On 2/28/07, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon(a)prwatch.org> wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Indeed - I noticed it was disappearing in 2005,
and by 2006 it
seemed to
have almost completely vanished. I recognise that part of my
feelings about
this are just irrational wishing for the "good old days" (I have
noticed
it's always the same with any online community people have been
members of
for a long time - we tend to get nostalgic and hype up how good
things once
were). But still, there was a culture of mutual respect for each
other. Even
if you thought someone was dead wrong, you didn't get into a wheel
war or
edit war with them.
I don't know how accurate your perceptions are on this point. I've
been involved with Wikipedia since late 2002 and haven't noticed a
huge change in the amount of respect that Wikipedians show for one
another. The main thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a
bigger corpus of formalized rules, and a correspondingly higher
likelihood that disputes will turn into officious rule-wielding
rather than debates directly about articles and their merits. I don't
know whether this change is a good thing or a bad thing -- some of
both, probably.
Yes, my views may be skewed by the massive assumptions of bad faith I've
constantly stumbled across - I can't say that my experiences represent an
accurate sample. I just feel that there's a lot more assumptions of bad
faith these days than there used to be. I recall a lot of nasty debates,
especially over deletionism vs inclusionism, but I can't think of any
(except trolls, of course) who assumed the other party was acting in bad
faith. That's the kind of respect I'm talking about.
As for the "culture of mutual respect," though, I remember some knock-
down-dragout fights, ideological wars, and some
incredibly nasty
experiences with trolls, vandals and cranks. Moreover, this seems to
have been going on at Wikipedia since its earliest days. Larry Sanger
(who left Wikipedia before I got here) recalls its early history as
follows:
I too can recall many contentious arguments - but none of them as
detrimental (I would say) to the community as the kinds of arguments we have
today. Today, instead of just arguing, people are more likely to take things
to the next level by assuming the other party is acting in bad faith, and
revert/wheel warring. I'm well aware of the acrimonious atmosphere
engendered by the earliest trolls, but putting the trolls aside (since they
rarely contributed much either to the project or the community), I think
there was a lot more good faith and mutual respect for other Wikipedians
(but not necessarily for the opinions of those Wikipedians).
I don't know whether the Wikipedia commmunity today is overall more
or less successful than it was in the past at
fostering a "culture of
mutual respect," but if John Lee thinks it used to be better, I
suspect that this may simply reflect his early good luck rather than
an actual change. My own experience suggests that the overall culture
hasn't changed much. If anything, it probably has gotten marginally
better over the years.
Well, a sample of one (or two) is never a good foundation for any factual
findings. ;) I would note, however, that the mailing list has always been
full of acrimonious debates, and has generally been more confrontational
than the project as a whole. What concerns me is what actually goes on in
the project, because whereas last time, despite the discretion available to
all editors and admins courtesy of WP:BOLD, WP:IAR, etc., these powers were
rarely abused, today, they are the very first guns to be rolled out in an
argument. If you disagree with someone, increasingly the tendency seems to
be to revert them, despite our best efforts to contain such attitudes.
Johnleemk