[WikiEN-l] the elephant in the room

[Marc Riddell]

on 6/17/07 6:43 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:

> On 6/17/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 17 Jun 2007 at 14:06:08 -0400, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Joe hasn't pointed anything out, he's been railing about conspiracies
>>>> in general, and two editors in particular, for weeks now, trying to
>>>> invent ways to "get" them in some way. Unsurprisingly, these are the
>>>> same two editors who are a particular focus of the WR cesspool, where
>>>> he regularly posts. And you, Dan, have been doing much the same,
>>>> though to your credit your forays into WR are often curtailed by your
>>>> natural disgust for the loathsomeness of the general goings-on there.
>>> 
>> on 6/17/07 6:16 PM, Daniel R. Tobias at dan at tobias.name wrote:
>> 
>>> Yes, the antics on WR do raise my blood pressure sometimes (I'm
>>> taking medication for that).  That doesn't mean that they don't
>>> sometimes have a point in what they say (when you strip it of the
>>> silly, nutty rhetoric they tend to encrust their points with.
>>> 
>>> I don't go for the conspiracy theories outright; I prefer referring
>>> to a "clique" rather than a "cabal", to get the connotation I intend
>>> to convey about it.  A "cabal" implies a much greater degree of
>>> power, organization, and pervasiveness than really exists; even
>>> English Wikipedia alone is much too big and complex for any single
>>> "cabal" or "clique" to control literally *everything* (even Jimbo
>>> couldn't keep his fingers in every single thing that goes on even if
>>> he wanted to).  An editor can edit for years without even running
>>> into any of the members of the clique I'm concerned with here, if he
>>> stays away from the handful of "pet topics" the clique members are
>>> interested in (leaving over a million other articles to edit).  I
>>> only ran into those people myself when I went from mainspace article
>>> edits to the internal politics of policy debates, RfAs, and so on.
>>> 
>>> However, in those policy areas, there does seem to be a fairly
>>> cohesive small clique of people who have a disproportionate amount of
>>> influence, and whose behavior seems to be practically immune to
>>> questioning.  This is not so much an "evil conspiracy" as it is the
>>> natural social-networking tendencies of human nature; people tend to
>>> form into clusters of friends, who help one another out and back one
>>> another up.  That's perfectly fine and healthy, except when it leads
>>> such a group to circle its wagons in defense of the goals of the more
>>> control-freakish clique members, as seems to sometimes be happening
>>> here.
>> 
>> Daniel,
>> 
>> Are there any defense mechanisms established in WP against these "cliques"
>> or special-interest groups?
>> 
>> Marc Riddell
>> 
>> 
> Well, common sense and the willingness of one lone wolf admin to spend
> 5 hours or reading vitriole and whining came to my defense rather well
> when I was being attacked by one of these cliques just this week.  In
> the end, these cliques tend to be their own worse enemies.
> 
KP,

I agree with you they can be their own worse enemies - eventually. It just
seems to me to be another unnecessary obstacle an honest editor has to find
their way around to do what we're really supposed to be doing here. You
shouldn't have to wait for someone to come along to help you; there should
be a mechanism for you to turn to. A person coming to the Project with an
honest intention to contribute to, and improve, the substance of the
encyclopedia, can eventually get fed up with the adolescent (bordering on
the infantile) extraneous bullshit.

Marc Riddell