[WikiEN-l] Admins shouldn't shoot back

[Marc Riddell]

>>> 
Marc Riddell wrote:

>> This appears to be especially true when it comes to discussing the
>> leadership and structure vacuums within Wikipedia. It is easy to simply not
>> respond on a List such as this, but how would you react if asked about this
>> in person, face to face?
>> 
on 6/19/07 7:48 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge at telus.net wrote:

> What leadership structure? Sometimes I believe that the leadership is
> only suitable for drawing and quartering. I often have the impression
> that we live in a culture of distrust, and that this infects much of our
> activity, whether on Wikipedia or esewhere.

What leadership structure? Precisely. This is what I have been trying to
drive home for some time now.

A community without strong, definable leadership produces a culture of
"everyone for themselves". This is true whether in Wikipedia or the world at
large. It becomes the very familiar "survival of the fittest". And "who can
you trust?" becomes the pervading question.

> At one time the purpose of religion
> was to bring people together in a common belief, and that did bring
> people together. In some communities it still does. But with the notion
> of God being brought into question it pulls the rug out from beneth the
> feet of those who used God as a major premise upon which to establish
> all their other beliefs. If the notion of God is really total nonsense,
> how do you convince the true believers of that without producing a
> psychological basket case.
> 
> Children are told certain received truths by their parents and
> terachers, but they go online and with minimal research find out that
> those received truths are completely wrong. The parents are relatively
> clueless about the online world. Evil as they may be, the sexual
> predators remain only a tiny part of the problem. At least we can catch
> them and cut their balls off. But how do you protect kids against anomie
> when you don't even understand what it is? How do you convincingly say
> "Trust me" to someone when they've heard it so often before. What we are
> getting now in this paradigm shift of communications is the first broad
> generation of disbelief, and Kuhn did warn us that in the great paradigm
> shifts there will be significant losses.

Ray, the questions you raise here are crucial ones, but I believe a
discussion of them here goes beyond the scope of this List. If you would
like to discuss them privately, I would be open to it; if they were asked
rhetorically ­ you have given us much to ponder.
> 
> I fully appreciate that she has suffered unjust
> treatment by certain online persons, but I would fervantly hope that she
> can work with some of us who would prefer to find some basis for
> developpin a more trustful environment.

Yes!

Marc Riddell