[WikiEN-l] Reflections on the end of the spoiler wars

[Steven Walling]

You make your point well. Then, if the object is "figuring out ways of
isolating idiocy that don't amount to iron fist control." then it seems to
me that the best way of accoomplishing this is to make forum shopping a firm
criterion for closure of discussion. Is it still an essay? Why don't we
propose it as a guideline?

On Nov 14, 2007 8:56 PM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Nov 14, 2007, at 11:37 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
>
> > If you
> > don't support open discourse for everyone, you don't support it at
> > all.
>
> You're mostly just restating the basic paradox here. Yes - we want an
> open discourse-based project. On the other hand, an extended six month
> saga of forum shopping a doomed cause is not useful - it's counter-
> productive, engenders bad faith and assumptions thereof, increases
> wikistress, and sucks time and air away from the business of improving
> articles.
>
> Endless toleration of idiots (where "idiot" is defined as "inability
> or refusal to contribute desireable content") is not the goal of any
> productive system, no matter how open the discourse. The trick is
> figuring out ways of isolating idiocy that don't amount to iron fist
> control.
>
> In the article space we mostly have a system in place to identify POV
> pushers and other idiots and isolate them through blocks, social
> censure, and reversion until they get annoyed and leave. Equivalent
> behaviors in the policy space are far more accepted, and for good
> reason - we have our basic content principles well spelled out (NPOV,
> Verifiability, etc). It's a lot harder to reduce the policy space to
> first premises and then isolate those who do not adhere to them.
>
> This is, incidentally, why inclusionism/deletionism debates never end
> and often get so contentious - we don't have the same well-defined
> definition of what a useful contributor is on deletion debates that we
> do in the article namespace.
>
> All of which is to say, I think the problem is rather more complex
> than people are making it out to be, and has a significant component
> that persists even after the two obvious statements ("Shoot the
> idiots" and "open discourse is important") are made.
>
> -Phil
>
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