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

[Ian Woollard]

On 14/11/2007, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What is surprising in all of these cases is that it has seemed, to me,
> at least, that consensus formed for a position quite quickly - spoiler
> tags were stupid, sourcing guidelines needed to have enough
> flexibility to not break articles, and the 2004 election controversy
> articles are abominations. Everybody sane who looked at the situations
> recognized that. But unfortunately, everybody sane also demonstrated a
> general lack of willingness to participate in the same debates for
> months on end. And so the actual discussions have been deadlocks as a
> handful of tenacious proponents of the losing side continue stamping
> their feet.
>
> This is a major tarpit, and is one of the ways in which dreadfully
> stupid things are allowed to profligate. It makes policy formation and
> the engagement of remotely tricky and nuanced situations a horrid
> timesink that is unsuitable for sane conduct. So what can we do? How
> can we streamline our policy formation problems to drive away the
> policy equivalents of lunatic POV pushers? Again, noting that the
> usual problems - consensus can change, so forcibly closing debates
> doesn't work, often contributors who are totally insane on one point
> are wonderful on every other article they edit, etc. So what can we do?


You can start by treating people with decency and respect and not calling
people who may happen to have different values, or be at a different place
on a learning curve, as insane.

-Phil
>

-- 
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly
imperfect world things would be a lot better.