[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 64

[Matt Jacobs]

>
>
> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:47:57 -0500
> From: Emily Monroe
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> > Editors/admins who are regularly rude to others are not only
> > tolerated by most of the community, they often have a group of
> > supporters around them always ready to praise everything they do,
> > manipulating RfCs and other voting (sorry, !voting) situations.
>
> Do you think that civility blocks and bans pre-arbcom will help the
> situation at all?
>
> > If we want to make WP more friendly, we have to make sure admins and
> > high-profile editors are actually trying to BE friendly.  If they
> > can't handle that, they shouldn't be working in a collaborative
> > environment.
>
> Exactly the reason why I support civility blocks.
>
> Emily
>
> I do agree that they need to be applied, but I also think that civility
expectations need to be higher for admins, followed by long-term editors.
These people 1) should know better, and 2) are often newbies' first
experience with WP.  Otherwise, I can see Civility being gamed by groups of
editors in content disputes.  My own experience was that a number of editors
accused me of making personal attacks for calling out a boldfaced lie made
by an admin(!) attempting to undermine my credibility in a dispute.  I think
a first step would be for arbcom to start desysopping admins who are uncivil
on a regular basis.  This would help remove some of the leniency problems,
IMO.



> Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:50:58 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> > This is not unlike schoolyard bullies who are usually accompanied by a
> > swarm of sycophants.
> >
> It is certainly true that our systems are at their worst when confronted
> with cynicism within the community. Not surprising, since the essential
> and founding assumptions of Wikipedia were that people are not like
> that. And most really aren't. But this remains an unsolved problem. To
> connect it directly with newbie-biting is a stretch, if not an
> impossible one: there is something in the idea that people on the site
> are assertive beyond the needs of the job because a confident manner is
> self-preservation.
>
> Charles
>

I would disagree that the connection is a stretch, as my experience is that
it was directly related.  The editors watched certain articles and would
attack incoming editors who even suggested a change they didn't like.
Attempting to address the attack on any noticeboards would bring choruses of
"it's not an attack," "it was justified," or further attacks on the editor
using misleading diffs.  One of the group was eventually desysopped for
abusing the tools, but the time and level of drama involved was way
disproportionate to the clear-cut nature of the case.  In most cases the few
censures the group of editors received were ignored among the attaboys from
the usual crowd.

Sxeptomaniac