[WikiEN-l] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we talk people down off the ledge?

[Ryan Delaney]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I don't think this can be regarded as any kind of permanent solution.
> > Walking away would have done nothing in my case because I was the one
> being
> > hounded.
>
> I'm actually not familiar with what happened in your case, but I did
> include the caveat of "not allowing yourself to be *bullied* away".
> The point being that you can walk away from a flashpoint and calmly
> make your point later. Walking away is not "do nothing" but "don't act
> in anger", and "sometimes its really not worth it". The latter I would
> apply to intractable naming disputes. The amount of effort and debate
> that gets expended on naming debates is, in most cases, just not worth
> it. Cost-benefit analysis and all that.
>
> Carcharoth
>
>
I don't intend to constantly redirect attention back to myself and my
problem(s), but it's my only direct frame of reference and as it was my last
real on-wiki experience, it's a bit fresh in my mind.

So to speak more generally, what I'm trying to draw your attention to is the
idea that there are much more profound cultural problems on Wikipedia than
that "we need to make it more fun" or "People who are getting angry need to
take a break and cool off." David Goodman did a rough-and-dirty diagnosis of
the problems with what is going on at WP:AN/I, which now that I take a look
at it is just as bad as ever. In general, I found the widespread assumptions
of bad faith combined with mob justice appalling to say the least and it
thoroughly erased whatever belief I had that I could depend on community
support. I don't see why any other administrator discussed in this thread,
or any of the others who find themselves subjected to ad-hoc firing squads
on AN/I, should feel any differently.

- causa sui