[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[Ian Woollard]

On 01/02/2011, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>
>> If you don't consider it as a trade-off then bad things happen, you can
>> lose
>> the most productive members.
>
> Good propaganda, and it worked, but our most productive members are not
> habitually nasty, only a few are.

This is a good example. I resent you for referring to my general
discussion as 'propaganda'. This is rather uncivil. So please can
Bauder be suspended from this list as he violates civility???? Many
thx. ;-)

/tongue in cheek example

The point is that it's a continuum, what some people consider
incivility may not be considered by others, and they vary on how much
is needed for action. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have any statute of
limitations, so I've seen numerous cases where people come along with
a dirty laundry list from several years; implicitly this may overwhelm
thousands and thousands of positive edits, and the incivility may be
directed at people that are objectively up to no good.

That's the trade-off. As George says, everyone is incivil sometimes.

But my fundamental point is that perhaps it's about trade-offs between
things; so identifying the trade-offs identifies the areas that
require leadership. Things that aren't traded, don't require
leadership, since consensus will very typically do the right thing for
things that aren't traded off.

> Fred

-- 
-Ian Woollard