[WikiEN-l] NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>[...]
> The problem of abusive, combative, counter-productive behavior between (and
> among) persons in the Project is not going to be solved with new rules or
> policies - but by example.  [...]

Agreed, but it's not just that simple.  We have numerous good examples
already.  You, Fred Bauder, Brad, a few others are shining examples,
and there are plenty of good ones.

The problem is that humans are much more attentive to negative
interactions than positive.  We can have 10 incidents on ANI which
were resolved politely and constructively, and then the one thing that
someone was rude about blows up and gets 10x more contributions and
fighting over it than the other 10 combined.  Little bits of abuse
multiply and take over.

We need people not to start abusive behavior.  We also need to develop
social and policy mechanisms to defuse abusive situations.  The
ultimate endpoint is that Arbcom needs to be willing to step in for
serious long term bad ones - particularly with admins.

Arbcom can't help with the social and policy mechanisms to defuse
abusive situations, no.  But that doesn't mean they shouldn't work
their end of it.  Even if we all acknowledge that those are a hard
problem, and may be really difficult to actually resolve, the elements
of this that can be resolved in some way should be worked on.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com