[Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself

[Lars Gardenius]

It is very laudable if you, Peter, tries and help newbies and others that are harassed by other users.

I however don't think it is enough in a worldwide organization that you have to rely on volunteers and that these will intervene.

As I see it, if you start such an organization you must also take on the responsibilities that follows.
You can't just duck and pretend that you can hand over all problems to the users.

I still think that an international organization like the Wikis demands an instance to which mistreated and mobbed users can turn. An instance with the responsibility that normal rules in a society are upheld and with the authority to uphold them.

Regards,
Lars Gardenius




________________________________
 Von: Peter Gervai <grinapo at gmail.com>
An: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
Gesendet: 10:50 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013
Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
 

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Lars Gardenius <lars.gardenius at yahoo.de> wrote:
> No I don't think it is being addressed. Not in a serious way.

You mean it's not _solved_. Indeed.

At least one problem was mentioned in the thread which is that the
(honest, knowledgeable) newbies have unproportionally smaller
debating/lobbying power than aboriginals, and they are very easy to
oppress. This is an ongoing problem for the last decade or so and no
good solution seem to exist.

In theory there are (or could be) volunteers who could be called in
cases of newbie oppression from the experienced troll^H^H^H^Heditors
who would declare that they try to act as neutral as possible but they
would possess more experience to handle obnoxious editors and other
regual beings. Arbitration, mentoring, whatever we like to call it.
Obviously it only worked if there's a free way to reject a request (if
the volunteer believes the newbie has no merits, let's not call them
outright trolls and vandals) and if it isn't an "official" cabal but a
large catalog of helpful and experienced editors.

I have often done it (and still occasionally do on Commons since it's
a pretty harsh environment for newbies) and it's doable if there's
enough volunteers and people don't try to do it too often, I mean, one
in a week or month or so.

The point is to have a group of random people who are not involved in
the debate but could help to communicate with the members of the
community. (Since they're uninvolved it's probably useless to call
them biased, which is the easiest unargument I've seen in such
debates.)

g

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