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

[Fred Bauder]

That was the purpose of the original arbitration committee. Finding a
mentor is kind of hard nowdays as there are so many users who might help
but probably will not. On the other hand, many requests I have received
and looked into are from people who are making trouble themselves;
sometimes very serious trouble. Giving a second chance to someone who has
been banned by the community after extended discussion seldom works out
well. But that's not a newbie who has run into serious trouble just for
making jokes about Windoze...

Fred

> 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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