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

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 09/05/2013 11:49 AM, Lars Gardenius wrote:
> But if your child is mobbed at a Wiki when he/she tries to contribute, or your grandmother is being abused when she contributes to a Wiki, you want somewhere to turn. As said there is no such instance in the Wikis, there is noone responsible how people are treated and mistreated in the Wikis.

You start from the presumption that those things usually or often happen
for reasons other than trying to push something through against
consensus.  I have rarely seen that happening (and no, the OP is not an
example -- if anything he's an excellent counterexample).

Mind you, there are often cases where the newbie is going against
consensus but doesn't know it.  This is a case for user education.

We /do/ have a problem with the way much of the community handles new
editors, but the existing mechanism in place /do/ work for the most part
(at least, for the more egregious examples).  The rest is a cultural
problem that no enforcement body could fix; you don't make people nice
by beating them up.

-- Marc