On 05/23/2014 07:06 PM, Wil Sinclair wrote:
I participate on WO because I think every voice
deserves to be heard.
I'm going to give you a serious piece of advice here as someone who has
held one of the most public position of "authority" on the English
Wikipedia (the scare quotes are quite on purpose, ask me about them some
day).
Wikipedia Review and its successor WO are the roaming grounds of a
diverse group of people, some of them with astute and sometimes
insightful criticism about the failings of the Foundation's projects.
On a surprisingly large number of occasions, the criticism there has led
to exposing serious problems that desperately needed fixing, and some of
the commentary can be downright painfully precise when pointing out the
movement's gaffes.
This is the reason why, when I first got elected to the Arbitration
Committee, I tought much as you do and felt it important to "keep an ear
to the ground" as it were.
The problem with WO - and it's a fatal one - is one of motivation. The
vast majority of participants there do not offer critique out of a
desire to improve how we do things, or point at things that we are doing
wrong with the aim of having them fixed; they do so out of spite,
revenge or simple outright malice. It is no coincidence that the more
prolific participants there are people who were excluded from the
on-wiki discourse before joining: it is the rallying point of the
malcontent. The *reason* why they are so often uncannily accurate in
their "investigations" is because they are driven by an obsessive need
to turn over every rock, pick apart every comment, and expose (with no
regard for safety or privacy) those they deem to be their adversaries.
Somtimes just to make a point and gloat but - too often - in order to
harass, bully and threaten (and occasionally blackmail) participants in
the projects.
(And you need to be aware that, historically, those fora had a number of
"private" boards restricted to the bigger participants, where the level
of bile is much higher and much less veiled of legitimate criticism - so
what you've seen to date is certainly the *tamest* that can be found on
those sites).
The net result is that everything on those sites is tainted with bile
and venom; and every opportunity to hurt is exploited mercilessly. You
may *think* you can abstract that poison away from your participation,
concentrating on the buried legitimate claims that can be found. You
can't. It will grate on you, imperceptibly at first, but it will affect
you.
Sure, they'll occasionally dig up something that desperately needed to
be found and fixed - giving us the opportunity to right some wrong - but
that's a side effect of their effort to dig up "dirt" to throw at their
enemies. In practice, everything of value that bubbles up from WO will
reach "mainstream" venues soon enough if it was legitimate.
So yeah. You're of course perfectly *allowed* to participate in those
venues, but you shouldn't be surprised if that makes many in the
movement weary as - historically - that has proven over and over to be a
very bad idea.
-- Marc