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