[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep drivingaway good contributors

[Toby Bartels]

Mark Christensen wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>Ed Poor wrote:

>>>Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give
>>>admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the
>>>ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

I do agree that we should think about guidelines for
banning people for reasons other than outright vandalism.
I'm not convinced that this is necessary (at least not now),
but it's still a good idea to think about it.

What I primarily don't want to see is banning without guidelines.
Currently, Jimbo has banned only 2 people extraordinarily,
and each case was after long discussion, which is fairly safe.
Every other banning has been for outright vandalism (which is policy)
or has been objected to and reverted shortly thereafter.
Do we need to ban people for deliberately uncooperative behaviour?
If so, then we should set up guidelines for that before we start.
(And I think that most people here would agree with that.)
In particular, hard security measures reserved to "official" people (admins)
should be spelled out in some "official" document (a policy page).

>>You're looking at this in not quite the right way. Rather than thinking
>>about creating a police force (which is what giving one percent of the
>>users power to enforce rules is) we need to be thinking about
>>SoftSecurity.

I think that part of the problem is that, ironically,
people are sometimes too hesitant to implement soft security measures.
I think that it's reasonable for a group of contributors
to decide (through discussion on the relevant talk pages, most likely)
that a certain other "contributor" has repeatedly demonstrated
that they're unable or unwilling to work cooperatively,
and that therefore the miscreant's efforts can reverted without comment.
We are not obligated to continue to try to work with them
if they refuse to try to work with us.  So revert them.
(And there is also the good point, stressed by Jimbo among others,
that you'll sometimes want to wait an hour or so before reverting it
in order to give them a chance to go away in the meantime.
This is to prevent edit wars in the short term,
while edit wars over the long term are prevented by force of numbers.)

Will this always work?  Maybe not, certainly not forever.
Thus we should think about other security measures (soft or hard).
But the point is that there is an alternative between
attempting to work with somebody (which we all agree should be done first)
and banning them with extraordinary power (being discussed now).
This is Cunc's "SoftSecurity".

>I think a police force is can be considered SoftSecurity, so if you
>don't consider it so,  could you please explain what you mean by term?  

It can be, depending on what it does, but banning people is hard security.
I assume that Cunc is using the term "police force", then,
to mean a small group with extraordinary hard security powers
(such as admins that ban people).

>People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
>and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
>empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
>may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
>which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.

Yes, this is soft security, and it's what I think we should primarily do
(except for the fact that doing so *quickly* is sometimes counterproductive).
I would prefer to call such a group a "militia" rather than a "police force",
especially since doing this doesn't require any extraordinary powers.
But the language is not important.  It's the hard security (banning)
that Cunc is objecting to, and that I want to be cautious about.


-- Toby