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

[Jeroen Heijmans]

After being called a racist/fascist several times in the Famous Canadians discussion, I too have
seriously considered leaving Wikipedia, losing fun in contributing and being unable to do anything
against that without marking myself as a "mad blocker" or anything. If I encounter something like
that again, I will probably decide to leave - even though I'd rather stay. So I'd be in favor of a
system which could help dealing with contributors when they behave badly, as the current system is
apparently not suitable for that.

As has been mentioned before, most bad behaviour focuses around a few rules, which also happen to be
the few real rules we have around here (IMO):

* NPOV
* Copyright
* Wikipetiquette
* Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
* Treat the "rules to consider" respectfully (this one is arguably part of wikipetiquette, but not
mentioned, IIRC)

If pointed to these rules by another contributor, most newbies - or other contributors - will read
the pages on these rules and either comply with them, or leave, as most people are reasonable people
and they see what the use is of such rules, or see that they can't live with such rules and leave.
Some may also want to discuss these rules, as they think they are (partially) incorrect.

However, if people are being unreasonable (even for a short while) and don't follow the rules after
being pointed to them (or even don't read them, which we can't be sure of), there's nothing I, or
other Wikipedians can do. You can block the ID, but that will be called bad behaviour as well; you
can block the page from editing, but that will be called bad behaviour as well, and there are enough
other pages to continue. You can send a mail to the list, but that does not result in anything
quickly, it only serves as a notification to the other readers of the list.

Therefore, in my opinion, there needs to be a way that we can "force" the badly behaving editors to
at least read the rule(s) he/she is violating. After that the person can either a) comply with that
rule b) disagree with the rule but decide to discuss it (even though most of the rules are likely
not to be changed) c) disagree and continue with his behaviour d) disagree and leave. a), b) and d)
are all good situations (of course, we prefer d) not to happen), and would be the reactions of
reasonable people (yes, most people are still reasonable even if they've been unreasonable before,
and realize they have been when they are told to be unreasonable). Of course, c) is not a good
situation as, at that point, the contributor is _willingly_ ignoring rules that are held essential
to Wikipedia. In that case, I think there's ground for "hard measures", such as banning, banning
from editing, banning from editing anything but talk pages, etc, depending on the case. 

I'm not sure whether the right to "invoke" such a "reminder of rules" should be available to all
logged in users, or only to sysops - in the any case, it seems to keep a log of issued reminders and
also let the invoker specify why it was done. Also, there needs to be some measures if the same
contributor is reminded more than once of the same rule.

However, all in all, I think this is a good way to deal with bad behaviour. The "offenders" are
first reminded of the rule(s) in question nicely, in talk, or on their user page/talk. If they
continue to ignore those rules, we can remind them of the rules in a more forceful way. If then they
still fail to behave reasonably, there's are reasonably objective "proof" that the person is being
unreasonable, and that we can be "unreasonable" as well, by banning the person in some way. This
also means it is not necessary to involve a whole bunch of sysops.

As for a way to "force" somebody to read rules, I return to the proposal I made earlier this week -
let the first page the contributor sees after getting a "reminder" be a page with the rule(s) in
question displayed. I can't think of any other ways, but there probably are some.

The "rules to consider" are a different question, of course, even though there are a few which are
very close to being actual rules (I consider the use of English names and language to be one of
them, for example). If a contributor is "violating" such a rule, we should encourage him/her to read
that policy and the related talk, and then formulate his objections in talk there so the discussion
there can be re-opened, if necessary. However, most debates "gone wrong" on rules to consider
usually evolve to violation of some of the actual rules, so I think there's no need for anything new
mechanisms for "rules to consider".

Be it with some similar to my proposal, or something completely different, I really believe
something needs to change to deal with bad behaviour. Otherwise, the trend will continue, and more
and more people will get sick of bending over backwards, and leave. 

Jeronimo