[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy is a problem)

Mon Nov 8 02:10:38 UTC 2004

Delirium wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
> 
>> Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and 
>> get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them 
>> will come back under a different name. But at least the community will 
>> be able to unite behind the AC ruling.
> 
> 
> I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a 
> lot of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.  A 
> site in which all unpopular users are banned is not really a wiki.  I'm 
> personally quite glad that Wik was not banned the numerous times his 
> case was brought up (until the last time, of course), and wouldn't want 
> things to work otherwise.
> 
> Perhaps you have a different type of site in mind?

I don't really want to diverge into a dicussion of the personality 
traits of particular users, but Wik was more than just unpopular. He 
refused discussion and conducted numerous edit wars. According to this 
mailing list post:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/027321.html

he was responsible for the departure of at least two users.

There are more important things than the number of words written on 
Wikipedia. It also matters that the text written is accurate and written 
in a neutral point of view. NPOV is acheived through rational discussion 
and compromise, two things that Wik was extremely bad at.

Another thing that is more important than word count is the mental 
health of our contributors. Editors should be able to contribute to the 
site without constant anger and frustration. They shouldn't have to put 
up with personal attacks.

Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of 
Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally 
frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He spent 
about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.

I'm thinking of a site where NPOV is valued, rather than just word 
count. If that's different to the type of site you're thinking of, then 
so be it.

-- Tim Starling