[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in fact dangerous to Wikipedia

Thu Sep 7 08:26:00 UTC 2006

G'day David,

> On 05/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>It seems that we constantly assume 'Vandal!' in this case.
> 
> How do we get across to the CVU that they can't vote amongst
> themselves to dispose of Assume Good Faith? Which is, ahh, a *policy*.
> Telling them they can't has had no effect.

I don't think username blocks is something we can blame CVU for.

CVU tends to stand for tolerance of bureaucratic nonsense, inexperience, 
unfamiliarity with the goals of Wikipedia, militarism, and general 
Cluelessness.  All Bad Things, I agree, but they point to a completely 
different issue: the phenomenon is of users who don't know how Wikipedia 
works or should work but think they know better than the rest of us 
because of their CVU "experience".

The admins involved in CVU tend to be either, a) Clueful people who 
signed up for reasons which escape me but which I trust made sense to 
them; or b) the "CVU admins", who passed RfA on the strength of their 
perceived vandal-whacking ability but don't yet know what they're doing. 
  In my experience, 'a' is no problem, and 'b' may be overly officious 
or process-oriented but don't go out of their way to set up Kafka-esque 
username traps[0] for newbies.

I'm more concerned[1] about longer-term admins who've become burnt out 
and decided they couldn't be bothered providing reasoning for exceeding 
their mandate.

[0] Excuse me, I had some leftover flowery rhetoric burning a hole in my
     literary pocket.

[1] In this specific case ...

-- 
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse