[WikiEN-l] "Wikietiquette" Committee

Thu Oct 2 23:19:05 UTC 2003

The idea of a "wikietiquette" committee is a good one, in my opinion. It
would probably make it easier to for the at-large community to deal with
problem users (eg. Heine), rather then relying on developers.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] RK temp-banned


> Jimmy-
> > It seems likely that he's angry enough to never come back anyway, in
> > which case we can all just talk about how to best avoid this sort of
> > thing in the future.
>
> Ban faster? :-)
>
> Seriously, I don't see how you can avoid dealing with problematic persons,
> and I don't see how the persons attacked by RK should have acted any
> differently, and I still think that a temporary ban was the best action in
> this case. There are some people who believe that I am somehow working on
> a grand strategy to usurp power on Wikipedia, which is kind of funny,
> because the first thing I would do it if I had it is democratize
> everything ;-).
>
> We should avoid developing too much of a behavioral double standard. RK
> was tolerated because he contributed good material. But how much good
> material has not been contributed because of his well documented
> behavioral problems? In my opinion, we need to set clearer rules on
> Wikiquette and be serious about enforcing them, with a well-defined
> protocol of warning, temporary banning, permanent banning etc. Maybe there
> could be a 5-10 member Wikiquette "committee" where violations could be
> reported and decisions would be made by voting. By making it proprietary
> (totally unwiki, but so is reporting directly to you) we can avoid having
> the lists and talk pages cluttered up with these complaints and can make
> sure that users will not have to fear repercussions for reporting
> Wikiquette violations.
>
> Implementation wise, this could be a mailing list with non-member posting
> rights (perhaps with a web-based submission interface to avoid spam --
> this could actually be done inside Wikipedia by creating a fake user with
> that email address and using the "Email this user" feature, how about
> [[User:Mediator]]?). Right now, it's really difficult for users to deal
> with insults and personal attacks. I would love to be able to say in 5-10
> years that the discussion climate on Wikipedia is the best anywhere on the
> Internet.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
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