[WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

Tue Jun 20 20:00:18 UTC 2006

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Post 11.

Regarding the assertion:

| In the present state of Wikipedia, the rules in practice and the
| prevailing attitudes of administrators are all skewed in favor
| of the Infantile Vandals and the Expert Disrupters, while the
| Accurate Reporters and Responsible Scholars don't stand a chance.

I don't want to argue the details of the specific 3RR charge.
I have already stipulated that it was a "bad thing" for me
to let myself get pulled into that, and probably wouldn't
have let it happen except for the extreme circumstances.

And I am not here to defend my individual self.
I am speaking for what I know to be the generic
attitude of folks who take things like accuracy
and verifiability seriously, who do not suffer
fools gladly, as the saying goes, when it comes
to that.  It's clear to me that most folks like
that would have walked away, probably quietly
but no less disgustedly, long before putting
up with the kind of sophomoric toilet-papering
that I have had to put up with on this score.

I've already been told that the WP hieratchy thinks it can
afford a high attrition rate among conscientious people,
and that is confirming what I already said above.

The fact that nobody has yet bothered to read the stuff that
I have written in those WQAs, RFCs, and my answer to the 3RR
is the thing that tells me that this place is utterly beyond
hope.

I will exercise the remainder of my responsibility
to try and point out some obvious problems,
and then I will get out of your hair.

Let the sun shine in ...

Jon Awbrey

George Herbert wrote:
> 
> On 6/20/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> >(...)
> 
> Ok, I'm sorry, but I don't understand what your complaint is here that
> is causing you to want to withdraw.
> 
> You appear not to have been seriously or lastingly sanctioned for
> anything; GTBacchus warned both you and JJL not to 3RR / edit war, and
> then Voice of All blocked you for 24 hrs and then 2 minutes later,
> changed that to just a warning.  I think it's clear that for the
> activities of the 12th and earlier, both you and JJL were in some way
> misbehaving, though you're the one who got slightly and temporarily
> bitten.
> 
> None of that concludes the underlying content issue in JJL's favor.
> 
> You essentially "got away with" a 3RR vio (block was changed back to a
> warning), which is unusually tolerant.  You may not be very familiar
> with block policy, but generally only well known and apologetic
> editors are unblocked early after a 3RR 24 hr block.  You were clearly
> by normal standards given the benefit of the doubt regarding whether
> it was serious misbehavior.
> 
> Being blocked and warned is merely a symptom that you carried on the
> mutual edit warring with JJL for a couple of hours too long after the
> warnings.  That's not a decision that you were all wrong and he was
> all right.
> 
> I also think that you and JJL have not constructively engaged in
> discussion on the article talk page regarding the key points of
> dispute.  Nor have you asked for mediation with JJL.
> 
> This is not intended as a personal attack on you, but you appear to be
> an ineffective editor, in that you do not appear to understand the
> mechanisms Wikipedia is using here.  Your perception that you're being
> picked on or driven away is an overreaction to what are really
> fundamentally mild warnings and reactions to your making some mild but
> clearly good intentioned steps across the WP policy line.
> 
> There are cases where I believe longer experience "more popular"
> admins and editors have abused newer editors to some degree or
> another.  But I think your claims here are unsubstantiated.  If you
> cannot understand Wikipedia well enough to work with the system, then
> perhaps you should stop editing for the time being.  But blaming the
> system, when it has not fundamentally mistreated you, is an excuse.
> 
> The system is not perfect, but the system isn't the problem here.  You
> have a perfectly normal, reasonable content disupute with another
> editor.  You haven't been abused or pushed around.  If you can't work
> within the Wikipedia rules to resolve the problem, then that is your
> problem.  Thousands of other active editors are able to resolve these
> sorts of problems routinely.
> 
> --
> -george william herbert
> gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
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