[WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

Tue Jun 20 20:16:48 UTC 2006

On 6/20/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:.
> 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'm sorry if you found our rules like 3RR and our dispute resolution
process cumbersome and uninviting.  As flawed as these may be, try to
imagine what Wikipedia would be like *without* these rules.  The 3RR
is not that old, and prior to its implementation, edit warriors could
revert a dozen times a day (I think the record I personally witnessed
was 14) with impunity, a single edit warrior could essentially hold an
article hostage for months.  While it would be nice to summarily ban
idiots or pov pushers or conspiracy nuts, etc., what metric do you
propose we use to separate the wheat from the chaff?  Who gets just
three reverts and who gets more?  How do we decide? It's not often
that clear, and some trolls can talk a good game when they need to
appear reasonable and sane.

I know from personal experience that it is frustrating to deal with
stubborn nutjobs, and frustrating to deal with a system that treats
you and the nutjob as equal players, but I haven't seen any serious
proposal for a better system or one that doesn't introduce more
problems, or reintroduce problems we've largely got a handle on. By
and large, consensus works well.  It can sometimes be difficult to get
enough sane eyes on a particular article, but it can be done.