[WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

Tue Jun 20 21:02:25 UTC 2006

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Post 12.

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.

Rob,

If you read what I have written so far, it should be clear that
I am not disputing any of the fine sentiments in [[WP:POLICY]],
nor am I disputing the 3RR action.  I cited those details only
because people have been asking me for more concrete examples
of things that are leading me to say what I've been saying
from Post 1.  As far as reverts go, I try to use as few
as possible, and in the case of really hot disputes I
try as hard as I can to observe a Zero Revert Rule.
And that is what I did from 16:03 on 20 May 2006
until the incident of 12 June 2006, when I let
somebody get my goat, as the saying goes.

That is not one of the problems that I am trying to point out.
That is not the sort of thing that would lead me to postulate
the conclusion that I've repeated for ease of reference above.

I'm pointing to the fact that Infantile Vandals and Expert Disrupters
have got the Well-Intentioned Folks, WikiPeons and WikiPolitburocrats
alike, totally out-snookered in the current scheme of things, and I'm
not seeing the requisite awareness or gumption to do a thing about it.

Okay, maybe "totally" is too strong, but "seriously" at any rate.

Having spent some of the increasingly non-productive time
that I've been having lately in the WP environment musing
on why this is happening, I have accumulated some guesses
as to why, but this is already too mamy posts for one day,
so I will save it for tomorrow.

Jon Awbrey

Rob wrote:
> 
> 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.

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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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