Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Maile66 (talk | contribs) at 16:16, 30 September 2019 (extra space (mine)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Discuss this story

• This is a vexed question. We should all treat one another well, and by and large we do. Most of the time that we don't it is resolved by the community, or by normal social means - you don't collaborate on a project with someone who you find obnoxious. Sometimes, though, well-meaning people (and of course bad actors too) get into a mind-set where they consider someone an enemy, whether of themselves, some ideal, or the encyclopedia. At this point normal conventions break down, and "opposition research" starts. There are other issues, "pile on" used to be endemic on AN/I, it is not so much now, but it still happens, and not just there. Confirmation bias is another, once we make bad faith assumptions, or assumptions of bad faith it is hard to see the good work an editor does. There are many other human failings, we are all subject to that can make our behaviour, to us reasonable, slip dangerously close to or across the dividing line into unreasonable. Partly as a guard against this in myself, I changed my sig a number of years ago to include the phrase "All the best" - I try to ensure that I mean it before I sign any comment. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC).
  

• In the past eight years, I would say, the community here has made substantial if still patchy progress towards creating a collegial editing environment. The episode under discussion struck me, as someone who has been on Misplaced Pages since 2003, as based on a concept of adminship that was obsolescent a decade ago. Meanwhile Misplaced Pages has become even more important as an online information source, the institutional strength of the WMF has been transformed, and Wikimedia as a whole is starting to look more like an integrated solution to a very serious problem. The traditional navel-gazing is quite understandable but, look, I see some backlogs that need clearing. The real work is there to do. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

• The process was agonizingly slow, confused, and just ugly. The community did not come up with a method to minimize harassment in everyday practice. The difficulty of giving an accused harasser enough information to defend themselves while protecting their accusers against potential further harassment was underlined.

This is not an issue that’s going to be solved overnight, and to suggest that it should have been solved with the ArbCom case carte blanche is, frankly, ludicrous. Civility issues and harassment on-wiki have been issues that have plagued this community for many years, and while I would say that the environment is much more collegial now than it was 10 years ago, it’s clear that there’s much more work that needs to be done by the community. OhKayeSierra (talk) 13:17, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

OK, @OhKayeSierra: I didn't mean to say that I expected a complete resolution of this problem overnight. And "looking back" at it (we can do that already!) there were some positives - e.g. we actually confronted the problem in a few ways. And I'm not blaming ArbCom for this - they had a hard job - but all in all, the process struck me as slow, confused, and at times ugly. BTW, I'm very pleased to see the comments in this section so far are quite positive about the general problem of harassment. I get disheartened at times, so perhaps I'm not seeing the forest for the trees. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:36, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Becoming disheartened on occasion is normal and natural; however, that is not so hard to fight as long as we remember that this brilliant idea of an encyclopedia of all present and growing knowledge is a community effort of staggering proportions. It is those times when we are misunderstood that give us opportunities to make ourselves understood that lead to community wisdom. While that is not always easy to do, it is well worth the effort. Smallbones, you have taken on no small task, and I hope that overall, the community agrees with me that you do it admirably! P. I. Ellsworth, ed.  14:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

• I am a long-term, occasional editor. I don't know anything about the disputes discussed in the Signpost article. From my perspective, our biggest problem is attracting and retaining good editors. I loved what MontanaBW wrote. This is the first sentence: "Misplaced Pages needs to improve the sometimes hostile and toxic environment for article creators and editors, both new and old." Amen. We routinely drive away potential good editors with unrestrained criticism, which often comes across as an arrogant attack. I frequently encourage friends and colleagues to contribute to Misplaced Pages. The few that do usually tell me later something like, "Why should I spend time writing on a topic I know in-depth, only to have some jerk delete it all and throw a bunch of rules with colons at me and treat me like I'm an ignoramus?" I try my best to encourage them to "hang tough" and "don't let the rule-bound editors suffering from a superiority complex get in your way." But most have made up their mind and moved on to "volunteer work where my contributions are appreciated."   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 15:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

• "There might be volunteer mentors who would act as intermediaries." Now there is an idea which may have some legs. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:33, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

• Indeed, where do we go from here? We need to be better at policing our own, and it will happen (has happened) in baby steps. Arbcom has limitations. Over the years, I have seen many stalked by the recently defrocked admin. Fram has gone after me. Responses only go so far. After a few back-and-forths, I realized that Fram in a defensive position had no intention of retreating. In such a case, you dust yourself off and get on with more important things. Fram is not the only such one who employs heavy-handed tactics, admin or otherwise. So ... in other words ... Fram and those of his mindset rule the roost, free to delete anything they don't like, free to continually hound others, free to use the tools unhindered. We need to find a way to honor's Jimbo's ideal of "anybody can edit" without someone in power turning that into, "only people I personally deem competent can edit". We need to be able to get past WP:FANCLUB, those in power protecting their own. When the summer brouhaha happened on Jimbo's talk page, I wondered if some of the anger was also fear of , "...there but for the grace of God, go I ..." by some I had seen demonstrate the very behavior that got Fram banned. We need to recognize that Fram may have (or may not) have been the extreme of power over-reach among some admins. But he certainly was not the only one; Fram was either the one who didn't know when to back off, or the one who didn't see when he crossed the line of no return on one or more editors. Whatever the case, we need to do better at stopping the subculture of bullying on Misplaced Pages. — Maile (talk) 15:55, 30 September 2019 (UTC)