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Growth vs. maintenance

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WJhonson at aol

Nov 7, 2009, 11:33 AM

Post #26 of 32 (705 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time,
andreengels [at] gmail writes:

> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>>

I would submit that this tells you something very significant.
The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of
freedom.
The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it.
When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor
has no "friend" on their side. You cannot appeal to the police to stop the
police.

That's my main point. However it has to be worked out. We need a
contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor.

Will

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andreengels at gmail

Nov 7, 2009, 12:43 PM

Post #27 of 32 (708 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM, <WJhonson [at] aol> wrote:
> In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> andreengels [at] gmail writes:
>
>
>> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
>> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
>> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>>
>
> I would submit that this tells you something very significant.
> The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of
> freedom.

No, it means that whoever you block there will always be *someone* who
is against it and makes an issue out of it that the block is unfair
etcetera. It does not mean that *the community* is of that opinion.

> The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it.
> When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor
> has no "friend" on their side. Â You cannot appeal to the police to stop the
> police.

You can appeal to other sysops, to the arbcom, to the community. What
you are proposing is to have *every* case be appealed to the community
automatically. There are always some people who are of the opinion
that if you have made personal attacks 30 times that is still 20 times
too few to be blocked.

> That's my main point. Â However it has to be worked out. Â We need a
> contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor.

No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We
don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating
it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not
helping creating it.

--
AndrĂŠ Engels, andreengels [at] gmail

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dgoodmanny at gmail

Nov 7, 2009, 6:05 PM

Post #28 of 32 (707 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

As I interpret what André says, I agree with him:

We need, as does every voluntary society, the involvement of many
ordinary members in each aspect of the government of the society. We
need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion,
expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established
forms.

To the extent that we have special cadres, they will be
self-perpetuating and excluding. To maintain coherence, we need a
limitation in the numbers of people able to take the final action--as
admins or arbs do--but not in the numbers of people who participate in
making the decision.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM, <WJhonson [at] aol> wrote:
>> In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>> andreengels [at] gmail writes:
>>
>>
>>> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
>>> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
>>> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>>
>>
>> I would submit that this tells you something very significant.
>> The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of
>> freedom.
>
> No, it means that whoever you block there will always be *someone* who
> is against it and makes an issue out of it that the block is unfair
> etcetera. It does not mean that *the community* is of that opinion.
>
>> The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it.
>> When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor
>> has no "friend" on their side. You cannot appeal to the police to stop the
>> police.
>
> You can appeal to other sysops, to the arbcom, to the community. What
> you are proposing is to have *every* case be appealed to the community
> automatically. There are always some people who are of the opinion
> that if you have made personal attacks 30 times that is still 20 times
> too few to be blocked.
>
>> That's my main point. However it has to be worked out. We need a
>> contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor.
>
> No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We
> don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating
> it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not
> helping creating it.
>
>
> --
> André Engels, andreengels [at] gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l [at] lists
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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bodnotbod at gmail

Nov 7, 2009, 6:44 PM

Post #29 of 32 (701 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 2:05 AM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny [at] gmail> wrote:

> We
> need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion,
> expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established
> forms.

Surely the established forms are quite limited, the wiki and the
internet in general being a text-based way of communicating.

Are you suggesting people take part in deletion debates through the
medium of interpretive dance?

Next time I want to warn a vandal I'll make some pottery that voices
my displeasure and upload a JPEG to Commons.

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WJhonson at aol

Nov 7, 2009, 6:45 PM

Post #30 of 32 (712 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

In a message dated 11/7/2009 12:44:42 PM Pacific Standard Time,
andreengels [at] gmail writes:

> No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We
> don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating
> it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not
> helping creating it.>>

You are completely ignoring what I said.
Police do not help the work move forward. Police never help any progress
progress. Their only function is to stop something, not to make anything
occur.

You are labeling all those blocked as being vandals. That is begging the
question. The very point, is that many of those blocked, perhaps even most
of them, did *not* deserve it at all. Appealing to another admin is
pointless, all admins support each other in the same way that all police support
each other. It's called a Police State. That is what the term implies. That
is what we have in the project. The fact that many people can work just
fine within a Police State is not the same as saying that such a situation is
ideal or even matches the real world.

In the real world, we do not run society at the whim of the police.
Stating that people can appeal to ArbCom is fairly silly. We are discussing
trying to get people to become involved in the project. Not trying to teach them
how to run power games in a massive RPG. That is the exact opposite of
what I had hoped we were trying to do. If the entire project is a game then
we've failed. If we are forcing people to learn all the gamer rules just to
get their points considered, then we've failed. If we have a sink or swim
mentality for all new contributors then we've failed.

That's my point. A vanishingly tiny number of admins ever seek out and try
to help people who are blocked. Everyone is guiltly until they prove their
own innocence in a system which frowns on anyone trying to do so. That's
not the type of society that the majority of people want to live under. And
yet that's the type we've created. Anyone who has tried to learn how to win
under this sort of oppression in-project knows exactly what I'm speaking
about. I'm not sure that any admin would understand it. That's a given.
It's hard to show the police that a police state is a bad thing. That's why we
in the real world have checks against police abuse.

What I'm saying is that we need the exact same type of checks in the
project.

You had said previously that when this "Community Approval" was tried,
every block was challenged. Yes. Every person blocked is going to say "I'm
innocent". You see it on death row as well. No criminal is ever guilty. But
to presume that somehow that's not what we want, is to say that the real
world, in which we all live, is not what we want. That what we want is
criminals to behave nicely and not complain about the quality of food in prison.
And for those falsely locked up, to just serve their term and have no
"Innocence Project". I disagree.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. And that proof should not rest
in the arms of a sole person as it does in our project. In our project a
person can be locked up indefinitly with no trial, and no appeal. And you
wonder why people get disenchanted.

Will Johnson

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dgoodmanny at gmail

Nov 7, 2009, 8:05 PM

Post #31 of 32 (711 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

I regret having been so unclear as to not have made it obvious that
the established forms referred to the Wikipedia formal channels of
DR, AfD, and the like. I have sen too many justified complaints
rejected and the people placing them attacked and humiliated for not
following the correct details of procedure or using the correct Board
to post on, or not first asking humbly someone who gives every sign of
being gruff and unaccommodating.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 2:05 AM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> We
>> need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion,
>> expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established
>> forms.
>
> Surely the established forms are quite limited, the wiki and the
> internet in general being a text-based way of communicating.
>
> Are you suggesting people take part in deletion debates through the
> medium of interpretive dance?
>
> Next time I want to warn a vandal I'll make some pottery that voices
> my displeasure and upload a JPEG to Commons.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l [at] lists
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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andreengels at gmail

Nov 8, 2009, 4:41 AM

Post #32 of 32 (687 views)
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Re: Growth vs. maintenance [In reply to]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 3:05 AM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny [at] gmail> wrote:

> We need, as does every voluntary society, the involvement of many
> ordinary members in Â each aspect of the government of the society. Â We
> need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion,
> expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established
> forms.
>
> To the extent that we have special cadres, they will be
> self-perpetuating and excluding. To maintain coherence, we Â need a
> limitation in the numbers of people able to take the final action--as
> admins or arbs do--but not in the numbers of people who participate in
> making the decision.

I'm sorry, but if that's where you agree with me, you _have_
misunderstood me. I stand for exactly the opposite. I think it is a
terrible waste of energy to get the community involved in each and
every blocking decision. To form a good opinion about a block will
often cost considerable time (an hour or so) of reading in on the
conflict. Because of that I don _not_ want each and every person doing
that on each and every block. Instead, we appoint a few people that we
trust to do this reading and decision-making in our place - read: the
arbcom.

--
AndrĂŠ Engels, andreengels [at] gmail

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