User:Isomorphic/Essays/The Rule of Law

A semi-coherent ramble about rules, trolling, and other stuff.

I fail to understand the obsession some Wikipedians seem to have with due process. When I first arrived here, you couldn't get anyone to agree on any rules at all. Everyone yelled "guidelines, not rules" every time anything resembling a rule was suggested. Now we have people who nitpick every policy, and trolls who try to bend the rules against us.

Wikipedia isn't about rules, or even about community. It's about building an encyclopedia. The rules and the community exist to serve the encyclopedia, not the other way around. If the rules are in the way of making a good encyclopedia, then it's the rules that should change. I care a lot less whether someone has followed the wording of a policy page than whether they are sincerely trying to help the project.

I strongly support Please do not bite the newcomers, and I feel that our strength is in our ability to accept all kinds of editors. We need to take care to assume good faith on the part of newcomers. Our problem is that assuming good faith is one thing; ignoring obvious bad faith is another.

There's nothing sinister or fascist about showing the door to those who aren't helping the project. There is no moral equivalence between telling someone they can't edit a website and tossing them in jail or exiling them from a country. Heck, most websites out there are never editable to anyone except their owners. There's no "freedom of speech" argument, either. Wikipedia is a very open project, but it's still a privately owned website. No one has an inalienable right to edit here. The internet is large. If someone doesn't want to help write an encyclopedia, there are countless other places they can spend their time.

We consistently ask the wrong questions. Wikipedia not a court of law. Fairness and justice are good, but they are not the point. Building an encyclopedia is the point. If someone is, overall, making it harder to build a quality encyclopedia instead of easier, they should find something to do elsewhere.

Wikipedia is not the place to fight "The Man". It is not a place for the disaffected to experiment with "dissent" in a safe, virtual world where they won't get arrested for it. If someone wants to inform the public about something, that's great. That is what we're here for, and anyone is welcome to add information as long as they follow NPOV. But if someone shows up wanting to reform the project, or complaining about the tyranny of the admins, I'm just not that interested. The best part of this community is the opportunity to collaborate with intelligent, knowledgeable people in creating something worthwhile. I'm not interested in imaginary power struggles.

All it takes is a few edits that demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt someone isn't really interested in helping to build an encyclopedia, and I no longer care what they think. I'm not talking about rudeness. It's bad, but it happens. I'm not talking about POV pushing. Again, it's inappropriate, but it can be worked into the overall wiki process. I'm not talking about self-promotion, although that gets under my skin immensely. I'm not even talking about vandalism, as some vandals mature and become useful contributors.

I'm talking about edits made to deliberately cause trouble. Edits that have no rational explanation otherwise. Things like nominating a vandal for adminship, or trying to pick fights. Things like making provocative contributions to talk pages and the Wikipedia namespace, without contributing substantially to any articles. This sort of person is not useful here, and we have no reason to tolerate them or worry one bit what they think.

Keep Wikipedia sane and happy. Please don't feed the trolls.

Hi there - hope this is an ok place to post! I agree with what you say, but the problem becomes your definition of building an encyclopedia. Who gets to decide what vision of an encyclopedia is being built if people can be banned for having a different one? Mark Richards 18:51, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree 100% with the essay. You answer Mark's question with exactly the right answer: you look at their contributions. There is no question that the pattern of contributions of a troll is obviously different than a contributor. There won't be a "different" vision of an encyclopedia, there won't be anything recognizable as an encyclopedia at all.


 * I'm not convinced. Of course there are users who we can all agree are 'obvious trolls', but there is such a grey area of users whose vision we don't agree with, but might be just as valid and constructive as ours. We will never see it though, because the closed minded will ban them as 'obvious trolls'.Mark Richards 20:46, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Mark, your comments are exactly the sort of thing that worries me. What you say sounds good, but I don't see any relevance to what really happens on Wikipedai. Who, exactly, has ever been banned because they have a "different" view? People are banned because they won't follow rules, and won't respect other editors or the encyclopedia. I have a vision of Wikipedia as a useful, accurate reference work. If anyone has a vision other than that, I'm not interested in it. I'm perfectly willing to discuss and compromise on article content. I'm willing to discuss and compromise on policy. I don't always enjoy working with people whose worldviews are very different from mine, but I'm willing to do it. My concern is that some good editors on Wikipedia seem to believe that we are morally obligated to humor every head case or jerk that shows up, because to do otherwise would be unjust or unkind. I don't see things that way at all. To me, it's silly to have the time and energy (and happiness) of good editors thrown away in dealing with people who won't behave. I'd like to see a system where if someone is consistently ignoring the rules, they recieve an official warning explaining what they need to change. Then if they choose to ignore the warning, they get banned without need for further ado. It should be a simple choice; stay and behave, or go. We really don't ask that much of people, just some common decency. It's sad to have good editors driven away because we don't rid ourselves of nuissances like Irismeister, who patronizes and insults people while making himself out to be a victim. The best example was User:Plautus satire, who was here for a couple months even though practically everyone who ever dealt with him knew he needed to be banned. What were we waiting for, exactly? Isomorphic 23:57, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, what you say sounds good, but it papers over the issue of whether we can agree on what a 'useful and accurate work' looks like. While of course I agree that users who simply vandalise and or harrass, insult others might warrent exclusion (although I don't think that exclusion is the most effective way to deal with them) I worry that we get too narrow minded in what this looks like to us, and assume that other people's views of what is useful and accurate is not what we want, so we ban them. Mark Richards 20:19, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * In theory we might ban people just because we don't like their views, but I've not seen it happen. In practice, we go to the other extreme, tolerating people who don't even pay lip service to fundamental policies like NPOV.  As I said, disagreement is fine.  What is not ok is causing strife for its own sake, and being rude or obnoxious to other Wikipedia editors.  If you spent a while watching someone like User:JRR Trollkien, it was pretty clear that he wasn't fundamentally here to improve Wikipedia.  He was here to aggravate people and be difficult, and he did a fine job of it.  Sure, sometimes he would seem reasonable, but he also made edits that could have no purpose other than to cause trouble.
 * Also, exclusion is quite useful and effective in some cases. Plautus satire has not come back, and if you'll recall how much trouble he caused, this is a very good thing.  While I don't believe he was deliberately causing trouble, he was quite unbalanced, and Wikipedia is not an asylum. Isomorphic 01:32, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * To clarify: there are people whose fundamental view of Wikipedia I disagree with.  Anthony DiPierro and other radical inclusionists, for example, would turn Wikipedia into a giant mass of data, unsuited for actual reference.  I do not, and would never, call for them to be banned.  Really, the people I think most need to go are those who abuse other users. Isomorphic 01:38, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, there's a point of agreement - abusing other users is never ok - that I could certainly get onboard banning people for. Mark Richards 02:22, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for this essay - you just spared me one evening to write the same :-) --Elian 21:23, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)