User:Peter M Dodge/Esperanza

First of all, something which was prevalent on the MfD discussion and something I strongly agree with, is that there is a significant distance between the intention of the charter, and the example that many Esperanzans provide. While there are some Esperanzans that are among my best friends, such as Editor at Large, others I have encountered have provided less than stellar examples of behavior. Some of this was readily apparent on the MfD discussion - many editors persisted with allegations of bad faith nomination, accusatory comments against some of the people that voted delete, including myself, and many had absurd and uncivil comments like "It's not April 1st, is it?" which did nothing to make Esperanza look like a group that had merit as a positive community environment. As administrator dmcdevit stated in the MfD, If this is the civility parade, I'd rather stay at home. --Dmcdevit

The aims and goals of Esperanza are noble. Not a soul I could see on the MfD argued that, at least not in any intelligent fashion. Fostering community support for frustrated and flustered editors is not a bad thing, and helping editors collaborate is the very purpose of the various Talk namespaces; Esperanza is simply an extension of that, in my manner of thinking.

As I said, the problem lies in the divide in Esperanza's stated goals, and reality of many members' interactions with the community. As someone that attempts to resolve disputes and is interested in such things, I watch MedCom and ArbCom with a lot of interest, and it seems too frequently that Esperanza users are involved in the wrong end of such dispute resolution avenues. Undoubtedly this will be taken with a grain of salt, as I don't like to name the users I've seen, both to respect their privacy and to avoid this discussion turning into a dispute in and of itself. It is still, however, food for thought

To this end I propose a few WikiProject policy-type changes:


 * Users that are blocked for violations of WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, and especially WP:STALK should be dismissed from the group. Keeping them in not only encourages them to continue, making them feel as if they are somehow protected or justified, but also promotes a bad image of the group.
 * The WikiProject should promote an agenda of "do no harm." Membership in Esperanza is not license to ignore policy, contrary to some of it's members' actions.  Likewise, it does not give any user any sort of special status over other users.  In this case, it is very much the actions of a few bad apples, but we shouldn't let a few bad apples spoil the batch.

Some of the specific projects of Esperanza have come under fire, some of them with good reason. The Coffee House and Barnstar Brigade are two that I feel are particularly contentious and justified in being deleted. Remembering the First Pillar of Wikipedia - we are an encyclopedia first - such activities do not contribute to the goals of Wikipedia in any meaningful way. Some argue that the role of support is played by such a things, and assuming this premise for the sake of discussion - how is this not redundant with the purpose of the Talk namespaces, such as Talk and User_talk? Furthermore, how does the Coffee House in it's state before deletion help with this "support" role in any meaningful way? it was full of just ... random nonsense, to be frank. I felt it's nothing that could not have been done in Esperanza's talk namespace.