User:Volunteer Marek/HnH

Heresies and hypocrisies

A collection of thoughts on Wikipedia, its culture and above all, its very imperfect institutions.

My heresies with respect to Wikipedia as she exists

 * Any admin who says "that's just a content dispute" deserves a slappin', no matter where they say it. ALL disputes are content disputes. Long term, you can't solve behavioral disputes without addressing the underlying content disputes. And it can be done too.
 * If Wikipedia could get its shit together and come up with a coherent Naming Policy for people and geographic places, something like 50 to 80% of all these "nationalist" disputes would go away. The policy doesn't have to be perfect, just reasonable enough (see Gdansk/Danzig vote - which DID end a lot of disputes and conflicts). It would provide a benchmark that can be referred to when disputes do arise. Ok, there's an important caveat here too - such a policy need not only be established (in some ways such a policy already exists) but also enforced, preferably by outside persons.
 * Edit Warring's good for you. And good for Wikipedia Too. Well, sometimes.
 * Synopsis: The title is a joke. I only mention that because it has been used against me in bad faith (I assume that most readers are good faithed and/or intelligent enough to realize that it's meant humorously but still, one can't be too careful on Wikipedia these days). What I mean is that vigorous disagreements can lead to better quality content - as long as editors are willing to do serious work, conduct research and look for reliable sources and approach dispute resolution with mutual respect. The flipside is that some of the worst articles on Wikipedia are actually the ones that NO ONE FIGHTS about, rather than the ones that people spent too much time fighting about.


 * Discretionary sanctions don't end conflicts, they make them worse.
 * Synopsis: In "mature" conflict-ridden areas discretionary sanctions make matters worse rather than better. They do this by creating an incentive for editors on opposite sides of an issue to engage in block-shopping rather than devoting their time to honest content related dispute resolution. If you make getting blocks cheaper then demand for blocks will go up. You'll get a proliferation of block requests on all sides and even more bad faith in the area. As a result, conflicts will get even worse. Imposing discretionary sanctions on conflict ridden topic areas is like exporting arms to conflict-ridden third world countries. The only way it can "work" is if one side exterminates the other.

Wikipedia's own hypocrisies and internal contradictions (sometimes, but not always, the same thing)

 * Game theoretic analysis of how certain topics become conflict prone. And why it's so hard to do anything about it
 * Why "Assume Good Faith" is the stupidest Wikipedia policy of them all... except in the way that it's actually written.
 * Synopsis: You can't force editors to assume something they know not to be true. Nor should you. If try to do so you won't suceed, all you're doing is creating another weapon in the arsenal of conflict warriors to fight with as they just end up accusing each other of "not assuming good faith". In a tragi-comic kind of way, often some editors indignantly demand that somebody assume good faith towards them while at the same time they're quite busy blatantly, obviously and hypocritically shopping for a block against the very person they demand this off. But the policy as she's actually written recognizes this - too bad few people ever bother to actually read it. You most definitely SHOULD assume good faith in regard to new editors or those you have not interacted with much before.


 * A short history of the "canvassing is bad" policy and why it was written by morons and loosers, or how bad policies persist on Wikipedia even when they don't have any common sense going for them.
 * Synopsis: The original policy on "no canvassing" was a spin off "no spamming" and it only referred to UNWANTED requests or communication. But shortly after it was spun off, someone who lost an AfD dispute changed it out of sour grapes in order to get a failed AfD overturned. They removed the "Unwanted" part of the policy and it turned from being a ban on a particular type of spamming to a ban on any kind of persuasion and public speaking. Of course, political advertisement, public appeals and speech, as well as communication with potential voters is part and parcel of any real life democratic process. On Wikipedia it's banned.


 * There's a very frequent confusion about whether certain administrators are "uninvolved" or unbiased. The two terms are treated as synonyms, but they're not. In Wikipedia-speak an "uninvolved" administrator is one who is not currently, or in recent past, engaged in a content dispute with one of the relevant parties. But obviously, one can be "uninvolved" and biased at the same time. This can be due to a personal grudge, latent prejudice, or simple wrong-headedness. At the same time an "involved" administrator may very well be unbiased - particularly if their involvedness endows them with insight into a particular area which facilitates their neutrality (of course this won't always happen - it takes a particular type of individual who is capable of this). What we need in dispute resolution is unbiased administrators; whether or not they're "involved" or is secondary. But that's a lot harder to get.

My own hypocrisies - we are after all a product of the system we operate in and in our moments of weakness we all participate in its hypocrisies

 * Calling an editor a "nationalist" is the new version of calling an editor a "troll".
 * Synopsis: I've done it. It was true when I did it (I think). It's still not the right thing to do. "Nationalists" on Wikipedia are real enough, just like there are real to goodness "trolls" (hell, sometimes they're the same people). But just like the epitaph "troll" used to get abused - with editors calling anyone that disagreed with them a "troll" - and eventually came to be regarded as a personal attack, so should the epitaph "nationalist". Its use does more harm than good. By its nature it "discusses the editor" rather than "discussing the content". It should be seen as a form of a personal attack on par with calling someone a troll, unless there's overwhelming and clear-cut evidence to support it. Ban it already.


 * Lemma: "Anti-nationalists" can be worse than the "nationalists"
 * Synopsis: Labeling other editors as "nationalists" is very often done ... by other, even more extreme, nationalists (just like very often it's actual trolls that call other people "trolls"). And what better way than to indulge one's nationalist proclivities than to go around and insert racist or slanderous materials into the other ethnic group's articles, while not actually "hyping up" one's own nationality?