QUOTE(Maunus @ Thu 24th November 2011, 3:50pm)
I think one thing that is not helpful is labeling people. I am depending on the time and the situation a (rogue?) admin, an expert editor, a content contributor, a moth person (sometimes good/sometimes bad), a newbie killer, a drama queen, an article owner or someone trying to make it into some other article owners turf. What should I be flagged as?
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About the expert role: I am an expert in certain subject matters. Have I felt that I am being driven away? Yes. In my role as admin or non-expert editor have I driven away other expert editors? yes (not on purpose but it has happened as a consequence of bad communication and short tempers). What makes the difference between me and the driven away editors is both the level of addiction (when I have been driven away I always come back), the fact that I have a kind of support network in wikipedia of other experts and people who share my views and approaches (a cabal? a clique? a mob?) so I know that not all of wikipedia hates me.
We definitely differ on this... In my view there needs to be what John Kenneth Galbraith called "countervailing force" to the current system in which quality control inspectors (administrators), often of severely deletionist temperament, control the proverbial "front gate" and make use of automated tools that discourage and drive away new content creators. Wikipedia needs more expert participation, not less. When experts are blown away with a lame 20 second page assessment by a New Page Patroller with an itchy trigger finger who is playing some twisted form of a First-Person Shooter game, something needs to be done to change the culture.
I'm not an anarcholiberal into kittens and cookies while the A7 carnage continues. It's gonna take organization and directed effort.
The only way to do that, I think, is for the people seriously dedicated to writing in mainspace to be identified, to be organized, to make demands, and to work together to DRIVE a change of "company culture."
Step one is the identification of those who are "the people seriously dedicated to writing in mainspace."
I am convinced that volume of content contributed to mainspace (in terms of kilobytes added) would be the best metric for separating the sheep and the goats. Ultimately that information is going to have to come from the Foundation... So there will have to be allies at the top...
t