Should valued contributers be treated differently? Options

[mbz1]

I find this comment interesting:

If I was the boss of a company, I wouldn't fire my best employee for pissing off everyone else, especially if he or she actually gets shit done. Let's face it: Malleus is worth more to Wikipedia than five admins.

Why not let Malleus have immunity because of his usefulness? Is calling someone a cunt (even if regularly done over several years) that bad, considering this is the Internet?

If someone leaves Wikipedia "because" of Malleus, it's their choice.

Fetchcomms is mistaking: Malleus is worth more to Wikipedia than at least a hundred admins, probably more, but does it mean Malleus and other valued editors should be treated differently than not so valued, but good faith editors?

I have no answer to this question, but I would like to hear what others think about this matter. Thanks.

This post has been edited by mbz1: Sun 25th December 2011, 8:28pm

[jd turk]

Fetchcomms is mistaking: Malleus is worth more to Wikipedia than at least a hundred admins, probably more, but does it mean Malleus and other valued editors should be treated differently than not so valued, but good faith editors?

No, no, a thousand times no.

[Eppur si muove]

Fetchcomms is mistaking: Malleus is worth more to Wikipedia than at least a hundred admins, probably more, but does it mean Malleus and other valued editors should be treated differently than not so valued, but good faith editors?

If one takes seriously Wikipedia's mission to create an encyclopedia, then before the faux-religious "5 pillars" should come a rule zero which should rule all administrative and functionary actions:

Before an admin, functionary or co-founder takes an action or decides not to do so, they must ask themselves this question "Will this particular action that I am considering help or hinder the development of a high-quality non-plagiarised encyclopedia that accurately reflects the most strongly evidenced facts rather than the opinions of cranks and people who have their own axes to grind?" If the former, go do it. If the latter, don't do it. If uncertain, seek some advice.

The better the content that someone produces, then the more likely that blocking or banning them will be harmful to the project. The more disruption someone causes, the less likely that such an action will be harmful.

Everyone should be treated the same but their value to the encyclopedia is an important factor that should be taken into account.

The people who are among the least useful to the project are trolls, subtle vandals and POV-pushers. Unfortunately, many admins and Jimbo find it a lot easier to spot some rude words than to identify those who are systematically distorting content. So, all too often, they go off on one about the rude words and defend the trolls. However, if they were actually to follow rule zero, they would realise that the person being sworn at is often a positive harm to the project and therefore the one most worthy of a block or ban.

Of course, if someone's rudeness is driving away useful contributors or reducing their willingmess to spend time developing content, then that is a cost to the project. So not just the usefulness of the perpetrator of a bit of rudeness should be taken into account, but also their target(s). More should be done to protect (rightfully) valued editors and newbies, who for all we know might become valued, than to protect timewasters.

This post has been edited by Eppur si muove: Sun 25th December 2011, 11:22pm

[Herschelkrustofsky]

If one takes seriously Wikipedia's mission to create an encyclopedia, then before the faux-religious "5 pillars" should come a rule zero which should rule all administrative and functionary actions:

Before an admin, functionary or co-founder takes an action or decides not to do so, they must ask themselves this question "Will this particular action that I am considering help or hinder the development of a high-quality non-plagiarised encyclopedia that accurately reflects the most strongly evidenced facts rather than the opinions of cranks and people who have their own axes to grind?" If the former, go do it. If the latter, don't do it. If uncertain, seek some advice.

That's sort of a longwinded paraphrase of WP:IAR. The problem at WP is not the rules. It's the selective enforcement of the rules. I suspect that the rationale for that selective enforcement is similar to the argument you are making for "valued contributors"; in the case of SlimVirgin, for example, the reason her desysopping was temporary, when anyone else would probably have received the dreaded Community Ban, is that she was considered "valued." Another thing, therefore, which should be examined is the criteria for being considered "valued." Under present conditions it means you have racked up the most MMORPG points.

[Eppur si muove]

If one takes seriously Wikipedia's mission to create an encyclopedia, then before the faux-religious "5 pillars" should come a rule zero which should rule all administrative and functionary actions:

Before an admin, functionary or co-founder takes an action or decides not to do so, they must ask themselves this question "Will this particular action that I am considering help or hinder the development of a high-quality non-plagiarised encyclopedia that accurately reflects the most strongly evidenced facts rather than the opinions of cranks and people who have their own axes to grind?" If the former, go do it. If the latter, don't do it. If uncertain, seek some advice.

That's sort of a longwinded paraphrase of WP:IAR. The problem at WP is not the rules. It's the selective enforcement of the rules. I suspect that the rationale for that selective enforcement is similar to the argument you are making for "valued contributors"; in the case of SlimVirgin, for example, the reason her desysopping was temporary, when anyone else would probably have received the dreaded Community Ban, is that she was considered "valued." Another thing, therefore, which should be examined is the criteria for being considered "valued." Under present conditions it means you have racked up the most MMORPG points.

But selective enforcement need not be nepotism. A lot of systems do include judgement as an essential part of the process.

The definitions of disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association all contain a condition to the effect of "the symptoms ... cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (The wording varies slightly between different disorders, or at least they did in DSM IV, the version that was current when I was trained as a social worker and that I have at home.)

Much legislation in England and Wales requires that someone operating under it take into account "all the circumstances of the case". So when I was an Approved Social Worker considering whether to detain someone under the Mental Health Act 1983, I had to decide not only whether the person was mad, but whether detaining (or "sectioning") them was the best action in all the circumstances of the case. One time I was assessing a religious Christian on 23rd December. She was clearly psychotic but I decided that I should take the importance of Christmas to her into account as one of the circumstances of the case. (I think the daughter wanted a quiet Christmas and that this was why she had made the referral to us at that time. She was still happy to use her mother as a babysitter for her own children.) So, I said no to the psychiatrist who wanted to detain her. (The GP who was the third member of our decision-making group didn't want to detain her but was persuadable.) In January the three of us went back and, despite a valiant effort on her part to say how important she attended the visit to her church of an evangelical speaker from the US, all three of us agreed that now was the time to section her.

So what I say in my "long-winded paraphrase" is actually what is embedded into a lot of professional systems as the way of doing things. The Crown Prosecution Service has a similar criterion of only bringing a case if it is in "the public interest" to do so. The public interest equivalent in Wikipedia is whether Malleus's contributions are so valuable that it is not in the long-term interest of readers of Wikipedia that he is blocked or banned.

What you are complaining about is favouritism and self-interest. The admins you accuse are considering "do I like this person?" and "will taking this action have repercussions for me?" This is something else completely. After I decided not to section this woman above, I had a nightmare about her jumping off the roof of the block of flats in which she lived. All people deciding whether to section someone know perfectly well that they will never end up on the front page of the Daily Mail for taking away someone's liberty when it was necessary but they might if they decide not to section the person and they go on to do something dreadful. Most are professional and try to set that consideration aside.

Unfortunately a lot of people are not mature enough to be able to differentiate between a decision in the public interest and nepotism. And that applies both to those taking the decisions and those commenting on them.