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This list strikes me as a long and not particularly well reasoned way of justifying (to the writer themself, probably, but also to others) questionable past and

This list strikes me as a long and not particularly well reasoned way of justifying (to the writer themself, probably, but also to others) questionable past and future behaviour that maintains the status quo and the keeps the "cabal" intact while waving away criticism. Some choice quotes that come with no acknowledgement there are valid criticisms, and no solution to those criticisms other than "keep doing what you're doing": - “attack sites are the whining of the incompetent, who failed to succeed at editing Wikipedia” - "There IS a cabal. It's a core group of editors united by the belief that the encyclopedia must protect itself against jerks, and against people who write junk." - "When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good." - "The only bias it has arises from the self-selection of its members" Could've written "You have a problem with the way we do things? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and saved some time.

ben509 7y ago
That's how organizations get stuck with a status quo. The key is to understand they're quite sincere; when they think it through, they have this massively successful encyclopedia as evidence that solidly justifies their conviction that their current way of doing business works. And people who don't like it tend to leave and their voice goes unheard; as the piece correctly indicates, this is pretty normal. This is a common problem. For an institution or organization to work, the members of it have to build up and disseminate institutional knowledge, often by trial and error, and much of it can't be fully explained. That then leads to inertia: you can't formulate a convicing challenge to the way things are done unless you understand them, but at that point you're selected by the other members of the institution to accept their way of doing things. Generally, for a given organization, it takes an outside shock to really force them to reevaluate how they operate. If Wikipedia started losing patrons or saw their readership decline, they'd probably reconsider, but it's hard to imagine how much they'd collectively have to screw up for that to happen.
- jaggederest 7y ago
  Groupthink is the term of art. Makes it very easy for otherwise reasonable people to ignore all the evidence.
- sametmax 7y ago
  That's also how apple made great devices. You do have to protect yourself against the average mediocrity if you want something to remain great on the long run. It's a hard balance, and a hard one to keep without sounding like a jerk.
belorn 7y ago
I mentally rewrote the first point as: When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they do not share the views and value of the majority. Otherwise they would not get censored.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  > majority I would agree, as long as the "majority" refers only to the majority of people that use and maintain the particular platform upon which the censorship is occurring.
bikeshaving 7y ago
If you get hung up on the list’s views on censorship or Wikipedia’s policies, you’ll miss a lot of practical advice for moderating communities. For instance: > 16. Some trolls and POV-pushers are best fought with a time delay. Let them make their edit; then change it an hour or two later, or even the next day. Trolls are easily bored, and are more likely to go away if you hold your fire for a bit. (Blatant vandalism of course needs to be reverted immediately.) There’s an important UX principle here not to make negative feedback more responsive than positive feedback, or you might adversely induce your users to do more of what you didn’t want them to do. Consider using a different format for negative feedback (use email rather than in-app notifications), and find ways to stop the user from doing further harm immediately but notifying them eventually. > 60. It is easier to get a sincere "thank you" for reverting "you're a f____" from someone's userpage, than it is for writing a researched, thorough, and referenced encyclopedia article on an encyclopedic topic. The best way to continue as a writing Wikipedian for many years is to be, as the Buddha recommends, "indifferent to both praise and blame." There’s a running theme in the list about how conflict is more engaging than collaboration, and it really makes you think about how social media platforms have primarily become places for public conflict. Wikipedia has the goal of being an online encyclopedia first so they can actually strive to lessen conflict rather than come up with innovative ways to convert conflict into user engagement (Twitter ratios, the FaceBook mad emoji, etc.) > 6. Any logged-in user whose first edit is vandalism of a user page, or a nasty personal attack on a talk page, should be immediately and permanently blocked, without comment. > 30. Many of our best contributors began with a few shabby edits. Be kind to newbies, even though it is a test of patience to see the same mistake hundreds of times over several years. > 38. Try to be as tolerant as you possibly can regarding edits by established contributors. Should you need to revert one, leave as polite an explanation as possible, with room for compromise: and if they're simply wrong, don't rub their nose in it. The loss of long-established contributors due to avoidable conflict is one of the greatest threats the project faces. People who have been here a year or more, and made thousands of contributions to the project, are its greatest asset, and this cannot be overstated. There’s a great case to be made, when creating a community whose primary goal is not raw engagement, to segment users into new and established members. The first actions a user takes on a platform are clear indicators of what kind of user they will be, and it’s important to distinguish users who will provide no value versus users who might not know the niche norms of the community. I really think a lot more online communities would do well to add quizzes to the user registration process (Which of the following actions are harassment?). In addition, you should never use the same moderation tools (especially automated moderation tools) on established community members, because they’re that much more valuable. Independent of your views of how Wikipedia is run this list is written by someone who’s been in the trenches, and has, in my view, a really solid understanding of the work that goes into internet moderation.

ben509 7y ago

That's how organizations get stuck with a status quo. The key is to understand they're quite sincere; when they think it through, they have this massively successful encyclopedia as evidence that solidly justifies their conviction that their current way of doing business works. And people who don't like it tend to leave and their voice goes unheard; as the piece correctly indicates, this is pretty normal. This is a common problem. For an institution or organization to work, the members of it have to build up and disseminate institutional knowledge, often by trial and error, and much of it can't be fully explained. That then leads to inertia: you can't formulate a convicing challenge to the way things are done unless you understand them, but at that point you're selected by the other members of the institution to accept their way of doing things. Generally, for a given organization, it takes an outside shock to really force them to reevaluate how they operate. If Wikipedia started losing patrons or saw their readership decline, they'd probably reconsider, but it's hard to imagine how much they'd collectively have to screw up for that to happen.

jaggederest 7y ago
Groupthink is the term of art. Makes it very easy for otherwise reasonable people to ignore all the evidence.
sametmax 7y ago
That's also how apple made great devices. You do have to protect yourself against the average mediocrity if you want something to remain great on the long run. It's a hard balance, and a hard one to keep without sounding like a jerk.

belorn 7y ago

I mentally rewrote the first point as: When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they do not share the views and value of the majority. Otherwise they would not get censored.

stronglikedan 7y ago
> majority I would agree, as long as the "majority" refers only to the majority of people that use and maintain the particular platform upon which the censorship is occurring.

bikeshaving 7y ago

If you get hung up on the list’s views on censorship or Wikipedia’s policies, you’ll miss a lot of practical advice for moderating communities. For instance: > 16. Some trolls and POV-pushers are best fought with a time delay. Let them make their edit; then change it an hour or two later, or even the next day. Trolls are easily bored, and are more likely to go away if you hold your fire for a bit. (Blatant vandalism of course needs to be reverted immediately.) There’s an important UX principle here not to make negative feedback more responsive than positive feedback, or you might adversely induce your users to do more of what you didn’t want them to do. Consider using a different format for negative feedback (use email rather than in-app notifications), and find ways to stop the user from doing further harm immediately but notifying them eventually. > 60. It is easier to get a sincere "thank you" for reverting "you're a f____" from someone's userpage, than it is for writing a researched, thorough, and referenced encyclopedia article on an encyclopedic topic. The best way to continue as a writing Wikipedian for many years is to be, as the Buddha recommends, "indifferent to both praise and blame." There’s a running theme in the list about how conflict is more engaging than collaboration, and it really makes you think about how social media platforms have primarily become places for public conflict. Wikipedia has the goal of being an online encyclopedia first so they can actually strive to lessen conflict rather than come up with innovative ways to convert conflict into user engagement (Twitter ratios, the FaceBook mad emoji, etc.) > 6. Any logged-in user whose first edit is vandalism of a user page, or a nasty personal attack on a talk page, should be immediately and permanently blocked, without comment. > 30. Many of our best contributors began with a few shabby edits. Be kind to newbies, even though it is a test of patience to see the same mistake hundreds of times over several years. > 38. Try to be as tolerant as you possibly can regarding edits by established contributors. Should you need to revert one, leave as polite an explanation as possible, with room for compromise: and if they're simply wrong, don't rub their nose in it. The loss of long-established contributors due to avoidable conflict is one of the greatest threats the project faces. People who have been here a year or more, and made thousands of contributions to the project, are its greatest asset, and this cannot be overstated. There’s a great case to be made, when creating a community whose primary goal is not raw engagement, to segment users into new and established members. The first actions a user takes on a platform are clear indicators of what kind of user they will be, and it’s important to distinguish users who will provide no value versus users who might not know the niche norms of the community. I really think a lot more online communities would do well to add quizzes to the user registration process (Which of the following actions are harassment?). In addition, you should never use the same moderation tools (especially automated moderation tools) on established community members, because they’re that much more valuable. Independent of your views of how Wikipedia is run this list is written by someone who’s been in the trenches, and has, in my view, a really solid understanding of the work that goes into internet moderation.