User:JzG/RfC
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There is an RfC ongoing at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG2. I have not commented there, and have no intention of reading it. I have already told some members of the Arbitration Committee why this is, but since many friends and other concerned members of the community have asked, and have urged me to comment, I will do so here.
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[edit] Use of admin tools
Some concerns may have been raised about my use of admin tools. While not pretending to be anything like perfect (something no admin is required to be), I would defend my use of tools in most cases.
Look at the numbers involved, and the proportion of problems that arise. I hope this is below the level of "systemic problems", and I sincerely hope that I am well into the "benefits outweigh the costs" box on this one.
[edit] Deletions
I have performed, I think, a little under 10,000 deletions. Last time I counted, around 98% were still redlinks and most of the balance were either redirects or complete rewrites. A fair number were in response to OTRS tickets citing grossly defamatory edits; my approach to defamatory WP:BLP material is definitely on the firm side. I am not alone in this (see the issues ongoing right now with and ).
There have been some problems. Take , for example. This was discussed in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff. Neither Violetriga nor I covered ourselves in glory there. I remain unhappy that we are hanging this millstone around the neck of somebody who is famous only for being the subject of a dispute over which they had no control, but I have walked away, because in the end I am content that the Badlydrawnjeff arbitration gave us a much clearer understanding of exactly what is and is not acceptable in WP:BLP cases.
Is there a serious ongoing problem with my use of the delete feature? I hope not. I am open to a polite discussion of any deletion, and in the case of BLP deletions try not to stand in the way of sourced rewrites. There was some kickback about BLP deletions (mine and others) last year, but I believe the community position has now settled at a point that is, if not happy with, then at least accepting of, Jimbo's strengthening of BLP policy.
I am still, of course, a deletionist at heart - although since we are all here to include content I would rather describe it as having an inclusion threshold at the top of the spectrum. I do not deny that sometimes I have allowed my frustration with what I consider to be egregiously bad content to get the better of me. However, I think you'll find I make much more use of WP:PROD and WP:AFD these days and am less likely to simply nuke an article that I consider to be crap. I am also more likely to discuss deletions with others.
[edit] Blocks
I have performed, by my count, just under 1,200 blocks and unblocks, the vast majority of which have been, as far as I can tell, entirely uncontroversial. There are a couple of blocks and one or two unblocks which have been controversial. Jeffrey Vernon Merkey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was one widely-discussed example, and the single purpose accounts engaged in . The latter is a very specific issue which I'll come to in a moment.
I have noticed that I am more likely to block indefinitely than some admins. There are two reasons for this: first, I view blocking as preventive. If I think that a user does not understand what they are doing wrong, then I may block them with no expiry time, because the disruption will only cease when a human has reviewed their response and noted that they understand the problem. This applies particularly to spammers, copyright violators and users who insert defamatory content, where the disruptive activity can be time-consuming to fix. Second, I tend not to deal with the trivial cases. I don't frequent the 3RR board or AIV, where the routine short-duration blocks are handed out to people who have got carried away. By the time someone arrives on my radar, they have very often already caused a significant problem for the project.
But not always. I have been badly wrong on at least a few occasions, and I think I have learned from that. Six months ago I would likely have simply indeffed ESCStudent774441 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), for example. As it happens, he ended up indeffed anyway, but not by me.
Indefinite does not mean for ever, it means until we are sure that there won't be any resumption of the problem. A typical case, in my view, would be Fys (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). Actually I only blocked for 24 hours, and for an unequivocal 3RR violation, but as soon as there was an assurance that the problem would not be repeated, I unblocked the user. Even though the user, then and now, showed every sign of being utterly unrepentant and bearing a massive grudge, there was an undertaking to cease the disruptive behaviour so I unblocked.
[edit] Disruption and blocks
Now, I have a strong feeling about blocks, which I guess is at the edges of where consensus currently lies. I feel that Wikipedia is currently at (yet another) turning point. We have been through the Wild West barn raising phase, where all new content was likely good; we've got past the one and two million article mark and been forced to consider what our inclusion standards are and should be; we've reached the crisis point of Wikipedia being abused to denigrate living individuals; we have mature content in many areas. And now we are at the point where Wikipedia is the number one most important place on the Internet to promote your band / blog / mad theory / company / self. We're really well set up for resisting most of these, but we're really badly set up for handling the long-term determination of zealots.
It is my view that, in those articles which are subject to repeated circular arguments, POV-pushing and trolling, we are going to have to be a lot firmer about taking new iterations of the dispute away from the dispute - in short, we will need to be more willing to block people who turn up and pitch right in to old battles.
[edit] Civility
Anyone who thinks I'm uncivil can.... no, wait, that probably won't help.
Two things to be taken in mitigation here. First, British English usage is considerably different from American English usage. In England, "oh fuck off" is, in the circles in which I move anyway, perfectly normal. You'd say it to a mate. Just as an Australian might (or so Wikipedia tells me) refer to a mate as "you old cunt", a term which is considered the last unforgivable swearword in English. So people should make allowances for linguistic differences, but for values of people that mainly means me. I know that the States has a completely different attitude to this. It baffles me that you can have national outcry over one exposed breast or a careless swearword, yet buy firearms without a license. And, you buggers, you killed one of my forebears. But there we go, "two great nations divided by a common language". It took a while to sink in, since my skull is thick, but eventually it did. Mostly. Please don't all laugh at once when I say this, but Jimbo actually did recruit me last year to an informal group attempting to work out how how to improve levels of civility on the wiki - presumably because if they can fix my behavour they can fix anyone's. I do think there is a difference between invective and incivility, and it's a difference that should be explored. We have some users whose behaviour is vexatious to the point of tearing one's hair out, but because they ever so politely fuck with your mind, they get away with it. People, spitting in the soup is uncivil, but the community right now seems to have more of a problem with telling the soup-spitters to eff off than it does with the soup-spitting. This does need to be fixed, but I'm probably not the one to fix it.
Second, I get trolled. A lot. Really really badly, sometimes. Of course this is partly because I handle trolls badly and they love the attention. It's also because I have been known to take decisive action where it is needed - the rouge admin at work. I will freely admit that going through days of process when everybody knows what the end result will be, frustrates the hell out of me. Overturn and list at AfD for a garage band article created by a single purpose account just because it made an implausible and unsupported claim of notability, well, that has always seemed to me like a total waste of everybody's time. In particular, I find it really very hard indeed to allow someone to have the last word when what they say is flat wrong. There are a few users who I have blocked, and who spent an inordinate amount of time asserting over and over again that these blocks were abusive, however many times they are told otherwise by uninvolved users of long standing. This winds me up beyond measure. But look! I have unwatched their talk pages and disengaged.
One or two of the people I have blocked have taken it rather badly. Several of them abused Wikipedia for personal vanity or gain. Here is one of my big character flaws: I find it really hard to tolerate people who abuse Wikipedia for their own vainglorious ends.
[edit] A time of stress
I have had a fair bit of personal and on-wiki stress. This has included the group who consider to be the Antichrist and are still attacking me on and off wiki more than two years after I refactored their attack article, ParalelUni (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log · rfcu), who posted one of the most despicable personal attacks most of us have ever seen, Cro..Scream (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log · rfcu), who emailed me to tell me that my sister's death was only to be expected since I'd dared mess with him, ColScott (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log · rfcu), who phoned my wife at home and whose website briefly published my phone number and (thankfully out of date) address. I have had to reconsider several times whether my involvement with Wikipedia is good for me or for Wikipedia. But I come back, because I admire the goals of this project and because I have some good friends here.
Every now and then I have to remind myself why I am here. A while back I registered an alternate account in order to do just that, and to avoid the crap that sometimes comes just from being me (there are some people who very obviously watch my edits). That account has made about 500 mainspace edits and a couple of DYKs, but rapidly became useless because it was outed by Wikipedia Review. It probably wasn't hard to spot, since there are not many people interested in classical horn players and surgical stapling. So one of my ways of stepping back from stress was denied to me.
There have been a couple of things that have caused me very serious distress in the last half year or so.
First was the Durova incident. I'm not going to rehash that. Yes, some people flatly deny that harassment of editors ever occurs. Others, including me, disagree. Anyone who's in doubt should probably ask User:Alison, but let's not go there.
Second was the death of my father, which hit me much worse than I anticipated, much worse than when my sister died, and which I am nothing like over yet. The problem with was mainly caused by my thinking I was starting to get over it, when actually I was not at all, and I really went to ground after that for quite a while.
And underlying this is the fact that I am in my mid-40s, married, with children aged 11 and 13; any readers of this comment who are themselves parents of teenaged or grown children will probably understand the temptation to behave like a parent when people behave like your kids. This is a vicious cycle, since people who behave like surly teenagers very often are surly teenagers, and resent even the slightest hint of authority. That's what did for ESCStudent774441 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) in very short order, I think. I never will like Wikilawyers or those who demand that "cited content" is somehow sacrosanct, ignoring the obligation on the user seeking to include disputed content, to achieve consensus for its inclusion. My challenge is to find a way to live with that annoyance.
[edit] Fixing the problem(s)
I have taken action to improve my excessively bad tempered behaviour, based on numerous thoughtful comments from people I respect. You know who you are. Here are some of the things I have done:
- I have disengaged from some long-standing disputes, including burying the hatchet with user:ATren. We'll never be friends, but I don't think we're enemies any more.
- I have become much more ready to walk away from disputes. If a user is winding me up, I will simply unwatch their talk page and leave them to it.
- I remove comments from my talk page rather than getting drawn into arguments, and I try to consolidate debates at a single locus rather than have the same fight in several places.
- I unsubscribed from several mailing lists where vexatious trolling is known to occur.
- I try not to revisit contentious debates after making my point. Occasionally it's necessary or advisable, but for the most part I say my piece and move on.
- I spend a lot less time on Wikipedia. You may not believe it, but I do.
- I have over 14,500 mainspace edits under one username or another, and I try very hard to make substantive edits to content whenever I'm feeling stressed. I do not want to follow the unfortunate path of some users whose involvement with Wikipedia is by now almost exclusively to engage in disputes.
- I have a loose arrangement with some friends that I can call for help and advice when I need it.
- I rarely go to IRC, since I tend to find that this provokes positive feedback cycles (read the lead of the linked article if you are not familiar with the scientific and engineering usage of that term).
- I make much more of an effort to be emollient when I do feel the need to take action.
- I talk more and do less.
- I refuse to take on some cases which people bring to me, or refer them to others.
- I do not check my deletion log every week (this is a really important one, since outrage over serial recreation of articles on crap subjects was a big source of stress).
I can only think of one occasion in recent months when I have used invective in a summary, and that was when an admin who has declared an agenda against me came to my talk page when there was nothing there but posts of sympathy about my father, and left a note telling me they had undone some blocks I made. I cannot guarantee to the community that I would ever be able to remain polite in such circumstances, and if inability to give such a guarantee is considered a problem then perhaps there is a problem. But I hope not.
This last few days I've been at home with a chest infection, and incidentally helping clear the backlogs at OTRS. I think that activity has been broadly welcomed by those that knows about it, but I have a new job which I start soon as senior engineer for enterprise storage and virtual infrastructure, EMEA, for a Fortune 500 company, so I think I will be closer to the hour or two a day mark going forward, and that's good because it tends to focus my mind on the things which are important and where I can make a positive contribution.
I'm looking around at people who manage to take decisive action with less kickback than I get, and learning from them. I'm also picking my fights with much more care, mostly picking fights where I don't care. Am I bothered if a right-wing American is accused of being a gay prostitute? Only in the abstract. I know I must be doing something right because in the last couple of weeks I have had two users chew me out for my obvious bias towards the American extreme Conservative agenda. As a card-carrying member of the Liberal Democrats I find that funny :-)
I still need to fix the acute sense of outrage I feel when people abuse Wikipedia for self-promotion or personal gain. And I still need to be more measured and take more time to explain when I take administrative actions. Looking back I can see several cases where a lengthy series of to-and-fro would have been avoided if I'd spent more time explaining the original action.
Far and away the most positive sign, if you know me at all well, is not taking part in the RfC. A year ago, simply seeing Dan Tobias opining that I have no good hand account would have had me incandescent with rage. Now, I see that and simply walk away. I am sure there are many good-faith comments by people I admire and trust, and I sincerely hope that my friends will continue to report these comments to me, but I have no intention of losing my temper, and no intention of issuing line-by-line rebuttals against grudge bearers and other malicious individuals. As with the mailing lists, WikBack, Wikipedia Review and other places, I am not going to go looking for things which, when I find them, will make me angry. And that really is progress, I think.
Wikipedia isn't therapy, but I'm not using it as such. I've withdrawn from Wikipedia, or scaled back my activity, more than once when the going has been tough. I am capable of immense reserves of good faith and kindness, and am trying to teach myself new behaviours when people are rude and aggressive to me. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but always I try. Feel free to leave me any constructive comments about how I could have handled something better.
