It's not just changes that draw petty, sarcastic and juvenile replies for Wikipedians. We have a pervasive problem of burnout, wherein our more experienced contributors became jaded and disillusioned and make a practice of appalling behavior. Two recent cases in point... I don't need to explain the Tanthalas situation more than just to mention it as an example, but the second case is, I think, more serious. An administrator replies to a plea for help from a new contributor, who has uploaded his own work several times and tried to release it under public domain. Rather than explain, the administrator uses what appears to be his boilerplate response - snide, condescending, and perfectly tailored to send this new contributor away with a bad taste of the entire project. [1][2]
Unfortunately this type of interaction isn't even unusual. In some respects it appears to be the norm, in fact, and there doesn't seem to be any effective way of addressing this problem. I can no longer recommend people to become involved in editing, because frankly I refuse to subject friends and colleagues to the risk of this type of treatment. Perhaps the Foundation should put some effort into this issue before soliciting new participants who are likely to be shocked at the editing culture. Nathan [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fastily#SYS_logo.png [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Fair_use _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
