Collaboration Leads To Discouragement

I created the CollaborationLeadsToDiscouragement on TheAdjunct after a wave of attacks at C2, and I felt constrained in my responses to ParkingLotTherapy done at WardsWiki. My motivations were if I stick to HowToReactToaFlame principles, there will be less WikiNoisePollution to others who use various forms RecentChanges.

Since TheAdjunct do not have much WikiNoisePollution as yet, I have copied portions of whats on TheAdjunct here so interested parties can add their observations.

Suggestions for amelioration of such a circumstance:

Forget the other person's rudeness.
At least on TheAdjunct, rely on others to direct them to SimpleRules? #1.
Read LaoTse and DaleCarnegie for time honoured patterns about converting contention to harmony.
Sit more ZaZen, drink more tea (local if you can find it). Less boiling of oceans, more boiling of kettles.

Others?

LessonsInCollaboration? in SeptemberZeroFive

Things had probably been brewing for a while. And in SeptemberZeroFive it happened.

It started with a anon remark in my HomePage ("Are you the person who has been signing...") which got me uncomfortable due to an abundance of unchecked WikiTrolling activities. After thinking aout it, I thought maybe there is already material at C2 that share my perspective on what and why and how to sign contributions.

I did research and came up with an existing SignedWithaPurpose page and went on to improve it and preserve the DocumentMode. Afterwards I wrote back on my homepage for the "anon contributor" to note.

And then this famous wiki personality jumped in. He went to this page where I refactored (to add viewpoint), and said:

"If you want to discuss it, I'd rather like you to start by doing it. XXX, you could do well to sign pages like AAA, and many other pages you create. You owe that to Wiki Readers. --ZZZ
- where XXX was my user name, AAA the page he did not like, and ZZZ his name
- it would have been less of a shock if he said these words in my homepage, or in the AAA page which he named explicitly.

He made his remarks in a page which could very well be a suggested reading to new comers.

To me that was really rude. But the bigger disappointment was towards the "silent majority" who said nothing about this "come in and take charge" behavior. Perhaps nobody thought it was a big deal.

Irrespective of whether my activities deserve some "punishment", has anyone thought about how this high profile "loaded remark" make impression on visitors and newbies?

There were subsequent events that is perhaps the subject of a different story, open flames etc coming from supposedly "civil and experienced" elders of C2 community. A different person in this instance.

There's lots of really bad stuff that happens in a medium like wiki wiki, it's hardly all hugs and roses. Back when I was still considered an outsider, I had a big heated argument on a page (details withheld to protect the guilty) against at least 4 other people. That's me on one side, and everyone else on the other. Now the thing was, I was in the right and they were dead wrong. And I could cite primary evidence for that, give numerous arguments, and so on and so forth. And by any reasonable standard, I did win the argument. So what happened is that all of my opponents coordinated through email or some other backchannel and decided to nuke the page and everything on it.

Now, I just got involved in a forum where the moderator decided that they were going to suppress any private conversations through the expedient of not showing any email addresses. What really bugs me about it is that as much of an enormous PITA as that is, I really can see their point of view on this.

I wish I could say that I sympathize with you but I can't. I had all of my naive illusions torn away from me a long time ago. -- SignatureA (taken away as it was not signed as a C2 contribution)

As, I suspect, one of the 4, I took as little, or perhaps less pleasure in that big heated argument as you did RK. Or you may be thinking of a different big heated argument, but the one I'm thinking of will do for the sake of this LittleCoolArgument?. FWIW you have my apologies, and I will simply assume yours, for any offence given or taken. I believe that indeed you did win the argument in question, at least by attrition. My response to those events was to flee C2, believing, rightly, that I didn't have the free time to waste defending my viewpoints against yours. And anyway many more unfortunate events lay in the future of that wiki.

It's my earnest hope that mutual excellence, strictly observed by all, can prevent TheAdjunct from becoming similarly ExtremelyInterstrangled. I hope that DL can find ways to simply forget about whatever his particular bete noir has done or might do. But I think I speak for all of us when I say I'd like it better if we could come up with some mechanism equivalent to the old UseNet KillFile that would make this easier to do, or else once the bot wielders and so on turn up I expect TA to suffer the same throttling as the original.

I dare say we need a page on suggestions for such a mechanism: WikiConflictResolutionDevice?. -- SignatureB (taken away as it was not signed as a C2 contribution).

CategoryCollaboration