Wasting People

I want to suggest that because in the end it's people that matter and because of the entirely voluntary, fragmented and tenuous nature of commitment on Wiki, this is a key phrase to think about for almost all the negative experiences we may have on Wiki. Three ways we can waste people on Wiki are:

"killing" them through malicious deletion, misrepresentation or slander
wasting their time by allowing more and more noise for less and less signal to read or more importantly, by getting them entangled in unnecessary editing conflicts in a way they can't escape without damage to their reputation (in fact too often in the knowledge that their reputation is going to be damaged either way but that further unplanned and non-constructive conflict resolution is the lesser of two unwanted evils)
putting those with valuable things to say off doing so, in some cases before they start (often as they see results 1 and 2 for others)

I think we've been WastingPeople on Wiki in the last eighteen months, much more than before. I think we need to face up to the tensions between the three aspects, each of which are extremely serious. I think we need to learn to use this apology a lot more by email and sometimes publicly: "I'm sorry for wasting your time on that".

The wrong way to use the three aspects is to accuse others the moment we feel "they've wasted me" pain. The pain is the price we pay for enlightenment and relationship. We will feel wrongly deleted, misrepresented, slandered even (although I propose that in the future Wiki takes the issue of slander very seriously indeed). Our time will seem wasted as fragile understanding is built up between different people with very different thoughts. Even "going off in a huff" when things don't go our way is no way to treat this remarkable experiment in community, created as it was not just from rare instinctive flair for system design but from wisdom and respect for others and their views. Go silently, with sadness perhaps but not with recrimination. It will make it easier for you to rejoin and for others to show appreciation for the good things you have left. This can be a parting gift to the community, not to destabilize it needlessly and thus perhaps cause the wastage of other good people. -- RichardDrake

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