User talk:RexxS/CERFC

My surprise

Greetings RexxS. I never anticipated that I would so completely disagree with your suggestions. I know you are intelligent, and very reasonable. I've seen that truth many, many times. Yet I am utterly unable to follow your reason, throughout the questionnaire answers. The most poignant factor, that immediately jumps at me, is the sad fact that we have no basis to even debate pros and cons. We have no premise, no goals, no standards to measure against, nothing. I can't help but wonder if this is the point you are intent on making?

I am curious, can you give me one example, of a functioning institution, that succeeds, while following a model like you suggest? A model that allows each person to determine their own standards of acceptable conduct, while disallowing any suggestions from outside self to the contrary? I have tried to imagine how the policy might read, if it was fashioned to accommodate the things you suggest. Can you give an example of that? And if policy did state, in effect, that every editor was allowed to decide for themselves, how they wanted to be, with no possibility of adverse consequences, how can that be managed?

How do we explain to new users that it is not only possible, but likely, that someone will address them in a derogatory manner, and their only recourse is to decide their-self, how they want to respond? Suppose the user asks for an example. Might we say: "Imagine that you asked the following question: Can anyone help me find out who is the most recent Medal of Honor winner?" Now suppose the person who answers you says: "I wish I could help you, but the way you spelled honour tells me that you don't have the capacity to understand simple concepts, not to mention that you are way to likely to say some dumb ass American bullshit that will definitely piss me the fuck off." How do we tell someone that our site governance allows this? Why would we want our site governance to allow stuff like that? How do we get to a better place RexxS? Because I can't see this as workable.

Hi My76Strat. I am afraid that my time spent on Usenet in the 1990s mirrors the situation we find on Wikipedia. Any online community will experience a wide range of behaviours and I've never seen a successful attempt to apply sanctions to them. I truly believe that the key to a civil working environment is persuading each editor to take responsibility for their own actions, and to understand the effect that they have on others. My experience in 40 years of working in education is that behaviour modification is not brought about by coercion, but by observation of good role models and the encouragement good behaviour, against a background of peer's expectation of civil cooperation. The best schools work exactly like that.

Perhaps I haven't been clear enough - and for that I apologise - but I am not advocating disallowing any external suggestions. I am against external sanctions - they just don't work. I do expect editors to explain to others when they feel upset by their behaviour, but I don't want to see some third-party "authority" swooping in and jumping to a conclusion that allows them to punish one of the parties; it's counter-productive.

To answer your example: the beauty of crowd-sourcing is that in a functioning community, there will be many others who will answer such a question politely and collegially: "Don't be upset by that other editor; the most recent Medal of Honor winner is Leroy Petry, and you can find a complete list at List of Medal of Honor recipients". The onus is each and every one of us to be good examples of collegial interaction in line with our own standards (as we have no other standards to live by). The problem you will find is there is no "site governance". If that were workable, we'd have had one by now.

Hope that helps, my friend, but please feel free to ask further if my stance still puzzles you. --RexxS (talk) 10:38, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying these matters. It is much easier for me to find a lot of agreement with your approach; having an understanding. My76Strat (talk) 13:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)