Abd

Revision as of 17:42, 4 February 2014

Revision as of 19:10, 4 February 2014

Line 188:

:When you place a message on a talk page, please sign the message using four tildes, that is, <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will automatically sign the message with your user name and with the time and date. Best wishes, --[[User:Abd|Abd]] ([[User talk:Abd#top|talk]]) 17:42, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

== Some comments regarding Croatian Wikipedia ==

Hello,

Let me start by quoting you:

:''What I saw on Wikipedia was that members of a dominant faction got away with behavior, and routinely, that would get other editors desysopped or blocked and banned quickly. Wikipedia is not necessarily ''overall dominated'' by that faction, the one I have in mind, and they've been dinged, they have lost battles, but they are still kicking.''

I assume that here by "Wikipedia" you mean "English Wikipedia". If that's the case, then I can say that the above words describe Croatian Wikipedia too, with one crucial difference: Croatian Wikipedia ''is'' dominated by that faction.

Croatian Wikipedia is a much smaller place too: only a hundred or so users with 5+ edits per month, so it is quite possible to control it. Most people who don't edit to the dominant faction's liking sooner or later either get banned or wikihounded until they quit. The modus operandi is well-established: harass and provoke them, and when they (over)react, ban them (if necessary, using super-stringent criteria that apply to some, but do not apply to others). That's why the idea of the community solving its problems by itself may be seen as cynical: while the community is dominated by one faction, and dissenters are driven out, that's how it is going to stay.

The dominant faction is united by its right-wing ideology. This is rather obvious in both their conduct, and the resulting content. My guess is that they've learned the lesson from the recent media controversy, so they'll try to stay away from WWII revisionism and blatantly chauvinist content, and move into anti-LGBT, pro-conservative, and generally lower-grade right wing bias. The methods are unlikely to change, though.

Perhaps it's my lack of imagination, but I fail to see how this is going to go away by itself. Only a decisive action like project restart is going to cut it - and yes, that means, among other things, ''desysopping everyone'' and ''voiding all bans''. Only then we'll have a real community that will be able to make meaningful decisions about admins, CUs, policies, procedures, and other things. Good admins will eventually be reelected, bad ones won't. Anyway: I don't know ''how'' to restart a project - no one does - but this process has to meet some basic requirements, which I've tried to enumerate [https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Project_restarting_process&diff=prev&oldid=7333578 here].

I really appreciate both your interest in this subject and your level-headed approach, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on this issue and - most importantly - how to proceed. [[User:GregorB|GregorB]] ([[User talk:GregorB|talk]]) 19:10, 4 February 2014 (UTC)