Wikimedia Ethics/Audio/Transcripts
All participants are invited to answer these questions. The goal is to also have a recoded discussion session, but text only is also welcome.
1) What do you hope the project can accomplish? 2) What ethics/management issues are you particularly concerned about? 3) do you think this kind of project can help Wikimedians find ways to improve Wikipedia?
- 1) What do you hope the project can accomplish?
- a) Raise awareness of ethical issues and the need to evolve from current practices to more ethical practices, a never ending progression. We are enroute to the elusive and asymptotic goal of ethical best practices.
- b) Improve the general level of scholarship among those who elect to participate in the learning project on Wikiversity. Its not just about improving Wikipedia, it is also about encouraging and helping people to become better scholars and better thinkers.
- 2) What ethics/management issues are you particularly concerned about?
- I'm concerned about the existing Regulatory Policies and Practices at Wikipedia and the sister projects. These range from lamentably dysfunctional to discouragingly unjust to atrociously corrupt. Many of these erratic and dysfunctional self-governance practices manifest themselves in the context of the BLP Problem (Biographies of Living Persons) as documented by Doc Glasgow and commented on by NewYorkBrad and many others.
- 3) Do you think this kind of project can help Wikimedians find ways to improve Wikipedia?
- Yes, it will help individual learners find ways, but it's not clear that enough individuals will learn enough to make a difference with respect to Wikipedia. But I have little doubt it will help those who wish to learn how to reason more deeply about ethical issues and ethical conundrums. Its anybody's guess if those individuals can make a difference on Wikipedia.
- 1) What do you hope the project can accomplish?
- Provide a guide for participants on wikipedia for how to best navigate various situations.
- 2) What ethics/management issues are you particularly concerned about?
- I'm particularly concerned with problems surrounding the "free speech" vs "disruptive behavior" - how can editors and more importantly adminstrators deal with users who are either acting in difficult-to-spot bad faith (subtle vandalism, trolling) or in good faith but unhelpful to the goal of providing an encyclopedia (supporters of pathological science, self-promoters) ethically and efficiently.
- 3) Do you think this kind of project can help Wikimedians find ways to improve Wikipedia?
- This kind of project? Yes, absolutly. However, this actual project, compromised, as it is, by most of it's contributing members being "good faith but unhelpful" on wikipedia, is unlikley to be useful except as a source of emotional release for it's members and a source of schadenfreude for others.