User:Herostratus/Well jeez

Wikipedia is one of the world's most popular websites. Anybody can edit it (normally). Being blocked from editing it is distressing. This is doubly so if any of these factors apply: no warning or engagement, no proper explanation, or the block is unjustified or only arguably justified.

Of course most block by fare are necessary and justified (we assume) and we're not saying they're not, but there's an emotional toll. Consider that some people, or a few people at any rate,

• have never been in jail (or even arrested).
• have never been sued.
• have never been suspended from school (or even had detention, or failed a class).
• have never been fired from a job for cause (or even called on the carpet for a serious dressing down by their boss).
• have never been in a physical fight or even shouting verbal confrontation (except maybe as a schoolchild or maybe a lover's quarrel).
• have never been kicked out of their house or come home to find the locks changed.

We know that a lot of people have had some (or, God forbid, all) of these things happen to them, but the average person – you can call them goody-goodies if you want to – tries to follow the rules and takes sanctions by authorities very much to heart. For a few people, being blocked is the worst punishment they've ever had in their adult life. This is the first time someone has said to them "You've broken the rules, and badly, and you're in a lot of trouble here and need to go home and think about your behavior". Or one of the few times. And that certainly is the message one takes from being blocked, regardless of how we try to gild that. It's a pretty hard thing to hear, for some people.

We know for a lot of experienced Wikipedians (which includes all admins), "Under the spreading chestnut tree / I blocked you and you blocked me" is all part of the WP:MMORPG. But most of our editors, particularly new editors, come from a different perspective.

A person, particularly a new user, on being blocked is not likely to say "Oh, well, here is part of the functioning of this site. I'll just put in this template, formatted properly, and enter litigation on this matter, all in good fun". The person is likely to be appalled, horrified, angry, sad, alarmed, and disgusted. They'll likely close the page at once and never come back (but they'll have a story about what a screwup the Wikipedia is). So whether its a new user or not, any block of any duration has a non-trivial chance of being permanent, in that the user is likely to just throw up his hands and walk away.

Again, most blocks are justified, and we thank our volunteer administrators for enhancing the functioning of the Wikipedia in this way. But, you know, we want to be careful here. We mean, if you select for editors who don't mind being blocked, you are selecting for editors who don't have self-respect. If you select for editors who don't have self-respect, you will not have many accomplished people.

On the other hand

Well, we certainly learned a lot from discussing this essay. We renamed this page to "Well jeez", short for "Well jeez, the admin corps doesn't like this essay, and more than that considers the very ideas to be illegitimate, some weirdo fringe crazy talk dangerous for people to read and not eligible to be in Wikispace (they kicked it back into our userspace) with the other essays". OK, it is what it is.

So, then, we'd say that on the other hand, you're going to have people who don't believe any of this and wouldn't care if they did. It's understandable. The business boss, the policeman, the parent, the referee... they make mistakes. They chastise someone, they arrest someone, they make someone cry, they penalize someone, they fire someone, and sometimes it's a mistake. It's alright to make mistakes. We all make lots of mistakes, all the time. Making mistakes doesn't make someone a bad administrator.

But a lot of people can't take it, is all. Exceptional people are like "I screwed up, and it matters". Mediocre people are are like "I screwed up, but it doesn't matter." (Second-rate people are like "I didn't screw up and don't".) The average person is mediocre, so of course you're going to see that a lot. It's a lot easier to say "it doesn't matter" than to say "it matters". There's a bit of cognitive dissonance with being exceptional about this. It's stressful to be exceptional. It involves more mental and emotional gymnastics to keep that in the same mental place with "I'm good at being an administrator, and I'm going to keep on".

A lot of people can't do that well.

So, if an admin is all "I screwed up, but it doesn't matter" on a block, it follows that they're going to figure that it doesn't matter, either because people actually don't get upset if they're blocked -- it's just a strictly technical transaction without significant emotional import -- or, the person is upset, there's something wrong with them -- they're a sob sister, or a snowflake, or whatever -- and we don't really need to worry about people like that. Neither of those are true, but it's understandable. Understandable, but still something that you want to struggle to grow out of.

You have to remember, too, that a lot of admins have been in bar fights and have been expelled from schools and have been hauled into court and are generally tough little gamecocks. They -- like most people -- have a lot of trouble walking in the shoes of people whose experiences are different from theirs. That's natural; that's people. It's mediocre, but again, the average person is mediocre. We'll tell you this tho: we can drive up and down the streets our of tony suburb, or have dinner at our club, or go to our private-college reunion... believe it or not, we're running into a lot of people who haven't had these experience. Some of them are here. I guess one could dismiss them as bourgeois goo-goos if one thinks that's helpful.

Goody-goodies, snowflakes, or what have you -- it doesn't mean they're not good editors, or potentially good editors. And that matters, too.

So be careful out there!

See also

WP:PUNISH, a related essay