It's interesting that Marc assigns the blame for the myriad conduct problems to leadership (the executive suite, though I'm not sure who this represents). I might argue the opposite. The lack of leadership makes it impossible to maintain consistent standards of behavior. The amorphous and unstable crowd can't consistently agree either on what these standards are or how they should be enforced.
It's a basic reality of life as an adult that employees with perfect work product but terrible attitudes are often terminated; their own work is fine, but their presence disrupts the work of others. Yet firm behavioral expectations and consistent enforcement are made possible by stable leadership. This is an obvious concept proven by thousands of years of human history, but Wikipedia is committed to an approach closer to anarchy. What we need, then, is a solution that provides for fair and consistent enforcement of fair and consistent standards in a community that lacks any normal facets of social stability. Unfortunately, people far brighter than I have been ruminating on this problem for years without arriving at such a solution. Perhaps the most credible proposals involve a reorganization of the decision making processes on Wikipedia, but these have all been shot down by some of the same people who complain most strenuously about cultural degradation. Until folks come up with more than complaints and minor tweaks to existing policies, I think its unlikely that significant progress is possible. Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l