That was the purpose of the original arbitration committee. Finding a mentor is kind of hard nowdays as there are so many users who might help but probably will not. On the other hand, many requests I have received and looked into are from people who are making trouble themselves; sometimes very serious trouble. Giving a second chance to someone who has been banned by the community after extended discussion seldom works out well. But that's not a newbie who has run into serious trouble just for making jokes about Windoze...
Fred > It is very laudable if you, Peter, tries and help newbies and others that > are harassed by other users. > > I however don't think it is enough in a worldwide organization that you > have to rely on volunteers and that these will intervene. > > As I see it, if you start such an organization you must also take on the > responsibilities that follows. > You can't just duck and pretend that you can hand over all problems to > the users. > > I still think that an international organization like the Wikis demands > an instance to which mistreated and mobbed users can turn. An instance > with the responsibility that normal rules in a society are upheld and > with the authority to uphold them. > > Regards, > Lars Gardenius > > > > > ________________________________ > Von: Peter Gervai <grin...@gmail.com> > An: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Gesendet: 10:50 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 > Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself > > > On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Lars Gardenius <lars.garden...@yahoo.de> > wrote: >> No I don't think it is being addressed. Not in a serious way. > > You mean it's not _solved_. Indeed. > > At least one problem was mentioned in the thread which is that the > (honest, knowledgeable) newbies have unproportionally smaller > debating/lobbying power than aboriginals, and they are very easy to > oppress. This is an ongoing problem for the last decade or so and no > good solution seem to exist. > > In theory there are (or could be) volunteers who could be called in > cases of newbie oppression from the experienced troll^H^H^H^Heditors > who would declare that they try to act as neutral as possible but they > would possess more experience to handle obnoxious editors and other > regual beings. Arbitration, mentoring, whatever we like to call it. > Obviously it only worked if there's a free way to reject a request (if > the volunteer believes the newbie has no merits, let's not call them > outright trolls and vandals) and if it isn't an "official" cabal but a > large catalog of helpful and experienced editors. > > I have often done it (and still occasionally do on Commons since it's > a pretty harsh environment for newbies) and it's doable if there's > enough volunteers and people don't try to do it too often, I mean, one > in a week or month or so. > > The point is to have a group of random people who are not involved in > the debate but could help to communicate with the members of the > community. (Since they're uninvolved it's probably useless to call > them biased, which is the easiest unargument I've seen in such > debates.) > > g > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>