On Wednesday, August 8, 2018, Ori Livneh <ori.liv...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 2:48 PM bawolff <bawolff...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> MZMcbride (and any other individual contributor) is at a power >> disadvantage here relative to how the foundation is an organized >> group > > Have you been on the receiving end of an MZMcBride diatribe? I was, when barely two months into my role as a software engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation (and newly transplanted in the Bay Area), MZMcBride wrote a Signpost op-ed centered around an inconsiderate remark I made on a bug that I closed as WONTFIX. The responses to that included on-wiki comments telling me to go fuck myself, calls for my immediate resignation, and unbelievably vicious anonymous hate-mail. My mental state after that was bordering on suicidal. > I hope that you are struck by the parallels between that affair back in 2012 and the one we are presently discussing. The germ-cell of both cases was a legitimate grievance about Foundation engineers being dismissive toward a bug report. MZMcBride has a very good ear for grievances, and he knows how to use his considerable social clout to draw attention to them, and then use words as a kind of lightning-rod for stoking outrage and focusing it on particular targets. I don't know why he does it and I won't speculate, but I am convinced he knows exactly what he is doing. How could he not? This has been going on for nearly a decade. > When I saw MZMcBride's "what the fuck" I instantly knew what was coming. After it happens to you, you never forget the sensation of instant regret and absolute panic as the Eye of Sauron fixates on you. It is a miserable experience and I understand completely why the CoC might feel compelled to intervene. >
Im sorry you were on the recieving end of a wikipedian "mob". It is not a fun experiance. But i dont see how Mcbride should be held accountable for this. All he did was write an essay critical of several things the foundation was doing. Much of it was unrelated to you and about issues that were many years in the making. Some of his criticism still rings true today. The quote he used was perhaps mildly removed from context, but it was not wholly pulled out of context. The op-ed is on the whole much more fair to its subject than theop-eds I read in my real newspaper about real politics. If other people did inappropriate things, than they should have been punished (back in 2012). But i hardly think we should start banning people because they wrote something sort of seditious. On the contrary I think internal self criticism of the movement is very important. It is unfortunate when that criticism falls harshly on a specific contributor, especially a new one, and it can be annoying to have to consider your secondary audiance when writing on a task...which are problems i dont have solutions to. -- brian _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
