User:Filll/Unblocking Disruptive Editors

Efforts to unblock disruptive editors

One of the defects of Wikipedia is that there are a large body of editors who are unfamiliar with disruptive editing and controversial articles, but who are willing nonetheless to lecture those with extensive experience in these areas about how they are wrong. Now this in itself would not necessarily be bad, except the inexperienced editors have the ability and the will to force other editors to deal with disruptive elements, wasting their time. There are no consequences for this.

As a community, we have only limited resources. Is it reasonable to volunteer 100 hours of someone else's volunteer time to deal with a mess you helped create? How about 500 hours? 1000 hours? Currently, there are no clear consequences to this sort of behavior. The enabling of destructive and disruptive editors is almost as negative for the project as the editors creating the disruption, if not more so. One enabler can help introduce 20 disruptive editors onto Wikipedia, burning up countless hours of other's time to deal with the ensuing nonsense. And they can do so with impunity. There is nothing to stop them from doing it again and again and again.

However, this gets worse. Many new editors encounter disruptive editors, and leave an article that they have expertise in. Or leave Wikipedia altogether, disgusted. Some respond with uncivil comments and are quickly blocked. Although many claim that civility problems create a bad working environment and discourage new editors, there is no evidence of this. Many of the new editors themselves exhibit civility problems when they encounter a tendentious editing environment, with edit warring, obvious trolls and disruptive editors pushing unencyclopedic agendas.

How many productive editors or potentially productive new editors is Wikipedia willing to sacrifice to introduce one disruptive editor into Wikipedia unfettered? How many hours of other editors time is Wikipedia willing to waste to cope with the introduction of one disruptive editor? These are important considerations and it should not be thought that there are not subtantial costs to the project to allowing disruptive editors to have free rein.