Wednesday, April 11, 2018

#WeMissGerardM - Got banned from #Wikidata

A friend of mine got into problems on #Wikidata.

The story:
She had proposed a property that was talked into something else that would not work for her or me. There was no obvious consensus particularly because of a lack of agreement how the property would function. Someone in power stated consensus and created the property and my friend proposed for its deletion.

What followed was awful because it shows how we interact. When someone says:  "This is a disruptive and bad-faith nomination" in my book this is aggressive and a personal attack. When someone else follows up with a request for a ban because of something that happens elsewhere it becomes a mob howling for blood. The arguments used were personal, had no relation to what happened at Wikidata and I objected strongly.

What else:
I objected to the language used, to the fact that you do not attack someone this personally. The language used is in my opinion not critical but overly aggressive even brutal. I object to how we behave, the language used, the personal attacks. It is not the first time that I objected to the way how we treat each other. Given that a friend was victimised this time I did not back down. Now I am banned from editing Wikidata for a week even though the admin who banned me agrees that I did not do anything that is a "banning offence". What I did was not let others "get away with murder" and not agree that the common good gets damaged by me in this way.

What next:
I do not know. I will miss working on the Ottoman Empire, I will miss working on awards, I will miss working on the BHL. But I will miss my friend most and I am sad that we Wikidatans treat each other in such an adversarial way.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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