User:ScottyBerg/Climate Change

Some unsolicited thumb-sucking

This essay contains my thoughts and observations on the Climate Change controversy at Wikipedia. I am writing from the perspective of a layperson mildly sympathetic to the climate change thesis, but without any technical background in the subject. I know about as much on the subject as any layman, and I'm relatively new to Wikipedia (class of 1/10). The extent of my knowledge was watching the Al Gore documentary, but otherwise I haven't even read about this much in the media.

I realize that much of what I say below is going to strike a lot of people as extremely naive at best. However, I would guess that a lot of uninvolved and casual observers might feel similarly.

Introduction

In mid-March 2010, I was perusing Jimbo Wales' talk page. I found a lengthy debate underway concerning the "Climategate" controversy, then known as the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident.

I didn't have much to say, but I decided to say it. You can find my original contribution buried on this archive page, along with the brief and slightly curt response that it received three days later. My feeling was that both "hacking" and "Climategate" were inappropriate. I was especially perturbed by "Climategate," as that presumed that a Watergate-style incident or scandal was underway.

Jimbo Wales favored "Climategate," as did some other editors. However, subsequent to this point, independent studies indicated that this whole thing had been a trumped-up media circus. The article was subsequently renamed Climatic Research Unit email controversy, and it has remained such without much recent controversy.

Since then I've become tangentially involved in the discussions on the email article and a couple of others, mainly DeSmogBlog. I don't think I've ever actually edited any of these articles; they're just too much of a hornet's nest. I've also lurked in some of the discussions that have taken place elsewhere, including an extraordinary variety of "enforcement" and other bureaucratic pages.

Observations

In so doing, I've made some observations:

• Personal antagonism is rampant. You have two armed camps, both frequently filing complaints against each other, sometimes identical in nature. It reminds me of the trench warfare in World War I, where both sides ground each other down to a stalemate.

• Both sides assume bad faith and engage in personal attacks. I've always been dubious about the WP:AGF and WP:NPA, as they seems more Utopian than practical goals in the Internet culture. One of the things that's interesting is seeing people from both sides assuming bad faith and personally attacking in the name of good faith and no personal attacks.

A battlefield mentality prevails.

• The battle involves longstanding contributors. Some of the people involved in this dispute have been editing Wikipedia for many years, and feel that they are entitled to latitude in how they express themselves. But there are also a lot of newcomers, which seems to breed suspicion, sometimes justified.

• The atmosphere is tense. In a sense, both warring factions "own" the CC articles. There is no conscious effort by anyone, as far as I know, to exclude outsiders or new editors, but the antagonism creates what an employment lawyer would call a "hostile atmosphere." The big, fat "probation" notices from the Arbitration Committee helps feed the hostile atmosphere. People don't want to get in trouble, especially over something they don't feel that strongly about.

• There seem to be few outside editors in the sense of people wandering by to contribute, probably because of the above, and because most people don't have the technical expertise. Only the people with strong feelings seem to be most heavily involved in these articles. An outsider feel superfluous when edit warfare is going on, and feel like a meddler when things have calmed down for a while.

Administrators are caught in the middle.

• Administrators are drawn into the battle. There is no "adult supervision," in the sense of administrators trusted by both sides to step in when things get hot. Administrators are identified as being on either one side or the other. There are thousands of administrators, yet remarkably few seem interested in stepping in to mediate, and the ones who do are immediately viewed as being involved and not impartial. (I'm not saying that they are or are not, just that they are perceived that way, justifiably or not.)

• "Hair-trigger enforcement" is all the rage. It seems that every time an editor rubs another editor the wrong way on the CC articles, the "victim" runs to an enforcement board specially set up for the occasion and demands satisfaction. Most of these seem to end with modest blocks or no action at all, and the process seems to accomplish nothing except to increase tensions. There is a great deal of "tit for tat" complaining going on too, which is a sign that the process isn't working right.

• Creation and deletion of articles is often at issue. Articles on the fringes of the controversy are frequently nominated for merger or deletion, indicating either that marginal articles are being created, or that people are too anxious to delete articles on climate change, or perhaps all of the above.

Miscellany

Some observations that I made after attempting to edit some of the pages myself:

Some editors have anger-management issues.

• Too many reverts. Editors need to talk things out in the Talk pages more often. Meanwhile there is...

• Too much talking. People use the Talk pages to stall and filibuster, which sucks.

• Too much nastiness. Some of the players are just too nasty for their own good. I'm talking gratuitous, unprovoked nastiness.

• There is an elephant in the room. Many of the conflicts surround the actions of one particular editor who happens to be a notable climate scientist, who sometimes is not always temperate in his opinions. So the question arises: do you get rid of an expert in the field because of his intemperate remarks?

• Questionable calls. Nothing tears down order on a ball field more than umpires who seem biased. In my humble opinion some of the accusations of administrator bias seem to have some basis in fact.

Above all:

• Too much g---damn whining. I can't believe how many pages are devoted to editors yelling at each other and demanding that bans, blocks, forced feeding, enemas and other punishment be exacted. Grow up, people.

Suggestions

• Encourage outsiders to participate. Try harder to bring in people from the outside, such is by pleading for help in the related wikiprojects. This won't necessarily result in any more outside editors. I posted a note in Wikiproject Blogging for help with DeSmogBlog, and I'm not sure that anybody responded. But I still think that it needs to be tried more often. We're all volunteers so obviously you can't force ordinary Wikipeople to participate, particularly in a controversial area, but this is the single most important thing.

The highest organs of Wikipedia may need to intervene (and have).

• Both sides need to turn down the volume. I think that an "amnesty" would be in order, followed by a no-tolerance policy, applied with ruthless even-handedness, enforced by a new crop of administrators. However, the problems seem so intractable that the highest organs of Wikipedia may need to intervene.

• Outside administrators need to be forced to participate. They need to be drafted at random, as happens in jury duty, and required to adjudicate specific disputes ("You were mean to me!" "No, you were mean to me first!"). Sure, administrators are volunteers, but this needs to be one of the duties of office. They need to step in briefly, and then go away, lest they become excessively involved in the personalities and issues.

• Existing administrators need to stop administrating on CC issues. Ain't working boys and girls. By all means participate, but not as administrators. Whether it's your fault or not, you're perceived as unfair and that is feeding the climate of hate.

Conclusion

I am not sure there will ever be a resolution to the controversy surrounding the CC articles until the underlying controversy is resolved. That may not happen until the last iceberg melts, which may take a while (or maybe not, according to some of the literature), or until they don't melt, which would be even longer.

Arbitration

A lengthy arbitration case concluded recently with a variety of topic bans and sanctions. However, the fighting continues at various skirmish points around Wikipedia. La lucha continúa.