I've been subscribed to this list for about a week now, and
overwhelmingly I see stuff about dispute resolution. What can I do to help?
[[en:User:Alphax]]
Okay, maybe some people are unaware of CheeseDreams exponential use of sock
puppets to get around the ArbCom's one year ban on Jesus (or is it
Christianity?) related articles. I know I am partisan, but I think we can
fairly say Cheese Dreams is now out of control:
>Cheesedreams is now editing under User:Cheese-Dreams. I thought all the
>sockpuppets were blocked? I've blocked this one now anyway. --fvw* 23:44,
>2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
>This is just a new sock. Sigh - I don't think CD gets it. --mav
>Darling, your so wrong, I get it very well, I just ignore you, darling.
>CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>The other note is that CheeseDreams uses a dialup and this makes it
>impossible to block her IP range. She can redial as many times as she
>likes, and she doesn't need to use open proxies. Rhobite 04:28, Feb 1,
>2005 (UTC)
>LOL, you cant stop me now, darling. CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As Rhobite points out, it will be very difficult if not impossible to block
CheeseDreams.
I know there has been much discussion of ways to get around the
difficulties in blocking someone whose IP address is shared, or who can
easily move from one IP address to another. I happen to know next to
nothing about computers, so all I can say is I trust the people working on
this problem and wish them luck.
But I do have another proposal for dealing with these kinds of situations:
give the ArbCom the power to declare a user an "outlaw."
We would need clear guidelines for how to decide who is an outlaw, but for
one thing we must be specific that this is someone who has utter disregards
for bans or partial bans, and who cannot effectively be blocked.
There should be some deliberation at the ArbCom before declaring someone an
outlaw, to ensure due process.
The consequence of being an outlaw is this: anyone -- any editor, sysop or
not -- can revert an outlaw's work at any time, without restriction (so if
doing so means that they must revert more than three times in one day,
their reverts will still be considered legitimate and they won't be punished).
My thinking is this: in the case of CD right now, blocking is not effective
so all we really can do is revert her work. Right now this is being done
primarily by sysops, and however large the list of admins are, in the case
of someone as reckless as CD this still becomes a big job. My idea is that
there are some violations of behavior -- eg. when someone laughs and says
"you can't stop me now" -- that the best thing to do is to mobilize the
entire community to take action.
Okay, I know that this sounds off the wall. Please just think about it,
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
Despite beyond posted on RfC (3 FEB), Encyclopedia Standards talk (5), and asking repeatedly over days in #wikipedia and #en.wikipedia, there is a dispute between myself and another use at [[Blitzkrieg]] which no one has responded to. The dispute involves the inclusion of material and necessity of references. I posting here to increase exposure.
If you should become involved, which I certainly hope you do, please read the initial comments about the article during 2004, before this began. The "Inaccurate changes" headings are between us, but the current discussion is at "Factual accuracy dispute."
Please note that despite his language which casts me as some kind of malicious user (he has previously called my edits vandalism[1], and me a POV-pusher[2]), I have in fact written, with references and footnotes to substantiate my edits, all but the intro, Precursors/Successors, and countertactics. This is not to claim credit, but to dispel the above argument.
I've been pulling my hair trying to get even *one person* to register a comment, and am only posting here after the failure of the above methods.
User:119
[1] [[Talk:Polish September Campaign]]
[2] Above and [[Talk:Blitzkrieg]], 'blitzkrieg according to 119'
Fred Bauder points out that what I suggest amounts to a permanent
ban. Yes, this is precisely what I mean. I understand that many people
might disagree with me, but this is the effect of what I proposed. If
Jimbo rejects it, so be it. But to reiterate, what I am suggesting should
only be used in the most extreme cases, and after some sort of due process.
David Gerard points out that this is, in effect, the current situation
concerning Cheese Dreams. Yes, I understand that too. But it is an
informal and ad hoc response. I am suggesting giving the ArbCom one more,
formal, ultimate sanction. I think making the sanction official will make
it easier to enforce; having the ArbCom in charge guarantees that the
accused will benefit from due process.
By the way, although I do think CheeseDreams would be a perfect candidate
for this sanction, my main point was not to orchestrate some consensus that
she is an "outlaw" -- that would make this just another ad hoc
response. My main interest is in creating an ultimate sanction the ArbCom
can apply in the most extreme cases, where banning and blocking are
ineffective and scoffed at by the person blocked. Put another way, I am
suggesting a new protocol for enforcing permanent bans; the protocol
amounts to asking all editors to be on the lookout for activity by the
person banned and known (it has to be official) sock puppets, and to
reverse edits without any fear of violating the three revert rule.
Nicholas Knight suggests another strategy for handling this, and Rhobite
has some concerns. I am neutral, but do hope that there will be vigorous
discussion about Nicholas's proposal. It may be more effective than mine
-- or less effective; perhaps both proposals have merit and can work in
concert.
But the main point that I share with Nicholas Knight: "It's just going to
get worse, and as legitimate users get fed up and leave, people like CD
will turn Wikipedia into a laughing stock."
Forget about my personal gripe with CD -- forget about CD altogether. The
point is, we can count on situations in the future where a person given the
most reasonable temporary ban will flout the ruling of the ArbCom, and, by
using many sock puppets, effectively neutralize our current means of
blocking users. This calls for some new policy. People now have my
proposal and Nicholas's proposal to consider. I really urge all committed
Wikipedians to participate in this discussion, and perhaps develop other
proposals worthy of consideration.
Should such a discussion occur primarily on this list-serve, for now? Or
should we create some page on Wikipedia where people can discuss proposals
(if so, what page? Where?)?
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
David Gerard wrote:
>Nicholas Knight (nknight(a)runawaynet.com) [050206 03:51]:
>
>
>>Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
>>provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated with
>>the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP. Wikipedia is
>>getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight around when users
>>are engaging in wildly abusive activities.
>>
>>
>Contacting ISPs is a step I'm really not comfortable with. Even in the case
>of Michael, when he was vandalising continuously, the only reason for
>contacting AOL was that their network was effectively one large anonymiser.
>CD is nothing like at that level. Also, there really is no reason to
>presume an ISP will necessarily give a shit. We're not paying her fees.
>
>
The one situation in which I could imagine an ISP being willing to
cancel the account of a banned user is if it's being used for something
illegal. A simple example would be uploading child pornography. So it
might work against the likes of Brother Larry (or whatever name the
diaper guy was using last), but not against CheeseDreams.
Complaining to an ISP that they're allowing somebody to edit Wikipedia
while banned would only produce incredulous responses like, "Well, you
do let anybody edit, what did you expect?" They won't think it's any of
their business to enforce our internal rules for us. Nor do I think
Wikipedia has any real weight to throw around here; if we tried to make
a public issue out of it, the publicity would do more damage to
Wikipedia than to the ISP.
--Michael Snow
Bill Konrad wrote:
> BTW, I agree that this proliferation of tags on the article page is
> not particularly helpful for readers.
Agreed, and I think this expresses very well the principle that should
guide whether a given tag goes on the article itself or the talk page.
If a tag is necessary or helpful for the reader, it should be placed on
the article, but the number of such tags should be limited. A protection
notice or dispute tag would qualify. VfD notices too, since they imply
that the article may not belong at all. Virtually all of the rest are
either primarily meta-information (which belongs on the talk page the
way featured article tags are already done) or else they are poor
attempts at categorization (which should be handled through, shockingly
enough, categories).
--Michael Snow
Dante Alighieri wrote,
>I responded to a DIRECT request that Slrubenstein be blocked for violating
>the 3RR. Note that this direct request was posted not only on the Admin
>noticeboard, but on my Talk page. Now, in my opinion (as someone who reads
>the 3RR to mean what it SAYS, "three reverts to the same ARTICLE in 24
>hours") was that Slr had obviously violated the rule. That he had pretty
>clearly been baited was irrelevant. How would it have looked if we ignored
>a straightforward violation by a longtime contributor and told the "new
>guy" that he had "done it too" and that that somehow made it OK?
As Dante mentioned, he and I have had quite pleasant and civil discussions
of this. Since some people misinterpreted the intent of my first e-mail, I
was not in any way accusing Dante of any kind of misconduct. My comment
that I thought the application of the rule in this case was frivolous was
not a comment on Dante's judgement or intentions -- it was a comment on the
limits of the rule. And, as most people understand, my intention was only
to raise some general issues worth discussion.
Earlier, David Gerard wrote:
>The article history doesn't matter. It won't actually be a disaster for the
>article to have something stupid in it for ten minutes.
And my point is, that there are situations where the article history really
does matter. There are different reasons for edit wars, and different
reasons for reversion. I guess many people disagree with me, but I think
that different kinds of edit wars for different reasons might require
different policies. I certainly agree that when one edit is reverted back
and forth several times (the narrowest understanding of the 3RR), then the
block policy makes perfect sense and is necessary.
Sometimes the volleys of reverts are both the result of and expressions of
a serious lack of wiki-etiquette and incivility. In these cases, the block
policy makes perfect sense and is necessary.
But sometimes the reverts have to do with serious differences over
content. I think this is an important distinction, because in such cases
having a night, a couple of days, even a week to cool down, will not change
things. Moreover, our other dispute-resolution mechanisms (mediation,
arbitration) are not well-suited to resolving conflicts over content. I've
said this before and I will say it again, we need some sort of mechanism,
or series of mechanisms, for resolving major conflicts over content. In
cases where everyone has a fair amount of knowledge about something (Bush's
inaugural speech or Doom), we can count on the disorganized sensibilities
of the community as a whole to sort out conflicts. But in cases where only
a small number of community members have the knowledge or interest to
involve themselves in an article, the informal mechanism doesn't work very
well. I am not advocating anything like peer-review; I am not sure what I
would recommend -- I just think it is something we need to think about and
discuss.
And in the cases where several -- five, ten, fifteen -- reverts involve as
many different edits of different passages, this could be an indication
that, despite brief volleys of reverts, participants are finding ways to
work through the situation on their own. In my experience this occurs
where there is a serious conflict over content, but a desire for people to
come up with some mutually acceptable solution. In such cases, two or more
parties might willingly tolerate some multiple reverts.
I know that in my case Jalnet2 asked for me to be blocked. I just wonder
whether he would have changed his mind if he knew that he would be blocked
too. Maybe I am wrong, maybe my case is not the best example. But I do
believe that there have been and will be cases like the ones I suggest
above, where we could use other policies.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
Harry Pasternak, an AIDS-denier, wrote an extremely
disingenuous letter to Jimbo and the rest of us. Mr.
Pasternak falsely claimed that their are no peer-reviewed
studies and papers that prove that the HIV virus causes
AIDS. For shame.
He is using the same tactic used by certain religious
fundamentalists who deny that there are any peer-reviewed
papers which prove that Evolution occurs, and the same
tactic used by religious fundamentalists who claim that
there are no peer-reviewed papers which prove that the
world is 4.5 billion years old.
In all such cases there *are* such papers, and in all cases
Wikipedia articles *do* link to reputable cites which have
vast amounts of peer-reviewed scientific information on
this topic. We can add more citations of course, but
Pasternak's claim is not meant to improve the article. It
is meant to mislead, obfuscate, and push AIDS-denial, and
it is written in the same way that Evolution deniers and
Holocaust deniers work. They give the appearance of being
rational, but they distort statements made by other people,
and refuse to accept any evidence at all.
The utter denial of the existence of such peer-reviewed
papers is dishonest, and borders on a pathological
obesession. We need not take such bizarre rants to this
list, for any form of "denial".
On this subject, some good reading material about
PEER-REVIEWED studies, can be found here:
http://www2.niaid.nih.gov/newsroom/focuson/hiv00/default.htmhttp://www2.niaid.nih.gov/Newsroom/FocusOn/Hiv00/MACSWIHS.htm
Unless these websites don't exist either, and the studies
cited within do not exist, and the scientists quoted do not
exist....
Robert (RK)
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