Hey Chris! You might be glad that you are not alone in all of the nonsense. I
was blocked by an Administrator who accused me of VANDALISM without showing
any proof. What kind of drugs are these people taking? This is an example of
what happens when the wrong people are entrusted with power. They become petty
tyrants.
Most of the Administrators are fair people. There are some who abuse their
priviliege of power and it appears that you have encountered one. So, my
advice is to persist with your protest and find some allies. You have found one in
me.
On 4/23/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Today's featured article (Main Page, 23rd April 2006)
>
> "Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish
> language....."
While it sounds a little bit silly, it appears to be a valid and dignificant
assertion. The article isn't just about the literature of Turkey (a
post-1919 state) nor is it the entire literature of the Ottoman Empire
(which was a multi-national empire). It's also not the literature of
Anatolia - Anatolia was not Turkish until about 500-800 years ago, and the
Turks were not originally Anatolian.
Ian
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 22:22:36 +0100
From: Guy Chapman aka JzG
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Libel chill
I was a researcher on H2G2 for a long time. I became frustrated with
the bureaucratic process of publishing and peer review - but actually
it was quite good at preventing crap form being published in the
edited Guide. It was just frustratingly slow to get updates
recognised. WP is much better in that respect, but it's also a lot
easier for POV pushers and obsessives like YTMNDers to hijack
articles. I wish I had an answer.
Guy (JzG)
I have an answer. Enforce WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV and scrap everything else other than legal policies and a technical policy or 2 to keep vandals, spammers, and edit wars under control. Other than copyright violations, those 3 policies enforced would put libel and most other legal issues in the sources' laps.
Yes, I do mean scrap all the other guidelines and quasi-rules. In fact, enforcing only those 3 would make admin jobs more straight-forward (easier), allow them to focus on content (are sources real, spam, etc.?), abuses harder, and eliminate most vandals and edit warriers (POV pushers/obsessives/hijackers). Why? Because 99% of them ignore or abuse those rules in some way. Meanwhile, wikiens can still add, change, and be bold as long as WP:V sources are provided.
~~~~Pro-Lick
---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1¢/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.
Tim Starling wrote:
>The basic problem with {{office}} is that I don't trust Brad Patrick and Danny to decide between
>them what's right and wrong. I'm not making a slight on their character. I'm just saying that there
>needs to be oversight, when something so important as the neutrality of the encyclopedia is at
>stake. In some cases, we may need to make a tradeoff between NPOV and risk of being sued, and I fear
>that due to their background, a lawyer may be inclined to automatically choose minimisation of risk
>over neutrality, even when the risk of a successful lawsuit is very small.
>
>
In all of the cases that I've looked into so far, I hardly think what's
going on is a choice of minimizing risk at the expense of neutrality. In
fact, lack of neutrality has been very much at the root of these
problems, probably as much so as the risk of a lawsuit.
Unfortunately, the community has proven unable on a number of occasions
to actually produce a neutral encyclopedia article in a timely fashion.
This tends to draw complaints from affected parties, who not
surprisingly want the Wikimedia Foundation to be responsible once it has
been put on notice of problems on a site it operates. I shall not
comment on whether any particular case truly involves actionable libel,
but I think to speak of "libel chill" misapprehends the situation.
First of all, a neutral encyclopedia article is not an unrestrained free
speech zone, and I think the rhetoric of someone's freedom of speech
being chilled is out of place to begin with. Second of all, it is
entirely consistent with our mission to seek to "chill" content that is
decidedly non-neutral and in most cases fails to provide verifiable,
reputable sources for its assertions besides. Finally, in terms of
producing a better encyclopedia, it really matters very little whether
libel is the real concern or not. Quite simply, the articles involved
have fallen abominably short of our declared standards, with very poor
prospects for improvement, so intervention has been necessary.
There is also the point that whether a lawsuit would be "successful" is
not the only consideration. Any lawsuit, even a frivolous one, would
entail significant costs. Much more than the value of the man-hours it
should take to bring something up to the standard of a neutral article
that properly cites reputable sources for its facts--even if we assign a
suitable value to the time being donated by volunteers. Hence when it is
possible to avoid a lawsuit by intervening on the wiki, it is highly
desirable to do so. Sometimes the execution has been awkward, but that's
a different problem.
>I would like to see review of these "office actions" by a diverse committee, such as the juriwiki-l
>mailing list.
>
>
I won't speak for the other participants on that mailing list, but from
my personal interaction and observation, I trust Brad Patrick to handle
outside concerns appropriately when they arise. There hasn't been much
discussion of these cases on that list; I won't speculate as to whether
that's due to apathy, or because nobody thinks it's that big of a
concern. Certainly anybody who's worried that we're not aware of these
situations is welcome to email the list and call them to our attention.
--Michael Snow
Wikipedia: Success factors
Wikipedia's success mainly depend on its users - the Wikipedians. In
theory, everybody can be a Wikipedian. This thread is supposed to find
out if the theory holds true in practice.
The idea is that the Wiki-community of Wikipedians is a special group
of people, who have special characteristcs. To account for these
special characteristics, I have provided the following Factor
Model:
User factors: - Openness - Neutrality -
Flat hierarchy- Computer Skills - Motivation -
Knowledge factors: - Tacit & Explicit knowledge - Fast changing rate - Peer
review
Technology factors: - Easy usability - Fast access - Infinite reach,
multilingual - Flexible structure - Safe
All these factors play together to accomplish the goal of succesful
knowledge creation and knowledge sharing.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Success_factors
Comments, feedback and own ideas are very welcome!
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Wikipedia%27s-Success-Factors-t1494067.html#a4049275
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.
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Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
(amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
it to their wonderful service. Now Wikimedia has been informed that they
are likely to be sued, and in response has done something knowing that
it would increase the publication and spread of this libel. - we're then
liable for their reposting of the content, and "utterly screwed". I
know, I know, "that's not what was intended". Well, tough, that's the
way the Real World(tm) works.
So, what does this mean? Well, flagging articles as Office-protected is
a legal no-no in that kind of case, and something significantly less
high profile has to be done - and, possibly, the existence of this
action would be buried for all eternity (or, certainly, several decades,
which on the Internet is much the same thing).
This is something that we have to deal with /now/ - the Foundation could
possibly be sued out of existence tomorrow. There is no time for us to
have a nice chat, or wring our hands about whether it's properly the
"wiki way". We're here to build an encyclopædia, above all things, and
if you don't care that the Foundation is here to keep everything
working, then possibly you need to re-evaluate your priorities and
commitment to this project; Distributed Proofreaders could always do
with a few more volunteers, for instance.
Please note that this is all conjecture on my part, I'm not the one who
makes {{office}} decisions.
Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail : james(a)jdforrester.org
IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com
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I've been blocked by an Administrator who is clearly abusing his
administrative rules in regards to 3RR. He's reverted a change I've made
in regards to the Lou Dobbs article located here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Dobbs please also see the following
discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lou_Dobbs#Removed_Dobbswatch.com_.26_Opin….
He claims there is concensus; there is none. The article section in
question has been tagged with the NPOV Dispute tag and submitted for a
request for arbitration here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFAR
I've followed the guidelines of Wikipedia and have been banned
subsequently for doing so. Through out this process I have been
threatened numerous times for following the guidelines set forth by
Wikipedia policy.
This hasn't gone without notice as others have said the same thing (see
discussion) as well as having my reverts, reverted by parties who took
the time to read the discussion (see diffs).
I'm posting here as i've been blocked and protocol has allowed me this
option. I will exhaust every avenue within Wikipedia guidelines until
they are no more to exhaust.
Administrators should not abuse their power and that is exactly what is
taking place here. This is my public notice of such activity.
Thank you,
Christopher Warner
This week's "Economist" (www.economist.com) has a survey of New Media.
Unfortunately the section about wikis is "premium content". So, to
paraphrase:
"When people express scepticism about participatory media, they usually
have people like Brian Chase in mind...", there then follows a
column-long retelling of the Seigenthaler case
"For the most part, it is much more worthwhile to dwell on the
phenomenal opportunities than on the poison pens..." - gives details of
en.wikipedia doubling in size last year, 12 times bigger than the print
Britannica, more visitors that the NY Times and CNN, and only 5 years
old. Describes what wikis are, but also notes that Wikipedia is atypical
of most wikis because of its size and number of contributors.
Asks how Wikipedia manages to work, quotes Robert McHenry's "faith-based
encyclopedia", quotes Jimbo on <1% of editors doing half the total edits
and besides site democracy there's the occasional aristocracy and
monarchy when quick action is needed. Reports on reaction to "Nature's"
comparison with EB: "Jorge Cauz, Britannica's president, claimed victory
because Wikipedia had 'a third more errors'. Privately, however,
Britannica's editors were shocked to have to concede that their creation
contained any errors at all. Total accuracy, after all, is the main
selling point for the old media.". Reports EB's rebuttal and Nature's
refutation. "But if it [Nature] did get it wrong, it is not clear why it
would have erred more for Britannica than for Wikipedia. Mr Hoiberg [EB
editor-in-chief] puts a brave face on it, claiming that 'our model,
although not perfect, is the best.'"
Goes on to contrast the reaction to the Nature episode - Britannica
instinctively regards Wikipedia as a threat, whereas Wikipedians do not
reciprocate. Quotes Jimbo as being a big fan of EB's work and glad that
Brockhaus seems to be doing better than ever. The Economist contrasts
this to the "joyful reaction of Wikipedia's detractors to Brian Chase,
the dodgy biographer (whose article was literally one in a million)".
Reports McHenry's public restroom analogy and ends with the rather nice
sentiment "One wonders whether people like Mr McHenry would prefer there
to be no public lavatories at all."
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
