>Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2006 12:26:26 -0400
>From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey(a)att.net>
<snip>
Enough.
I have edited articles which Jon Awbrey is involved in editing. The words which do *not* come to mind are "concise, clarity, reasonable, verifiable". The words which *do* come to mind are "pontificating, arrogant, obfuscate, verbose, obstinate". IMHO, the issue is not that he has had to deal with POV pushers and aggressive adversaries. The issue is that he writes reams of original research, in overdone pseudo-intellectual style, which obfuscates rather than clarifies any meaning which he might be attempting to present. When anyone asks what he means, he responds in a condescending, rude manner, insulting the questioner. When his ability to write three paragraphs of personal interpretation based upon a one-line source which only tangentially relates to his edit is brought up as a possible OR violation, he dismisses concerns with, again, insults and insistence upon his superiority. In short, he seems congenitally unable to work with others, unless those others are devotees of his personality cult. Any suggestion of modifications of his incredibly convoluted content additions is met with similar accusations of incompetence of his fellow editors. He frequently makes long, windy posts on talk pages, which neither clarify what he is doing to the article nor address any concerns anyone has raised. A strong mentorship in which Verifiability, No original research, Consensus, Civility, and simple respect for fellow editors would do far more to enable him to make productive contributions to Wikipedia than any kind of guidance on "dealing with pov pushing editors and bullies". Teaching him to communicate effectively would be even more help. One presumes he has a point buried in the massive volume which constitute a single post, but locating that point is always challenging, and usually not worth the effort. This has been pointed out to him multiple times, but his response is utter dismissal of the notion that *because he is the one attempting to communicate something, the onus is on him to try to make his meaning clear*. He has now expanded his love affair with his own pontificating beyond articles and talk pages to this list, and as is usual, the response is an initial attempt to understand what on earth he's getting at, followed by a general numbness at the sheer avalanche of self-aggrandizing fluff.
I suggest that if Jon Awbrey wishes to stay with Wikipedia, he be assigned strong mentors, and if not, he be moderated from the list. We don't need another 10,000 emails of an "exit interview" - if he is leaving, a one-line email with the word "goodbye" will cover the subject more than adequately. One puppy's opinion.
-kc-
On 30 Jun 2006 at 23:52, mboverload <mboverload(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Wait...what's wrong with white people? =D
They like to top-post their e-mail replies?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
According to the WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias, "The average
Wikipedian on English Wikipedia (1) is male, (2) is
technically-inclined, (3) is formally educated, (4) speaks English to
an extent, (5) is White , (6) is aged 15-49, (7) is from a
predominantly Christian country, (8) is from an industrialized nation,
and (9) is more likely to be employed in intellectual pursuits than in
practical skills or physical labor."
The problem with this is the unfortunate gap in coverage that results
from a lack of interest from the typical demographic of Wikipedians
described above. While this demographic is definitely interested in
contributing to a free, online encyclopedia, that doesn't mean the
others aren't. One particular problem is that in order to contribute
to Wikipedia, you'll need to use a computer. There are others who
would probably be interested in contributing to our global effort,
too, but don't understand technology. We need to allow them to
contribute.
For that purpose, I would like to start a project where people without
access to computers (or people who voluntarily choose not to use them)
can -write- their own Wikipedia entries and mail them in. The first
phase of this plan, of course, would be spreading the word. The least
expensive way would probably be distributing fliers in frequented
areas. People could then write their own articles, and mail them in to
the Wikimedia Office. Someone at the office (maybe Monica?) could open
the letters, scan them in, and email them to an offline submissions
mailing list. From there, people interested in the project would
transcribe the article into Wikipedia (if applicable, see below) and
mail back a corresponding letter featuring a print-out of the new
article. Very simple process, plus it would allow people from
non-typical-of-Wikipedia-editor backgrounds to put in their word.
What if their entry is redundant? Not to worry. If the written
submission has content the Wikipedia article doesn't, we add it in. If
it doesn't, that's okay. We don't necessarily have to tell them what
made it in and what didn't, but either way, a reply will be sent to
the writer with a print-out of the article.
----
I'm passing the above on for en:User:Messedrocker, since he's not
subscribed to the list. My thoughts:
a) This has certainly been done before on a local level with minor
languages - was it in West Africa somewhere? My mind is failing me,
but I've certainly seen it mentioned on wikipedia-l before - the
writing was done by a local elder, transcribed and put online by a
volunteer.
b) It might well work, but would probably require careful thought and
planning - who are we targeting? what sort of articles are we
targeting them for? how do we deal with unwanted and inappropriate
submissions without causing more badwill than we started with?
c) Copyrights. This might get fun.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
I'm not sure what the right venue is, so I'm asking here...
What is the technical or policy reason that IP blocks don't let
editors with named accounts log in from that IP or IP range anyways?
If someone starts creating socks, those would seem to be easily
identifyable if they're consistently from the same IP or IP range,
unless you're talking about AOL.
With AOL, it would get past a lot of ongoing frustration and admin
efforts (it seems) if users with accounts could log in and edit even
if the IP range or address was blocked for anon use due to vandalism
etc.
I apologize in advance if this is an old argument, but I haven't found
any explanation and would like to be informed on why it's done this
way now, and whether alternatives have been considered in the past.
Thanks.
--
-george william herbert
gherbert(a)retro.com / george.herbert(a)gmail.com
On 6/22/06, Sherool <jamydlan(a)online.no> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:46:12 +0200, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Revisiting
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html
> > and checking the long long long list of images at [[Category:Images
> > used with permission]] there are many of them kept becuase they were
> > uploaded before such date.
> >
> > It's been more than a year since the ruling, I believe older images
> > weren't removed in order to let uploaders tag them properly, find
> > replacements, or so they could be processed at the old Vfd.
> >
> > Quoting Jimbo
> >
> > "It is very unfortunate that such images are still being uploaded _new_
> > when we have not be happy about them for a long time. It is not fair to
> > contributors who are working on such things, since we have no intention
> > to keep them in the long run."
> >
> > Well, if in the long run they have to go, it could start now. So, I
> > was wondering why aren't they being processed yet. I'm thinking of
> > nominating batches of them at IFD every certain time. On the other
> > hand, however [[WP:IFD]] is clogged, so I was a bit hesitant about
> > doing so without more feedback.
> >
> > Thus I created [[User:Drini/OldCopyrightedImgs]] which has a small
> > sample for the first bacth and shows how I would be nominating them. I
> > tried to sample different kind of images (uploaded by the webmaster's
> > site, by random users, by respected old users, without source,
> > orphaned images, etc) so we can get an idea what we're dealign with.
> >
> > Still, IFD is overloaded, so maybe better alternatives can come up?
> > Maybe a IFD-like for this kind of images?
> >
> > Jimbo, what's your current view about such things?
>
> I don't see how anyone could object, either they come up with a fair use
> rationale or secure a permission to release the image under a free license
> or it gets deleted, simgple as that, as you say there have been plenty of
> time to fix this. Ok a lot of people don't know that these kind of
> licenses are no longer allowed, but they will know once they get the IFD
> notice on theyr talk page, and images can be undeleted now too, so there
> is rely no excuse to delay this any further, if people are uneable to come
> up with a compelling reason to keep an image within the IFD wait period
> they can simply request the images be undeleted though Deletion review at
> a later time if the copyright holder agree to release it under a free
> license after all. Nothing like a pending deletion to make people spring
> into action.
>
> Just be sure it's done "by the book", notifying uploaders and adding
> {{ifdc}} to captions where the image is used and so forth to boost
> awarenes about why they are beeing deleted. IMHO making as many people as
> possible understand why this kind of licenses are not acceptable are more
> important than getting them all hastily deleted, "by permission" and "non
> commercial" images are still a fairly big problem, people just don't use
> those tags anymore becase they are not listed (they tend to pick "no
> rights reserved" instead for some reason). I actualy think {{permission}}
> and {{noncommercial}} should be added to MediaWiki:Licenses (at least
> after all the old ones have been cleared out), that way we can easily
> track them down and delete them rather than digging them out of some other
> random license tag the uploader choose because he didn't find a good fit
> (same deal as "don't know" and "some website"). But I digress.
>
> --
> [[:en:User:Sherool]]
>
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>
Well, my point is, why aren't these being speedied like the new ones?
If giving time for finding replacements was the issue, plenty of time
has been given, (yet precisely since they were kept, noone is
bothering to find free replacements). Jimbo says those won't stay
forever, but unless they start being gone, noone will get the free
stuff.
So, is anyone willing to support speedying these images?
** at least in the case of the ORPHANED noncommercial/withpermission
before the date** ?
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
first post.
after six months in WP I am totally fed up.
it is no longer worth the headache trying to
write quality articles or to improve articles
in this ennvironment.
but i would like to post some of my observations
in hopes that it might help out somehow, someday.
WP is a meeting ground for several types of people.
the main types i've observed fall under these heads:
1. accurate reporters (AR's).
2. responsible scholars (RS's).
3. infantile vandals (IV's).
4. expert disrupters (ED's)
in the present state of WP, the rules in practice and the prevailing attitudes of admins
are all skewed in favor of IV's and ED's, while the AR's and RS's don't stand a chance.
by "rules in practice" i mean the way that policies and guidelines actually get enforced.
the sad thing is that the "rules in principle" state all the right ideas, but people who
are born and bred to check facts don't have a chance against puppet mobs of pseudo-newbies,
who seem bent on nothing short of making the world safe for their current state of ignorance.
"assuming good faith" and "not biting newcomers" are so much easier for admins to parrot
that it has rendered them the most naive dupes of expert disrupters who have learned how
it easy it is to exploit their naivete. in short, WP is like email before virus protection.
this is one of the biggest reasons that WP's reputation in responsible communities
has gone from "not especially reliable source" (NERS) to "dump of popular errors" (DOPE).
it is my impression from my acquaintances that more and more responsible scholars who buy
into the ideals of WP in the beginning quickly find themselves disamyed by the realities,
and just go way quietly after a short while of seeing their efforts go to waste here.
i really do hope that something that lives up to the stated ideals and policies of WP
does come into existence someday, so i will try to put aside my present discouragement
and focus on the kinds of experiences that can be converted into constructive critique.
to be continued ...
jon awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o