I would like to apologize to everyone for claiming that there was a
concensus on the article "Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial Issues".
A concensus involves everyones agreement, and that obviously was not the
case.
As a demonstration of good faith, I promise to abstain from reverting any
articles for the remainder of this year (2002).
Merry Christmas!
Jonathan
--
Geek House Productions, Ltd.
Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
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Email: djw(a)reactor-core.org
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Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5R2W2
Folks,
I woke up this morning dreaming about Wikipedia. I think I'm devoting too much time and energy to the project.
I'm the 6th-most-frequent contributor. That's crazy. I don't need to do that much work. It's not like the project will fail without my constant daily attention.
So I'm going to follow Larry's advice and example. Better than that, I'm going to stay off the mailing lists *and* the encyclopedia for the rest of the month.
See you all next year!
Ed Poor
At 23:55 12/12/2002 +0000, Cunc wrote:
>Moderation is fine for lists with a clearly defined scope, such as
>job-announcement lists or dog-breeding tips. These wiki lists do not have
>such a clearly defined scope.
I think this is a good point. I just looked at [[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]]
and it says:
"Wikipedia has a number of project mailing lists; the general project-wide
list is Wikipedia-L. It's an essential resource for Wikipedia authors.
Maybe you don't want to clutter up Wikipedia with questions or discussion.
Or maybe, for whatever reason, you'd just like to chat with other
Wikipedians without doing so via the wiki format. Great, then sign up for
Wikipedia-L! "
The writeup for WikiEN-L isn't much more precise, just adding that it is
for "discussion of issues concerning the english wikipedia only". Note
that it doesn't say "The list isn't for flaming, so don't do it", or
whatever. It even encourages "chat", which I think most subscribers would
think of as unwanted noise.
Before we go ahead with moderation (which I remain opposed to) we ought to
have some idea of what is (or should be) and isn't (or shouldn't be)
allowed on the list, make this clear to all list members, and edit
[[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]] to reflect this. I am very unclear still as to
what is being proposed about what should and shouldn't be allowed.
Perhaps we need [[Wikipedia:What the mailing list is not]] or something.
LP (camembert)
Jimbo writes:
>What do you think of my idea of my selecting a board of "approvers"
>who don't reject posts, and then me logging in once a day (at least)
>to handle the rest? This shouldn't burden my time unnecessarily, nor
>should it slow the list down much, if we have enough approvers to keep
>things moving along reasonably well.
I like this idea, at first, but then I remember Cunctator's objections
and am put in mind of Kitty Genovese. In short, while I doubt
anyone's life will be on the line based on a posting to wikiEN (or
lack thereof), the underlying principle is the same, isn't it?
Sometimes groupthink in public keeps people from acting when they
should, and no one is left accountable.
What would keep the "approvers" from ignoring a valuable message
without consequence? Suppose all approvers came to dislike a poster
and all independently decided to ignore the poster, but the poster had
something valuable to say?
kq
On Wednesday 11 December 2002 02:00 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Obviously, we can't completely ignore the most expected forms, but
> redirects are wonderful bidirectionsl tools, and I am not bothered when
> a link from [[Bill Clinton]] redirects to [[William Jefferson Clinton]].
> The person who did not know the connection between those two names has
> an opportunity to learn something. When I get a surprising result I
> begin by asking "why?"; once that question is asked I can learn something.
The reason we title the article [[Bill Clinton]] is for more or less technical
reasons that revolve around making it as easy as is reasonable for people to
find what they are looking for and link to it directly. Yes, redirects can be
used to facilitate this, but we should continue to prefer titles that will
naturally catch most queries and most links. Redirects are great to catch
secondary uses.
There is also the big picture to consider: If we do not favor the titles most
likely to be searched for and linked to then this sets an example for new
contributors who will invariably make hideously long and complicated titles
for things (and the amount of information that can be added to a title often
varies a great deal - thus we get multiple articles on the same subject). And
it has been my experience that newbies in general either don't know about or
bother with redirects. So we should encourage titles from the start that will
catch most spontaneous links and queries. The beauty of this is that newbies
who are not aware of our conventions at all tend to title things using the
most common form already (although they do tend to capitalize and pluralize
too much for my taste).
So we should keep the amount of information in the title to a reasonable
minimum and explain in the article just what the full names of people and
things are. In short, KISS
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma Payment. Have you had your Wiki today?
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palladium&diff=484590&oldid=484…
Larry lamented,
> As I originally expected, we're seeing more and more "no" answers to
> moderation. That's too bad.
>
> Good luck, everyone, trying to implement other solutions, or with the
> status quo: I think the list will continue to be mired in constantly
> flowing excrement. Those with a low toleration for it will continue to be
> driven off.
I beg to differ, esteemed colleague. The prospect of elevating the tone of our discourse remains ever bright. Your original proposal was made less than 24 hours ago, was it not? Do not despair.
----
Let us consider rather WHICH proposal to adopt or reject:
1. Moderate wikipedia-l
Opinion seems to be turning away from this option. Indeed, a couple of non-English speakers want wikipedia-l abolished (!).
2. Moderate wikiEN-l
Some posters whose reputations carry some weight (like you, Larry, you fat slob! ;- [oops, I wouldn't be able to say that on a Moderated List <mischievous grin>, even with emoticons]) have turned toward this option.
3. Just continue to use social pressure
This remains a viable fall-back position.
----
Ed Poor
For those who are considering moderation of one list or another, let us consider our moderation options:
1. Each post from ALL subscribers must be approved.
2. Only posts from "naughty" subscribers need approved.
3. No moderation (status quo)
I myself reject option #1, since it would take way too much time. It would overwork any finite group of moderators. It would prevent urgent messages from being passed on quickly. (If this were the only option, I would withdraw my support for Larry's idea of moderation altogether.)
Option #2 means that posts would be transmitted immediately, as they are now. The exception, however, would be that a moderator could mark any subscriber's posts as requiring "administrative approval" (this phrase comes from the mailing list software). It would only be the small number of subscribers whose posts would be filtered by the moderators. Each post held for approval would then either be passed on or rejected. If rejected, it would get the appropriate comments:
* reason for rejection
* notice of right-of-appeal
I would expect that anyone whose post was rejected, would then either:
(A) Clean up their language and participate like an adult, or
(B) Go sulk, like a naughty child (thus proving that they did indeed merit the "time out")
In either case, I predict that only someone who was deliberately working against the project would refuse to comply with the simple, easy-to-follow rules of civil discourse: exactly the kind of *ahem* troll no one wants on a mailing list anyway.
Ed Poor
Please ban Clutch (Jonathan Walter); his harassment has
gotten totally out of control. I agree with Erik Moeller's
recent posts on this issue.
As Erik has stated, "Clutch" continues to violate Wikipedia
policy and always unilaterally removes portions of the
Richard Wagner article which illustrates Wagner's
anti-Semitism. Clutch then inserts a breaktakingly
dishonest apologetic for anti-Semitism, and then slanders
me as a "Zionist" for daring to disagree with him.
(First off, being a Zionist is not a bad thing. It merely
means that one agrees that one supports the right of the
State of Israel to continue to exist. Secondly, using the
word "Zionist" or "Jew" as an insult, as Clutch often does,
is an anti-semitic act, unbecoming of adults working
together on an Encyclopaedia project.)
Also, Erik points out, there is a long-defined consensus on
the Talk: page among all the participants that Clutch is
violating policy.
Further, in recent days he has taken to posting libelous
statements on the main meta-Wikipedia listserv, and is
intent on portraying himself as the victim of a
Wikipedia-wide "Zionist" conspiracy. (For those not in the
know, Clutch has repeatedly slandered the Wikipedia project
as being a "Zionipedia" project.)
This is not just annoying. He is an internet troll trying
to disrupt the community. Please do not allow him to
continue doing so.
Robert (User:RK)
=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
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I have been reading the discussion on freezing Ed Poor's Sysop status with much
interest and I thought I'd weigh in a few thoughts. First of all I think it
would be a mistake to freeze them as I believe Ed does an exceptional job at
sysop stuff. But in the event of an edit war that gets out of hand, what are
you to do? Assuming that it has moved past the ability for discussion to fix
anything, one option is to ban the person making the problems. Another
solution is to protect a page. It seems to me that the latter solution is more
reasonable as it is quite temporary and the person in the edit war may only be
causing problems in that single area. I know people say it is an abuse to
protect pages like that, but I've seen it used in other situations quite
effectively to get people to talk about it in the talk page rather than an edit
war. But what do I know, I'm just a lowly wikipedian.
Ram-Man
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