tannin Wrote:
>The enormous frustration, disruption, and harm to Wikipedia that Vera
Cruz creates is perfectly clear.
>The probability of successfully negotiating with her to effect a
reform is equally clear: near enough to zero
>as makes no difference. She shows not the slightest sign of being
able to reform, and every sign of being
>able to evade and make a mockery of any and all attempts to restrain
her: indeed, she obviously delights
>in them, and goes out of her way to court them. An IP ban is the only
practical response, and is probably
>in any case inevitable. The sooner the better.
Vera Cruz posted to mav's talk page a ranting (and quite redundant and
self-pitying) Faulknerian screed which mav (rightly, I think) refused
to read. The interesting thing about this is that she did so while
not logged in, and from the IP address 172.130.118.81 . The
temptation to ban her immediately was quite strong. Now, this
morning, I did ban her.
It occurs to me that Vera might *also* be user:172. If so, I'd say
she's been having us on even better than I thought. what is the rest
of 172's IP?
cheers,
kq
wikikarma: cashing in various [[Russia]]-related edits from yesterday
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>One of the things that Eric pointed out to me is that thinking of
>voting as a simple "majority rules" (i.e. 50% plus 1) is too
>simplistic. I _totally_ agree that 50% plus 1 would be a horrible
>rule, and likely to end up being a tool to close out minority voices.
>
>But there are other forms of voting (Condorcet's method, approval
>voting, etc.) that don't suffer from all the same defects.
No, but they suffer from other defects. In 1952, Kenneth Arrow, a
professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, proved this
using an "impossibility" theorem which showed that no voting system
is completely free from counterintuitive incomes. Arrow looked at
voting systems that satisfy two harmless- sounding properties. First,
if everyone prefers candidate A to candidate B, then A should be
ranked higher than B. Second, voters' opinions about candidate C
shouldn't affect whether A beats B--after all, if you prefer coffee
to tea, finding out that hot chocolate is available shouldn't
suddenly make you prefer tea to coffee. These sound like reasonable
restrictions, yet Arrow proved that the only voting system that
always satisfies them is a dictatorship, where a single person's
preferences determine the outcome. But this doesn't mean that a
dictatorship produces an optimum result either, because dictatorship
violates the democratic principle that government should be based on
the consent of the governed. In short, perfect democracy is
"impossible."
While there is no system that works perfectly, the *ideal* of
democracy still has value and is something that can be approximated.
>I'm a big fan of the notion of a constitutional republic. Majority
>rule is morally repugnant. But some form of consensus voting, with
>the protection of a "constitution" or "bill of rights" for all
>wikipedians, rights that can't be taken away without some
>super-extraordinary voting procedure, will probably be the way to go,
>someday.
I disagree with the notion that majority rule is morally repugnant,
but the concept of "democracy" doesn't really fit that well with
Wikipedia anyway. If we were serious about "majority rule" for
Wikipedia, we would need to have some system for ensuring the
inclusion of a representative sample of the population being
"represented," and that would mean, for starters, finding some way to
include people who don't have access to the Internet (currently 90%
of the world's population). Obviously, there aren't resources
available to do this.
I think Wikipedia currently functions quite well, despite never
having bothered to develop a philosophy of governance. If we want to
find a word that describes how it actually operates, take a look at
the concept of "demarchy" coined by coined by Australian philosopher
John Burnheim. The only difference is that Burnheim imagined that
"policy juries" would be selected at random. With Wikipedia, the
"juries" that deliberate about each article are self-selected, not
random.
If you want to read a little more about "demarchy," I added an entry
on it to the Wikipedia. I was hoping I'd be able to make it the
100,000th article, but I missed and landed on 100,005 instead. Oh
well...it's still time for champagne, folks!
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------
Erik Moeller wrote:
>Well, I was referring to articles about fiction, not articles that *are*
>fiction. The latter are generally not tolerated on Wikipedia. A separate
>fiction-pedia (storypedia?) might indeed make sense, but be careful
>not to try too
>many projects at the same time. It's not like there's any shortage of fiction
>on the net ...
Point taken. I guess I misunderstood. I read your posting from a week
or two ago about "micronation fantasies" and got the impression that
people were starting to use Wikipedia as an outlet for their creative
and humorous impulses.
It's true there's no shortage of fiction on the net, but finding
*quality* fiction is comparable to finding quality encyclopedia-like
information.
The impressive thing about Wikipedia, from my point of view, isn't
that it makes it possible to *post* articles. (Millions of web sites
do that.) The impressive thing is that it makes it possible to
collaborative *edit* and *improve* articles. It seems that this model
ought to be applicable to any number of non-encyclopedia applications.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------
Sheldon Rampton wrote:*
*
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>/One of the things that Eric pointed out to me is that thinking of
>/>/voting as a simple "majority rules" (i.e. 50% plus 1) is too
>/>/simplistic. I _totally_ agree that 50% plus 1 would be a horrible
>/>/rule, and likely to end up being a tool to close out minority voices.
>/>/
>/>/But there are other forms of voting (Condorcet's method, approval
>/>/voting, etc.) that don't suffer from all the same defects.
>/
>No, but they suffer from other defects. In 1952, Kenneth Arrow, a
>professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, proved this
>using an "impossibility" theorem which showed that no voting system
>is completely free from counterintuitive incomes.
>
I was going to change the subject line, but "Things that bother me"
seems very appropriate. :-)
Arrow's theorem is often trotted out as an excuse to stick with the
status quo. There's a couple things I should point out here:
1. A voting system doesn't have to be "perfect",
2. Arrow's theorem comes under strain when dealing with Condorcet and
similar systems. In particular, the "Independence from Irrelevant
Candidates (IIAC)" criteria is arguably too broad. Arrow classifies
candidates caught in a circular tie as "irrelevant". It's the rarely
used tiebreaker in Condorcet that fails, not the core method. While
still disqualifies it as "perfect", it does WAY better than 50%+1 (first
past the post) does against Arrow's criteria.
A more complete rebuttal of Arrow can be found here:
http://electionmethods.org/Arrow.html
Having said all of that, the difference between these systems pretty
much becomes moot when talking about yes/no decisions. The examples
I've seen on this thread seem to be of that nature.
>I think Wikipedia currently functions quite well, despite never
>having bothered to develop a philosophy of governance. If we want to
>find a word that describes how it actually operates, take a look at
>the concept of "demarchy" coined by coined by Australian philosopher
>John Burnheim. The only difference is that Burnheim imagined that
>"policy juries" would be selected at random. With Wikipedia, the
>"juries" that deliberate about each article are self-selected, not
>random.
>
A more formal version of this would be good for many of the examples
from this thread (deciding whether to ban a member, votes for deletion,
votes for NPOV). The tricky part is defining the jury pool, and
figuring out when to sequester them. :-)
Rob
You Wrote:
>172.130.118.81 is an aol ip number :
>2 solutions :
>1 Vera Cruz and 172 have the same provider and sometime they get the same
>dynamic ip.
>2 Aol use a proxy/cache....
>
>Ericd
Well, it's been thoroughly discounted that Vera Cruz and 172 are the
same person, so it's probably an AOL proxy then. And AOL does use
proxies, as I discovered in email with Brion VIBBER about a separate,
unrelated matter.
In other news, I owe everyone an apology for my last message in re:
trolls etc., I was arrogant and dismissive--not attitudes we want to
culture at wikipedia.
best,
kq
wikikarms: [[Luaka Bop]] stub, about to add more Dept. of State info
(not to [[Luaka Bop]] tho)
Erik Moeller wrote:
>Instead of just *recommending* that we do not add fiction shared only
>among a small number of participants, I suggest that we prohibit it
>entirely or at least restrict it to single articles (e.g. "Star Wars fan
>fiction"). This would allow us to quickly resolve many disputes caused by
>people bent on adding fringe fictional material to Wikipedia.
Another possibility, that might mitigate the problem, would be to
create a separate Wiki site for people who want to post fiction. As
it happens, I've been toying with the idea of creating just such a
site. There are people who *like* reading fiction and perhaps
creating it collaboratively. Give them their own playground, and
maybe they'll leave Wikipedia alone.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------
You Wrote:
>Vera Cruz edited Ed's talk page a few minutes ago. Is she banned or not?
I banned the IP but not the username. I don't know how to ban the
username, or I'd do that too.
Maybe we could add a short screening process to wikipedia:
[ ] Are you a troll?
[ ] Have you ever been fired for being "a prick in general, and bloody
near useless"?
[ ] Have you been committed to a mental institution within the last month?
kq
>What's it say? I can't read it without telling the New York times where
>I live, how much money I make a year and other personal details that
>they would never receive if I picked up a copy at my local newsstand.
>(Of course, they respect my privacy!)
I respect your privacy even more. Do this: sign in as payyourauthors
and use the password abouttime . courtesy http://librarian.net
cheers
kq
I like the new idea of a "mentor" better than the old idea of "this guy needs to be banned".
I suggest that mentors apply a 7-to-1 ratio of praise to criticism. That is, "I liked this" "That was good" "Thanks for mentioning X", etc. seven times, followed by "Oops! That's not how we do it" once.
"Uncle" Ed Poor
In part in response to recent edit disputes, I have suggested a new
policy:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ACheck_your_fiction
(complementing "Check your facts"). It appears to me that we have not
really defined what types of fiction are OK on Wikipedia, inviting all
sorts of micronation-fantasies, online RPGs, fan fiction and so on. In the
above policy, I merely recommend not adding fiction that is limited to an
insignificant number of participants. While the "fact" that this is
fiction is to some extent verifiable, the small involvement of others
makes it hard to expand and improve these entries, and they have little
value for us as an encyclopedia.
I recall a discussion where someone suggested that we shouldn't have
articles about every "anti"-movement, and that there would probably be
hits for "anti-banana", too. I checked, and there are. The Anti Banana
Society:
http://antibanana.8m.com/
A typical teenager nonsense page, much like many micronations. I doubt
anyone would want an article about this one.
Instead of just *recommending* that we do not add fiction shared only
among a small number of participants, I suggest that we prohibit it
entirely or at least restrict it to single articles (e.g. "Star Wars fan
fiction"). This would allow us to quickly resolve many disputes caused by
people bent on adding fringe fictional material to Wikipedia.
There seem to be plenty of people who have lost their ability to properly
distinguish fantasy from reality (or never had it in the first place, or
are still too young to be expected to have it) and we should define a
clear policy on how to deal with these people and their writings.
Wikipedia is not Everything2.
My apologies if this particular horse has already been mutilated.
Regards,
Erik