In the past few weeks we have seen a glut of page protections triggered
by revert wars. Very often these involve the same group of users
pursuing their tactics on different pages. I have seen people say, as an
explanation for protecting a page, "the usual suspects". The problem is
that a small core of people have decided to blatantly disregard the
three revert rule.
I think the Arbitration Committee can deal with this problem, and I am
calling on it to do so. Responding to a similar situation several months
ago, it imposed a revert parole on Wik, and later Cantus, that allowed
these users to be blocked for 24 hours whenever they violated the three
revert rule. Since then, Cantus has continued to contribute but not
caused nearly as many problems, while Wik unfortunately chose to depart.
I have presented a case to the Arbitration Committee involving three of
our most frequent revert warriors. I am asking for only one thing: that
these users be placed on the same kind of revert parole.
Very nearly all Wikipedians follow the three revert rule voluntarily.
When users prove that they are not willing to respect our rules, the
community should be given the ability to enforce them. I welcome anyone
who would like to express their support for this request on the
arbitration page.
--Michael Snow
I note with some astonishment that out of the nine Sysops
originally set up to "judge" me, only four ever made it to
the point of voting to ban me.
Four out of nine is enough for a ban? Despite the
following seven facts? I guess it is enough for a ban, in
a dictatorship.
1* I am not involved in any flame wars. So why the ban?
2* I am not involved in any revert wars or edit wars. So
why the ban?
3* The supposed problems are in articles in which the
articles HAVE ALREADY BEEN RESOLVED, long ago! So why the
ban?
4* I repeatedly take week-long (or longer) Wiki-breaks
(like the last 10 days) to let things cool down and allow
other people to have their say without any problem. So why
the ban?
5* I have taken many contentious articles OFF of my
Watchlist, and simply let others do what they want, rather
then engage in multiple arguments. So why the ban?
6* I have asked for and successfully used mediation when
necessary. So why the ban?
7* I have been successfully working with a large group of
others on potentially acrimonious articles, without revert
wars, and with great progress being made on many articles.
So why the ban?
To be fair, Fred Bauder claims that objecting to
anti-Semitic hatespeech is grounds for a ban, and counts as
being in a flame war. That's not rational or fair, but
Fred says it is Wikipedia policy and that he would vote for
a ban. So I fully expect all the people who similarly
condemned HistoryBuffEr to be banned by tommorow, right?
If not, it is just more evidence that four people hate me,
out of over ten thousand Wikipedia contributors.
Robert (RK)
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>From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: POV Pushers
>Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 14:45:26 -0400
>Chris,
>
>I think your time-out idea worked out great. I made some new friends,
>and general animosity in the talk pages is down. Five of us are even
>discussing a plan for working together:
>
>Ed (thinks he's neutral but really just as biased as anyone else)
>HistoryBuffer (pro-facts and pro-fairness)
>IZAK (intolerant of injustice)
>Jay (doubly just pro-facts and pro-fairness :-)
>Pir (really, honestly, genuinely pro-facts and pro-fairness :-)
>
>Edmund Poor (mondo prude)
On my best days I'm triply pro-facts and pro-fairness. :-)
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>Just a couple of questions: who the hell are you? And what the hell are
>you gibbering about??
>
>Cheers!
>David...
This is Gordy. The person who I was talking about earlier. He is upset
because I blocked him from editing Wikipedia for making legal threats.
See User talk:Gordy and Vandalism in progress.
Theresa
I am appalled by the manner in which I was freely abused and slandered by wikipedia, and I am further stunned that during a websearch, all of the derogatory remarks were freely available from the first few search pages of Yahoo and Google, mentioning me by name, and also my IP address, with accusation of being a spammer and also a direct inference by a one Theresa Knott of being a 'liar'.
I have hardly used wiki, and visited two days ago for the first time in months, and was shocked at my treatment.
I contact wiki president Jimmy Wales, who has made it clear that he 'stands by' his admin decisions and attitudes.
After a variety of discussions and e-mails, I finally lost patience with this unforgiveable attitude and arrogant stance, and notified Mr Wales that I intend to raise legal proceedings against wikipedia. This type of freely accesible derogatory, slanderous information, including posting an individuals IP address on the internet , could have serious consequences for many people. Wiki even concedes in it;s own pages, that such things can occur more or less 'by accident', but make no effort to correct or remove slanderous comments and peron's IP addresses. In a world where IP Blacklists sites have been greatly on the rise, wiki has set a dangerous precedent for itself, and made itslef a law unto itself.
I am interested in hearing from other aggrieved parties, who would be willing to provide testimony of their treatment by wiki admins, including derogatory, defammatory/slanderous comments, accusations and IP address posting. You can contact me by e-mail at zionprophet(a)zioncities.com, in full confidence.
I am in the process of setting up a website concerning this, warning other webusers of the atrocious behaviour by wiki and it's president and administrator's, and shall keep anyone who contacts me fully advised of these matters.
For anyone who tries to 'infiltrate' this matter on the behalf of wiki as some kind of 'mole', don;t bother wasting your time. Wiki shall be kept abreast of everything, and any person behaving in such a scurrillous manner shall further be dealt with legally.
Regards,
zionprophet
Mark wrote about:
"POV pushers who don't actually violate any of our rules, or even good
contributors who are very biased and very motivated on one particular
issue, are a major problem. The neutral arbiters tend to be people
without a personal stake in the subject, and it's hard for any of them
to match the time commitment and passion that the POV pushers bring to
the editing process."
He's right as usual: Highly motivated, biased contributors are the
problem. (Sometimes I have been in this group -- sorry!)
The key point bears repeating:
* The neutral arbiters tend to be people without a personal stake in the
subject.
That's why, so many times, I've been able to mediate certain conflicts.
I really didn't care one way or another -- whether out of ignorance, or
whatever -- what the article SAID; I just wanted to get both sides to be
able to come to a mutually satisfying agreement.
Every mediation I've taken on has succeeded. My unbroken record of
success comes, however, not from talent or wisdom or "mysterious occult
powers", but from regarding one simple principle that Mark pointed out.
You can't mediate if you have an "interest" in the outcome. You must be
what judges and lawyers call a "disinterested" party. (not
'uninterested', which means you're bored by it!)
Gary D. (at [[Prem Rawat]]) and many others have done the same -- and
usually much more smoothly and politely than me, of course!
We need mediators who can stand ABOVE the controversy and
dispassionately describe all the reported facts, and all the advocated
points of view. That means I can't help [[global warming]] or [[asbestos
abatement]] or the use of [[DDT]] in preventing malaria. (Like, I won't
go to a dinner party if I know Molly has been invited, because she
always brings up gun control and we always have a big, disruptive debate
about this: no matter how many times I promise my wife that I'll be
"calm, fair, decent", etc. If I can't control myself in that situation,
I just have to stay out of that situation.)
Okay, now, we all agree on the problem. But what is the solution?
Issue #1: Can we mark an article version as a sort of milestone? Shall
we give users and search engines the milestone version as a default? Or
at least as an opt-in preference?
Issue #2: Can we exclude certain users from editing certain articles?
(How about starting on a small scale as an experiment: let admins "ban"
NON-SIGNED-IN contributors, i.e., IP's, on a per-article basis -- and
see how this works out. The [[Prem Rawat]] series would benefit.)
The wikiwiki idea is brilliant, and my hat's off to man who invented it.
But any invention can be improved upon. I call upon Geoffrey, Mav, Fred,
Rebecca, Elian, Jay, Mark, Erik and the whole gang:
Let's put our heads together and come up with an idea. Then let's try it
out. If it doesn't work, we can try something else.
Ed Poor
----- Original Message -----
From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator(a)kband.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 9:40 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Just gently _mark_ milestones
> On 10/12/04 6:01 AM, "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith(a)verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > How about providing this minimal amount of mechanism:
> >
> > a) A way of marking a particular edit as a "milestone."
> >
> > b) The ability to mark an edit as a milestone would be suitably
> > restricted to people, probably sysops, who would agree to be governed
> > by discussion, consensus, policy, etc. TBD.
> >
> Instead of restricting the power to sysops, everyone (registered) should
be
> able to vote, with clear criteria. You'd get something like the
recommended
> diaries at Daily Kos.
>
> *Or* the process of becoming a sysop should become automated so that most
> regular users are sysops.
And stating that only "high level" sysops can unmark milestones...
> I am appalled by the manner in which I was freely abused and slandered
by > Wikipedia..
<snip a few pages of ranting>
Just a couple of questions: who the hell are you? And what the hell are
you gibbering about??
Cheers!
David...
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> From: Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
>
> I'd have to say I agree with that criticism. I've wasted some time
> myself on some of these contentious subjects, only to come back a few
> months later and find an abysmally horrid article in its place. Now I
> could start over again and try to hammer that article back into a
> reasonable state, or I could just revert to my 3-month-old version, or
> I
> could give up and say, "fine, the crappy article can stay". And,
> increasingly, a lot of people are taking the third option.
>
> -Mark
I can relate to that. Even with non-contentious articles. I call it the
"months later" effect. One of the delusions of Wikipedia is that when
one has done good work, and an article receives no comments or further
edits, that the article has somehow been accepted or approved. In most
cases, I suspect, it just hasn't been noticed.
There's one article which I really, really liked a few months ago.
Factual, vigorous, lively, and the collaborative product of many
contributors. In the meantime, a new editor appeared and, _while in
fact remaining within the bounds of good behavior_, reshaped it to his
personal vision by extremely assertive editing of the article,
monitoring it, and challenging any other edits that don't fit his point
of view (which of course he regards as "neutral"). There's nothing
actually wrong with the new article but _I just don't like it_.
One of the big problems with "hammering out consensus" in _any_
organization is the arrival of newcomers who did not take part in
forming that consensus. I've seen it almost every place that I've
worked. Someone will propose something that seems outrageous, and
someone will pipe up and say, "But we spent all that time on it and we
all _agreed_..." and, on analysis, it turns out that it was quite a
while ago and many of the "all" are no longer there, the procedure had
remained in place only because nobody challenged it... and the hard
work of building consensus starts all over again with a different cast
of characters.
But in a company, the arrival of newcomers is infrequent, structured,
and the newcomers undergo some kind of formal or informal process of
becoming oriented.
There's also a regression-to-the-mean-like effect. When an article is
relatively undeveloped, and a random newcomer wanders in and decides to
"edit this page," the chances of improvement are high. Not only because
the average quality of the editors is higher than the quality of the
page, but also because theor motivation is likely to be relatively
pure. The main reason for wanting to edit a _low-quality_ page is that
one actually knows something about the subject.
But when an article is of high quality, the people who have knowledge
in the topic area are likely to leave it alone. The people who are most
likely to edit it are people who want to push a point of view, or
people who know much less than they think they know. The result is that
the better an article is, the greater the chances that random edits
will lower its quality.
I think there needs to be some mechanism in place so that when an
article becomes generally regarded as good, Version 1.0 or whatever, it
can be sort of locked in place. Perhaps it could be stamped with a
version number, and any attempts to edit [[GoodArticle]] are
automatically redirected to [[GoodArticle/Version1.1]]. Within a
discussion forum, when and only when there is general consensus that
[[GoodArticle/Version1.1]] is better than [[GoodArticle]], a sysop or
suitably-authorized-panjandrum can move it to [[GoodArticle]].
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/