>From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (wasReithy
>is a problem)
>Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 07:02:40 -0700
> > Secondly, the AC should take a leadership role. The AC was appointed by
> > Jimbo, and now has a number of democratically elected members. It has
> > something approaching a mandate. It should make summary judgements in a
> > single sitting, and not be afraid of controversy. It should do what it
> > thinks is best for the community and make up the rules as it goes along,
> > within the bounds of community norms.
>
>As now constituted, it would be difficult to get us together, prepared
>(this
>is important--you have to have looked at the edits before you sit down) for
>such a procedure. We have acted quickly in a few instances, but in general
>most arbitrators move relatively slowly. Being elected and not being afraid
>of controversy is a contradiction. I think we try to do what is best for
>the
>community and when there is no explicit rule try to find a way to resolve a
>dispute within expressed community norms.
Abuses are generally obvious, and arbiters takes weeks or months to even
review the evidence, much less rule on it. This is a cop-out.
> > Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
> > get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will
> > come back under a different name. But at least the community will be
> > able to unite behind the AC ruling.
>
>This was tried at first by one arbitrator but was overruled by the
>majority.
>Unless the bulk of the arbitrators differ markedly from the users there is
>little support for lifetime banning.
Proof that the process is broken. We all know what a troll is.
> > The best way to deal with trolls is to unite the community against them,
> > then put up with them until they grow out of it. It only took Michael 18
> > months. Even adult trolls like 142 eventually get bored and go do
> > something else, but you've got to expect it to take a year or two.
> >
> > If only trolling was an criminal offence by international treaty...
>
>It proved impossible to ban obvious trolls who advertised it by
>incorporating troll into their usernames. It was insisted that they should
>be "judged by their edits" not their username. With respect to uniting the
>community, when we were smaller that happened, now there are a number of
>troublesome users that I only become aware of when a request shows up in
>requests for arbitration.
Awareness doesn't seem to be enough, since action is glacial, and good
editors have been driven away by the time the ice age actually arives.
>May I suggest that when a serious matter arises that any user disturbed by
>it engage in the dispute resolution procedure. Our failures to act in cases
>which are not before us are to be expected. We do not initiate cases.
The issue is that you don't act when the evidence has been brought, as my
examples have shown.
Jay.
I concur. Many users have had their user pages vandalized by others opposed
to their POV's.
Josiah
User:Yoshiah_ap
---
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Hi folks,
as part of my master thesis I developed a wiki based product catalogue /
marketplace. Using it you can build a browsable and searchable catalogue
of goods and services, make comments on them, sell stuff and so on.
Source code is available under the GPL and the wiki database under the FDL.
Now I am looking for all kinds of people who want to participate -
developers, product describers, dealers and consumers. Also I would like
to discuss possible cooperation with the wikipedia project. All of you
may contact me for any concern.
At that time, the market place is available at:
http://market.prag053.server4you.de
for some sample products, please go to "Browse - Page 2 -
Telecommunication - Mobile - Siemens".
Have fun using it,
Marcus
I have noticed that many people believe that a number of Wikipedia articles
are very US-centric and I think in some occasions this is true. I would say
that you might need more non-US contributors.
Have you considered using geotargeting advertisement for solving this problem?
For example, you could target ads to places like India, Japan, South Africa,
UK, Brazil or Canada.
--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
The second point is this one.
A lot of the opposition on the wikinews project is
related to
* dividing community forces (stretching human
resources)
* reduced number of editors will mean less chance for
npov
* breaking news-pressure will push editors to publish
quickly, while nearly 4 years of experience show us
only time and number of editors allow us to approach
npov. As best said by Maha_ts ''Establishing NPOV
within the short time span required for news reporting
will almost be impossible, to any degree of fairness
and accuracy''
* fear of legal issues (consider setting up a legal
team at the same time than wikinews)
* and mostly, concerns on original reporting.
So, overall, though I think the idea of wikinews is
great, and should become a major hit, I think that we
need
- that rules be collectively worked on, so that
concerns voiced by non-supporters are taken into
account. For this, I hope that many editors join the
future project so that we all work on it.
- possibly to get some journalists involved in the
project, so that we get more (or different)
perspective. There are some journalists interested in
wikipedia, and who would feel ready to discuss the
project with us. Or even to join it.
For this reason, and after several discussions here
and there, given the controversial nature of the
project and its likelyhood to get in the sunlights of
media immediately upon its creation (contrarywise to
wikipedia, which had time to polish before it become
known), I would suggest that we try to contact some
interested journalists and possibly have them join a
sort of advisory board. What do you think ?
Anthere
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I've jotted down a draft of the note about the upcoming December elections
for the AC, along the same lines as Angela's first draft for the July ones.
It's at:
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004]]
Looking forward to some input and moving forwards,
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
Mail: james(a)jdforrester.org | jon(a)eh.org | csvla(a)dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM : (MSN) jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
>> I think Jay's assessment of our dispute resolution process is quite
>> accurate. I spoke about how I thought the AC should proceed when it
>> first started, but I was ignored. I'll repeat my basic points now.
>> ...
>
>Tim - we are having an election for several ArbCom seats in December. Please
>run.
>
No, no, Tim's a developer and is needed far more urgently for other
important projects, like setting up all the new language Wikipedias
we're going to need!
Seriously, I'm sure Tim would be great, but I don't know whether
arbitration would be the best use of his time. I suppose we can let him
decide that.
--Michael Snow
Tim Starling is right on all counts regarding the AC.
The AC began with a weak mandate, or at least, perceived that it had a
weak mandate.
It adopted rules that were designed, in a large measure, to be
absolutely sure it did not step on the community's toes, since it did
not want to lose what little mandate it has. These rules have
outlasted the weakness of the mandate, which is now stronger, and now
there is no mechanism for the AC to change its own rules, which the AC
asked the community to "ratify."
The requirement to vote on whether to accept, reject, or recuse from
each case is something the AC has imposed on itself.
The use of legalistic procedures has been for the most part adopted by
the AC itself, with some encouragement from the "Member advocate" group
who have overall weakened the AC, which hardly needs to be weakened at
this juncture. I respect Alex756 a great deal but this particular
initiative of his was most unhelpful.
The requirement to attempt mediation first was adopted by the AC itself
because it did not wish to weaken the mediation committee.
The requirement to sit "en banc," that is, with all arbiters rather than
one or two on each decision, has been imposed upon the AC by itself,
mainly because the arbiters themselves have widely varying approaches
to the matters brought to them. This should be no surprise, because
Jimbo chose at least some of the members for this purpose to ensure
"balance."
I think that Tim's comment that the AC is not depriving anyone of their
liberty or property, and hence need not operate with the safeguards of
courts empowered to do just that, is particularly insightful.
There is no reason why the AC cannot assign a single arbiter to review a
particular case and deal with it. Draw straws, take turns, ask for
volunteers -- it doesn't matter. Most cases are clear. In tough cases
involving established contributors it may make sense to involve the
other arbiters, informally or formally.
I would also like to draw attention to the growing problem with socks,
or more generally, bad-faith users who are smart enough to know to
create an account. There is no reason why we cannot implement the
simple measures that every other web site in the world uses, like
requiring confirmation of new accounts through a valid email address,
and logging IPs of each edit in a way that is accessible to whoever is
responsible for dealing with problems. The UBB software is an
excellent example of this being done correctly in a way that balances
privacy concerns and protection of the content. It's really just a
modern-day picospan but still, its community-related features are
worthy of notice. These measures are not foolproof, but they are
enough to create a practical barrier to trolls, socks, and other
troublemakers.
UninvitedCompany
I've been on USENET since 1989, and nobody ever fussed about
top-posting until the very late 1990s. People did whatever they chose.
(People did fuss about not trimming down quoted material from previous
posts, because bandwidth really was an issue). In the late 1990s
someone invented some nonexistent netiquette rule about top-posting,
and people wanting to feel like members of an ingroup began to lambaste
newbies about it.
If you do a Google Groups search on "top-posting" from 1981 to 1996 you
will see that there are only 52 hits and _none_ of them refer to
top-posting as we know it. The hits are on things like
"way-over-the-top posting" and "I had been given some kind of top
posting overseas" and "On our system the FAQ was the top posting."
In 1997 we start to see entries like "You can get in a lot of trouble
in the Netscape newsgroups for 'Top Posting'" and "First, please stop
'top-posting'." In 1998, "I know some groups prefer 'top' posting, but
I think they've got it bassackwards, don't you?" There is an exchange
> If the quoted text is included at the end of your messages instead
of
> the beginning, it will significantly increase the speed of reading
> news. If you are a fast reader, it might even double it.
I had a long argument on this with the folks in the NetScape
newsgroup
a while back. While I agree with your position in general, they
argued that it was an issue for `newsgroup standards' (i.e. each
newsgroup adopts its own practice).
It seems to me that the `core' issue is whether Newsgroup
circulation
is reliable and timely enough so that you usually have the earlier
messages to which some response is directed. If you do, then Top
posting makes the most sense, while if you do not, Bottom posting
wins.
As News delivery gets more timely and reliable, we would then expect
Top posting to become more and more `the rule'...
If it originated in the Netscape groups, I don't know why. Maybe, when
replying to a post, Netscape Communicator's "Collabra" pre-positioned
the insertion point below the quoted text and perhaps Outlook Express,
or whatever AOL was using, pre-positioned it at the top? That could
explain why it became such a bone of contention
By 2000, the level of discourse has become quite elevated: "Now you
have all become top-posting fjuckheads with no direction at all" and
"Oh, here we have a member of the top-posting newbie faggot fan club."
By 2003, "STOP top posting. That is WHY YOU ARE retarded. Got clue?"
and "Hands up who isn'ta top posting fuckwit" and "Good illustration of
why top posting is only done by noobs."
--
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/
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
I've been on USENET since 1989, and nobody ever fussed about
top-posting until the very late 1990s. People did whatever they
chose.
I've been on USENET longer than that and can say you are quite wrong.
Apart from a few maverics who were idiosyncratic on principle, or
novices who were quickly educated, everyone followed the practice
of inserting replies AFTER quoting what they were replying to.
Not doing it like that, or getting the number of ">" symbols wrong,
was sure to bring complaints. You can go to
http://groups.google.com and do a quick survey to see that I am right.
I think (but I'm not sure) that the practice of putting replies at the
top
began when some popular software (Microsoft, I bet) made that the
easiest option. That's when the real wars started, maybe in the late
1990s as you say, but the reason for the wars was that it violated
prior practice, not because nobody cared before.
Zero.
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