David Benbennick wrote:
> > > How about the reverse? Are we prepared to grant EN adminship to all
> > > Commons admins?
>
> > I'm confused. Does vandalism on EN affect commons?
> My point was simply that "fair is fair". If you think EN admins
> should get to be Commons admins automatically, it's only fair to allow
> Commons admins the same privilege.
I'm dismayed that you see this as a game of tit-for-tat rather than the
serious policy and coordination question that it is.
As a practical matter, I believe that most of the commons admins are
already administrators on their "home" wikipedias. As I stated in my
opening post, I would support granting commons adminship to admins from
any of the larger wikipedias, including de and fr and perhaps others.
>Any failures to gain commons adminship probably has more to do with
>the attitude of those applying then any general policy (I note that
>you failed in your application, uninvited).
>It is not unreasonable to reject adminship requests made by those who
>have no interest in the well-being of the project. I was recently
>voted an admin unopposed despite having no uploads and very few edits
>- but I have actively fought image vandalism there.
>Quite a number of other en.wp admins have also succeeded - because
>they did not simply "demand" adminship because they already have it
>elsewhere, but because they demonstrated that they care about the
>Commons.
I did not "demand" adminship on the commons. I asked politely and was
turned down, based on my lack of involvement at commons. Commons has
its own wikipolitics, which should be unsurprising. The "official"
criteria is 100 uploads or other edits. Sometimes this is enforced,
sometimes not. As is the case on en, commons adminship requirements
appear to have become more demanding with time.
The point is that vandalism on commons affects en.wikipedia, and such
vandalism is likely to become a growing problem as more images get
migrated. For technical reasons alone it is harder for en admins to
track such vandalism, because it does not appear in recentchanges on
en, or in the "related changes" pages. The fact that vandalism, once
identified, cannot be properly addressed by en. admins (at least in
cases where page protection or a block is appropriate), makes matters
even more difficult.
If commons is a completely independent of en.wikipedia, perhaps we
should reconsider our present drive to move images to commons. I don't
think that would be wise. The original intent of commons was to create
a project that would serve all wikipedias rather than to create a
freestanding media archive unrelated to any of them.
In the past day, [[user:jtdirl]] has published my name and address, and
[[user:mackensen]] has accused me of criminal acts. Other admins apparently
support both actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notic…
What is wrong with you people? Take a step back from your world of user
accounts and internal rules and get your priorities right. Please.
--
Peter in Canberra
David Benbennick wrote:
> How about the reverse? Are we prepared to grand EN adminship to all
> Commons admins?
I'm confused. Does vandalism on EN affect commons?
[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and
Subversives have Penetrated Washington]]
I just closed this vfd. Apparently someone decided vfd is not a
discussion, and all discussion should be on the discussion page. Don't
we have a big notice somewhere saying AFD is a discussion?
On 9/13/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions
> are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to
> be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the
> deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles
> harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that
> survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.
I'm simply suggesting that admins should be more willing to use
judgment in making the decision deletions they are already empowered
to make. This isn't about giving new powers to admins, it's about
expecting admins to exercise their existing powers with judgment and
discretion instead of mechanically.
AFD is swarming with professional deletionists, and many deleted
articles were deleted with input mainly from editors whose main
contribution to Wikipedia is to vote to delete things. I question
whether this group of individuals fairly represents the Wikipedia
community, and therefore whether AFD actually arrives at community
consensus, except in obvious cases, and therefore call for admins to
exercise their judgment in evaluting AFDs for whether they reflect
true consensus, and also for admins to feel free to boldly undelete
articles that were clearly deleted in a manner which harms the
encyclopedia.
I know that it has become popular to grill admin candidates on their
criteria for "consensus" at AFD, and candidates who fail to meet the
standard that the deletionists have established as "reasonable" get
dogpiled with oppose votes. Frankly, I'm worried about this emergent
mob mentality, which I think is encouraged by having a caste of
professional deletionists, which is itself a consequence of having a
centralized deletion mechanism.
Kelly
Bryan Derksen writes:
"Are there no inclusionist admins who would go on "deletion log patrol"
if such a thing became common? Would you worry about a corresponding
problem of unchecked undeletion?"
I'm the only person I know who does this regularly at present--there
aren't presently a lot of articles being wrongly speedied so it only takes
one person to check. I think the RC patrollers generally exercise good
judgement. There is a tendency to stretch speedy criteria but this is
mostly done with commonsense.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Old [mailto:keithold@gmail.com]
> Sent: 13 September 2005 11:31 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion
>
> Let us look at an article about a person who is notable in Australia but
> not elsewhere (for example) which is in a poor state. Editor A comes and
> tags the article for deletion. Editor B comes through and deletes it.
> Neither editor is aware of the significance of the person in Australia
> and the article is deleted.
>
> If it was listed on articles for deletion, an editor or editors from
> Australia could argue for its retention and improve it meaning we have a
> better article.
If the article started by providing enough information, references and
links to other articles for any reader to understand why the subject of
the article was notable, then surely the problem wouldn't arise? No
assertion of notability is already a criterion for speedy deletion. If
the article was a two-line stub then it would surely be no major issue for
someone familiar with the topic to create a more encyclopaedic article
that wouldn't get tagged for deletion.
WT
> Where exactly have you been trying to form this policy by working
> through the issues? So far all I've you do is rewrite [[Wikipedia:Fair
> use]], which was on the whole a good thing. (I thought there were a
> few problems with it...)
Indeed, that was a major area, and there does appear to be some progress
there. As you're aware, I've also edited a couple of of the tag
templates, and the Wikiproject page. There has also been some
discussion on the speedy deletion page.
> I could be wrong, but it seems like you've nominated a whole single
> image for deletion along these lines in the last two weeks. If you
> think an image is a copyright infringement -- and doesn't qualify for
> fair use -- why not tag it as such and mark it for deletion?
At present I am more interested in policy matters. I do not believe
that I can accomplish anything meaningful by my own extensive use of
and involvement in an existing copyvio image process that (a) is far
more work for the listing admin than the uploader, (b) takes weeks to
reach resolution in uncontroversial cases, and (c) has an excessive
inclusion bias for copyvio images with a fair use claim. I'm willing
to review images, and list them for deletion, but not until the policy
issues are properly addressed. I have had too much Wikistress in the
past trying to work to implement things that lacked definition.
> You added your name to [[Wikipedia:Wikiproject Fair use]], which has
> been quite active in rewriting fair use tags (and deleting problematic
> ones), and is on the cusp of having a workable system for users to
> label suspicious/disputed/approved fair use claims.
>
> If you'd like to participate in the discussion, please do. There are a
> number of people who are trying to draw up guidelines and feasible
> plans. I'm not trying to sound snarky, but you're clearly aware of our
> project, so I'm taking your complaining to the list as being some sort
> of indication that you don't think it is in alignment with your goals
> or thinking.
At present, the project isn't soundly grounded in legal advice. I'm not
an attorney so I can't fix that. However I do disagree with the other
WikiProject members in several important areas. I believe this is a
matter better resolved by competent counsel rather than by compromise
and consensus. That is why I have brought it here.
I believe, for example, that we do not accomplish anything meaningful by
using low-resolution images and sound clips; consenus appears to be that
resolution limits are important. I don't think that discussing or
voting on this will help us because it is better settled by sound legal
advice. I don't think it is in the best interests of the project to
have a bunch of laypeople (non-lawyers) dream up fair use policy.
> After some time assessing things, I think a great deal of our fair use
> images are just fine. The vast majority of them are things like box
> art and movie posters and are low-res, used appropriately in articles,
> have no "free" replacements available, and don't deny anybody future
> profitability.
I am unconvinced of this. Other than the OCILLA safe harbor provisions,
I don't think we have a uniformly strong claim. Many of the articles
don't have any meaningful critical content, instead merely serving to
identify the game or movie or book as the case may be and provide
noncritical directory information (credits, year of publication, and so
on). I don't know what the case law has to say on that.
I don't believe that our fair use claim is in any way strengthened by
the absence of "free" replacements for copyrighted materials.
I believe that publicity photos require no fair use rationale for the
reasons I have stated on the appropriate policy page.
I believe that the non-commercial nature of the project should not be a
guiding factor in our choice of fair use policy, because of the need to
preserve re-use rights for mirrors.
You see it differently, and I understand that, and in most cases I
understand your reasoning. Again, compromise and consensus are a poor
substitite for counsel in this case, which is why I'm not striving for
compromise and consensus.
> At the moment we've been mostly concentrating on
> sorting these sorts of things out so that it's easy to see get to the
> more problematic cases. These things take time, of course, and the
> efforts of volunteers -- hence a coordinating project.
The categorization efforts are indeed helpful. It is the policy that
concerns me.
1) As I understand it, the proposed "pure wiki deletion system" doesn't
really delete articles, it just sweeps them under the rug.
2) It is more important to me that Wikipedia be an encyclopedia than that it
be a wiki. I accept that it isn't a _pure_ encyclopedia. I don't think it
should be a _pure_ wiki.
3) What is the evidence that a "pure" wiki system will work better? This
seems like ideology to me. Isn't Wikipedia, by most measures, far more
successful than any other Wiki or Wiki-like entity in existence? (Are
Wikinfo, Everything2, JnanaBase, etc. even a blip on the Internet radar?)
4) Slashdot is a group blog. An encyclopedia is not a group blog.
5) USENET resembles a pure wiki system. Articles can only be deleted
("cancelled") by the person who created them (and as of 2005 virtually all
news servers seem to ignore cancellations anyway). It is an inclusionist's
dream. It is far larger than Wikipedia and far more comprehensive. It
contains a great deal of valuable information and it is very, very useful to
me, particular in the decades since the establishment of Deja News/Google
Groups. I have the belief, correct or not, that I can judge the reliability
of the information I find on it. _I use it all the time for decision making,_
particular decisions about purchasing things. But it is not an encyclopedia.