On 8 Oct 2006 at 22:18, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Oct 2006 15:30:59 -0500, "Richard Holton"
> <richholton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >So, that leaves open the possibility of someone else creating the page?
>
> Nope. Fleshlight demand editorial control. We can't give them that.
> The only way we can prevent their "advertising value" from being
> ruined is by not carrying it.
Since when do we have any obligation to preserve somebody else's
"advertising value"?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Date: 10-Oct-2006 08:23
Subject: Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org>
On 10/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://openusability.org/download.php/89/germanwikipedia_usabilitytest_edit…
> Very interesting usability analysis. We should take this stuff to
> heart. A lot should be fairly simple to implement (although much is
> non-development, e.g., too-verbose messages/help).
There's something about some en: admins making them explain everything
in mind-numbingly excessive detail. Something that would take a simple
subject-verb object sentence gets turned into three sentences with
four dangling modifiers and two words over four syllables. Just in
case someone didn't get a TERRIBLY IMPORTANT detail shoved in their
face right there, y'know. Large chunks of Mediawiki: space need
rewriting in Comprehensible.
- d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources#Top-to-bottom_…
WP:RS is an essay, not a guideline. I can say that because the
incumbents are now blindly edit-warring to their preferred version,
even against corrections of grammatical errors. That's the sign of a
process that has become way too introverted and really, really needs
to be brought back in touch with the real world.
- d.
It has been pointed out to me that the is a, well, conflict now, with the old WP:VAIN now called Wikipedia:Conflict of interest being more than somewhat adjacent to Wikipedia:Conflicts of interests.
Is this going to be a merge? Cleaning up a guideline page is one thing. Assuming I'm up to merging hot-potato policies is another ...
Charles
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Hi everyone,
to those I've known at Wikipedia and worked well with, thanks for the good
times. I used to believe in Wikipedia. It was worth a lot to me, it was fun,
it was good to work on articles.
But I'm quitting. It's sad to say, I know, and even sadder that due to my
reasons for quitting, I can't trust leaving a goodbye message on my user
page or mailing from my normal account. But for the things I am about to
say, I know that several admins and possibly those higher up in the project
would ban me just for saying it. I know this message may never reach this
list either, but I'm at least going to try. I'm doing it this way because
someday, I might want to come back, and I'd like to be able to come back
under the same username I left.
I'm quitting wikipedia because I don't like what I've seen too many admins
become. Self-righteous, arrogant, self-centered, conceited... jerks.
I've seen too many admins who believe that our civility policies only apply
to the normal editors. Too many admins whose first course is to insult a new
user in order to see if they get a "reaction" so that they can spank the new
user for talking back to an admin.
I've seen too many admins block accounts for infinite duration on flimsy
evidence or mere whim.
I've seen admins block accounts with the reason of "name..", and then block
another account for the reason that it was a "suspected sockpuppet" - of the
offensive username block.
I've seen more accusations thrown around of someone being a "sockpuppet" of
another user. Time and again, I looked through the edits, and I didn't see
it. Instead, what I saw were users who were systematically hounded until
they finally broke down and broke the civility rules, and then as an
afterthought someone came up and said "oh, it doesn't matter, they were a
sockpuppet of X anyways", thereby removing all culpability on the part of
the abusive users who had spent time hounding and abusing the newbie to the
point of cussing or vandalizing.
I've seen the way accusations of "sockpuppet" have become a way of life in
content disputes, and I've see how the admins on wikipedia do absolutely
nothing about it. Too many despicable pov warriors spend their time accusing
anyone they disagree with on one article or another of being a "sockpuppet",
and never does a CheckUser come back innocent. The one time I ever saw CU
come back inconclusive, the admin blocked them for being a sockpuppet
anyways, claiming they had "proof" in the form of edit summaries, which is
to say that the user was editing on the same article where the admin's
friends had previously harassed someone.
I saw a thread earlier today which I thought was monstrous - a user whose
talk page was locked for "unblock template abuse", whose only crime or
"abuse" of the template was removing the template after the blocking admin
consistently and maliciously removed it. This thread was stopped by the
assertion of David Gerard that the person who started the thread was
"Enviroknot." I don't give a damn who started the thread, if the question is
valid, the question is valid. I looked at the user in question, and I see
plenty of problems with the way it was handled, and at least two admins who
deserve at the least a stern censure and at the most, de-adminning for
abusive behavior. We NEED users to bring these problems up. We NEED to cull
the herd of abusive administrators.
But there's no way in hell I can say that with my normal username, because
David's terms are clear: the usage of the term "sockpuppet" stops all
rational discussion, and anyone disagreeing with David gets banned.
Anyone who says that there are abusive administrators out there, or speaks
out against a specific one they've had a run-in with? The cry of "Rouge
Admin lololol lets see how can I pwn this noob today, take that and stop
annoying the admins" is the cry that goes out, not "that sounds serious,
I'll take a look."
We are too arrogant. I've seen Jimbo use the excuse of "well troll X doesn't
like it so they are doing right" or "well you must be correct because the
wikipediareview crowd doesn't like you" as a way to justify bad behavior in
the wikimedia IRC room and even on this list. I've seen countless times
where good users are attacked for speaking up and saying this same thing:
We, the overwhelming number of admins on the project, are too arrogant. Too
self-centered.
We spend too much time "defending" wikipedia and not enough time bringing
new users into the fold, being polite, being nice. Teaching them about
policies, about the manual of style. Editing alongside them. Admins are
supposed to be "just another editor with a few extra buttons", but too many
admins today get drunk on that power. They insist that normal editors are
"beneath" them, that they should be able to own articles and give their
friends a hand up when content disputes arise. If you're friends with an
admin, rest assured that your buddies will call someone a name, get one
called back, and then ask you to punish the other guy for "incivility." And
you'll do it, too, without a moment's hesitation, simply because you have
the power to do it.
I've sat in the IRC channel watching a user come in to ask for help only to
be rebuffed, attacked, insulted, and finally booted because "no new user
could ever find the IRC chat room, they are obviously a sockpuppet of some
disruptive user." I sat by silently because I knew if I spoke out, they'd
just boot me too for being "disruptive."
And you know what? I'm tired of it. Our articles are suffering because even
the good edits of supposed "sockpuppets" are being reverted by
overly-zealous admins who believe that they have to hunt for every edit made
by someone they think is banned - even if it's just a typo fix - and revert
it. Yes, I have watched this in action. I have watched admins put obvious
page-tagging edits like an insertion of "joe is a fag" back because the user
who reverted the vandalism was someone deemed a "sockpuppet" by our
completely erroneous and pointless system.
The Wiki is broken. It's not the vandals who broke it. Those we could
handle. It's not the edit warriors who broke it. Those we can handle.
WE, the admins of wikipedia, broke it. We broke it by being stuck-up jerks.
We broke it by thinking we are better than normal editors, by getting full
of ourselves.
And every one of the admins on wikipedia, myself included, has been guilty
of it at one point. Some are more guilty than others. Some are jerks 100% of
the time. Some have become so obsessed with their pet sockpuppet, be it
Enviroknot, Freestylefrappe, Willy on Wheels, Entmoots, Pigsonthewing,
JarlaxleArtemis, Karmafist, Lir, PoolGuy, or whatever else their pet
sockpuppet of the week is that they are no longer useful.
Some never should have passed RFA to start with. Some deliberately gamed the
system and pulled support from a specific interest group to get passed, then
turned around and started immediately abusing their power to help the
interest group and haven't stopped since. Some are likely sockpuppets of
serial edit warriors.
Some are just insane.
And some of us just are human, and fail to appreciate that, and fall victim
to power tripping behavior. I think that the admin behavior which made this
list moderation-default falls under that. But that's another of those things
that is "not up for discussion."
Too many things are not open for discussion. Too many of the verboten topics
center around people who are on power trips, or were at the time they took
some action. Too many times admins seeking to consolidate their power bases
or trading favors with other admins have stood up for improper, abusive
behavior.
So, I'm out. As long as the cult of adminship reigns here, wikipedia's not
going to improve. New articles may come and edits might be made eventually,
but the state of wikipedia, our accuracy, our reliability, WILL fail as long
as admins are allowed to champion abusive users or be abusive themselves and
simply get away with it time and again, rubber stamped by secret evidence
and higher-ups who are more interested in their own power than making a
better encyclopedia.
Jimbo, this might as well be an open letter to you too. None of the rest of
these spineless yes-men will ever say these things to your face. Hell, I
couldn't at the last meetup, because I was so afraid that you or Danny or
one of the other high-ups would note down my username and ban me. That's the
atmosphere you've cultivated.
Peace out.
In a perfect world we would automate references to a higher degree. An idea
I've just thought of is introducing reference-space to Wikipedia, in a broad
parallel to image-space. We currently have images with a separate existence
from articles, and each image can be used on many articles. This system
means that image copyright is centralised and anyone happening upon a useful
image can include it without needing to upload the image again, provide
license info, and so on.
Why not streamline referencing by having a page for each reference, which
provide full cite information and external links, and a MediaWiki trick to
mean a full reference can be supplied with three or four words rather than
(as currently) writing out a long string of author name, title, publication
details and index numbers.
To give an example, instead of having
Sen, A: "On the Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal", Journal of Political
Economy, date,volume, issue number
incorporated separately into every one of a dozen different articles, we
would have a page called
Reference:Paretian Liberal (Sen)
which would have the full details of the source, in a standard format,
details of any duplicates (e.g. hardback/softback and domestic/international
editions of books), and links to whatever online searchable databases were
available (similar to the current ISBN search facility for books). It would
also have a list of 'articles that reference this work" and possibly a brief
user-contributed summary.
When referencing that particular article, one would be able to wikilink to
[[R:Paretian Liberal (Sen)]]. A wikilink to reference-space would appear as
an inline reference and, if it were the first use of the source,
automagically add the full cite to the References section at the bottom of
the page. The full cite would link to the reference-space page.
What d'you reckon? Clearly it would need a lot of developer time but would
make exhaustive referencing much, much easier if that is where we need to
be.
Chris
Hi,
I'm a blocked user (but I'm not here to discuss that) and I've been
accused of something (else) that I didn't do so I'm here to clear the air:
Please direct your attention to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cyde&diff=79893307&oldi…
Specifically, this comment:
":::Your cryptic "cough, Nathan, cough" is, I take it, a reference to
e-mails I supposedly sent to Nathandotcom. That was a banned user using my
e-mail address, and he did the same to several other admins. The abuse was
reported to his university who managed to identify him and it has stopped.
Like Cyde, you need to learn all the facts before commenting on issues.
Cyde, you're now calling me a "liar" over an issue that is my business,
not yours, and that I know about, and you don't. I have asked you many
times to stop raising the issue, stop gossiping about me and others, and
to stop attacking me. I am hereby asking you again.
[[User:SlimVirgin|SlimVirgin]] <sup><font
color="Purple">[[User_talk:SlimVirgin|(talk)]]</font></sup> 18:56, 6
October 2006 (UTC)"
Quite honestly, I'm sick of being accused of things I didn't do by
arrogant admins who think they're right.
Let me clear the air with the following points:
1) While I may have something against those involved in the situation that
led to my blocking, I have absolutely nothing against any other admin of
Wikipedia, save for Cyde (who was involved). Therefore I have no logical
reason to harass any admin on Wikipedia.
2) I do not attend college or university nor have I ever in the past. When
my userpage was visible, I clearly mentioned who my employer was. I'm the
Director of Technical Services of xytra.net (Services Internet Xytra SENC
of Gatineau, Quebec - this can be verified by e-mailing nathan(a)xytra.net
or by asking info(a)xytra.net or support(a)xytra.net). Therefore these
accusations that I have harassed any admin of Wikipedia are purely false.
As I have said over and over, if someone's going to accuse me of
something, at least provide proof. Proof wasn't given and it makes
SlimVirgin out to be just ranting about nothing (apologies if this can be
read as a personal attack).
The only places I access the Internet from are: my place of residence, my
place of work and the home of my two co-workers.
The only times I have ever used universities or colleges for Internet
access are:
* 2001-2002 when my girlfriend (at the time) attended university
* late 1990's when I lived in Toronto
4) Just because someone forged the e-mail addresses of admins and me being
a blocked user, does that automatically mean "Nathanrdotcom has reason to
harbour negative feelings towards Wikipedia as a whole and believes he has
a reason to take it out on random admins"? No, of course it doesn't. Now I
admit I have a mood disorder but I don't appreciate being accused of
things I didn't do. I don't attack anyone without provocation. I have had
a talk with Jimbo about my block - why would I contradict myself and start
attacking random admins? It just doesn't add up.
5) I have used the Internet since 1995 and consider my knowledge of how
things work[tm] to be better than average. On the Internet, anyone can
forge anyone's identity, e-mail address or etc and deflect the blame to
anyone else. In other words: Anyone can send an e-mail and claim to be me,
that doesn't mean in any way that I was the person responsible. There are
enough people on Wikipedia who dislike me (and plenty who have read that
defamatory "article" about me on a..less than reputable Wiki and wish to
manufacture some stunt to blame me for).
I really resent the implication that I would go around attacking other
admins without provocation and I want it said for the record that I
haven't been involved in such activities.
Honestly, SlimVirgin owes me an apology for her baseless accusations but
it's highly unlikely that I'll get one.
If anyone has ANY questions regarding the above, I would appreciate
it if you would please e-mail me and I'll answer rather than you making up
your own information and calling it true.
Thank you for your time,
Nathan (User:Nathanrdotcom)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
"David Gerard" wrote
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest
>
> This used to be called [[Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines]]. Are there any
> good writers at a loose end and feeling strong enough to go through
> this de-vanitising it?
I have given this a thorough edit.
Charles
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> Cheney Shill wrote:
> > Anons should not be editing policy. As you point out, it
> > contributes little (nothing that couldn't be done with a
> > throw-away account) and just wastes admin time. And may
> > even lead to the frustration that has been voiced on this
> > list by admins quitting wiki. Utterly pointless.
>
> I see it as pointless too, but sure not as much that someone should
> construe a wiki-quitting reason out of this.
>
> It's just a waste of time to watch and revert these anon-policy changes.
> Yet another reason to remove these pages from one's own watchlist
> (another form of IAR ;-).
>
> It serves more as a honey-pot for vandals, with ensuing potential
> collateral damage caused by IP blocks.
>
> But it's probably not that important. I was just a bit astonished to see
> that we we cannot semi-protect the policy about semi-protection ;-)
>
(and WP:FULL should be fully protected! And WP:CSD should b<BZZZZZT> GAAAAH ow
that hurt)
I used to log in to edit the occasional meta-page, thinking I needed a Real
Pseudonym to be Taken Seriously. But then I tried it logged out, and found it
wasn't true, I don't get reverted (any more than I did before).
I'm actually pretty impressed that this is the case.
Regards,
Dan Mehkeri
(and WP:VAND should be vabnali<BZZZZZZZZT> GAAAAAAH alright sorry sorry)