*Jim Schuler* jim62sch at gmail.com
<wikien-l%40Wikipedia.org?Subject=%5BWikiEN-l%5D%20Admins%20who%20pretend%20…>
wrote:
>Happens in the real world too, it's just a part of life. People get
>frustrated, they threaten to leave, they calm down and on it goes. I know
>that some people like to think Wikipedia is some parallel universe where
the
>laws of reality are suspended and a Utopian ideal is supreme, but
>Wikipedians are flesh and blood real people whose flesh and blood
>emotions penetrate the brane separating Wikiworld from the real world.
In the real world if someone quit their job, emptied out their desk and then
came back after 3 days saying they'd changed their mind it would be up to
the boss to decide whether or not they can come back. If a boss said "sorry,
you resigned and I accepted your resignation" there's not an employment
tribunal in the world that would force the boss to rehire the employee.
Mongo quit, fine, that's his right, but if he changes his mind after 3 days
he should not expect to get his Admin status back. He's losing it anyway
because of ArbComm so the point's moot but if that wasn't the case it should
be up to the community whether he gets his admin status back after giving it
up by quitting.
Frankly, it looks like his "resignation" was a stunt to try to rally support
against the ArbComm decision to desysop him. That is disruptive but its the
sort of disruption that would be curtailed by a "you quit, you're
desysopped" rule.
And again, there's nothing here that would punish someone for taking a
wikibreak as long as they didn't claim that they were quitting when they
really were just taking a break.
Michel
"Parker Peters" wrote
>
> If an article fits into Mythology, and Greek Mythology, and Pre-Homeric
> Greek Mythology, and Athenian Mythology all at once, then it should be in
> ALL of those categories, because each is a different search.
No, that's wrong. All except the top-level category, Mythology, maybe.
The fact is that very large, unsorted categories are unusable. They need to have sub-categorisation go on.
Charles
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> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:06:50 -0800
>
> Libraries are wonderful things, but a scholar who believes that
> "the sum
> of all human knowledge" is to be found in the library alone is like a
> medieval monk who believes that the same is to be found only in the
> monastery.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and an encyclopedia _is_ a distillation
of things to be found in libraries.
Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are published in peer-
reviewed journals, not encyclopedias. Wikipedia is not a peer-
reviewed journal. And journals have their own requirements, which in
fact are more stringent than those for an encyclopedia, one being
reproducibility of results. That's the "new-knowledge" equivalent of
what we call "verifiability" and it is _much_ harder to do.
Which is why writing an encyclopedia article takes on the order of
weeks while writing a research paper takes on the order of years.
Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are also published in
popular magazines, books by any publisher that thinks they can make
money by selling them, self-published, published on the web, etc.
Whether these are to be called "knowledge" depends on which
definition of "knowledge" you use. In the Britannica's slogan, "The
sum of human knowledge," they likely meant AHD4's meaning number 4,
"4. Learning; erudition: teachers of great knowledge." It is, after
all, an encyclo-PAEDIA.
> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:06:50 -0800
>
> Is a snapshot of a wall plaque different because it's taken by a
> reference librarian as opposed to a Wikipedian?
>
> --Michael Snow
Well, that was a jocular aside, my point being that the wall plaque
is very significantly harder for me to obtain than any of fourteen
million-odd books in my state's "library of last resort."
But in fact there _is_ an _obvious_ difference, and it is much the
same difference that exists between a contributor to the Britannica
or _Nature_ or the New York Times. A reference librarian is a) a
known person with a known real-world identity, with b) professional
credentials and a code of ethics. (One to which, of course, an
individual librarian may or may not adhere).
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote
> Of course MONGO should have held back, and we, his friends and fellow
> admins, should have helped him to do that, but I suspect that the
> decision is not going to be a popular one.
OK, not going to be 'popular'. Do you suggest we look at the evidence, or the buzz?
Charles
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On Dec 12, 2006, at 15:17:28 UTC 2006, Fred Bauder
fredbaud at waterwiki.info
<wikien-l%40Wikipedia.org?Subject=%5BWikiEN-l%5D%20MONGO%20and%20the%20ArbCo…>
wrote:
*>* I think that is the most important thing any of us can do here,
>insist on verifiable information from reliable sources.
>
>Fred
If there were more support for Principal (4) Reliable sources,
it would put some teeth into WP:DR and lessen the burden that clogs
Arbitration.
nobs
>> I don't think he's lost broad community support at all, if you look at
his
>> talk page and the talk pages on the ArbCom case, I think you'll see just
>> the
>> opposite.
>And why, pray tell, would anyone who supports the decision dare go to his
>userpage and tell him, especially given his record of threatening blocks?
>Furthermore, why would any otherwise sane individual go and rub salt in
>the wound if he's that disturbed by the result of the RfAr by gloating
>about it? I'd like to think that most of the people who feel this is the
>proper outcome aren't interested in dancing around about it.
They may not show up on his userpage, but would certainly weigh in at the
ArbCom case, as happened
in many other cases...in this instance there's just not much talk in support
of this outcome.
>> And when re-applying for RFA, you don't need to have lost broad
>> support, just a small group (15% or so) of committed opposers will be
>> enough
>> to block it. Other high profile admins have gotten much longer leashes
>> than
>> this...
>I think the evidence of lost support may, in fact, come from the results
>of the aborted arbcom election vote. Whether he acted correctly or ended
>up with the correct result (both of those are separate things) 99%, 75%,
>whatever of the time, I'm not sure that the trust of the general community
>exists anymore because of that percentage of being wrong.
Well, the standard there is much higher, there are editors with significant
numbers of opposers that are otherwise
highly regarded in the ArbCom Elections.
If in fact there is a silent majority that agrees with this decision there's
no sign of it (though it may be there),
I think they could do us a favor by making them selves known. As it stands
now I see this action as contrary to the good
of Wikipedia both as it effects a single editor and what it says about the
support you'll get under sustained pressure
from what are generally recognised as commited trouble makers.
Brian
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4:32 PM
Thanks...I don't feel I am in serious trouble or that actions I have taken are deserving of a desysopping. My evidence and that submitted by Muscial Linguist and others clearly shows that the pages I protected/unprotected or changed to semi-protection were not policy violations. I made a bad block six months ago that was brought to an Rfc in which I agreed with most who stated I shouldn't block anyone I could be seen as being in a conflict dispute with. I also made a dumb threat to block another user recently that was reviewed at AN/I...
In another example, I blocked another editor (Miltopia) who was stalking my edits as shown under the section of the same name in my evidence section. Musical Linguist and others also tried to explain this to arbcom. Other admins simply would not agree that I was correct in my stalking comments, and apparently neither does arbcom.
There really is never an excuse for not following policy to a tee, but then again, I have yet to see a perfect admin...some simply deal with less than I have had to deal with. Those unfamiliar with my case will no doubt have difficulty understanding all the events. However, arbcom has a thankless job, but a job that needs to be done correctly or not at all and when the letter of the law is applied so unevenly from one case to another, I question where the justice is. I guess more than 200 article starts, 4 that I helped get to featured level and more than 26,000 edits are my legacy.
On a final note, when a person is "right" more than 99% of the time in the real world, they get a promotion. On wikipedia, if someone sifts through your entire contributions history and finds that 1% and posts it on an arbcom hearing...you get desysopped.
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> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
> The benefit of storing citations in a semantically marked up format
> (such as the cite templates) should be self-evident. The fact that
> this is difficult to achieve at the present without producing
> unreadable wikitext is a problem - but it doesn't mean we should
> abandon the goal of maintaning references at a high level.
Agree, absolutely, but I'd certainly like to see a whole lot of
improvement. This is an area where I think there could be a lot of
technical fixes.
I use the "cite book" template a lot.
It's a mess.
About half the time, I have no clue what to enter for "first=" and
"last=". I type in something, anything, that makes the formatted
citation have a reasonable _appearance_, but the semantics are all
wrong.
--What if the author has a middle name or initial? What if the author
customarily is known only by initials and surname?
First=Katharine Anne|Last=Porter?
First=H. G.|Last=Wells?
--What if the author has an honorific or other prefix or suffix?
First=Roy|Last=Blount Jr.?
First=Dr. Phil|Last=McGraw?
First=Isidore|Last=Rosenfeld, M.D.?
--What if the book has no "authors" as such, only editors?
Title=The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language|
First=Editors|last=of the American Heritage Dictionaries?
Title=The Norton Anthology of American Literature|First=M. H.|
Last=Abrams (General Editor)?
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>> From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net>
>>
>> How exactly is the writing on the wall different from a book?
>> (Sure, not
>> every Wikipedian can go read the writing, but not every Wikipedian
>> has access
>> to a particular book either.)
>
> ... my library's interlibrary loan network.
>
> Actually if my library can't get it...
>
> ...the Boston Public Library, the Commonwealth's "library of last
> resort." The Boston Public Library has fourteen million volumes...
>
> ...interlibrary loan networks are not unique to my region of the U. S.
>
> ...sent to me by interlibrary loan.
>
> Reference librarians are very accommodating...
Libraries are wonderful things, but a scholar who believes that "the sum
of all human knowledge" is to be found in the library alone is like a
medieval monk who believes that the same is to be found only in the
monastery. Though I think a more serious concern for our project is
those people who limit themselves to what's available on the Web.
I worry that the demand for "easy verifiability" in our culture is too
strong, fueled by contributors too lazy to look beyond the first page of
results in a Google search. Fact-checking is work, and while we
shouldn't make it unnecessarily onerous, there's no need to be
apologetic if it does in fact require real effort. We need to expect
more such effort, and we would have better articles and less of the
donated junk from people cleaning out their mental closets of
misremembered trivia.
Some people seem to have misconceptions about this. For example, a
source in a foreign language is not unverifiable for lack of a
translation. In the end, you can always learn the language (unless it's
something not yet deciphered, like [[Indus script]]). Similarly, even if
a source cannot be brought to you, it could still be verifiable if you
can go to the source - literally, not just as a figure of speech. It's
the possibility of access that makes something verifiable, not the
medium, ease, or breadth of distribution.
> I don't think I could ask the Penn reference librarian to go there
> and take a snapshot of it for me. (Although you never know, and I
> admit that I haven't actually tried).
Is a snapshot of a wall plaque different because it's taken by a
reference librarian as opposed to a Wikipedian?
--Michael Snow