It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community
will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term
"fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back).
Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel
warring.
Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of
the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of
the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense
of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word
was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they
were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean,
come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David
Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some
oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not
liking what we see.
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for
herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on
writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes.
What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people
more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox
purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!)
and arguing with others.
At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a
band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of
adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
Here ends my long and horrible rant.
--Alex, aka Linuxbeak
> From: Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 22:49:17 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> Hi all,
> Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta" and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve
Umm, no. Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an airport and
joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just joking!" excuse
gets while you're being cuffed and hauled to jail. "Joking" that you are a
pedophile is no different in my mind.
What is staring to kill me is that people feel hey have a RIGHT to edit
Wikipedia. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege and if you demonstrate you're a
dolt and can't handle that then there should be no question your ability to
edit should be revoked for a set period of time or indefinitely. We're
talking about a user here who's vast majority of time has been spent putting
all the "funny" boxes on his user page and embarrassing the good name of a
rock and roll legend.
If we continue to allow the user space to be populated with "funny" little
boxes and statements that have no fathomable use towards writing an
encyclopedia then we might as well shut the foundation down and call up
Rupert Murdoch to tell him he forgot to buy a part of MySpace.
--Guy (User:Wgfinley)
> From: Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson(a)worldnet.att.net>
> Reply-To: <conrad.dunkerson(a)worldnet.att.net>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 18:29:33 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> W. Guy Finley wrote:
>> Umm, no. Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an airport and
>> joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just joking!" excuse
>> gets while you're being cuffed and hauled to jail. "Joking" that you are a
>> pedophile is no different in my mind.
>
> Joking about having a bomb in an airport or actually having one is
> illegal. Joking about being a pedophile or actually being one is not.
>
> Still no difference in your mind?
No. Molesting children is a crime. Let me guess, the next splitting hair
argument of "well he's a child so being attracted to children is okay".
"Pedophile" in common usage is a pejorative term.
>
> Bomb 'jokes' are illegal because they create a risk of panic which could
> lead to injuries. Ditto shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater unless it
> actually is on fire. Likewise verbal plans or exhortations to commit
> criminal acts. Everything else is 'free speech' and allowed in most
> countries.
That's right, and I'm certain having people who claim to be pedophiles as
contributors isn't going to cause any panic on the part of people or fear of
risk of exposure to an environment where molesting children is condoned, and
people are encouraged to put such ridiculous statements on their user pages.
Lovely.
>
> If we want to be TECHNICAL then Wikipedia allowing people to say 'I am a
> heterosexual' but not 'I am a pedophile' (or 'I am a homosexual'... as
> some of the anti-pedophile crowd were also advocating banning) is
> discriminatory under US law. Ditto allowing 'I am a Christian' but not
> 'I am a Satanist'. Since we aren't getting government funding or paying
> people to work on the encyclopedia we're actually allowed to
> discriminate, but don't expect it to be universally popular.
Hence my statement that this whole userbox fiasco continues to spin out of
control where no common sense can be used or a line drawn because removing
blatantly obvious and ridiculous boxes like these and blocking those who
create or use them is seen as somehow clamping down on free speech.
Wonderful. Can't wait for "This user rapes women" and "This user bombs
Israeli markets" to make their appearance. Those will certainly be good for
a chuckle and good guffaw and a group of folks who will snicker at just how
unbelievably clever they are while this project continues to be sullied with
their nonsense.
--Guy (User:Wgfinley)
I've finally finished my survey of biographical articles on Wikipedia. I
randomly selected 100 biographical articles, and evaluated them on a number
of points such as the century the subject lived in, the length and quality
of coverage, the number of sources cited, the number of links to the
article, and the number of Google hits. The results are at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100_Biography
Not surprisingly, the average coverage of subjects is fairly poor. 64% of
articles were rated "low" or "stub", indicating they did not have even a
basic chronology of the subject's life, and 29% were rated "medium",
indicating a basic chronology but nothing more. 6% were rated "good", with
a relatively complete chronology, and one article was approaching "featured"
quality. While doing the survey, one of the biographies was deleted for
lack of notability, one as being unverifiable, and two were listed as
copyvios.
Sourcing is about average, with 13% of articles citing sources, versus 15%
for articles in general. Given the sample size, the difference is
insignificant. The number of sources cited per article is higher, though,
at 2.8 sources per article for biographies, versus 2.3 sources per article
in general. The difference is even more pronounced when you take into
account that in the general survey, one article provided almost half the
total sources.
A rough categorization indicates that about 43% of biographies are of
"cultural" figures such as writers, actors, musicians, and athletes. 25%
are of "political" figures such as politicans and aristocrats. 11% are
scholars, scientists, inventors, and the like, and 6% are biographies of
fictional characters.
Coverage is generally Western-centric, with 70% of biographies being of
people from Western Europe, North America, and Australia. The majority of
biographies are for the 1800s and 1900s, with only 22% being of people who
are currently engaged in whatever they're famous for.
More abstract results from survey are that there is no obvious correlation
between article coverage and Google hits, between inbound links and article
coverage, or between inbound links and Google hits. More recent subjects
tend to have more Google hits, but there are significant exceptions. For
example, [[Sandro Botticelli]] is from the 1400s, but has 345,000 Google
hits, while [[Romeo Munoz Cachola]], from the 2000s, has only 7.
There is also no apparent correlation between article coverage and sources:
four of the six "good" or "high" articles have no sources, while seven of
the thirteen articles with sources were rated "low" or "stub".
While doing the survey, I came across 303 articles that were not
biographies. Assuming the results I got were typical, about 25% of articles
on Wikipedia are biographies. Another 46 are "pop culture" subjects such as
albums (12), bands (6), movies (6), books (7), or fictional objects (4).
There were five schools, and 16 Rambot-created articles. An alarming number
of articles had serious problems, including two copyvios and two articles
that needed speedy deletion.
During the survey, "random page" gave me the same article twice: [[FX-6]].
--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]
BoingBoing and digg have the story now.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/wikinews_uncovers_te.html
There's some serious investigative journalism going on in our sister
project. They've got a very good low-down on the whole situation.
And looky here! The story was submitted to the blog by a man named...Jimmy
Wales. Imagine that.
--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1(a)gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 17:39:14 -0500
> Subject: Re: [WikiEn-l] Alternative names for the Counter Vandalism Unit
> On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (OT: There aren't barbarian hordes riding in from the North to ravage
> the Empire. The worst anyone can do with Wikipedia, really, is piss
> people off for a while (which I recognize is not meaningless). But
> it's not physical property destruction or personal physical harm.)
OT: There are words that have several meanings. Historical ethnic
group that sacked rome is just one of the meanings for Vandal.
On 2/7/06 5:54 PM, "wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org"
<wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org> wrote:
> From: Mark Wagner <carnildo(a)gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 15:49:19 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> On 2/7/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> While I agree with the general point, slippery slope arguments are
>> usually pretty weak.
>
> The problem is that the step from "admitted pedophiles" to
> "pedophiles" has already been taken, and from there, it's a *very*
> small step to "accused pedophiles", an illustrious group that includes
> Ta bu shi da yu, Schissel, and Lucky 6.9, all named by "Parents for
> the Online Safety of Children", Jtdirl, Gmaxwell, and me, all named by
> Jeff Merkey, and no doubt others.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
Straw man. Nobody's talking about accused pedophiles, we're talking about
people who would willingly put on their page "This user is a pedophile" i.e.
"I am a pedophile".
--Guy (User:Wgfinley)
Although I think you're right, I don't think any admins blocked people just for believing certain things. Those who were blocked were acting in a way that justified their I-hate-to-call-it-punishment.
--Ryan
> From: Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> Hi all,
> Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta" and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve
--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/
Dear All,
Interesting. In the February 21, 2005, issue of PC Magazine, it mentions that Jimmy will soon establish a Stable Versions systems. " There is another independent project in the works, that requires a change to MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses. This can be found at:
[http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions]
But, when I go there, I don't find it.
Anybody?
As Ever,
Ruth Ifcher
--
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>
> On 2/7/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wait, wait? Is the code both insecure and and non-optimal? That's two
> > very excellent reasons not to implement it.....
> >
> > --Oskar
> >
>
> We don't know how optimal it would have been since we never gave it a
> test run. Last I heard it was being rewriten in a different way which
> should be more secure.
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Does anyone know if this extension is still in the works, going to be
implemented, or shelved? Because the way some things look right now, we need
all the help we can get.
--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1(a)gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake