>
> From: BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne(a)gmail.com>
> Date: 2006/02/17 Fri AM 11:50:17 EST
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom has completely lost its mind
>
> If Wikipedia isn't mine, then who owns it? Who gets to decide whether
> publishing "I am a fish" on your user page is allowed or not? Why
> doesn't my opinion carry as much weight as the next one? AFAIK there
> is no Wikipedia-rule against writing pedophile on your user page. I
> thought that was the whole reason for this email thread.
The Foundation owns Wikipedia.
> Most constitutions (the one in the US for example) explicitly
> guarantees every citizens right to free speech. Most countries also
> have laws that makes saying and publishing certain things illegal. In
> most countries with "free speech," you are allowed to put "almost any
> poster you want on your front door." Similarly, Wikipedia allows you
> to put almost any description of yourself you want on your user page.
No. The U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from restricting ''free speech''. The courts have extended that to state and local governments. There is no protection of free speech on private property, such as the servers on which Wikipedia is hosted. Try going to a shopping mall and lecturing the shoppers in favor of a position that is not popular in your community.
I've suggested this on the workshop page of the Tony Sidaway RFAr
(which is basically the AC case that had *better* deal conclusively
with the userbox issue) and I present it here for your esteemed
dissection.
Ignoring procedural matters (the AC has yet to make policy that it
isn't damn sure is already consensus), here's a proposal:
"The Arbcom recommends to Jimbo a declaration as policy:
* Rather than permitting all userboxes and disallowing only the worst
ones, policy shall follow the model on de: and move to certain
userboxes being permitted and all others limited or forbidden.
* Userboxes for human languages spoken and for geographic location are
unlimited.
* A user may display three other userboxes, whether by template, page
transclusion, code substitution, image or other means. Other userboxes
may be subject to deletion discussion on WP:TFD, except those
susceptible to speedy deletion under T1."
Cutting the Gordian knot.
* de: has Babel and location only and has yet to collapse in user
civil war. I deliberately didn't include "and others per community
consensus" as
(a) purported "community consensus" going against the actual aims
of the project was how we got into this mess;
(b) any attempted "community consensus" on the subject of
userboxes has become a festering mess of sockpuppets, meatpuppets,
getting the vote out, wheel warring, process-addict querulousness
versus hipshooting IAR and several multi-volume fantasy epics' worth
of flamewars.
* The "or other means" takes care of the userbox warriors.
* Where you take bad userboxes to kill them is spelt out.
Note also that my own userpage would presently fall afoul of this one.
Please discuss.
- d.
Has been much better lately. Thank you. Just because you're arguing
with an evil evil-ist doesn't mean you can't be *nice* about it. (You
don't see the complaints, I do.)
That said, I usually let through block complaints even if they fall
short of this - when someone feels they've been blocked unfairly, they
will be unduly tetchy. But I did reject two today noting that if I did
let them through, the senders would probably have stayed blocked until
the heat death of the universe, and suggested a rewrite. Fun fun fun!
- d.
"The two most plentiful elements in the Universe are bad Uncyclopedia
articles and hydrogen, and I'm not sure about the ... hydrogen. Hold
on, I'll try that one again." - Albert Einstein on an off day
The Stupid Bomb uses only the second-finest-grade stupid in the world,
capable of penetrating five light-years of lead. (The ''finest'' grade
stupid in the world would penetrate the bomb's neutronium shielding
and affect the guidance system.)
==Generating stupidity==
[do adapted zombie botnet image, write based on this]
-- Images --
bomb diagram: (based on real smart bomb) control system behind
neutronium shield, sharpened cluelessness tip, clue anti-pheromone
coating for easy atmospheric transport
gw bush: Various traitorous liberal homosexual paedophiles have
alleged that a Stupid Bomb was accidentally set off near the White
House in early 2001. Other groups have alleged it was deliberate.
e-meter: The €-meter is used by the Church of Objectivism to
remove ''money thetans'' from the subject's wallet. The meter measures
variations in clue resistance.
image of interconnected boxes: slashdot, wikipedia, wikipediareview,
what else ... take from the Zombie Botnet image - How stupidity is
generated and captured.
Kill them all. With fire. Spare not a single one.
On a slightly more serious note; the problem is now twofold. There's
the userbox mess to clean up, and the mess it's made in the community
- ripping the oldies and newbies apart - to clean up too. I'm thinking
a bit of friendly re-education into what Wikipedia culture is might
not be amiss. Instead of stating, "you don't get it"; teach people
what "it" is.
Rob Church
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Userbox_debates#User…
This template which I speedied under CSD T1 and pure common sense is now
on DRV because some process wonks are pointing out T1 doesn't apply
outside template-space. (Which is, if you think about, blatant
wikilawyering, since now anyone can just create the most offensive,
polemical and divisive template ever in userspace and have all his
buddies transclude it on their userpages.) I mentioned I had speedied
the userbox on the Admins' noticeboard, and two other admins expressed
agreement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#User:C…
Maybe Jimbo should clarify how literally he wants T1 interpreted and
whether userboxen in userspace are subject to this sort of thing.
John
All,
A couple of users have begun edit warring to remove some text in [[WP:3RR]],
namely:
* "Reverting in this context means undoing the work of another editor. It
does not necessarily mean going back into the page history to revert to a
previous version. The passage you keep adding or deleting may be as little
as a few words, or in some cases, just one word."; and * The portion of
the policy that stipulates that partial reverts count as much as whole
reverts.
Others' input is appreciated.
K
As a party to the arbitration on WebEx and Min Zhu
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/WebEx_and_M…)
I note that FeloniousMonk is criticised for using admin powers in a
dispute in which he is involved. It seems to me that Felonious was
not involved in an editorial capacity, only in the prevention of
reversion of certain content - which he saw (in good faith) as
whitewashing, which is vandalism. I happen to disagree - I would
always err on the side of removal where living people are concerned -
but I have come to trust Felonious' good faith even while disagreeing
with him.
Be that as it may, at what point does an admin become "involved" in a
dispute to which (s)he has been called to stop an edit war? I'm a bit
concerned that use of admin powers in a dispute where one takes a
watching brief without actively editing content might still be
interpreted as abuse, by extension of this precedent.
Or is it that Felonious' reviewing of the evidence and taking a stand
was, in effect, placing himself in the editorial dispute?
My problem here is that once an admin has been called into a
firefight, one side or the other will invariably see them as partisan
almost immediately, and I am not at all certain that I know when to
stop providing administrative support against vandals by request of
trusted editors in contentious articles: at what point am I "involved"
and needing to step back?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.ukhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
I said the same thing on Kelly's talkpage, but
MegamanZero removed my message and warned to block me
for trolling.
I think that you guys should stop doing Jimbo'w work.
If he wants the userboxes gone, let him do it. It's
not like he's doing something else -- like working on
articles. I think that Jimbo doesn't want to give
concrete orders on this issue because he knows that
his decission would make him unpopular to many.
Instead, he gives a few hints on what should be done
and lets other people, like Kelly Martin, to do the
work. Jimbo, either you want the userboxes removed --
and make it happen -- or you do not. Until you decide,
the userboxes should stay. Why should the community
busy itself on debating about this week after week,
and causing people to be more confused and frustated
about it?
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This is a policy proposal developed by Pathoschild from an original by
Doc glasgow.
It picked up quite a lot of favorable comments in Pathoschild's
userspace and so after discussion I've moved it to [[WP:UBP]] (which
believe it or not hasn't actually had any concrete proposals on the
main page for weeks).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_policy_on_userboxes