WikiEN-l April 2006

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175 participants
238 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] 2 Questions for Jimbo about WP:OFFICE and things that aren't labeled WP:OFFICE
by John Tex 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

>John Tex wrote: >> That makes perfect sense but again there was originally no indication this >> was a WP:OFFICE action. So, the question I think many of us want answered >> is, "What should people do when they see something appears to NOT be an >> office action"? >Assume good faith. It could be a mistake, it could be a poor decision, >it could be a very strange emergency having to do with a suicide attempt >(this case wasn't but my point is, we do sometimes get those on the wiki >and have to do our best to try to be helpful), it could be... >In general, there is plenty of time to stop and ask questions. It seems like Eloquence did assume good faith. He didn't go off onto any rant about Danny removing most of the content. He did post to the article talk page about what he was doing, etc. Johntex

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2 Questions for Jimbo about WP:OFFICE and things that aren't labeled WP:OFFICE.
by John Tex 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

JimboWales said: >Since WP:OFFICE is done publicly and under intense scrutiny from the >community and the external world, I hardly see any need for a special >narrow committee to be specifically tasked with overseeing it. It seems that this was not true in this particular case. Danny did not add the WP:OFFICE tag. There was every indication that it was not an office action. If it was a WP:OFFICE action, why did Danny not tag it as such? >What should people do when they see a WP:OFFICE action? Treat it as a >call for attention from the absolute best within ourselves, the absolute >best within our community. That makes perfect sense but again there was originally no indication this was a WP:OFFICE action. So, the question I think many of us want answered is, "What should people do when they see something appears to NOT be an office action"? Johntex

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 152
by Molu 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

"The recent fuss over Office actions demonstrates amply that even quite well established administrators feel that they can challenge and disregard the interests of the Foundation." Unfortunately it demonstrates nothing even remotely resembling the dark senario you choose to paint. No party involved *has* challenged, let alone felt entitled to challenge, the interests of the foundation. I believe it is a unanimous consensus among wikipedia community (disregarding vandals of course) that the interests of the foundation are foremost because without it the project can not exist. One of the parties has challenged what he could be reasonably certain were the interests of another party as an individual editor having nothing to do with any real-life Foundation affairs. By challenging an out-of-policy action he did the irght thing and the interests of the Foundation had nothing to do with it. It seems some people do not find it unreasonable to expect an editor to act on information he did not have. Reverting once the actions of another editor, especially when that action was in direct violation of wikipedia policies established through community consensus, is part of the normal wiki editing process and such actions are encouraged by [[WP:BOLD]] because they serve to advance the interests of the encyclopaedia better than spending endless hours (and because of the nature of talk page communication, holding even a short dialougue can take days) discussing an edit even when that edit is not very likely to cause controversies and edit wars. It is surprising how some people go on claiming that Erik should have emplyed some hidden precognitive abilities to deduce that an action explicitly labeled by Danny as a normal editorial action was actually performed in the interests of the Foundation and thereby refrained from exercising the editorial powers gifted to him by the *wiki*pedia. Molu Message: 1 Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:54:42 +0100 From: "Tony Sidaway" Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the uproar over wikitruth To: "English Wikipedia" Message-ID: <605709b90604221254l3f7c6da1uf7bed1d214415ee0(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On 4/22/06, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> Under the Communications Decency Act > >which provides a general exemption from third party liability to > >online information providers, this exemption does not extend to > >liability for publication by agents of the provider. A Wikipedia > >administrator who uses his special powers to publish defamatory > >content or copy copyright-infringing content would tend to advance the > >case against Wikipedia for third-party liability. > > > The fallacy there is in suggesting that all admins are agents of > Wikipedia. There is nothing in any description of admins that allows > them to do anything on any site outside of a particular project. A > Wikipedia admin does not thereby receive the right to be an admin on any > sister project or even on a Wikipedia in any other language. Perhaps > you should review the meaning of "agent". I use the term loosely. If someone entrusted with the ability to see unpublished content then uses that ability to cause it to be published, then the organisation's task of showing that it took reasonable steps to prevent publication is made more difficult, for it most demonstrate that it reasonably believed that this person would not do so. If our admins are chosen through a popularity contest in which their loyalty to the aims and interests of the Foundation, rather than the community, is not examined, I think it would be very difficult to argue that such a belief was reasonable. Basically we let any mutt off the street act as an administrator, irrespective of his views on, or knowledge of liability, copyright, or anything else relevant, or his commitment to act in the interests of the Foundation. The recent fuss over Office actions demonstrates amply that even quite well established administrators feel that they can challenge and disregard the interests of the Foundation. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2¢/min or less.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 164
by Stephane Charette 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

>On Apr 23, 2006, at 3:14 PM, Stephane Charette wrote: ><snip details of dispute> >> My comments were reverted. Today, that user posted my username on >> WP:AIV. I've been blocked ever since by Royboycrash. > >Happily, this error was quickly resolved: > > * 18:05, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan unblocked S charette >(contribs) (Decided to simply unblock.) > * 18:05, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan blocked "S charette >(contribs)" with an expiry time of 12 hours (shorter block time) > * 18:04, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan unblocked S charette >(contribs) (shortening block) > * 17:30, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan blocked "S charette >(contribs)" with an expiry time of 31 hours (stalking/vandalism) > >35 minutes blocked. It still shouldn't have happened, from what I >understand, but I hope that the quick resolution restored at least some >of S_charette's faith in Wikipedia. > >Jesse Weinstein I disagree -- not happily resolved. Here we are 9 hours later, and I'm still blocked. Please see my talk page for details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:S_charette I'm quite dissapointed for the following reasons: 1) The {{unblock}} template has not helped me in any way; 9 hours after I was told I'd be unblocked, I'm still blocked and still cannot finish off the school article I'd started. 2) Why was I blocked in the first place? Are there rules to follow before a user is blocked? Besides the fact that I'm not a vandal or a spammer (any check of my contributions will confirm this), the WP:AIV page seems to indicate there are some rules, such as: -> 1) The vandal has been warned with the appropriate warning templates. If you can't justify leaving these messages on a user's talk page, it likely isn't vandalism. -> 2) The vandal vandalized within the last few hours and after the final warning. Even though neither of these conditions apply to me, a disruptive user who is unhappy with my edit and posting my name on WP:AIV has now managed to have me blocked for the past 9 hours...and counting... Isn't there anything that can be done about this? Do all users go through this upsetting experience? Stephane Charette

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Why the uproar over wikitruth
by Molu 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

Hi, I don't understand something, what is the reason of this uproar about wikitruth's publication of articles deleted by us. There's even talk of prohibiting admins from reposting content, isn't that completely against the spirit of this project, free dissemination of information? Why should we care if wikitruth is posting copyvio and libel articles on their website? They are gonna get sued, bad for them. I can't see how reposting of our content will make us legally more liable than we already were. We do not remove illegal content from our servers, we simply hide it from all but a select few. That obviously does entail some legal liability. When that content is reposted for the general public, the extra liability is incurred by wikitruth. We, as always, are still alllowing only those select few to access the content. If they are okay about attracting lawsuits, good for us. We have deleted those articles only for legal or editorial concerns. No harm done to us if someone else decides to showcase that content. In fact it's good for us since non-admin users can view deleted content without any possibility of harm to the Foundation. Or is there more to this issue than meets the eye? I'll like to know. On a related note, there is another uproar over secrecy, concerning whether office actions need to be hidden. There is a general perception that the reason office actions are being taken nee dto be hidden from even admins. I do not see why this is so. We are not the CIA, the reasons for actions coming from the top is to protect the Foundation from lawsuits. What's so secret about that. What if every wikipedian knows that corporation A threatened to sue the Foundation and as a result libellous content has been removed from their article by office action untill sources are provided? What's the harm if every office action is advertised on the front page? I think there's a paranoia about secrecy around. We are an encyclopaedia, it is our goal to provide information. The Wikimedia foundation is a not-for-profit organisation running some innovative websites without any illegal activities (hopefully). What's so secret about that? Molu --------------------------------- New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Can the building owner be sued?
by Michael Snow 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Anthony DiPierro wrote: >On 4/23/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > > >>Anthony DiPierro wrote: >> >> >>>On 4/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote: >>> >>> >>>>>From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> >>>>> >>>>>So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and >>>>>writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door. Then the >>>>>owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes >>>>>down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other >>>>>removed messages. Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the >>>>>message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to >>>>>people. >>>>> >>>>>You think the building owner can be sued? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued. >>>> >>>>The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different >>>>question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess. >>>> >>>> >>>C'mon now, there are plenty of people who are not lawyers who are >>>trying to guess. Surely the fact that you are not a lawyer is not the >>>reason you wouldn't even try to guess. >>> >>> >>No, the real reason he isn't trying to guess is because he has good >>sense. You don't see any lawyers trying to guess, do you? >> >>--Michael Snow >> >> >Are you implying that lawyers have good sense? > > I certainly don't claim that for all of them, but they're probably as capable of good sense as the rest of the population. >Anyway, no, I don't see any lawyers trying to guess, but lawyers tend >to be greedy and not give away their expertise without getting paid >for it - one of the reasons I'm not a lawyer. > > Actually, most lawyers of my acquiantance are frequently willing to give their initial impression about a situation to people they know, without insisting on being paid. Any lawyer knows that one of the blessings/curses of their avocation is the inundation of friends and family with questions about legal issues, even if the appropriate response sometimes is, "You need to get a lawyer." However, lawyers generally prefer to deal with real situations, not made-up ones; this is at best a law school exam hypothetical, and they've already done enough of those, thank you very much. Also, to the extent that this implicates a real situation, any sensible attorney should have an idea of who they're communicating with. To the extent that you're responding to a potential client, it's usually not a good idea to discuss it in a public forum, because then you've probably destroyed any attorney-client privilege that might exist for the communication. --Michael Snow

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problem with wrongful block
by Stephane Charette 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

My username is S_charette: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:S_charette My talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:S_charette There is another Wikipedia editor who didn't like the standard infobox template I added to a Canadian school article (his old high school -- he seems to feel he owns the article), and my edit kept getting reverted with highly suspicous edit summary tags. I've tried discussing this with him in several places: 1) the school's talk page 2) the user's talk page 3) my own talk page 4) the education in Canada project talk page My comments were reverted. Today, that user posted my username on WP:AIV. I've been blocked ever since by Royboycrash. This isn't right, for several reasons: 1) I'm not a spammer or a vandal, which is the initial reason given for the block 2) I'm a regular contributor, vandalism patroller, and I've '''never''' been given a single warning prior to an immediate block today. Needless to say, my feeling towards the wikipedia experience took a big dive today. :( Any help appreciated. Yes, I would like to do whatever is necessary to take this to the next step, to get a proper review of what happened and determine how 1 disruptive user can successfully manipulate Wikipedia to get a valid contributor blocked. Sadly, Stephane Charette

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring
by Michael Snow 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Conrad Dunkerson wrote: > The 'first reverter' is NOT always the problem and 'discussion' does > not cure all ills. I don't think I've ever seen a serious wheel war > where discussion WASN'T going on. Discussion does frequently develop, but usually it fails to involve both of the participants in the actual "war". If both sides were busy discussing instead of serially undoing each other's actions, then that problem wouldn't come up, and they'd hopefully be able to make progress in terms of resolving the underlying issue. Unfortunately, the situation is sometimes aggravated by those who are late to the party, see that a dispute has come up, and decide to join in on the *action* rather than the *discussion*. Quite a bit of the userbox fiascos can be attributed to this, I think. To prevent this, I think the obligation needs to fall on the original participants. If you've helped precipitate a dispute that has moved to discussion, in order for that discussion to mean anything you need to prevent people from actively perpetuating the dispute. Specifically, you should be stepping in when your would-be allies arrive, as those are people who ought to listen to you, telling them to stop and join the discussion instead. --Michael Snow

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I am not infallible.
by Ilmari Karonen 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

I've just added the following notice to my user and talk pages: "I am not infallible. Regardless of any policies to the contrary, feel free to revert any admin actions I have performed if you believe them to be mistaken or unwise." This isn't meant as a criticism of the proposed wheel warring policy, which I have helped draft and generally support, nor do I assume that anyone would necessarily wish to extend the same permission to me. I recognize that there are admins who, for one reason or another, cannot or do not wish to give such permission; indeed, one might consider the entire WP:OFFICE policy the exact antithesis of this. I merely wish to hereby announce my personal assumption of good faith on behalf of other administrators, and to create, in the case of reversion of my actions, a presumption of "amity" as described in the current draft of the wheel warring policy. Just thought I'd mention this here, since it's related to some of the ongoing discussions. -- Ilmari Karonen

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Run that by me, one more time?
by Gordon Joly 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Today's featured article (Main Page, 23rd April 2006) "Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language....." Gordo -- "Think Feynman"///////// http://pobox.com/~gordo/ gordon.joly(a)pobox.com///

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WikiEN-l April 2006