WikiEN-l November 2007

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With Wikipedia bread on the side
by David Gerard 29 Nov '07

29 Nov '07

http://ourfounder.typepad.com/leblog/2007/10/jimmy-wales-gro.html - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case
by private musings 29 Nov '07

29 Nov '07

To Guy - but really addressing my views on the core of the current painful split, I feel that your responses typify the core of the problem - not just between you and I, but between what could sadly be described as the 'two camps'. When I sent you private information, asked you honestly and politely not to share it - what you failed to respect was *my* trust in you. The rights and wrongs and subsequent findings of fact do not alter the fact that you behaved unethically in breaching that trust. The ends do not justify the means. Durova has fallen foul of this also - of course a 75 minute block hasn't harmed anyone's actual editing, but it does enormous harm to the culture and atmosphere of all editing to think that a 'trusted' admin is prepared to write and distribute such material. Enourmous harm, Guy - surely you can see that, befuddled as you may be by it? In actual fact, you move a step beyond befuddlement, I kinda sense a righteous indignation which again is entirely misplaced, devoid as it is of any reflection, or true self-awareness. I am not questioning your sanity, character, good faith or editing - I'm questioning your approach to an issue you care deeply about - harassment of others - because I sincerely believe that you are doing more harm than good. You shouldn't have shared private information that was submitted to you in trust. Please consider the self-evident truth of that statement. take care, PM. On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:45:16 +1100, "private musings" <thepmaccount(a)gmail.com> wrote: >The fact that you were 'right' about my misdeeds in no way alters the >nature of your unethical behaviour. No, my behaviour was ethical. I asked a few trusted friends for advice before blocking one of your accounts. That is a sane and reasonable thing to do. >Nor does it excuse the Arb.s currently voting from failing to disclose >any prejudicial discussion (is it really due process to expect Arb.s >who have already 'sanity checked' your decision in advance of your >block, to then 'review' that block, and further 'vote' in the arb case? >- that's a real triple whammy.) No such declaration is necessary. I asked a simple question: in your opinion, is this valid use of an alternate account? Having ventured an opinion once does not disqualify them form venturing the same opinion again, especially when more evidence of even more accounts is brought to the table. You seem to think that restricting someone who has used multiple accounts disruptively and made careless and controversial edits to sensitive articles in some way damages the arbitration committee's credibility. I would argue that the opposite is true: failure to do so would damage their credibility. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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The Sooper-Seekrit "harassment" list
by Daniel R. Tobias 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

Geez... it took me a while to get through all the messages posted here in the last two days, and none of them were even posted by myself (though my name came up once or twice). OK... let's see what's going on with regard to the secret... oops, I mean private (really, the only difference between "secrecy" and "privacy" is that "privacy" spins better when you're trying to support or endorse it) mailing list to discuss "harassment". People on that list, or alleged to be on it, are becoming the subject of vague calumnies from others who intimate that all sorts of sinister things are getting plotted there for the purpose of causing trouble for others outside the list. Presenting actual evidence for the purpose of either supporting or refuting such claims runs into difficulties due to aggressive enforcement of rules that get in the way of it, so the discussion mostly takes the form of wild speculation on the part of the accusers and defensiveness on the part of the targets. Some claim that the list is doing actively malicious things; others who don't go so far still say that being on that list is likely to cause one to be enmeshed and reinforced in a cluster of memes, kept alive and magnified through the sounding board of a group of like-minded people, which will tend to bring about a bad attitude that is perhaps incompatible with being a good, non-drama-stirring member of the Wikipedia community. Sound familiar? How does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot for a change? -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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Teehee
by Steve Bennett 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

I found the last paragraph of this article (Source and additional information) rather amusing.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_shawm I guess we should fix it. If someone does, the version I'm referring to is: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catalan_shawm&oldid=163566364 Steve * And it's definitely better than no sources, I guess.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case
by private musings 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

re : jayjg >> Try and resolve the problem, Jay. > >I am. One big problem on this thread are accusations without any specifics. I'm asking for specifics. Personal information which I had submitted privately to Guy, with a request for that privacy to be respected, was shared by him. Arbitrators have voted in my case without disclosing discussions of my editing prior to my case. That is unethical.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case
by Durova 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

It's more complicated than that. Sitting arbiters were on the list. ****** No, it's quite simple. I made a bad block. No grand super-secret cabal ordered me to make it. And even if they had, list behavior is off-wiki and outside ArbCom's purview. If you sincerely believe that list actions are blockable, then would you consent to a level 2 warning for WP:POINT and WP:AGF? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. -Durova

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Wikiquote
by Marc Riddell 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

I am trying to connect with someone from Wikiquote, and I don't know how to do that. I came across an audio quote by Rod Serling and was wondering if they might want to use it in Wikiquote. Marc Riddell

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case
by Durova 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case With due respect to everyone posting here, the facts are well laid out in the Evidence section of the RFAR, and very few of them are in dispute. Jimmy, the reason people are up in arms right now is not that Durova screwed up, it is that ANY admin in this project could have considered any of this to be acceptable. When I wrote the other day that I thought long and hard about deleting unsourced, clearly erroneous, speculative, and potentially damaging information in a biographical article about a professional wrestler, I was serious. Very serious. The fact that ANY administrator believed that a pre-emptive block of a possible sockpuppet was acceptable behaviour is the problem. It is a systemic issue and there is absolutely no reason to believe that Durova is the only administrator who thought that way; in fact, there seem to be administrators posting in this thread who feel that such actions are perfectly acceptable. And it is this systemic issue that is causing the continued churning of this issue. Durova is not the problem. It is the culture that nurtured her belief that this level of sleuthing was beneficial to the project. The community is trying to find ways to make it clear that this is not acceptable to them. Dozens of well respected editors have edited in the past and in some cases continue to edit with alternate accounts. If we turned every admin into a checkuser tomorrow, it still wouldn't be sufficient to root out every alternate account on Wikipedia. So it is time to get back to basics here. It is the quality of the information contained in the encyclopedia that is of importance, not the identity of the editor who wrote any particular passage or article. That's what it says on the front page. Risker ****** Risker, your post to the RFC was articulate and well chosen. I had been addressing that at ANI until the thread became too chaotic and I was addressing that at my candidate questions. I would have addressed that at RFC if that had lasted a normal duration and I was prioritizing that at arbitration until, a day later, five arbitrators had voted before half my evidence had been posted. Some aspects of your worries probably remained unaddressed, which is why I posted links to that evidence at your user talk and offered to discuss it further with you. I realize that evidence probably doesn't address every angle, but please weigh the circumstances here. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Durova&diff=174174607&o… I haven't been given the normal dispute resolution option to respond adequately, and it's very tiring and unproductive to find your concerns expanded upon here at this forum instead of directly to me, where I could explain what else I've done and maybe find new and better ways to address them. Think of me as the pitcher who had a tired arm and threw a wild curve ball. -Durova

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Watchlists (was: Re: Meaningful estimates of popularity?)
by Steve Bennett 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

On 11/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Admins can see [[Special:Unwatchedpages]], which are those on no-one's > watchlist. Discussion at > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Special:Unwatchedpages Hmm. Seems like it's based on some pretty flawed assumptions, like that if a page is on a watch list, it's being watched. As opposed to a list based on pageviews or something like that. Personally, I think watchlists and "my contributions" are pretty underpowered. The watchlist, in particular, would be much better handled by dynamic queries like "the last 100 pages I've edited that have been edited between 1 and 10 times since I last checked on them". I'm keen to follow what happens to my edits, but "my contributions" can only distinguish between zero or more than zero subsequent edits. It also doesn't let me mark edits I've already "patrolled", so I end up revisiting the same edits again and again until they finally scroll off the bottom of the first page of the list... Meanwhile my watchlist is totally useless as it's full of pages that I lost interest in over a year ago. There's no way to trim the fat either - I can either manually remove every single old page, or I can clear the entire lot. But how do I clear just the pages I haven't edited in more than six months? Think Web 2.0, people!! :) Steve

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Happy birthday to me...
by Monahon, Peter B. 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

> Earlier: > ... [from bartleby.com, whinge = chiefly British to complain or protest, > especially in an annoying or persistent manner; versus (US?) whine = to > complain or protest in a childish fashion] ... Peter Blaise responds: Whinge / whine? I subscribe to many daily prompts with new information, such as Google Alerts on "wiki" and so on, and this just came in from dictionary.com: Word of the Day for Tuesday, November 27, 2007 kvetch \KVECH\, adjective: 1. To complain habitually. 2. A complaint. 3. A habitual complainer. People kvetched when someone else wouldn't relinquish his position. -- Barry Lopez, "Before the Temple of Fire.", Harper's Magazine, January 1998 They begin to look like malcontents who kvetch about the weather so much that they don't notice the sun coming out. -- David Shenk, "Slamming Gates", The New Republic, January 26, 1998 Time for my biennial kvetch about the West End theatre. -- Simon Hoggart, "Hose bans, petrol mania: saying 'don't panic' always triggers chaos", The Guardian, November 4, 2000 He's just a very up person, she says, which is odd, because he is also a big complainer, a class-A kvetch. -- Penny Wolfson, "Moonrise", The Atlantic, December 2001 He had difficulty getting American publishers for his later novels, partly because of his self-created image by then as a crusty old kvetch. -- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "What Kingsley Can Teach Martin", The Atlantic, September 2000 Kvetch comes from Yiddish kvetshn, "to squeeze, to complain," from Middle High German quetzen, quetschen, "to squeeze." ========== I do not believe we need to limit ourselves to negative or pejorative definitions of what we are doing here when we appear to be "complaining" - whinging / whining / kvetching. I think this is all important dialog, contemporaneously and for future visitors searching the archives, free speech, "minority reports", calls to conscience, and so on. By calling it "whining" we diminish it's importance and may then think it's dispensable, but without alternative and new contributions, no matter how unpopular, there is no growth, and without growth, there is only death. Me? I'm all for a lively (as opposed to deadly) Wikipedia community, so carry on the lively discussions. And now, back to endless discussions of the pros and cons of banning, keeping the energies fresh, regardless of any initial name or intended topic content of any thread, it's all about banning after all, isn't it? ;-)

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WikiEN-l November 2007