On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:36:14 -0800 (PST), Ken Arromdee
<arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, doc wrote:
> > This decision is so much better than if he'd, say, intended to post it
> > to a single-issue mailing list of editors who share his outlook -
> > because that would truly be deplorable canvasing.
>
> We all know that no such thing exists, right?
Public, private, or sooper-seekrit?
--
== 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/
Metz has a good point regarding WP:COI, though I disagree regarding
some of his other thoughts (i.e. trying to control an article through
shouting doesn't necessarily work).
When I first read the WP:COI guideline, I thought it was a good
recommendation, and have even cited it, but the way I have sometimes
seen it used leaves a bitter taste in my mouth at times. The worst is
those who, instead of making any attempt to help problematic newbies
understand NPOV and verifiability policies, drive them away from the
topics they are passionate about with refrains of "WP:COI".
It's easy to see the harm to the encyclopedia if someone is violating
WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:CONS, etc. However, what harm is occurring
if someone edits with a COI that isn't covered under other policies?
WP:COI should be purely cautionary; I see no reason it should ever be
enforced.
Matt Jacobs
Sxeptomaniac
> Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:55:52 -0800
> Quoting "George Herbert" <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
>
>
> On Dec 19, 2007 6:50 PM, <joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu> wrote:
> > Quoting "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan(a)tobias.name>:
> >
> > > Nobody's mentioned it here yet, but there's been yet another Cade
> > > Metz article on Wikipedia in The Register:
> > >
> > > Truth, anonymity and the Wikipedia Way
> > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/18/the_wikipedia_paradox/
> >
> > This one is closer to being accurate and it does correctly point out the very
> > serious tension between enforcing COI issues and allowing anonymity.
> > Who knows,
> > if Metz keeps this up it might actually turn into real reporting.
>
> I wanted to second this; I read the article roughly when it came out,
> and didn't have time to comment here but I think this latest one is
> much more balanced and fairly discussing some of the dynamic tension
> Wikipedia has made part of our operating philosophy.
>
> We do know the open / responsibility / anonymity tensions. Not
> everyone internally is happy with the balance we found, much less
> critics or normal people outside the project, but that those tensions
> exist between our goals and policies is accurate, fair, etc. Media
> covering them on an ongoing basis is fair, as they're an ongoing
> source of trouble for Wikipedia, because they are hard questions.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert(a)gmail.com
>
George Herbert wrote:
> It's been a recurring theme, but the point is that we still haven't
> figured out how to detect and head off (talk to, counsel, convince to
> take a stress-break and come back, whatever) flameouts by admins and
> longtime editors.
>
> There's a difference between people chosing to leave the project, and
> a project where the usual mode of leaving for experienced participants
> is an antagonistic conflict incident blowing up.
>
> That we haven't really come up with good solutions doesn't mean that
> we should stop noting incidents as they happen.
"Admin burn-out" is one of those topics that I've been interested too --
especially since at any given moment I post on WP:AN (or related pages) I
am the Admin who's been on Wikipedia the longest; I once described myself
as starting on Wikipedia back when Jimbo Wales was not even a "God-king"
but just an aristocrat who bought himelf a magic book. In some cases, I
have been an Admin longer than some Admins have had Wikipedia accounts.
(This has been the case since Zoe bailed earlier this year.) And this is a
distinction I'm not especially happy to hold.
(Note: there are a number of Admins senior to me still active on Wikipedia;
occasionally I'll wonder what happened to someone, look at their
contributions page, & see that she or he made a few dozen edits -- often
more -- in the last couple of days. However, they keep an even lower profile
than me, rarely, if ever, appearing on the Admin Noticeboards & related
pages. Why is that if an Admin doesn't burn out, he retreats to an obscure
corner of Wikipedia or just limits himself to Wikignoming? Your guess is
as good as mine.)
I don't know whether my longevity is because I *don't* try to handle the
hard cases, edit controversial articles (at least not after I learn the
hard way that they are controversial) or work very hard at fighting vandalism
or spam -- in other words, maybe I'm just Admincruft -- or its because I
stumbled across the secret at surviving the often vicious atmosphere at
Wikipedia. For anyone who's curious, my strategy has been to remember that
the problem people always, in the end, get themselves kicked off of
Wikipedia, & act accordingly. For example, when I'm in conflict in an
article, & I'm convinced that the other person is a (insert here your
favorite term of abuse) who is entirely, undeniably wrong (or has been
doing most of her/his research with the help of illegal substances), what I
do is ... sit back & wait 3 months, then go back & edit the article.
Sometimes I make the changes I was originally fighting for, but more often I
realize that the section in dispute ought to read another way -- sometimes
the exact text what my opponent was arguing for, but for one reason or
another I wasn't persuaded. Amazing what a curious mind can learn in
three months!
For this admittedly passive attitude towards Adminship (if not Wikiepdia
in general) to work, obviously I rely on other Admins to do the dirty work.
For this reason, it would be useful to know how I can support the
harder-working Admins so they can keep doing what they do. Telling me to
"keep an eye on them" is not a good solution, since much of my work for
Wikipedia is researching content -- out of 8 hours I might spend on
Wikipedia, at least half of it is reading various sources, more often books
than webpages, & trying to figure out how to usefully integrate it into
the relevant articles. (BTW, even in my most focussed moments of
researching, I find that 90% of what I find is not immediately usable for
one reason or another -- most often because I don't see how I can add it
to an article.) This means I often learn about the latest "blow-up"
several hours -- if not several days -- after it appears to be all over,
& someone has put a "Topic closed" notice on the thread.
If anything, I find myself more & more arguing with other Admins over how
to deal with a perceived troublemaker; either there are an increasing number
of people on Wikipedia who think in black-n-white, think anyone who
criticizes Wikipedia is more dangerous than _The Register_ (or whoever is
this week's most dangerous threat), & are upset that we are "too
easy-going" on the troublemakers, or I am far too laid back. Since I have
no problem dropping an indef block on people who are clearly troublemakers
(anyone can look at my Admin log to see that I have dropped the banhammer
from time to time), I don't think it's the latter. Most of the people
who claim that Wikipedia's not honest about the claim that "anyone can
edit" are, undeniably, the ones who got banned for good & understandible
reasons; but I'm finding an increasing number of cases where newbies are
getting the bum's rush for obvious newbie mistakes, & end up complaining
about how Wikipedia is run by some inner circle.
Geoff
Whether it was inappropriately sent or not, the aticle _was_ evicerated
after months of discussion.
--Avi
--
en:User:Avraham
----
pub 1024D/785EA229 3/6/2007 Avi (Wikipedia-related) <aviwiki(a)gmail.com>
Primary key fingerprint: D233 20E7 0697 C3BC 4445 7D45 CBA0 3F46 785E
A229
I see no substantial evidence of Physchim62 "blowing up" over the
case, though obviously he disagrees strongly with the arbitration
committee's involvement and its manner of resolving the dispute, and
puts his misfortunes down to the influence of cabals.
In some ways, without actually leaving, his jeremiad resembles the
kind of thing we sometimes see in a "Goodbye". The most famous of
such "more in sorrow than in anger" litanies was Radiant!'s
much-copied farewell of early February. 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Radiant%21&oldid=48400694
On the meatball wiki, the GoodBye page gives a reasonable explanation
of why this kind of fist-shaking is so common in online communities
and why it is so often associated with the temporary departure of a
fairly prominent member who feels that he is under-appreciated.
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?GoodBye
Most of us come and go quietly, but those comings and goings are not
so noticeable.
I don't believe the phenomenon of the noisy departure is a symptom of
an ailing community.
I suggest that the best we can do in response is to make sure that all
members of the community feel appreciated, even when (or perhaps
especially when) their opinions and actions don't command complete
accord.
And those members who do want to leave should be permitted to do so
with dignity, and feeling that they'll be welcome to return whenever
they want to. I do find it remarkable that so many valued editors who
have left us at one time or another, somtimes marking their departure
with doom-laden words like those of Radiant, or even copied from his,
have eventually returned and resumed their much-valued work.
We got three OTRS complaints in a row, about an hour ago, about
obscene images (one said "a vagina" others were vague) on three
unrelated film articles. No sign on the articles or
[[Template:Infobox Film]] of recent edits which would explain it.
Anyone know what's going on?
(also asked on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incide…
)
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
I think in terms of problems the wiki has, the two main issues are
verifiability and cruft. While some are unreasonably embittered by the
pop culture focus and complain about the stereotypical 'hurr hurr i
luvs halo we need five hundred articles on the weapons in it', there
is of course truth to it- 90% of all new editors start out like that.
THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL RESULT. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FORMAL
OFFICIAL COUNT. THE RAW DATA IS ALL PUBLIC, HOWEVER...
I for one welcome our shiny new Arbcom overlords, pending vote results
confirmation and the official announcements:
Newyorkbrad (97.4% support !!!)
FT2
FayssalF
Sam Blacketer
Deskana
Congratulations all!
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
> For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that
> the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the
> boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to
> believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
-------------------
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on
this list details of a private mailing list, together with your
opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral
responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something
very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a
fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo,
just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought
he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make
sure?
Sarah
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: River Tarnell <river(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 12 Dec 2007 11:52
Subject: [Mediawiki-l] that awful <ref> syntax
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
<mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
so, the first thing i notice when editing Wikipedia articles these days
is that they're full of <ref> tags that make it nearly impossible to
find the actual text of the article. the problem seems to be that the
entire reference is inline in the text. while this is useful for
locality of editing, wouldn't it be nice if it would be close to the
text, but not inline?
for example, references could be named and referred to with [name], and
then defined at the end of each paragraph:
Wikipedia[wikip] is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation[wmf].
[wikip] http://en.wikipedia.org/
[wmf] http://wikimediafoundation.org/
now, it's still easy to see and change the references, but you can
actually see the article text as well.
for an example from a real Wikipedia article, see
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Kate/ref>.
of course this would require some changes to the core parser to do
properly, but i think the feature is useful enough to be worth it.
comments?
- river.
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