We really need a good policy on speedy closing AfD nominations where
the nomination contains obviously false claims and whacking votes
that are just plain idiotic. Case in point, http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cyrus_Farivar_%284th_nomination%
29 where the nominator proclaimed that the article was kept because
of the journalist's involvement in an Internet hoax. In fact, it was
kept because this is a freelance journalist who has written for
Wired, The Economist, and the New York Times. As anyone actually
looking at the previous deletion debates would quickly notice.
Equally fun is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Greenlighting_hoax_%282nd_nomination%
29, where we have people citing a disputed guideline as policy, and
people declaring an article that's sourced to Slate (a publication
owned by the Washington Post) as having no sources.
I'm only mildly invested in the second as an article to keep around
(although I think deleting the first would be appalling), but this
kind of sloppy voting and sloppy nominating needs to stop. It's far
too clear that people are voting without even looking at what they're
voting on, and that despite our pretending that AfD is not a vote, it
is far too often treated as one. (And don't even get me started on
the latest and greatest bit of deletion DoubleSpeak, the ever-
wonderful Categories for Discussion.)
Personally, I'd support a speedy-close policy on any AfD with false
information in the nomination, and a standard "comment removed due to
obvious inaccuracy" template to put into place on the "discussions"
for when people cite policies that don't exist, claim lack of sources
where sources exist, or otherwise flagrantly decline to engage with
reality.
-Phil
http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/
The Harvard Business School is famous for its case studies. Two of its
professors put out a case study on Wikipedia, and the history of the
Enterprise 2.0 article (a new term championed by one of the case study
authors; the article was written by others who use the term).
I have a cameo as the admin who recommends starting a new AfD discussion.
The whole study is released under the GFDL, though it will be available
for sale via CD as per usual with new case studies.
Don't forget the check out the exhibits, which are fascinating.
--SJ
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
(which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
non-existent article.
Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the
horrible {{deletedarticle}} template. Users get a reasonably helpful
message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on
Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the
Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as
allowing us to be kind to them). I can't think of a downside offhand.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.ukhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
I don't know about other subscribers to this mailing list, but I just
received a password reminder email for Wikimedia mailing lists,
despite never having received one before, ever. This is probably an
unintentional change brought about by the changes to the mailing lists
in January.
To turn this back off, visit the WikiEN-l list information page at the
following URL:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Type your email address in the box under "Changing options and
unsubscribing" and click "Unsubscribe or edit options". Type in your
password on the next screen and hit "Log in". Scroll down to "Get
password reminder email for this list?", click "no", and click "Set
globally" if you want to turn it off for all Wikimedia mailing lists
you are subscribed to with that email address.
Then click "Submit my changes" at the bottom of the screen.
Voila! No more getting your passwords emailed to you in plain text
(which I, for one, think is the stupidest feature of MailMan ever).
~Mark Ryan
Marc Riddell wrote
> Terrific! I much prefer the term "Don't be a dick" to "incivility"; can we
> make the change :-).
Well, no. Why replace a good dictionary word with a profanity? Are you assuming that everyone who edits the English Wikipedia is a native speaker of English, who shares your likes and dislikes? You'd be very wrong about that. In fact the very acceptance of WP:DICK shows a basic level of crassness, if you ask me.
Charles
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