As we move into month 7 of the WP:OFFICE action on the [[Pacific Western
University]] article, I'd like to raise this issue again.
My from-the-trenches suggestions:
1. Impartial admin(s) assigned to each OFFICEd article at the time it is
protected (preferably someone with no edits to the article prior to
WP:OFFICE and no strong POV about the topics it covers).
2. Perhaps they could be randomly chosen from an existing pool of volunteers
with good track records on controversial issues who could confirm no WP:COI
issues for the article in question, kind of like ArbCom.
3. That person would be listed on the talk page as the coordinator and would
check back in each day and respond to proposed changes.
I like to work on controversial topics, but the current setup makes any
attempts at resolution, especially by non-admins, an exercise in futility.
In this case, it's never been clearly explained what the problem is, though
most who have looked at it believe it has to do with distinguishing the
Hawaii corporation from entities in other states. It appears they may also
want something changed based on accreditation information that has yet to
appear in a reliable published source.
At any rate, half a year under lockdown seems to indicate a significant
problem that needs to be addressed. I believe this and the unilateral speedy
deletion of controversial articles by admins are the two most serious
procedural issues Wikipedia faces right now. Both waste a lot of time, cause
a lot of animosity and generally drive away well-intentioned editors trying
to help.
These edgy issues almost always end up shaping policy, so we should address
these problems sooner than later.
Jokestress
Philip Sandifer wrote:
> Yes, the system is succeptible to the clueless and the crazy.
and
> If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of
> reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described
> we are screwed.
I find these two statements to be in considerable tension with each
other. The latter is not something I'm willing to assume, although it is
certainly something we should strive toward. In fact, most of the
community's social problems arise because people are too "clueless" or
"crazy" to recognize the limits of their competence. We need to figure
out how we can better push for more competent contributors.
Wikipedia's best contributors are those wise enough to know their own
limitations. They hardly ever cause a stir because they don't overreach
these limitations, or else they put the necessary effort into overcoming
them. Unfortunately, far too many people lack either the self-awareness
or self-control to respect their own limitations. That means we have to
apply external controls. This may range from deleting content that is
not helpful at all, to mercilessly editing poor-quality but salvageable
content, to evicting contributors who are an overall detriment to the
project. The proper uses of such remedies are tricky issues that require
an abundance of good judgment. The community's ability to cope with that
problem, the constant need for good and careful judgment, has not scaled
very well.
--Michael Snow
Stan Shebs wrote:
> But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are
> not usually self-aware
There is actually scientific support for this observation, in the
form of a study performed by psychologists Justin Kruger and David
Dunning. Their paper is titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How
Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated
Self-Assessments":
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
It states:
"Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make
unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the
metacognitive ability to realize it."
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
| Banana Republicans
| The Best War Ever
--------------------------------
| Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
| http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
|
| Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
| https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
--------------------------------
> From: Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net>
>
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:48:44 -0800, Ray Saintonge
> <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
>
> >This sounds sensible. Perhaps what we need some where is a list of
> what
> >would be "standard" information in a biographical article.
> Essentially
> >we would be looking at the kind of boring data that would be found
> in a
> >"Who's Who" that chose to include the individual: date and place of
> >birth and marriage, where they went to school, etc. Any of ths
> stuff
> >could still be disputed, put it would be presumed valid unless that
> happens.
>
> Actually I think this is a good litmus test for whether an individual
> is encyclopaedically notable. If there are no sources for basic
> biographical data other than the individual themselves, in other
> words
> if there has never been a reputably published biography or profile,
> then I don't believe we can have an article.
This would include minor actors and exclude famous scientists.
Even scientists who have a large number of scientific achievements
are rarely the subjects of published biographies. Being famous
enough to get a mention in newspapers doesn't help either, since
such articles rarely provide information like place of birth.
Zero.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate
in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
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Since he was not making any positive contributions through his membership,
it has been revoked.
Regards,
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])
I just updated my blog with an essay "Wikipedia burnout: an analysis", & with the expected
amount of tredipation I am soliciting feedback.
Although I suspect that some of you are already aware of my blog, & may actually have
enjoyed reading the occasional entry, for everyone else the URL is
http://original-research.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-burnout-analysis.ht…
Geoff
Administrator Yanksox has deleted Daniel Brandt's article with the
following summary: "privacy concerns, more trouble than it is actually
worth. Are you people even human?"
Yanksox then proceeded to delete his or her user page with the summary
"My, My. Hey, Hey / Won't you let me burnout or fadeaway?"
Cool Cat has started a Deletion Review on this, at the following URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_February_23…
Consensus there appears to be to endorse the deletion.
I thought it would be important to mention this on the mailing list,
considering the number of people who have participated in debates over
the existence of the Daniel Brandt article over the years.
~Mark Ryan
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The sad part is that many who quote or apply the rules have absolutely
> no understanding of what went into producing those rules.
I think this is the real problem more than the rules themselves. I
had an unpleasant experience about six months ago with someone who
nominated the [[Drupal]] article for deletion. Drupal is a content
management system that has had several books written about it;
Wikipedia articles on it exist in at least a dozen languages; and the
English-language article has existed for years with dozens if not
hundreds of individual editors participating in it. The article met
every test for notability, but it got nominated anyway.
Worse yet, the same individual also kept trying to delete specific
pieces of information from the article, such as the link to Drupal's
own website (which he called "linkspam"). The individual who kept
doing this would frequently cite Wikipedia policies, but his usage of
them was arbitrary, capricious and often contrary to the actual
policies themselves.
I got sufficiently irritated with this person that I spent some time
reviewing the history of his contributions to Wikipedia and found
that he didn't have a pattern of similar behavior outside the
[[Drupal]] article. Elsewhere, he generally seemed to be a competent,
sincere contributor. By his own admission, however, he didn't know
anything about Drupal and didn't care to learn anything about it. The
result was that he was mechanically applying rules without sufficient
knowledge of the topic at hand to grasp when and whether the rules
applied. The problem, in other words, wasn't that he lacked
understanding of *the rules themselves*. Rather, he lacked
understanding of *how the rules should be applied in a specific
context*.
I don't think there's any way to write rules so perfect that they
eliminate this type of problem. It's a people problem, not a rule
problem. Maybe we could add a new rule that says people should defer
to others when editing articles about topics they don't understand,
but (1) the most likely violators of this policy won't read the rule
anyway, and (2) even if they do, they probably won't recognize their
own ignorance.
I have a solution: a system whereby individual Wikipedians get rated
by other users according to their competency as editors in specific
topic areas. I estimate that developing the code necessary to make
this work properly will take approximately the same number of person-
hours as it has taken thus far to write all of Wikipedia. Add to that
the number of hours needed to spend arguing about whether such a
system is desireable or possible, and we effectively have a problem
that will be solved at about the same time as the heat death of the
universe. ;-)
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
| Banana Republicans
| The Best War Ever
--------------------------------
| Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
| http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
|
| Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
| https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
--------------------------------
In a message dated 2/25/2007 4:04:27 AM Central Standard Time,
bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca writes:
There is one significant area where deletion breaks this, cases of
"merge and delete." That result should never be implemented, there
should only be "merge and redirect" if merging is to be done.
I correct users on their talk pages when they vote merge and delete; I wish
everyone else would follow suit to keep these people from screwing up.
| Tyler | Zorin Deckiller |
| Wikipedia Administrator | Former SWU member |
| _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deckiller_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deckiller) |
| _http://www.myspace.com/redsectora_ (http://www.myspace.com/redsectora) |
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