On 23 Apr 2007 at 09:03:01 -0400, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> his cries, and jumps into the hole with him. ?What the hell are you doing? ?
> the man in the hole says. ?I?ve been in here before? the other man replies,
> ?and I know the way out.?
You still seem to have some character set problems with your mail
program; in the digest version, your quotes and apostrophes come out
as question marks, while in the web archive:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-April/069747.html
they're superscripted numbers. What do people who get the messages
in single-message form see? The header as shown by this message in
the digest has the content type as text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1",
which is a character encoding that doesn't have so-called "smart
quotes" (curly quotes and apostrophes) in it, so if your mail program
is trying to insert them, this is bogus. You should stick to plain
ASCII straight quotes.
--
== 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/
Was this an official OFFICE action?
Everyone seems to be up in arms over it--if not OFFICE, do admins have the
authority to overrule Jimbo? It seems like he does not have any wide
support in this.
Has that ever happened before? What was the outcome?
Since this is a great analysis of the issue at hand, I thought I'd make it
the start of a new thread.
George Herbert took the following quote by heart and made the analysis.
> Why is it that folk on this list always simply point out the problems
> with any change rather then engage constructively in finding working
> solutions?
>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
Date: Apr 21, 2007 3:48 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales should reconsider
To: English Wikipedia wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Stable versions is certainly a change which is technical based, has
major effects, and could help significantly on a bunch of different
fronts. Nobody has had much of anything negative to say about that (a
few gripes, but it's very very popular). It's just not live yet.
Structural changes of the "just remove all bios" or "remove any
biography that the subject objects to" are counter to the project's
core goal of making an encyclopedia.
Someone who has a WP article about them that they percieve negatively
may be upset, but it's one thing to say that we sympathize with them
being upset, and quite another to suggest that we shouldn't have an
article about them, or about large classes of people including them.
The idea that people have a right to not be covered in media reports,
encyclopedias, websites, blogs, etc. are not unique to criticisms of
Wikipedia's operations, but are rather odd overall. There is
generally little to no legal basis for these ideas, and little social
basis for these ideas.
Individuals are upset for one or more of three reasons:
1) They think they aren't notable, and don't want to be.
2) They think they're covered inaccurately.
3) They think the coverage presents them negatively.
We have normal processes to deal with truly non-notable subject
articles. They go away, relatively reliably. A lot of people who
don't want to be notable are by other reasonable standards. People
may not like that, but they may not like being covered in a local
newspaper or someone's blog or website, etc. The problem is not
unique to Wikipedia, and we aren't breaking social or legal norms to
cover people who meet some minimum standards of notability.
Notability is something they can challenge, but not something they can
arbitrarily reset standards on.
If they're covered inaccurately then that's a problem, and we can and
should do something about that. BLP says we need to, everyone agrees
with BLP, and people are if anything overly vigorous about enforcing
it.
If coverage is seen as negative, it's for one or both of the following
reasons: The coverage is slanted, or the sourced and accurate facts
behind the article are, or tend to be, interpreted in a negative
manner. If the article is biased, not-neutral, then BLP applies and
other policies apply and we fix it. If the facts don't show a
positive light on someone's life or activities, then that's their
problem, not ours.
People have a right to be upset about a lot of what gets put up about
them in Wikipedia. But the same applies to MySpace, Usenet, IRC, and
a zillion Blogs and homepages. Those don't have any sort of editorial
policy, charter to be accurate and neutral and have sources, and
people who have the power and responsibility to fix things going
around dealing with the things that are done wrong here. Wikipedia
does not offer a unique technical or social opportunity for internet
damage to people's reputations or lives. We are, all things
considered, probably uniquely the most reliable non-commercial source
on the Internet. We are clearly and unequivocally imperfect, but
that's a fact of life to some degree.
We could make a WarmFuzzyPedia. But it would not be accurate, useful,
or something that a lot of people would be interested in building and
maintaining. It would, in my humble opinion, be the end of Wikipedia
to change into a WarmFuzzyPedia, and I will resist you to the last if
you insist on going that direction.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
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I think this whole conversation is missing some points.
1. There are people who are out there who are only famous for doing bad
things. John Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer come to mind. Notoriety is no reason for
exclusion from an encyclopedia. There may even be only one bad thing that they
did: Lee Harvey Oswald and Gavrilo Princip surely deserve article, if only for
his single action of killing a president. In both cases, there are fairly
comprehensive articles about them, even though nothing else they did was
notable. Sure, these are extreme cases, but they still shoot down the argument
about deleting articles that contain only negative material.
As for the astronaut, Lisa Nowak, the article about her has existed since 26
July. Even today, the first paragraph makes no mention of jilted lovers or
alternative underwear. It talks about her role on a space mission, her
expertise in manipulating the shuttle's robotic arm, etc. There is a whole section on
her pre-rampage life, including her education, her space mission, etc. She
is not in Wikipedia because of her little stunt. That came later.
Having said all this, there is another criteria for inclusion--how much has
been written about them. How much are we simply reporting history, rather than
being in involved in perpetuating urban folklore (even if it is not an urban
myth). How much will their actions be remembered five, twenty, one hundred
years down the road, and how much is the reported action indicative of who
they are. Alternately, how much are we responsible for them being remembered for
something. If it is the latter, then we should be very careful about what we
include.
Danny
In a message dated 4/23/2007 5:05:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com writes:
Jeff was arguing that we can't delete a biography which only contains
negative material as "What about the astronaut who went cross country in
an alleged
>> attempt to murder her jilted lover? Guess what - her biography's going to
>> be based on that one incident, no matter what the eventual outcome. This
>> isn't a bad thing, either - it's simply reality.
Now, that's a fair point. There may only be one incident that's
newsworthy - and there may be no reason to exclude us reporting it.
But biography is by definition a record of someone life, not an
incident. If the incident is encyclopedic and verifiable then we should
have an article on the incident, and the individuals involved in it, but
disallow a biography, since we have inadequate material for such.
If we don't have appropriate information for a biography, we shouldn't
have a biography. And if all the information relates to the one
incident, we should simply have an article on that.
Further, as has just been pointed out to me:
"The biggest argument in favor of relegating an incident involving
a person to a non-bio page, is that a bio page features the name
of the person in the title of the article. This causes the bio to
rank *much* higher in the search engine rankings when searching
for that person's name. By the time all the internal linking to
that bio is carried out inside of Wikipedia, you also have the weight
of anchor-text content added to its ranking. Presto! Number one
in a search for that name."
And that is where the problems begin
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
During discussion of the deletion review for [[Darvon cocktail]] today on
WT:DRV, it was mentioned that En-WP has an article called [[Suicide
methods]]. After reading this article in detail, I have spent the morning
contemplating whether I consider it acceptable that Wikipedia is
disseminating this article on the Internet. I have concluded that I do
not. In many respects, this article could be used as a how-to guide by
someone contemplating suicide and/or could lead such a person to infer that
suicide is a reasonable response to whatever may be bothering him or her.
While some other portions of the article may be relatively common knowledge
or background information, I do not see how the article could be maintained
in an acceptable state without permanently protecting it.
I was astonished to read that this article has been put up for AfD three
times and has been closed as keep, once speedily, on each occasion,
sometimes with indignation at the prospect of its deletion. I do, however,
believe that our sensitivity to our obligations as one of the ten leading
websites in the world has increased in recent months.
I consider myself a rather conventional and non-rouge type of editor and
administrator but it is requiring a supreme effort of willpower not to
perform an immediate IAR speedy deletion of this article on the ground that
it represents an imminent threat to human life and safety whose
existence tends to place the project in disrepute. I have no desire to
create drama, but I am gravely troubled and would welcome comments from
other Wikipedians.
Newyorkbrad
I posted about a user, and no one seemed to care, that the user appears to
not have the background they quote themselves as having (namely someone who
is a phd in physics who does not understand the difference between
strike-slip deformation and uplift). This user also uploads images without
permission to use them, and when challenged for the copyright, simply said
they were unable to get hold of the copyright holder again, so the image
could be deleted. This user also quotes himself in numerous articles and
reports, and the reports he quotes can be found nowhere else on the web
besides Wikipedia and its mirrors, uses botanical terminology incorrectly,
yet writes botany articles and fights to the death challenges to his
wording, quotes material from the Jepson Manual that isn't in there,
improperly references geological material that he obviously hasn't read or
used.
To me, one of the reasons that people like the supposed phd professor get
away with claiming they are someone else, is that there is no way on
Wikipedia to deal with users like this. No one cared about the woman who
wholesale copied another's user page, and claimed to be on staff at a
non-existant university, and there is no way for the average editor to deal
with issues like this, no exposure method. It surprises me, considering all
the talk about whether or not we should institute a credentials verification
method, that there is no place that an editor can go to say, look, this
person is doing tons of work on Wikipedia, but there are some big problems
with his work, he uploads images that are clearly copyrighted by others,
saying he has permission, then can't find it, he does lots of botany
articles, but can't read in botany, and fights when challenged, his quotes
from geological sources are flat-out wrong, maybe in the thousands of edits
he so gleefully announces on his user page, he claims to have written
hundreds of technical articles but has difficulty handling technical
language, his paragraphs are often obvious cuts and pastes from diverse
unrelated sources that appear to be unrelated, he rambles all over the
place, repeats himself, translates things like yellow-green leaves in one
sentence to yellow-green flowers in the next, but then goes on to correctly
describe the flowers as oranges and reds, and maybe there are a lot more
problems that aren't in areas where I've overlapped with him.
Maybe, instead of debating the credentials issue, we could debate, how these
users, the Essjay's (or whatever his name was), should be handled in the
future. What editors should do when they encounter problems at this level,
or potential problems. How this can be discouraged on Wikipedia. I think
awards like high edit count awards should be warnings, not bragging
rights--and keeping a list of people with high edit counts encourages
behaviour like this. My little pet of the day editor, for example, edits an
article 10-20 times for one or two sentences, thereby boosting his edit
count. If this editor has as many "Did you knows" as his user page
indicates, shame on us for posting his articles on the front page with this
level of inaccuracy. This is a LOT of crap uploaded to Wikipedia by one
highly visible person--there should be a special place in Wikipedia for
these dishonrable mentions. And, if this stuff was riegned in early on, it
might lead to productive editors, rather than edit-countitis.
KP
We have now been dealing with what I will term the "Brandt affair"
(and the variety of subsidiary conflicts) for more than a year. In
that time we have seen wheel-warring, arbitration cases, bans,
harassment, attack sites, counter-attack sites, violations of just
about every policy we have by any number of parties, editors leaving,
editors being forced out, more than a dozen deletion nominations, a
few undeletion nominations, and megabytes of pointless, ever-repeating
arguments on and off Wikipedia, all for the sake of making sure that
our article on Brandt stays around. I think it would be reasonable to
say that this issue has become, by any measure, the single most
disruptive one we've experienced in terms of damage to the community
and the project as a whole.
But why do we need -- or want -- a biography of Brandt so much?
Brandt is not, in any real sense, an important individual. He has not
been the subject of biographical works of any substance; he has not
been profiled in magazines; he does not have a fanclub. His only
claim to notoriety is that he was mentioned in a few newspaper
articles dealing with broader topics than himself. Sure, this may let
him fulfill our "notability" requirements -- as does every Pokemon and
most models of vacuum cleaners -- but in a true historical context, he
likely wouldn't even be a footnote. Had he lived a hundred years ago,
his hometown newspaper probably wouldn't have bothered to run an
obituary; farther back, and we wouldn't even know of his existence.
If we too were not to bother with an article on him, what would we
lose? There will be no students who wish to research Brandt and lack
for a resource, no curious reader that will see Brandt's name
elsewhere and look him up; in practical terms, Brand is so obscure
that a biography of him is not actually going to be *useful* to
anyone. (Not that our current article is truly a biography, in any
case; it's merely a collection of individual episodes in his life --
the ones that some newspaper happened to mention -- strung together
with neither context nor connection to one another.)
The costs of trying to keep the article around, on the other hand, are
immediate and substantial. Forget, even, the massive amounts of time
being wasted on this by everyone involved, the bad press we've
received, and all the other tangential problems; the most dramatic
loss to Wikipedia are the many productive editors that have left the
project as consequences of this affair. How many editors are we
willing to sacrifice to keep the article? A dozen? A hundred? All
of them?
Some people may consider it to be a victory on our part to have
retained the article in the face of such determined opposition; if it
is, it's merely a Pyrrhic one.
So why, then, have we dug in our heels so thoroughly on this? Why
can't we just get rid of the article already and all go back to doing
something rather more useful than this endless fighting?
Kirill
Let me disclaim that I'm not a lawyer, I have no insider
information, and I could simply be talking through my beard. So take the
following for what it's worth. That being said, here's my analysis:
Don't stress over it! This is what's called "going through the
motions", or recently, "Kabuki". Both sides want to appear willing to
compromise, and to portray the other as intransigent. Here is what I
conjecture will happen - something along these lines: Brandt will make
edits to his bio that some Wikipedians will find objectionable. Flame
war ensues. Brandt will collect evidence to support a claim that
Wikipedians are a bunch of anonymous harassers. Admins will collect
evidence to support a claim that Brandt is an unreasonable unclean-hands
vexatious litigant. The next move is that after this has gone on for a
while, Jimbo will *PERSONALLY* REBLOCK Brandt, positioning his
ultra-popular, media-connected, well-supported, many lawyer-friends,
self as the primary personal defendant for any lawsuit. This is
amenable to Brandt, since he wants to sue Jimbo personally, not some
front-man. Then stay tuned ...
I'm not saying this has been worked out in advance in a
collusive fashion. But rather that each side knows what the other
wants, and they've reached a game-theoretic "consensus" over it. So sit
back for the movie, and don't waste your energy over feeling betrayed
by the politics of it (you haven't really been betrayed anyway). See
if I'm right.
The situation is now out of the hands of anyone but the
top players (Sadly, Wikipedia is *not* yours - whatever locutions
are employed, to a first approximation, it *belongs* to Jimbo and Co.)
Let me pre-emptively try to deal with Attack Of The Strawmen:
1) Does Jimbo want Brandt to sue?
No, of course not - "joy shall be in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth ...". Nothing would make him (Jimbo) happier here for
Brandt to see the glorious light of the Wikipedia-way and join in free
labor harmony for the greaterment of all Wikiality. But it's not going
to happen, and that's bloody obvious.
2) Are you claiming there's a backroom deal? I assure you not!
See above point about each side understanding the other.
3) But Brandt has been such a bad guy, how can Jimbo be so nice now?
The only thing that Jimbo will say in the near future is peace
and love, grace and forgiveness, let the prodigal be enfolded in the
bosom of the community ... BECAUSE IT'S THE RUN-UP TO A LAWSUIT. The
next act is when he'll say something along the lines of "With a heavy
heart, I have re-blocked Brandt. I gave him every chance, but it was
not to be ..."
4) Wikipedia is immune to all lawsuits by "Section 230"!
Well, let's say there's a good case for that proposition,
but it's still not a universally held belief.
[Disclosure: I may write a column on this eventually, so I'm taking notes,
but that would be weeks in the future if it even happens.]
--
Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Most papers are prevented from publishing the names of juvenile
> offenders. What would be your source for that information.
That's not exactly true. Papers can publish what they want about
juvenile offenders. Police and courts may choose not to release the
names of juvenile offenders, but sometimes newspapers learn the names
and publish them anyway. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-bk-
gunshop042007,0,2146757.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
http://archive.seacoastonline.com/news/04102007/nhnews-ph-p-
melville.html
--------------------------------
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| Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
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| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
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| Trust Us, We're Experts
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> From: "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Analysis of BLP issues (Jimmy Wales should
> reconsider)
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <fbad4e140704220745i1efef31n167795dc6cc18f6(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> OK. What seems a practical first move?
>
> Deleting all living bios is not going to fly. It just won't be accepted.
>
> The layer of barely-notable bios could be vanquished with little
> trouble. The tricky part is "what is notable?" It's not going to be
> possible to come up with a hardline definition that doesn't result in
> gross systemic bias, editors deleting like deranged robots or both.
>
> Is a new deletion rule on living bios worth trying? It's the most
> politically viable idea I've heard so far.
No Original Research is Your Friend.
Articles fabricated from 100% guaranteed primary source material like
blogs, websites, court reports, police records, and trivial human
interest reporting usually walk, talk, and quack just like original
research. But take them to AFD and the reaction will usually be "It
has references. It can't be original research." How can you do
original research without references?
We don't need to have biographies on people for whom no
biographical-quality sources exist at present. We can wait for
suitable sources to be created. There's no deadline, so I heard. When
we write about dead people, we nearly always plunder books,
biographies, encyclopedias, and the like. We don't look up the 19 July
1851 New York Sun. No reason to do any different for people who are
still breathing.
Angus McLellan