An aggressive and vocal minority of users (including some administrators who
are known to aggressively hammer 'opponents') wanting to be able to remove
on-Wiki references and links to web sites that specifically have targeted
them. In and of itself, this is not a Bad Thing on the surface. However,
their implementation and ideas do not enjoy widespread community support or
endorsement, as evidenced by the backlash they face each time they try to do
it. In spite of this, they have now extended this to:
1. Damaging articles and the encyclopedia (Will Beback and his abuse during
over Teresa Hayden's site).
2. Specifically have 'broken' two RFAs by dropping poison pills on them
(Cla68 and Gracenotes), disrupting Wikipedia for political gain.
3. They have made the notion of "attack sites" political and sociological
poison, to damage their Wikipedia "enemies".
Someone really needs to throw out the bathwater, without murdering the baby
as seems to be the intent here with the BADSITES gamesmanship. Apologies for
any frankness that cuts through undeserved AGF.
Regards,
Joe
http://www.joeszilagyi.com
Jimbo says is perfectly here:
"And it seems to me that one of the mistakes that people make when we argue
about this is to adopt a too rigid universalism of the who thing, in other
words: to imagine that Well gee, if we settle if we settle on particular
principle with respect to this particular article in physics we're going to have to
delete all the Pokeman articles, because we can't find any academic sources'.
And I think that's a mistake. I think it's a mistake to treat different
realms of knowledge as if they are some how fundamentally the same."
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
Ok, I get it
"This List of Swedes contains individuals who, in accordance with
Wikipedia's verifiability and no original research policies, have been
identified as Swedes by reliable sources."
Looks totally weird.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Andrew Gray [mailto:shimgray@gmail.com]
>Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:19 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Thoughts on naming people - article content, this time.
>
>So, reading wikien-l in one window, and browsing random-article with
>the other, I came across:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jews_in_politics
>
>"This List of Jews contains individuals who, in accordance with
>Wikipedia's verifiability and no original research policies, have been
>identified as Jews by reliable sources."
>
>Given the context of the ongoing discussion about wilfuly outing
>people... is it just me who finds that wording, hmm, a touch odd?
>Discuss.
>
>--
>- Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
>
>_______________________________________________
>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
>
Here's a perfect example of a vandalism edit (well, an experiment) that
should be greeted with a welcome and an invitation to contribute usefully to
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&curid=564696&…
Unlike all the Wikipedians on this list and on Wikipedia who advocate
allowing editors to vandalize Wikipedia multiple times and claim they are
far preferred Wikipedia editors than the old established trash, I also
welcomed the editor to Wikipedia.
KP
On 30 May 2007 at 20:10:47 -0500, "Slim Virgin"
<slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dan, would you be okay with this scenario? I today create a website
> that outs you, says where you live, and accuses you of being a
> pedophile, with some alleged examples. I then start a discussion about
> it on various project pages, and every time I mention it, I link to
> it. I'm careful not to link to the actual page that gives your
> details, so I'm not linking to a personal attack. I'm just linking to
> the main page, and I link here and I link there, I link everywhere, in
> an attempt to increase my readership.
Given my own temperament and bizarre sense of humor, I might well
react to it by linking directly to your attack myself, on my user
page, along with a comment like "Look here [LINK], where Slim Virgin
calls me a pedophile... amazing what lengths people will go to
character-assassinate somebody they disagree with. She's probably
trying to get me to lose my cool and start lashing out at her so she
can revel in my reaction, but she's wasting her time... such
ludicrous accusations are worthy only of pointing at and laughing
uproariously... certainly not taking seriously enough to raise a big
stink about."
In fact, I did quite a similar thing back when Jeff Merkey had
attacks of that sort on me (and other Wikipedians) on his own
website... I linked to that, and to Brandt's hivemind page (which
also included me), on my user page in a "point-and-laugh" manner,
only taking down those links when they stopped working later. Nobody
objected at the time that I was "linking to attack sites", because it
seems like this hysteria is a fairly recent phenomenon.
> Let's take it a bit further. Let's suppose I'm a reporter and I write
> an article about my experiment for a reliable source, and let's also
> suppose it's a very notable newspaper, but not a good one, and it lets
> me name the website in the article. I don't name you, but I also don't
> admit that I made up the pedophile allegation. I just present the
> creation of the website as an experiment; veracity of contents to be
> left to the reader.
I would hope that, being responsible journalists, they would seek and
publish sufficient information to make it clear that the accusations
in the site they were mentioning were entirely false.
> Should someone then be able to create a Wikipedia article about my
> site, and link to it in that article so that it ends up in a prominent
> place in Google?
In that hypothetical case, where the site actually does become
notable in the outside world, then yes... and I'd hope the article is
factual and NPOV, and indicates the falsity of the site's claims.
> Then try to imagine how you'd vote in an RfA for someone who called my
> website a "mixed bag," and who didn't want a ban on linking to it.
It would depend on their motives and explanations, wouldn't it? If
they said it was a "mixed bag" because "Dan Tobias may not quite be a
pedophile, in the legal sense, but I think he does have an unnatural
affection for young children and ought to be kept under scrutiny for
this", then I'd likely oppose him for lack of good sense given that
there's simply no logical reason to jump to any conclusion remotely
like that. On the other hand, if it was that "I disagree with the
stupid and unfounded accusations Slim made there, but I understand
the point of the experiment, however misguided, and perhaps it has in
fact illustrated some flaws in Wikipedia's model whereby it can be
disrupted by making silly accusations against editors. We should try
to fix those flaws, while also making it clear that pointing them out
in this sort of destructive manner should not be tolerated. I see no
point, however, to shoving the whole thing under the rug by
suppressing all links to this regrettably notable site", then I might
choose not to oppose him despite the personal involvement.
--
== 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/
On 30 May 2007 at 12:59:56 -0400, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> WR doesn't qualify for citation under [[WP:V]] or [[WP:RS]].
That straw man has resurfaced so many times that I'm tempted to coin
a new term, "[[Bobblehead doll]] argument", for one which keeps
bouncing back up every time it's knocked down.
As others have said, it's not as a source in an article that anybody
has been or intends on using that site (except perhaps for a future
article on the site itself, if it should become sufficiently notable,
or maybe on [[Criticisms of Wikipedia]] -- the sole thing that it
would ever be a source for would be about itself and the views
espoused by its participants). The places it might turn up include
discussion and project pages, which are not subject to WP:V, WP:RS,
or even WP:NPOV.
--
== 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/
jayjg wrote:
> On 5/30/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote:
>> Here's a fourth case: the Brandt link on Wikipedia Signpost.
> I don't see any specific benefit to Wikipedia in having its unofficial
> newspaper link to WR.
Just to keep the facts straight, the link in question was not a link to
Wikipedia Review. I know Sheldon has mentioned the possibility of such
links in discussion of hypotheticals, but I don't recall that The
Wikipedia Signpost has ever linked to Wikipedia Review.
--Michael Snow
G'day Steve,
> SlimVirgin wrote:
> > ...we're a top--ten website with no idea how many admins we have.
> > We know how many accounts, but not how many people, and we don't
> > know whether they include banned users.
>
> I'm not an admin so I hope I'm not sounding glib or naive about
> it, but: I'm at peace with this dilemma. It's true we can't
> know, it's true that's a concern, but it's not one we can afford
> to worry about unduly, because there's nothing we can possibly do
> about it and still remain as open as we have to be. As long as
> it's significantly easier to deadmin someone who's clearly "gone
> rogue" than it is for them to construct the facade that allows
> them to become an admin in the first place, I think the situation
> is tenable.
I hadn't actually considered the scenario that SV puts in her post,
but it strikes me that there are more ways for a Trojan admin to
cause damage than simply going rogue and deleting the main page.
I'd also have to agree with her that, what with the CVU admin
phenomenon, it is trivial for a bad user to rack up a lot of edits and
bung his hand in, "Yep, I'll have me some extra buttons, please."
He doesn't even have to be a *competent* cleaner-up of vandalism;
reverting good edits by anons, leaving inappropriate warnings, and
tagging good articles for speedy deletion all show up as Good Work
in a "vandal-fighter"'s log. So, not only is it easy for an unworthy
person to get adminship by doing semi-automated tasks that look
and feel (but aren't) like hard work, his actions don't even have to
be of net benefit to the project for people to support him.
A Trojan admin will have all of the disadvantages that made him a
banned user in the first place: he'll be quarrelsome, rude, clueless,
arrogant, and insensitive. It's not hard to see how a rogue admin
who doesn't "go rogue" but simply hangs around like that last
inaccessible little bit of peanut butter in the jar, driving away
newbies and befouling the morale of the community, spreading
cluelessness about him like the Johnny Appleseed of the
Broken Telephone Effect, could cause a great deal of damage to
the project ... and we wouldn't even know. Going out with a
magnesium flare, chanting "I am rogue, I am rogue" brings a lot
of attention to one's self; just being a moron is unlikely to raise
nearly so much fuss.
The Trojan admin doesn't have to be a sleeper agent with Big Plans
to cause trouble. He just has to be what he is: a really, *really* bad
admin. So, I agree with SV that this could be a big problem. On the
other hand, it's no worse a problem than what we see today with
ordinary, non-Trojan, really, really bad admins.
So, I sort of agree with you, too.
Cheers,
--
[[User:MarkGallagher]]
Another thing in the subject of the BADSITES controversy, take a look
at this Request for Adminship:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Gracenot
es
(not to be confused with [[User:Grace Note]], a totally separate
person, and one who actually is one of the opposers in the above
nomination; interestingly, though "Grace" is usually a girl's name,
they're both guys, which shows you can never reliably infer gender
from usernames)
This user has been the subject of a massive piling-on of oppose
votes, most of them coming simply because he refuses to take a
totally politically correct position favoring the draconian, zero-
tolerance policy on removing links to so-called "attack sites".
Despite (or maybe because of) this, he's also got more support votes
than any other current RfA (it's currently 161 to 60, meaning that
101 more people support him than oppose him), but this might not be a
high enough percentage to satisfy whoever closes the RfA (is there a
set percentage, or is it just up to a subjective value judgment like
most other debate-closing on Wikipedia?)
There are some people in the Support column who are notable for
saying that they oppose him on the attack-sites issue but still don't
consider it a "litmus test" that bars their support for him (after
all, having administrator's tools has little or no connection with
one's beliefs or actions regarding attack-site links... adding,
dropping, restoring, and edit-warring over such links does not
require admin powers). However, a bunch of others seem to be single-
issue voters determined to torpedo any prospective admin who doesn't
toe the line entirely.
--
== 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/