WP:BLP seems to be the new crusade and of course I understand the reasons
and largely support the concerns of BLP warriors. But aren't we going too
far? The UK has a book called Who's Who?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whos-Who-2007/dp/0713675276 which lists everything
about notable people (they have much stricter rules about notability than we
do!) in the UK and Commonwealth right down to their address. Because its not
online some BLP warriors have removed details listed from in articles. Are
we only now to use online references on Wikipedia?
Mike33
The wikidrama continued in the [[Essjay controversy]] article over
the last 24 hours. First, various people edit-warred over the
insertion of the relevant link to a site that some regard as a so-
called "attack site", which also happened to be where important
activity in the history of the Essjay affair first came to light. The
anti-linking side threatened to block people for adding the nefarious
link, and actually blocked at least one ([[User:KamrynMatika]],
blocked by admin [[User:ElinorD]], about whom I must apologize
profusely to the Wikipedia community for playing any role in making
her an admin; I voted to support her RfA, despite knowing of her anti-
attack-site stance, out of a desire not to impose political litmus
tests like the other side did). This puts the lie to any assertion
that the link ban is "no big deal" because it won't be used to block
any linking that helps the encyclopedia... any such applications
(like attempts to suppress links to [[Teresa Nielsen Hayden]]'s blog)
were clearly misguided and can be reversed by using common sense and
[[Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules]]... well, except for now, I guess.
Then, [[User:MichaelLinnear]] came up with a seemingly good solution
to the mess; he found a respectable news outlet that was a reference
for the same fact. Problem solved... no "attack" links needed, huh?
Still, [[User:MONGO]] immediately and mistakenly reverted that
addition... well, anybody who's ever in the past inserted a so-called
attack link for any reason is clearly a Troll and an Attack Site
Partisan, so "Assume Bad Faith" is the applicable principle for
dealing with *their* kind... any link they ever insert must be
another evil attack site, given that their sinister agenda is to
promote those sites any way they can. Keep the revert trigger finger
ready, and the safety off! Still, he realized his error quickly and
reverted himself a minute later.
So, problem solved, huh? Not so fast... while all of this insertion,
reversion, and re-reversion was taking place, it appears that nobody
involved actually tried to *go* to that new respectable news link.
Turns out that it's "404 Not Found"... you get only an error page.
Well, I guess that's a great thing... no possibility of winding up on
evil attack-site content that way. The fact that there's no useful
information there either is only a minor quibble.
As of now, the nonexistent link is still there at Footnote 1... I
guess it will stay until somebody either finds another "respectable"
source, or else dares to face off against the Clique by putting the
relevant "attack" link back.
--
== 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/
In a message dated 6/27/2007 2:01:41 AM Central Daylight Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
Right! It should be easier to push your proposal through when there are
fewer knowledgeable people watching. ;-)
I hope that was meant to be humorous, because nobody was even responding to
the content of the rewrite. And besides, the discussions on Wikipedia are
where true consensus is established; not e-mail forums where people don't even
read/comment on the actual proposal. If your comment was not meant to be
humorous, it was a cheap attempt at intimidating and/or insulting me. I find this
entire experience to be sickening, and I am in awe of the treatment I have
received from fellow Wikipedians in my attempt to establish a compromise with
this rewrite. I really thought Wikipedia was more mature than this.
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
John Lee wrote:
> I am not sure if the circumstances are quite congruent concerning
> the Essjay
> issue. I understand his youthful indiscretion, being a youth myself
> and
> having made many youthful mistakes. I certainly would not want this
> being
> held against him in the future. But at the same time, I can find no
> basis
> for deciding the article on the [[Essjay controversy]] should be
> deleted
> that does not lie in some subjective valuation of morals.
I don't have a strong opinion on whether or not the [[Essjay
controversy]] article should be deleted. I suspect that ten years
from now it will be seen as a minor blip in Wikipedia's history, and
by then the argument for deleting it will be stronger than it is now.
At present, however, I think there are practical reasons *not* to
delete the article. The Essjay controversy is still only a few months
old and fresh enough in memory that deleting it carries an aroma of
Wikipedia trying to whitewash itself. Deleting it under these
conditions is therefore likely to simply produce revived controversy,
attention and edit-warring, which serves neither Essjay nor Wikipedia.
On balance, therefore, I think it is better to refrain from deleting
it for the time being, but consider the issue again in a year or so,
by which time passions will have cooled and it will be easier to
consider the article dispassionately on its merits, rather than on
the basis of personal sympathy for Essjay (or hostility toward
Wikipedia/Jimbo/whatever).
--------------------------------
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| Author of books including:
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| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
| Banana Republicans
| The Best War Ever
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>>>>>
From: "White Cat" <wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com>
Headline on CNN right now is "Poll: War support at new low" do we have an
article of this poll? We write articles on events unless they are notable
enough for the entire year rather than day.
A notable event would be Jimbo deciding to shut down the site (wikipedia)
for example which would IMHO only be notable enough to be mentioned on the
article on [[Wikipedia]]. Probably the coverage would be one or two lines,
max a paragraph. Not a full article, that can be on wikinews (maybe). Essjay
incident however isn't even worth a single line mention on article
namespace.
I also think that Essjay article is in violation of the spirit of "right to
vanish". I do not particularly ''like'' Essjay but this mocking of him even
bothers me. I ask myself this question: "will I be mistreated like him if
circumstances are right?"
- White Cat
>>>>>
As long as there are proper citations of all facts from reliable sources,
and that the subjects of these articles are welcome to contribute statements
of their own (or point out other reliable sources) on the Discussion page
-- and that these would be fairly considered by the community in the
article's content, the article should stay. If not satisfactory to the
subject, he or she should be able to request the article's removal, too --
but only a truly impartial committee (preferably EXTERNAL to Wikipedia, and
using standard tests of notability) should judge whether the BLP is of
"note" or not. The "Essjay controversy" is no different than:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edmondsonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_O'Leary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Deutschhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Troupe
One would rightly argue that these four all held more notable positions than
Ryan Jordan, but the moment Jimmy Wales (the sole-/co-founder of a Top 10
website) made public record and comment about Jordan in a venerable
publication like New Yorker, that made the whole affair worthy of inclusion
in any encyclopedia that seeks to have 2 million or more articles.
A Google search of 'Wales Jordan Wikipedia Essjay' returns 39,000 pages.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle. By comparison, a search for
'Quincy Troupe California laureate' returns "only" 10,100 pages; a search
for 'David Edmondson Radio Shack Pacific' returns "only" 13,200 pages.
If anyone needs to be blamed for the [[Essjay controversy]] article being in
Wikipedia, it's Jimmy Wales. He's the one who made all of the
publicity-drawing decisions that escalated this incident (elevating someone
he knew -- or should have known -- to have inauthentic credentials to the
Arbitration Committee, hiring the same person to his for-profit firm Wikia,
and commenting that he didn't "really have a problem with it"), other than
Jordan's initial untruth itself. Wales eventually sincerely apologized for
his mistakes. I commend that. But, it's another thing altogether to
suggest that the next remedy is to remove the article. If there are 39,000
pages floating around on the web about this topic, then clearly citizens of
the world will seek out Wikipedia for the encyclopedia's version of the
story, for years to come. What would it say to have nothing there, and a
ban on recreating the article?
--
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
Thoughts?
I'm not sure whether the interface they used was intentionally modeled
after an existing wiki package, or was just a generalized example. The
idea of prominent "edit" and "link" (for creating a new page) buttons
strikes me as more user-friendly, particularly for someone who's not
accustomed to the idea of a wiki.
Most of us probably know MediaWiki's syntax like the backs of our hands,
but I can see how it could be intimidating for a new user—particularly
on already well-developed articles, which tend to have wikitext
cluttered with tables and reference templates and all that. The toolbar
that Wikimedia wikis have doesn't really seem obvious, at least to me,
and it requires JavaScript.
--
Slowking Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Slowking_Man)
This is why I think the mailing list is a poor medium for discussion. Lots
of knee-jerk reactions on the part of everyone (one of the best things I
learned in my Business Writing course) due to the lack of an "edit" button and the
instant sending. I'm closing this topic on my end and focusing solely on
wikipedia discussion WRT the rewrite.
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
In a message dated 6/27/2007 1:24:06 AM Central Daylight Time,
cunctator(a)gmail.com writes:
About how to do *everything*?
Don't you recognize that *you're a newbie*?
You are in fact arguing that we should scrap policies and guidelines
because you, the comparative newbie, think you have good ideas.
You are also arguing that we should *not* scrap policies and guidelines.
Which one is it?
I'm reminded of Dana Perino now.
I believe you are misinterpreting my comments (understandable, as I'll
explain below). If you want specific examples as to why the mailing list involves
more knee jerk reactions, then that's a good one. Clearly, I didn't edit that
e-mail well enough ("do everything" was a silly comment on my part), and I
think you did the same (misinterpreting what I said and making a few rather b
old comments).
I assumed it was obvious that "so we should scrap policies and guidelines"
was not my position, because it was hypothetical. Also, there is a difference
between rewriting/modifying policies and scrapping them. We should *not*
scrap policies and guidelines; we should *rewrite and update* them as Wikipedia
evolves. The WP:FICT rewrite attempts to take the essense of the main
notability guideline (as well as parts of the current WP:FICT) and combine it with
good practices in day-to-day treatment of fiction.
Our exchanges are probably bordering on incivility, so I say we call it a
night/day and revisit this issue later (and I need to get some sleep, since my
uneven articulation and wordiness might be due to sleep deprivation). I think
we both have some valid points, but I can probably get mine across easier
and understand yours better in a day or two. Then perhaps we can work toward
discussing the actual rewrite and perhaps a compromise between the current
version and the rewrite, if you are interested.
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.