WikiEN-l September 2007

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133 participants
274 discussions

Slrubenstein complaining Was: Admins who do not have email this user enabled (list inside)
by Gregory Maxwell 14 Sep '07

14 Sep '07

[wrong thread david :)] On 9/12/07, steven rubenstein <slrubenstein(a)yahoo.com> wrote: [snip] > (PS by all means, go ahead and make some dismissive comment about me. > The great thing about not being on the listserve is, it doesn't matter > to me) Okay. Prior to Steven's post no one was attacking anyone. There was no yelling, no accusations, no burnings at the stake. As far as I'm aware admins are not required by policy to have email this user enabled, although it's a good practice. Multiple people had pointed out that it was easy to end up in that state accidently. All in all a polite and resonable conversation. Then in wades Steven with the meoldramatic accusations of Witchhunting. It just made no sense. I felt attacked by it, ... can I not post a simple factual list without being accused of all sorts of evil? but it was somewhat hard to feel too bad about it because it just made no sense. As such I'm thankful for Phil's reply. I didn't ask for it, but I saw it as a defense. I laughed. It could have been more polite, sure.. but I'm just glad someone took the time out of their day to say something about Steven's message rather than leaving the people it was targeted at standing alone. Most importantly, I think that no one should claim that it was Phil who attacked first in this case: The fact Steven used non-sense accusations rather than mean words or a condescending tone didn't make his message any less of an attack than if he had. It amuses me that around here the people I see doing the most harassing are the ones who claim to be against harassment.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2
by Sue Reed 14 Sep '07

14 Sep '07

Thomas, You said that much better than I did. Sue Anne sreed1234(a)yahoo.com ----- Original Message ---- From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> I've seen a few cases recently of people thinking that respecting privacy requires complete silence. It doesn't. If there is something you aren't telling people you should tell them that you aren't telling them and explain why not. If someone leaves for reasons you can't give then you announce "So-and-so is leaving for undisclosed reasons." or something. _______________________________________________ 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2
by Sue Reed 14 Sep '07

14 Sep '07

There is a balance here that people are discounting. A simple email that said, "Employee X has decided to leave the Wikimedia Foundation for personal reasons effective xx-xx-xxxx. We wish her the best in her future endeavors." possibly would have cleared this all up. It doesn't make the Foundation look like they are trying to shuffle someone out the back door while no one is looking. Any further inquiries can be told that due to the confidentiality policy, no further information would be discussed. With the profile of Wikimedia and Wikipedia, any major staff member leaving the company is going to have an impact. Sue Anne sreed1234(a)yahoo.com ----- Original Message ---- From: Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 9:48:06 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2 WikipediaEditor Durin wrote: > On 9/14/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> As it ever occurred to you that Carolyn herself may have preferred so ? > > > Certainly. > > However, for a major entity such as the Wikimedia Foundation to lose > it's Chief Operating Officer without making a formal announcement > smacks of organizational immaturity. That this was not done, and that > this is being *defended* smacks of reasons that the Foundation wants > to keep hidden. Actually no. I think that on the contrary that case was an example of us maturing greatly. Meanwhile, there is a confidentiality agreement with Carolyn to not further comment. Carolyn has the full right of talking to you, but we, as an organization, can not give details. In the past, there were some questions of how trustworthy the Foundation could be with confidential personal data. The Foundation was blamed because some private data were supposingly revealed and a couple of checkusers preferred to stop being checkusers when we requested them to simply give us proof of their real identity, because they feared that some spills could occur and their private data could become public. I find quite amusing that now you are trying to blame us for precisely respecting confidentiality :-) Regardless, I think you'll have to get used to the fact that as the organization is growing and maturing, all new hire and all new resignations will not be announced noisily, nor commented in all private details. You are perfectly free to try to guess who, why, when and what. Ah, and... in case you wonder, Sue started a quest to look for a new COO this summer. On related topics, I am myself starting a quest to look for a new treasurer since our current one (Michael) would like to move on. We may not do a BIG announcement about that. Before you start reflecting on bad hidden dark secrets, there is no secret. Michael has been on the board nearly 4 years. He does not have time any more for it. He is very busy with Wikia. He is part time working on west coast whilst his home is on the east coast. He indicated as early as end of 2006 that he would be ready to move out as soon as we found a good replacement. Recently, he urged me to start actively looking for a treasurer, as he feels we now have a staff in place allowing this change. No big deal. Just a person who want to move on :-) Anthere _______________________________________________ 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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3))
by Armed Blowfish 14 Sep '07

14 Sep '07

On 08/09/2007, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: > Thomas Dalton wrote: >>> I think making the pages available in high-ranking Google >>> results is more than 'transparency', it's shouting out to >>> the world. >>> >> Google's rankings are Google's responsibility. Wikipedia has never >> worried about search engine rankings, we just do what we think best >> and let the search engines do what they think best. Fortunately, those >> generally coincide, so Wikipedia has very high rankings, but we don't >> make any special effort to achieve those rankings. We also don't make >> any special effort to get rid of them. > > This appears to be sound reasoning. Basing our activity on "What does > Google think?" is a cyber-equivalent to letting your home decisions be > guided by what the neighbours think. It relinquishes control to outside > elements who have no vested interest in your efforts. > > Ec Wikipaedia is posting negative information about relatively private individuals... or are banned users considered so notable now that BLP does not apply? Are you so determined to take revenge on those that are banned that you must destroy their online and offline reputations as much as possible? Wikipaedia does control its robots.txt files. The encyclopaedic namespaces are the main namespace and the image namespace. What does the rest contain that so needs to be indexed by Google that you do not care how many people's reputations are destroyed, or how many Wikipaedians are tracked by other websites?

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Newbie biting, the 3RR, and improper labeling of vandalism
by SPUI 14 Sep '07

14 Sep '07

tl;dr version: three users including two admins revert-war a newbie past 3RR; one of them blocks the newbie for it, and doesn't block one of the admins, who had also broken 3RR, because the edits - made in good faith, and possibly even good edits - were supposedly vandalism. The blocking admin insists he did nothing wrong. Introductory links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mm555 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Route_50&action=history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mm555 Rschen7754 and TwinsMetsFan are admins; O is not one on en. Mm555 appears to be a newbie, or a former IP editor, from the Carson City, Nevada area. Among his edits, he edited [[U.S. Route 50]] to add junctions with US 395 and US 95 to the infobox, and was reverted a few times, in my opinion properly, since having that many junctions for each state would make it too big. A comment was added to the infobox: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Route_50&diff=prev&oldid=156… stating that there were enough junctions. A discussion on the talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:U.S._Route_50#Junctions_list_for_US_50 basically agreed that US 93 is not a major junction and US 95 would be better; US 395 was brought up but not rejected. Mm555, after reverting a change from US 93 to US 95: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Route_50&diff=next&oldid=156… decided that US 395 is better and changed to that: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Route_50&diff=next&oldid=156… Personally, I think I agree; the US 395 and US 95 junctions are fairly close, and the US 395 junction is in Carson City, the state capital. Rschen7754 reverted his edit "to good version", O made four reverts, and TwinsMetsFan made one. Mm555 ended up making five reverts. Rschen7754 warned him several times for vandalism, and O threw in a "Please do stop and read the guideline" ( Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Infoboxes and Navigation/Infobox , which it doesn't look like anyone linked him to); it's also about the number of junctions, not which one to choose. Nobody told him about the 3RR and nobody pointed him to the talk page discussion. TwinsMetsFan blocked him for 3RR, but did not block O. I confronted TMF and O on IRC, and TMF said he didn't block O because O was reverting vandalism. They claimed that Mm555's edits were vandalism because he wasn't following the consensus on the talk page. What should be done about this? The blocking admin insists he did nothing wrong; I didn't get a chance to talk with the other admin, who gave most of the warnings. Obviously Mm555 should be unblocked and apologized to, if he's not already gone. But how do we prevent this from happening again?

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(no subject)
by None 13 Sep '07

13 Sep '07

>From gwern0(a)gmail.com Fri Sep 14 08: 28:12 2007 From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0(a)gmail.com> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3)) Message-ID: <20070914122812.GA3301@localhost> References: <71cd4dd90709131010x2f1e62b2qf851fb33e7300e12(a)mail.gmail.com> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0709131502120.17247-100000(a)green.rahul.net> <71cd4dd90709131611h53e91b86scdb061be59f111af(a)mail.gmail.com> <a4359dff0709131615reead4d7p984098ba3693fd1f(a)mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <a4359dff0709131615reead4d7p984098ba3693fd1f(a)mail.gmail.com> X-GnuPG-KeyID: F7E5D682 X-GnuPG-Fingerprint: 85F9 9FDE 8F20 898F 59BC DF32 BE90 E8E4 F7E5 D682 X-Editor: GNU Emacs 23.0.50.1 X-Operating-System: 2.6.22-gentoo-r6 x86_64 GNU/Linux X-Mutt-References: <a4359dff0709131615reead4d7p984098ba3693fd1f(a)mail.gmail.com> X-Mutt-Fcc: ~/doc/mail/sent X-Mutt-PGP: S<F7E5D682> Status: RO Content-Length: 518 Lines: 12 Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:40:20 -0700 (PDT) On 0, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> scribbled: > > All depends on what the person did. Prank call 911? Leave the poor > > woman alone. Try to molest a minor? Have some respect for his human > > dignity. That's Jimbo's answer, anyway. > > I'm afraid I don't understand. Could you rephrase that? I think the 911 one is a reference to an old article that was an early deletion under BLP, and the latter is probably about Brian Peppers. -- gwern Operation EG&G 411 Hackers mixm Syria GSGI FBI Dodger DES

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I've been in a bad mood today. I apologise.
by Matthew Brown 13 Sep '07

13 Sep '07

I'm off work sick and am in a grumpy mood. Unfortunately, I think I've let that spill over into too many posts today. I apologise for my tone & assure you that I'm not normally QUITE this abrasive. I plan on either going back to bed or going out to clear my head, and won't be posting again until I feel capable of much greater civility. With thanks, -Matt

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Re: [WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2
by David Gerard 13 Sep '07

13 Sep '07

On 13/09/2007, Elonka(a)aol.com <elonka(a)aol.com> wrote: > Dunno if she's got the slides or talk up anywhere. Elonka? (cc'd) She says she hasn't put them up on a site because she hasn't got all image permissions yet, but promises she will! - d.

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More Wikipedia job openings!
by David Gerard 13 Sep '07

13 Sep '07

http://www.scriptlance.com/projects/1189575159.shtml?ref=hostmedic shyeah right. Spam filter anyone? - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2
by Armed Blowfish 13 Sep '07

13 Sep '07

On 12/09/2007, Josh Gordon <user.jpgordon(a)gmail.com> wrote: > "Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away." - Goethe (from where, I > wonder?) > --jpgordon 'Fear has its own physiology - primal responses to threat: the quickened heart, the sweaty palm, the panic that chokes in the throat, making time seem to stand still. We are born with these instincts to flee danger from the world outside us, to survive. But there's no place to run when the dangers come not from outside us, but from ourselves.' 'Fuelled by memory, fear takes form, becoming a thing that lives long after death, residing not just in our hearts, but in the hidden bonds between us. Fear so powerful can not be escaped, but it can be destroyed.' -- both quotes from Kolchak: The Night Stalker

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WikiEN-l September 2007