WikiEN-l September 2007

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

133 participants
274 discussions

Being bold doesn't work anymore, or why our prose is so bad.
by Steve Bennett 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

Against my better judgment, I attempted to improve the wording of a particularly badly written article. Last time I did this ([[Spruce goose]]), it got reverted. Guess what? Here are my changes: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bird_strike&diff=156028841&oldid=… And the (partial) revert: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bird_strike&diff=next&oldid=15602… The reverter seems to think it's important to mention that birdstrikes "will result in major injuries or death to the bird" and is particularly enamored with the phrasing in "High speeds, however, as for example with modern jet engine aircraft will produce considerable energy and may cause considerable damage ". Is it just aviation? Is it just me being jaded and impatient? Or is this the reason so much of Wikipedia prose is so crap? Because the payoff for trying to fix it is so small, and editors put so much weight on every possible detail being retained, at the expense of clarity and readability? Feel free to tell me if I'm totally off base here. Steve

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3RR needs to go (was Re: Newbie biting, the 3RR, and improper labeling of vandalism)
by Armed Blowfish 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

Blocking people isn't going to help y'all decide what version the page should be, and will probably just make it hard for anyone to work together. I suggest you get rid of per-user 3RR and replace it with some sort of per-article revert rule, which results in article protection if a limit is exceeded. Then y'all can actually talk about content instead of quibbling over who deserves to be blocked and who doesn't. Deserves... did something wrong... doesn't deserve... didn't do anything wrong.... 3RR blocks are punitive, and do nothing to protect the encyclopaedia itself y'all are always bringing up as an excuse to hurt people. Not that anyone will listen to me.... Actually I don't care that much, as long as you are nice to the people when you block them... but that might be too much to hope for.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] The more I think about my ban from Wikipedia, the more I realize how wrong it was.
by Monahon, Peter B. 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

"The price of freedom is constant vigilance" -- attributed to Thomas Jefferson -- I don't think this discussion will ever go away. I don't think this discussion SHOULD ever go away. I don't think we all disagree, essentially or penultimately; we only disagree superficially. What I think happens a lot is that we all end up each of us talking about different things in the same discussion, and then we don't know it, and think we're arguing. Some of us see the encyclopedia on it's own, and consider the people around it to be secondary or expendable. Some others of us are looking at the people first. If one of us writes, "The most important thing is such-and-such...", the reader might be unaware that the writer is looking at a different part of Wikipedia than they are, and so the argument spirals, untethered to any disciplined, preliminary, agreed-upon common experience. For example, we could be talking about how horrible, or great, are the pyramids. One of us thinks that if some workers are killed during construction, that's fine - it's the cost of the job. Some of us want that pyramid to always be subordinate to the members of the community building it. So, then, we're not talking about the same thing. One is talking about the pyramids themselves, the other about the people. Same here. Those of us writing about Wikipedia without regard for the people are thinking of something completely different from those of us who are writing about the people. So, conversely, am I writing about the people without regard for the Wikipedia? I don't think so. I have trust that the encyclopedia will get built, and will be even better, if it comes from a healthy, all-inclusive community . But, I suppose that I can see how someone else might think that I don't care about the encyclopedia at all. Just as I might see someone talking about Wikipedia without regard for the people - that may be an erroneous impression, also. -- > Earlier: "... being a democratic > community is not our goal ... we > sometimes ban people because > they do not, will not, or can not > contribute positively to the > encyclopaedia ..." Peter Blaise responds: "We" sometimes ban? No. ONE person sometimes bans another person ... and they do it because they CAN. Banning is an expression of that one person's impatience, that one person's misunderstanding, that one person's whim, that one person's malice, that one person's inability to spend the time and energy needed to resolve the problem inclusively, with respect for the other person upon whom they blame their frustration. Aside: Help me with the source of the following story, true or false, but it illustrates for me the opposite of a "banning admin": "Two chess champions were struggling in a tournament when one stood up mid-game, cleared the board with an angry swipe of their arm, and yelled, "I can't believe I'm loosing to such an idiot!"" I other words, the first player didn't know how to beat their opponent, whom they considered inferior, but honored that their opponent was going to win that game nevertheless, and so decided to let them win by default, rather than by the first player actually putting in all the work for an entire game, and loosing anyway. My point here is to suggest that admins caught up in a personal snit should bow out gracefully and let someone else address their "opponent" next, rather than ban their opponent. -- > Earlier: "... Wikipedia's community > is a co-dominate oligarchy with > high class mobility ..." Peter Blaise responds: I'm beginning to understand that democracy is always underneath any other supposed form of governance - democracy is the base note underneath any community regardless of it's claim to another form. I find democracy to be the least offensive and lowest common denominator of all communities. I also find that non-democracies are essentially inflicted by a few powerful individuals for their own convenience, people who value something other than the community. Also, admins don't ban people because those people ARE bad for the community and Wikipedia. Admins ban people because THEY THINK something about the people they ban, and because THEY CAN. Period. The tools of governance aren't intelligent. They don't distinguish intention from result. They do not know when they are being used as a weapon for good or evil. A ban is a ban is a ban is a ban, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. Perhaps we agree on an "end" goal: - Anyone unhealthy for the community and encyclopedia should be separated from the community until rehabilitated. Perhaps we disagree on the "means" to that end: - Who should decide? For how long? What tools / weapons should an individual have at hand? What tools / weapons should the community have at hand? -- > Earlier: "... Bans are not the decision > of one person - they are the decision > of 1200 people ..." So, 1,200 agree unanimously? Or, is it 601 people that must agree BEFORE a ban is inflicted? Do they all have to also agree on the extent of the ban? How does the banned person seek relief or recourse? Or, is it more likely that any ONE admin, sysop, bureaucrat can do any dang banning they please, for any dang reason they please, accurate or inaccurate, real or imagined. Then the poor banned person, if they can figure out a way, can try to find someone to appeal to, and you suggest there are 1,199 other admins who are ready, willing and able to respond to an unban request on demand? Sounds fair to me. NOT! Let me put it this way: (a) I believe 100% that anyone who is destructive of Wikipedia or any of it's members should be separated from Wikipedia articles (if that's where their crime took effect) and or from discussion / talk pages (it that's where their crime took effect) - essentially BANNED - until they have fixed what they have broken and have taken steps to prevent themselves from doing it again. On this I agree wholeheartedly. (b) I believe 0% in the Wikipedia power distribution and judicial system, so I think banning should NOT be permitted as a tool /weapon in their hand. Otherwise, banning is fine by me, just so long as no one has the power to ban - that is, no ONE has the power to ban! ========== Next problem - how to prevent stealth sabotage and take over by ominous powers, like the energies of, say, for instance, the China government. I suggest that Wikipedia is a POWER because of it's global influence, not the least of it from Google's high-ranking reporting on Wikipedia's popularity. Add to that the power to ban, and it makes any take-over absolute, even if it's "just" a corner of Wikipedia's many topic areas, even if only for a short period of time - that may be all that's needed to produce their desired effect. This challenge is different than a rogue, whimsical admin flexing their ego. This is, perhaps, a subtle, 10-year plan by some covert "secret service", maybe not even so far away as China, though on the Internet, everyone is equally close! No one has addressed the challenge to prevent that. I put it to us all that the features of the wonderful, incredible Wikiscanner http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ and it's users, independent of Wikipedia, are insufficient to the challenge. However, removing the banning tool altogether helps level the playing field, along with diminishing the powers of the "we ain't no democracy (meaning: we have the power)" proponents. I suppose the Foundation can try to reclaim Wikipedia, or whatever part has been co-opted after such an incident - why prevent something we don't believe, or even imagine, can happen? --

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Is fair use a right as well as a defense?
by Daniel R. Tobias 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

On 11 Sep 2007 at 13:29:21 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > And I didn't note that "case by case" is actually required for > justifying fair use. If the "abuse" is removing a nonfree image, I > generally find myself almost entirely unable to manifest two hoots. It can be kind of frustrating, though, to try to get what one feels is justified fair use images into the encyclopedia in the face of the strong ideological opposition from those who want a totally purist site in the area of copyright license. The purists won in many language Wikipedias, such as German, but couldn't get such an outright victory in English, so they took the next best step for them of continually tossing up hoops for image uploaders to jump through. Since I uploaded quite a few top-level-domain registry logos in the course of populating the infoboxes for TLDs (I created the TLD infobox and spent about two years gradually getting them in place in all the TLDs, including the 200-plus country code domains), and did most of this uploading in the more cavalier days when image licensing wasn't as vigorously policed as it is now, I'm faced now with a steady stream of ominous talk-page notices posted by bots threatening to remove this or that image unless I jump through whichever hoop they're tossing now, like providing a source or a rationale or a haiku. -- == 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/

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stable versions
by Anthony 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

On 9/8/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: > A very important aspect that needs to be in stable versions, IMO, is the > ability to ignore the system completely if one wants to. The first thing > I plan to do when the feature is enabled is to set my preferences so > that I always see the most recent version, not just the most recent > stable version; I want to work at the raw coal face of Wikipedia, for me > stable versions is just a fence around the worksite to get people to > stop "helpfully" filling in the hole I'm trying to dig. > Just curious. If I made a patch that allowed any user with "markstable" (by default sysops) to mark a particular version of an article as "stable", and then showed that version to users who weren't logged in, and added $wgStableVersions to turn it on and off, would it be accepted?

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Open/Unsecure Proxy - Tor
by NavouWiki 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Am I misreading the block feed or, are we blocking dynamically assigned IP address space with the reason {proxy} for indef? Navou

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Why I don't believe in conspiracies
by K P 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

On 9/9/07, Brock Weller <brock.weller(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ...You severely over estimate how > coordinated we are as a community. For god sake, we cant settle on > anything, you think we can come to a decision on this and keep it > secret? .... > >Snip > >> -Brock > There is a cabal, but it's a damn ineffective one. KP

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Spam blacklist and BADSITES
by Daniel R. Tobias 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

On 9 Sep 2007 at 23:41:59 -0400, "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 9/9/07, fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote: > > I think there is a consensus. > > Consensus? I call bullshit. Fred, you know that voices in your head do > not count as a consensus even when they agree. The voices in *my* head are generally in fervent disagreement with me. -- == 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/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Spam blacklist and BADSITES
by Daniel R. Tobias 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

On 9 Sep 2007 at 20:11:03 +0000, fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info wrote: > There has been extensive discussion, although not in a public > forum. We have had enough of Judd Bagley and his site. You decide things in backroom discussions, like the smoke filled rooms of old, and then you get peeved when people claim that there's a "cabal"? I think there's a pretty big "we" around who's had enough of a clique getting to decide what things the rest of the peons are allowed to see or talk about. The whole Bagley / Overstock / Weiss / Slim / etc. tangled mess gives off the stench of a thousand garbage dumps, and when there's that much stink around it's hard to tell for sure who it's coming from... but, as Kelly Martin said in her blog a while back, it exerts a pernicious influence on a lot of things all over Wikipedia, affecting article content decisions everywhere from [[Naked Short Selling]] to [[Lutheranism]], and policy decisions from banning policy to BADSITES and its progeny. It may be time for everybody outside that proverbial smoke filled room, everybody not entangled in the personal connections of the clique, to rise up and take back Wikipedia. -- == 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/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3))
by Daniel R. Tobias 10 Sep '07

10 Sep '07

On 10 Sep 2007 at 17:29:57 -0400, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: > Surely you wouldn't like it if someone decided to gather up a list of > the stupidest things you've done, throw in a few accusations of stuff > that didn't actually happen, then got together with a bunch of friends > and held a circus trial, found you guilty, and documented it all > indefinitely on a website which was so loved by Google that it became > the number one hit for anyone searching your name. "For Google so loved the Website that It gave Its only begotten Pagerank, that whoever believes in Wikipedia shall not perish but have everlasting Edits." -- The Gospel According to Wikipedia, 3:16 -- == 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/

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WikiEN-l September 2007