WikiEN-l December 2008

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

112 participants
159 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Subscription idea
by WJhonson＠aol.com 15 Jan '09

15 Jan '09

<<In a message dated 12/23/2008 8:57:12 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, wilhelm(a)nixeagle.org writes: If we start to use sources that only certain people can access, that closes off the ability of the average reader to verify what we write.>> ----------------------- The answer to this is "that only certain people can access ONLINE..." Any citation should give a full bibliographic citation that could be looked up offline as well. We would not want to subscribe to any content that is *solely* online and doesn't exist offline (such as stirnet.com). So a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle, *could* be found in an offline format, the online link is merely a convenience link for those who have access to it. Readers without, should still be able to verify the content in another fashion. Will Johnson **************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000…)

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JarlaxleArtemis/Grawp
by Fran Rogers 07 Jan '09

07 Jan '09

You all may remember [[User:JarlaxleArtemis]], who has been "editing" the English Wikipedia since 2004, at age 15. Originally he was an apparently good-faith editor, but was sanctioned by ArbCom in early 2005 for somewhat immature outbursts, copyright violations, and erratic behavior; eventually he pulled such stunts as putting his teacher's e-mail address on his userpage encouraging people to harass the "fucking bitch," e-mail bombing people who deleted his copyvios, and finally impersonating users and vandalizing with what would come to be hundreds of sockpuppets, all while claiming to be the victim. He was banned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArte mis_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlaxl eArtemis <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlax leArtemis&action=edit&oldid=117471376> &action=edit&oldid=117471376 He sockpuppeted and vandalized for a while after that, but apparently disappeared in 2006. One would have hoped maybe he grew out of his teenage phase and decided to get on with doing something productive instead. But sadly, the story doesn't end there. In mid-2007, he reappeared with a new "persona"... the move-vandal "Grawp." Unlike his ostensible predecessor Willy on Wheels, who at least had a harmless light-hearted flair to him, as "Grawp" Jarlaxle relished in specifically targeting users and sticking their personal information (usually gleaned from Daniel Brandt's website) in his page-move titles along with death threats and rape threats. Eventually we discovered that Grawp was in fact JarlaxleArtemis, and he only got more persistent and venomous (probably because as Jarlaxle, he was very open about his real-life identity and location himself.) About a week ago, having been one of Jarlaxle's recent targets, I decided to take matters into my own hand, and found his mother's contact information and wrote to her to inform her of the awful misdeeds her son's been up to. (While Jarlaxle is 19, he lives with his mother, and performs most of his vandalism from her Internet connection.) Instead of replying to me, however, she complained to OTRS that I was falsely accusing her son, who she insisted was JarlaxleArtemis but not Grawp. Jarlaxle then proceeded to prove her wrong... by vandalizing multiple wikis as "Grawp" later that night from the same IP address his mother sent her e-mail from. The ticket was handed to ArbCom, who replied to her with this evidence and the assurance that her son was in fact the one responsible... but received a response that she didn't believe them, didn't care, and was blocking all further e-mail from Wikimedia. (Though it's been suggested that Jarlaxle himself may have written that mail.) And he's continued to vandalize as recently as tonight. Personally, I'm utterly bamboozled. This kid is nineteen years old and in college; he's an adult, and he has his entire life ahead of him. Yet he still continues to anonymously threaten and harass people on the Internet, even though he's clearly stepped into illegal territory, his identity is known along with reams of evidence of his misdeeds connecting them to him, and his parent upon whom he's still dependent has been alerted. And he still soldiers on, using Mom's broadband to move pages on Wikipedia to titles "I will rape and murder (insert admin here)." What could possibly be running through his mind? And how can he be stopped? -Fran

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons
by toddmallen＠gmail.com 05 Jan '09

05 Jan '09

NPOV is not just a rule. It's what allows us to have a project at all. It is not "right" to violate NPOV because reality hurts someone's feelings. Reality frequently is painful. It's neither possible nor our job to change that. It's our job to make a neutral, factual, verifiable reference work. Not to impose our notions of right and wrong. Polarizing the issue into "those who agree with me are right and all others are wrongdoers" is unhelpful. -----Original Message----- From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:13 pm Size: 509 bytes To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 toddmallen(a)gmail.com wrote: > I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is > more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage. NPOV is a rule. BLP is about doing what's right. Some people elevate rules over doing what's right. I'm not one of them. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons
by toddmallen＠gmail.com 01 Jan '09

01 Jan '09

-----Original Message----- From: Falcorian <alex.public.account+ENWikiMailingList(a)gmail.com> Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:53 am Size: 450 bytes To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Scientia Potentia est < bibliomaniac_15(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > In the end, BLP is not one of our five pillars. The fact that we are an > encyclopedia is. > > bibliomaniac15 > That pretty much says it all. --Falcorian _______________________________________________ I'll put another "yes and hell yes" on that. Having reasonable BLP standards is great, but we passed "reasonable" many miles back. About time to bring it back to "Nothing unsourced or poorly sourced, no hatchet jobs, no pseudo-biographies that only cover the person'ss role in one event." We've gotten to the point of literal censorship on BLPs, where we're withholding relevant and well-sourced information like names, not because they can't be well-sourced (they can), but because of panic over "privacy." I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage. BLP is a necessary beast, but it's well past time to get it back on the leash, and make sure that leash stays short. If it's gotten to the point we're worried about it over neutrality, that just hammers home the need for real and immediate reform.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] NOR contradicts NPOV
by CrustyBush 01 Jan '09

01 Jan '09

I hope you'll forgive me - I've joined this mailing list half-way through this discussion. I am interested in what's being said, but am having a hard time trying to summarize it in my head. If I'm right, Phil is complaining that NOR contradicts NPOV because someone won't necessarily be able to defend themselves in their article because what they say (eg through a letter) will be OR, and therefore the article won't have NPOV? And then there's the discussion about whether the subject of an article can request the permanent deletion of that article? But then of course we'll have the scenario where only generally positive articles remain. Can't we just have it so that they insist that Wikipedia correct factual errors about themselves? And what's all this about spoiler warnings? Has there been a recent policy change? Where does one find out about these things? Thank you for being patient! I look forward to participating in the mailing list constructively.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion
by WJhonson＠aol.com 01 Jan '09

01 Jan '09

In a message dated 12/30/2008 8:32:58 PM Pacific Standard Time, wilhelm(a)nixeagle.org writes: Sorry, I am not getting it. Please explain in more detail.>> -------------------- First you must be familiar with the {{uc}}. This tag tells a tagger/deleter... STOP I'm working here ! If, for each new article, we simply automatically tag it {{uc}} with today's date, then no new article should get tagged for deletion simply because it's new and under developed. IF a new article is merely spam, or vandalism of course, you can delete it even with a uc tag. Some editors, like myself, do not develop articles all-at-once and plop them in, rather we develop them in-project with a bit and piece here and there and given several hours, you have a full article, or at least a useful stub. So new article patrollers just see one sentence, and then five minutes later two more sentences, and then 15 minutes later another paragraph.... they are likely to want to tag it as too stubby right away. The uc tag stops that. But new editors won't know, first day, about this tag . So making it automatic would solve that issue. Will Johnson **************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons
by WJhonson＠aol.com 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

<<In a message dated 12/28/2008 7:36:08 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com writes: But this response really does not sufficiently take into account the profound impact that our coverage has on the subjects of our articles.>> ----------------- And the counter-argument is, if someone has taken the step to become a public person, say the mayor of Santa Cruz, no one is to *blame* for that step except themselves. If we then turn up an article from a newspaper 20 years earlier that states that they were arrested for three DUIs, well, again they did it. The fact that we re-report it, and that we can collect it all together with other tidbits, into a biography, is the mere fact of our project to create a biography on the person. We aren't here to meekly parrot press releases, that would be a slap in the face of what creating an encyclopedia means. The "profound impact" is merely that Sarah Palin doesn't want you to dig into her past as reported in reliable sources, once she has become a bigger name than merely the mayor of a tiny Alaskan town. However we do, they do, that's the purpose of writing a biography. "This is your life" it's not our fault you messed it up. It is however our duty to report it. History is not always nice and sweet. Will Johnson **************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000…)

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Wikipedia's new plea for donations stirs skepticism
by Michel Vuijlsteke 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

This http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081230-wikipedias-new-plea-for-donat… is now showing up on Digg. Anyone on damage control? Michel

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion
by toddmallen＠gmail.com 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

That's already been discussed several times. It's really not feasible with the current load on speedy. The standards to avoid speedy (make a basic assertion of importance, provide sufficient context so someone will know what you're talking about, don't attack or advertise, don't post blatant copyvios) are really pretty minimal. If an article doesn't meet even these minimums, there's no reason to keep it around for an hour or at all. We can solve biting problems by being nice when speedying, not by failing to do it when needed. If we want to reduce the likelihood of speedies, let's restrict new article creation to those with a minimum number of mainspace edits to ensure at least some experience with content policies. This would also deter a lot of page creation vandalism and "JOHN IS A (insert expletive here)" and "We are the leading widget provider..." type garbage. -----Original Message----- From: Jon <scream(a)datascreamer.com> Subj: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion Date: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:07 pm Size: 1K To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I do want to thank everyone who gave input for my BLP question, and a special nod to Angela who pointed out the archives. I should have read those first. Here is a second issue I would like to discuss, if the group is inclined. Speedy deletion nominations, I would propose there be a paradigm shift from our current thinking of "Tag immediately and template the user talk *right after* creation to something like "don't tag untill an hour has passed". I believe this will be less bity and more encouraging to our users. To quote something I observed today from one good editor in reference to our jest over speedy deletions: "Welcome to wikipedia. You didn't create a good enough article in your allotted 60 seconds so we deleted it. Dont forget to sign your posts!" Even though it was in jest, it is true. I think perhaps it is time we consider enacting (onwiki discussion to follow if this is well received) something of a one hour rule to tagging and templating. We've grown so... ...automated. Thoughts? Best, Jon -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkla77MACgkQ6+ro8Pm1AtVdYACdGluva0JY2MmTfZkkYixRC+g5 PAAAoJerVDg8COBPdYcdTizmZCUJGAp9 =6sv9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion
by WJhonson＠aol.com 31 Dec '08

31 Dec '08

Thank you for explaining that. I would endorse a tool like the one you described. Will Johnson **************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000…)

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WikiEN-l December 2008