I find to have identified in a pair of templates a clear and present danger to the consensus-building principle on which our wiki rests: Template:Discussion top and Template:Discussion bottom.
These are being utilized to stifle and suppress free exchange of opinions when they sometimes are being applied to cut off what is being vicariously painted by one party as unconstructive/ridiculous/disruptive/pointless/time-wasting/take your pick, discussions.
We have other, appropriate, means to deal with "trolling" and genuinely disruptive contributions. This pair of templates makes it way too easy to put us all on a track which fundamentally and possibly irreversibly, compromises the consensus-building process.
I have thus nominated the pair of template for deletion. Opinions on this are particularly welcomed on the Templates for discussion page.
Halvor (meco)
--
all communication to and from this person will be subject to public availability
public password: 17stovner
_________________________________________________________
Alt i ett. Få Yahoo! Mail med adressekartotek, kalender og
notisblokk. http://no.mail.yahoo.com
Grawp has been a problem for a very long time and not only on the
english wikipedia but on every single wikimedia wiki as well as about
200 other wikis and wikia and even though most of his edits were just
page moves with links to shocksites, but quite recently within the
last 6 month, he has started to randomly attack users both on their
sex and religion and quite recently he has stoop so low as to attack
the users family members and children which is most definitely the
nail to the coffin. This has gone far enough and since the mother does
not want to take matters to her own hands, we may have to take this
one step further and go to the feds because internet bullying and
harassment is a CRIME and its about time he paid the price..we have
had enough !!
--
Cometstyles
Those of you whose spam filters work as badly as mine are no doubt
familiar with the genre of 419 spam emails. You know the thing, "Dear
Respected Sir. I am the Minister for Trade of Nigeria, and I wish to
embezzle a BILLION dollars AMERICAN..." One element of these that you
occasionally see is "supporting evidence" - the writer tries to give
the impression the email is legitimate by linking to an entirely
respectable but irrelevant news story which proves the person they're
claiming to be actually exists, in the hope that this will make the
whole thing seem legit.
Last month, I got one purporting to be from Maria das Neves, the
former Prime Minister of São Tomé and Principe. What immediately
caught my attention, as I went to hit delete, was that it linked not
to a newspaper article about her, but the Wikipedia article (which it
referred to as "my profile")
This was on 15th December. And sure enough, if we look at the December
statistics for that page, we find that about four hundred people
followed the link over a couple of days:
http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/Maria_das_Neves
There's a second, smaller, spike at the end of the month; a second
run? If we look back there's also one around November 24th, and one
yesterday (January 17th).
An entirely unexpected application of stats.grok.se, there!
On a more relevant content note, it seems most of these "waves" led
people to add warnings about it to the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=258161984&ol…http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=260979984&ol…http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=264791843&ol…
...so the "you can edit" idea must be getting fairly apparent even
among people who read spam :-)
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Long time since I've posted
I made two edits to the Jesus article. The first dealt with the lede
paragraph, and the second dealt with the etymology section. Leadwind
reverted the edit and left a brief message: (reverted recent edits, lede
should be 4 paragraphs not 5, controversy issue is not cited, see talk). I
explained my edit on the talk. After I waited a while, Leadwind had not
responded, so I restored my version, and considering his comments I
removed paragraph I added on controversy.
Slrubenstein came along reverted my edits without comment or explanation
on talk. I explained my edit on the talk page and the comment line again
and waited a while for a reply. After a while I decided he was either
somewhere else, in which case I would restore my version and we would deal
with it when he got back, or else he was acting like an edit ninja and I
could disregard him altogether. We were both cautioned about 3RR and the
version stood as I left it - still with no discussion on the present
issues from SLR. SLR commented on a previous issue which we were dealing
with on the talk, but at that point we were dealing with the first issue
of the lede, and on that he still said nothing. Nothing at all to back up
his revert.
Orangemarlin came along and did the same thing. Instead of no comment at
all, he simply said the issue was NPOV. I waited for an actual explanation
on talk. Nothing, so I restored my version again, telling him that wasn't
good enough just to call something NPOV without discussing it and backing
it up. Fair enough?
So, in dealing with two edit ninjas, neither of whom gave two cents worth
of reasoning for their reverts, on either comment or talk, other than
NPOV. Now I don't know about you, but I have a problem with people
claiming ownership of articles such that they think they don't have to
deal with the actual content of an edit such as mine.
I got hit with warnings about "edit warring," and I was blocked. SLR now
claims on AN3 that I am "lying" and conjectures that I "will no doubt
respond to this either by dismissing me, or attacking me, or with some
irrelevant ramble." Indeed. Of course, his explanation is not faithful to
today's chronology, and has nothing to do with his reverts
today, and he instead is dealing with a separate issue. Two separate
issues, and separate edits. He has been responsive on the controversy
issue, but not on the issue of the lede, and his unqualified reverts.
Now, in the course of yesterdays issues, SLR and I exchanged a few jabs.
He called me a subtle anti-Semite, and I insinuated that he was a peddler
of anti-Christian dogma disguised as scholarship. Other choice words such
as "irrational" have been thrown around. I think I kept my cool for the
most part.
I happen to really think the edit ninja concept is wonderful; it
identifies a certain kind of editor that we've had on WP all along, (and
now have a name for) without actually resorting to the use of an epithet,
which one might feel quite inclined to do. I have respect for SLR, and
have dealt with him for years. But his apparent responsiveness yesterday
vanished today, and he acted like just another edit ninja. Orangemarlin
followed suit, and likewise offered no substantive reason for asserting
one version over another. He could have just left it alone, as SLR and I
apparently were, as we both recieved 3RR warnings. But he didn't. He, like
other admins like to do stuck his nose in without reason, and without
addressing the substance.
Am I being a jerk here? ...For assuming that I deserve some kind of actual
response and rationale when someone decides to just undo what Ive done?
Should I just infer that other people know better than I do, and they
should be able to just basically screw with people whenever they want to?
Stevertigo
Mark wrote: ->Even if they did, I'd find Wikipedia more useful for
many things, such
as getting overviews of fields that have multiple competing viewpoints,
and pointers into the literature for further research. But I'd probably
read Britannica, too, whereas currently I don't really.<-
Oh yeah, try to find a Britannica article for each Beatles song and
each Pink Floyd song.
--
Alvaro
When I gave my occupation as encyclopedist on Blogger, I found another
had also, The Vital Encyclopedist. He blogs at
http://encyclopediavital.blogspot.com/
He in an inclusionist, but from the conventional encyclopedia world.
Fred
I recently came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Outlines
and it took me a while to realize the full extend of this desaster.
Some part of en.wp's authors is duplicating Wikipedia, this time
without text.
For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_outline_of_Algeria is
a list of articles somehow related to Algeria. This purpose is better
served by either [[:en:Algeria]] (with full sentences) or by
[[:en:Category:Algeria]] (with proper software, without full
sentences).
My recommendation would be to delete them on sight. Given the
situation at en.wp, this is better done with a formal VfD,
triple-signed by someone else and already attached objections and
specialized templates for revision and arbitration, right?
Mathias