Might be of interest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/10130195.stm
"Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube
because of its "growing sacrilegious content". [...] Some Wikipedia
pages are also now being restricted, latest reports say. [...]"
Carcharoth
Recap: A while ago we discussed date conditional switching templates:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-May/100714.html .
The problem to be corrected was the use of future tense language which
then becomes outdated and thus notably incorrect. This also has a
greater effect of casual correction patterns which essentially
annotate the error rather than fixing it. For example:
""Apple's iTunes store *will start* to sell DRM-free 256 kbit/s (up
from 128 kbit/s) AAC encoded music from EMI for a premium price (this
has since reverted to the standard price).""
A proper correction would have simply changed "will start [to sell]"
to "began [to sell]" and that would be that. Time and tenses require a
little bit of thinking however, and an editor made a parenthetical
comment (edit note, annote) in place of a considered switch of tense.
Forgivable but incorrect. If the {{dateswitch}} template idea was
fully implemented and used, anyone writing future events could simply
write {{dateswitch|will start|began|ON DATE}} and the switch would
happen on the date.
The idea had some support, but people had some issues with dateswitch
templates that would produce the wrong output because of some later
change in the input. I guess that this might be more rare than common.
The above example is notable however of where they miss the point. I
note that we now have a category for some tags which relate to time,
but I don't know about some of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Temporal_templates These appear
to be largely template messages, and if we are to employ actual
computational power in helping deal with outdating, would it make
sense to make a distinction between temporal messages and temporal
(functional) tags?
-SC
In which year of Wikipedia's existence did it start to really attract and satisfy users? In other words, when did it hit a critical mass of good content so that users searching for information on Topic X had a reasonable chance of finding something on the site that would make them want to return as an end user rather than just a contributor who supported the site's concept?
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On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of
> Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He used
> to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's
> administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things
> that other people can't view on every project.
[snip]
This is absolutely no different than any of the several other
incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do
something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical
ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to
do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability
in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't
do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people.
(I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves,
but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it
would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them)
Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a
necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a
consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects.
So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they
cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them,
especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white
after the fact.
Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent thing:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales
For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all
the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as
having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the
authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete
indifference) of the involved community.
Activity requirements were imposed on stewardship, and Jimmy only used
the technical permissions on enwp (due to traditional practices on
this project) thus failing to meet the requirements. But his
traditional role on enwp justified keeping some elevated privileges,
so rather than cope with an exception to the steward rules a special
role was created. Tada.
But the change in naming of the permissions from the conventional role
to the special one didn't actually confer an increase in authority—
and when the extent of the actual authority to push privileged changes
outside of enwp was tested the unequivocal answer[1] was that it
didn't exist... and there really is no real reason to say that it ever
existed.
Some people want to spin this into a narrative about Jimmy's role on
english Wikipedia, but thats bogus— This wasn't an english wikipedia
thing, and rather than supporting the suggestion that this signals a
loss of authority on English Wikipedia the actual expedience suggests
the opposite: Look at relative concentrations of enwp users in the
poll. ISTM that Enwp users are quite comfortable with Jimmy playing
an important role as he has traditionally, and that almost everyone
else is either indifferent or surprised by the notion— unsurprising
because they haven't had the pleasure of working with him. (And,
while it's been a long time since I've worked with Jimmy on anything,
and while I disagreed with his involvement here, it's still the case
that I completely understand where the traditional role on enwp comes
from: He _is_ a great community member to work with... but the other
project communities aren't filled with people that have that
experience)
[1] Or as unequivocal as anything involving 350 people can ever be:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_Jimbo
I was wondering how you were doing.
By the way, Medcom has a backlog and needs more members. Dispute
resolution seems to be in need of some overhauling again anyway. Might
be a place where some leadership would help.
-SC
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> > Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of
> > Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He
> used
> > to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's
> > administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things
> > that other people can't view on every project.
> [snip]
>
> This is absolutely no different than any of the several other
> incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do
> something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical
> ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to
> do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability
> in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't
> do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people.
> (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves,
> but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it
> would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them)
>
Well, it's different in that it's the founder of the organization, the
technical ability was the highest given to anyone, that it was used several
times in the past (even more boldly) with impunity, etc.
Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a
> necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a
> consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects.
> So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they
> cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them,
> especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white
> after the fact.
>
What was the line that was crossed? It wasn't unilateral deletion. Wales
has done that and more in the past, blocking and deadminning people who
deemed to question his asserted authority, and he's gotten away with it.
But this time, it was different.
In any case, I'd say it's newsworthy, in a way that no other deadminship
ever came close to being.
> Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent
> thing:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales
>
> For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all
> the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as
> having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the
> authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete
> indifference) of the involved community.
>
I'll have to check the records, but I believe Jimbo used his powers
"unilaterally", beyond that of a normal steward, before granting himself the
founder flag. In fact, I seem to remember the founder flag being invented
in response to some questions over whether or not he had the authority to do
certain things.
But I'll have to check the records, unless you can remember what it is I'm
thinking of.
"19:10, 14 September 2008 Jimbo
Wales<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales>
(Talk <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales> |
contribs<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales>
) blocked Moulton <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Moulton>
(Talk<http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moulton&action=edit&r…>|
contribs <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Moulton>)with
an expiry time of
infinite (account creation disabled, e-mail blocked) (Incivility)"
That predates the founder flag, right?
To point it out, there is a template {{badimage}} to indicate an image is on the bad images list, but simply adding this template is not enough. Adding to the bad images list requires administrator intervention. The template is purely informational.
Perhaps that's where the confusion lies.
Shirik
------Original Message------
From: K. Peachey
Sender: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To: English Wikipedia
ReplyTo: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Limited usage image tags not working?
Sent: May 16, 2010 1:17 AM
If you mean [[Mediawiki:Bad Image List]] none of those three images
from the last vandal hit are listed on the list.
-Peachey
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Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
> 1. Simple vandalism being missed (Carcharoth)
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 14:52:56 +0100
> From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple vandalism being missed
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTimFLiuM41Jcz0WnsDdI_Wl94mgqTRkEoquKnK28(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I was recently looking up which countries were in the Congo Basin, and
> the version of the article I found was this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Basin&oldid=359085351
>
> The list of countries is clearly missing.
>
> It was removed with this edit:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Basin&diff=357222409&oldid=…
>
> That was 20 April 2010 (I've now restored the list).
>
> Has anyone done a recent study to see how and why vandalism like that
> is missed and how common it is for such things to be missed?
>
> Carcharoth
I don't know about a formal study, but I'm finding ancient vandalism
more rarely which implies there is less of it now.
There is no single magic bullet for this. As I see it the hardest
vandalism to stop at present is the random removal of a small amount
of content via an IP that is only used for one vandalism. IPs and
accounts that go on vandalism sprees usually get spotted quickly and
if the Hugglers miss them eventually they will vandalise something on
an active editor's watchlist. But vandals who show restraint are
harder to spot.
As for dealing with it, our edit filters have been improving, more
stuff is being bot reverted, Huggle, recent changes patrol and Newpage
patrol deal with the vast majority of vandalism almost in real time.
And we have other backstops available
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Uncategorized_and_u…
has turned out to be quite useful at identifying recently vandalised
BLPs, and Poop patrol is now in alpha test.
Overall I think we are getting faster at dealing with vandalism,
though there is still stuff there, I recently deleted a BLP of someone
who had been "raised in the woods by bears". But that had only been up
for a few months, nowadays I very rarely find vandalism that has been
up for a whole year.
WereSpielChequers