Found an error in the times for the office hours. I doubt that anyone
would want go from 3:30 PM to 4:30 _/AM. /_
> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:31:42 -0700
> From: Cary Bass<cary(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] [TODAY] Office Hour for Thursday, July 22,
> featuring Sue Gardner
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc: textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org,
> Wikimedia Commons Discussion List<commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
> Wikinews mailing list<wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
> wikimediameta-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:<4C45EB8E.6000808(a)wikimedia.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> (Note: This announcement is also an update to James Owen's prior email
> announcing Sue would be doing office hours this Friday. The date has
> been moved up to Thursday. The time remains the same.)
>
> On Thursday, July 22, the Wikimedia Office Hour will be hosted
> by Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. The
> Office Hour is from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30 PM to 4:30 AM PDT).
>
> If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
> using a web browser: First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
> <http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a
> nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
> #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
>
> Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/,
> typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
> the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning,
> which you can click to accept.
>
> Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
> relevant email lists you happen to be on.
>
Please pardon me if any of this is redundant as I've just recently joined
in here. I'm here absorbing the discussions as well as continuing to study
elements of the site, freshly after enduring some measure of frustration due
to the atmosphere I've discovered exists on the site.
One observation I've made is that for a good part, the editors who regularly
review content seem to look down upon many different types of sources online
-- and while there are "real world" sources that aren't online, they don't
seem happy unless they can easily click on something. They are dismissive
of the IMDb, of YouTube, even smaller newspapers they haven't heard of,
they'll question "reliability" of the source -- and of course anyone
blogging information would be a big no-no as well. But the thing is -- the
popular internet is largely comprised of these types of sources! When most
of it is "citizen media," and when there are many "reliable sources" whose
content stands behind a paywall -- it seems that there ought to be at least
some relaxing of standards as much as can be done within fair reason.
Actually the site seems to profess an element of relaxation -- however as
there are many who only relate to "rules," then much room for argument
exists. And they seem to happen all too often, leading to much
frustration. I'll then invite you to review one very interesting argument
in progress, relating to the article "List of Apple Inc. slogans":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Apple_…
It really gets my hackles up to read through this -- one person actually
said that EVERY item mentioned ought to be sourced! One fellow who
valiantly struggles there to get them to consider "the wiki way" (if one
might call it that), seems to face major oppression there from these
deletionist completionists.
Part of the damage here could be, if left unchecked -- fault could be found
with virtually ANY article if one wishes to find it. This shouldn't be the
point! To me, this is the perfect type of article I'd like to find on
Wikipedia. Yet it faces being deleted because of this particular attitude
which seems to be growing there. Further, let's suppose that Apple is
either a contributor or even just a well-wisher of the site -- if they were
aware of their work being discussed as "non-notable" in any regard -- what
could the repurcussions be? Maybe that is not for consideration in these
arguments -- but establishing goodwill all around is certainly relevant.
The more little articles that people worked hard to create that are deleted
within this environment -- the more likely you have people proferring
complaints about the site all around.
I've also noticed that these "articles for deletion" are posted in one
place, and there also seems to be a nice batch of people who make it their
business to weigh in on each one -- usually those with the deletionist
perspective. And if "consensus" is weighed by votes -- even if it shouldn't
be but no doubt IS -- then most articles presented for deletion won't stand
a good chance. And at least some of this goes back to "sourcing" again, as
so many possible sources just "aren't good enough" for the perfectionists
batting away at these.
Jon
> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:08:04 +0100
> From: FT2 <ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Another sourcing problem
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTim1l3wDbbD8e3TDb4NM7x45rC1tMyGRqkeOcKuf(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> This is a point comon to all codification.
>
> For those who have clue about wiki, yes. For the many who don't, are
> learning, do not want to be bitten, might be over-aggressive in
> adding/criticising/removing, or want clearer guidance, we have detailed
> policies that capture key points.
>
> So while ideally IAR does the trick in practice for mass editing it could
> help. Especially where it interacts with our core content policies (and RS
> -> Verifiability -> core to encyclopedic quality) the guidance may help a
> lot in the cases it comes up.
>
> Expanding SELFPUB from an anomalous exception to a principle will help.
>
> The wider principle is that if the originator of an online post is able to
> be confirmed (author is not spoofed, publication on own website or one
> controlled by him/her, etc), and has some kind of position to speak to the
> point (salience, significant to article or NPOV), then we have enough to
> say
> "X says Y" and the fact that X chose to say Y on a blog or self pub website
> is not really an impediment.
>
> FT2
On 20 July 2010 20:22, Conor Wao <conorwao(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I am interested in getting the Irish chapter up and running. I have a
> particular interest in releasing more music into the commons. I would like
> to apply for funding to provide educational workshops and demonstrations.
> Have we got enough people who are interested enough to get going?
UK person who's not much help at all here ;-) Anything people in the
UK can do? Anyone else Irish who can join in?
- d.
Hi everyone,
This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia
Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can
read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>.
Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM
PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to
1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT).
The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be
#wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC
client, you can always access Freenode by going to
http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and
choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click
through a security warning. Go ahead.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi everyone,
Anyone who has played with Pending Changes knows that in many
circumstances, there were some very perceptable speed problems with
the feature on complicated pages (which unfortunately, tend to be the
pages that the feature is used on). The devs on the feature (Aaron
and Chad) did some investigation, and figured out that we weren't
caching as much as we should. This is all documented here:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24124
This change was rolled out on en.wikipedia.org. So, if you hadn't
played with Pending Changes in a while because of speed problems, now
is a good time to give it another shot. Visit here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes
...and follow the "Pages with pending edits" and the "All pages on
trial" links to find articles to try this out on.
We're not done with the performance work, but this particular fix was
pretty critical for the experience.
Rob
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:32 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>
>> wrote:
>> >> On 14 July 2010 02:07, FT2 <ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> The expectations upon admins are the pivot point for that. See [[
>> >>> User:FT2/RfA <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FT2/RfA>]].
>> >>>
>> >>> Any ideas how we can get somewhere like that?
>> >>>
>> >>> FT2
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> Well to start with you could chuck your requirements out of the
>> >> window. Your requirements like most at RFA are selecting for 3 things
>> >>
>> >> 1)some degree of editing skill
>> >> 2)Not appearing to cause trouble
>> >> 3)A decent set of wikipolitics skill
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It's two and three that cause the problem. Anyone whith a decent set
>> >> of wikipolitics skills is going to archive 2 by playing safe going
>> >> along with the flow and not challenging things. Almost anyone actually
>> >> passing RFA is going to have got into the habit of going along with
>> >> the ah "bad faith combined with mob justice". The people who might
>> >> actually try to challenge such things are unlikely to pass RFA because
>> >> either they lack the wikipolitics skills needed in order to pass (you
>> >> would tend to fail them under the "nor into politicking" clause among
>> >> others) or because they are not prepared to use them in a way that
>> >> would let them pass.
>> >>
>> >> Upshot is that we have for some years now been promoting a bunch of
>> >> admins who will go with the flow rather than challenge low level bad
>> >> behavior by admins and long standing users. The tiny number of rebels
>> >> and iconoclasts left are from years ago and have little to day to day
>> >> stuff.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> geni
>> >
>> > Yes, that does seem to be the main requirement, a successful candidate
>> > must never have taken a stand. This for a job that requires taking
>> > stands.
>> >
>> > Fred
>>
>> I failed my first try, and could have failed my second if I hadn't
>> made a serious effort to ameliorate a negative perception from taking
>> a stand earlier.
>>
>> The edge of the knife that we must balance on is both being willing to
>> take stands, and be open to feedback from the community and from other
>> admins if we take the wrong stand. Balancing there all the time is
>> very hard. Being willing to admit you're wrong on something and still
>> come back the next day willing and ready to make a hard call on its
>> merits is not easy.
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert(a)gmail.com
>>
>>
> Somehow this thread became about RFA standards. What happened?
>
> - causa sui
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:56:22 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we
> talk people down off the ledge?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4C3D5F96.6010506(a)ntlworld.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Ryan Delaney wrote:
>> Somehow this thread became about RFA standards. What happened?
>>
>>
> True. We seem to be missing the point that the trouble with the
> Administrators Noticeboard is at least in part that it is a
> "noticeboard", i.e. not a process for which there is a charter, but an
> unchartered discussion forum. Any claims that "AN has the authority" to
> do anything are complete nonsense, and admins act entirely as
> independent, responsible agents whatever thread they are pivoting off from.
>
> I don't see why this has to be the case, and have not done so for around
> three years. The community can require more. In fact it should require
> more. AN has long been something that should have been the subject of an
> RfC.
>
> Charles
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:15:37 -0600 (MDT)
> From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we
> talk people down off the ledge?
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <49934.66.243.197.173.1279098937.squirrel(a)webmail.fairpoint.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Fred
>>
>> I failed my first try, and could have failed my second if I hadn't
>> made a serious effort to ameliorate a negative perception from taking
>> a stand earlier.
>>
>> The edge of the knife that we must balance on is both being willing to
>> take stands, and be open to feedback from the community and from other
>> admins if we take the wrong stand. Balancing there all the time is
>> very hard. Being willing to admit you're wrong on something and still
>> come back the next day willing and ready to make a hard call on its
>> merits is not easy.
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert(a)gmail.com
>>
>
> To tie this back to the original post: It is this sort of insight that
> enables a person to continue to participate and contribute over long
> periods of time. That sort of insight has been developed by people who
> have participated in the give and take of making decisions, some of which
> have worked out, while some have not. So how can we, in a practical way,
> socialize administrators in the skills involved in continuing to
> participate effectively in an important project when everything isn't
> going as you might like. This happens in all large organizations.
>
> I keep thinking that stories of our adventures are relevant. That's what
> happens in other social situations, building the culture of how
> difficulties are coped with. Stories of successes and disasters; I'm
> afraid most of that lore has been closely held by insiders and not widely
> shared in the administrator community, as much of what when on was
> confidential for one reason or another.
>
> We'd like people who get into trouble to work through it and continue to
> contribute on a long term basis. That is a different path from someone
> getting into trouble, then we're done with them.
>
> Fred
>
I've got a couple of concerns with the adminship thread above.
Firstly the idea that new generations of admins have come in and
somehow supplanted the old guard. I've been an editor for a little
over three years and an admin for a year and quarter, by either
measure I'm easily in the newest 10% of admins. Whilst our editing
cadre and I suspect the nonadmin part of the ANI crowd will contain a
large proportion of editors who've edited for less time than I have,
the vast majority of our admins predate the RFA drought that began in
early 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_by_month
I agree that we have a problem if admins willing to take on
problematic vested contributors are in short supply. But I would
contend that if this is the case it is more a matter of such admins
having been removed from the admin cadre than their presence being
diluted by new admins. I suspect that I'm not the only newish admin
who takes a cautious approach when wielding the mop in unfamiliar or
contentious areas, but as most admin work is uncontentious grunt work
ideally suited to new admins, it shouldn't be a problem if thats what
our few new admins mostly do. I think that the <1% most difficult
blocks are best left to more experienced admins.
Secondly Fred Bauder's idea that "a successful candidate must never
have taken a stand. This for a job that requires taking stands."
I discussed RFA at Wikimania with a DE editor and a very longstanding
EN veteran. From the German editor I learned that the requirements on
DE Wiki are more inflated than our own, with 10,000 edits now the de
facto minimum for a serious RFA candidate. The EN veteran told me that
he used to check a candidate's entire contributions before !voting,
but he abandoned the RFA process when 2,000 edits became the norm, as
it took too long to check that many contributions. Judging from my
experiences of RFA; whilst successful candidates with less than 12
months tenure and 3,500 edits are very rare, so too are opposes based
on diffs older than 6 months, except where it leaves an easy trace
such as a blocklog, a former RFA or "excessive use of tools", as some
editors will oppose based on the percentage of automated edits rather
than a lack of manual edits. If you've been reasonably active in the
subsequent months then stands taken over a year ago are unlikely to be
mentioned, and one of RFA's few redeeming features is that almost
anything can be treated as a learning experience if you can
demonstrate that your recent edits show improved behaviour. However a
recently taken controversial stand is high risk, even if a majority
agree with you it only needs a 30% minority to blackball a candidate.
Based on my observations of recent RFAs, recency of diffs quoted in
RFAs, speed of the early votes in RFAs, the number of pageviews of
various pages in my userspace when I ran at RFA and the emphasis in
RFAs on questions and statistics rather than diffs and behaviour; I
believe that whilst the number of candidates who meet the defacto
criteria for a serious RFA run is quite limited, frankly disclosed
past controversial stances and actions are usually considered time
expired after at most 12 months. Undisclosed old incidents that didn't
merit a block are rarely discovered; So either they don't happen or
more likely no-one spots them.
--
WereSpielChequers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Fall_Off_Boy
Summary: A joke character with a similar name existed in comics fandom. The
writer who put this character in the comic book mistakenly thought he was
a preexisting character, and it's possible he confused him with the character
who had the similar name.
The Wikipedia article is allowed to mention none of this because it assumes
that reliable sources are professionally published and we can't use fanzines
and blogs for information... and professionally publishing anything about
a joke character whose superpower is that his arm falls off is not too likely.
(Also, previous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley .
Bradley had a dispute with a fan writer over "fan fiction" (whether it even
counts as fan fiction is highly questionable). The fan's side of this dispute
is available in blogs and fan sources; Bradley, being a published writer,
could get her side described in sources that are reliable by Wikipedia
standards. Therefore, Wikipedia only tells one side of the story.)
On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:43:05 +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> en:wp does allow quite a few historic images under fair use. And no,
> they're not safe. But we're in this for the long haul, not a pretty
> page today.
If you post any fair-use images, you'd better be prepared to defend
them and jump through hoops for them forevermore... Better not go on
a vacation or wikibreak long enough not to catch all the robotic
messages that continually pop up on your user talk page to inform you
that one of your images is about to be automatically deleted because
it doesn't have the correct incantations (based on ever-changing
rules) on the image description page, or the image is not in use on
an article because somebody removed it there (sometimes without
explanation), and hence the image itself will be deleted soon.
--
== 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/
Admin Rodhullandemu just retired after being blocked for blocking
Malleus Fautorum to win a dispute
For reference:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Block_review
On and off wiki I have mentioned before that we are really bad, as a
project, at identifying people who have worked themselves into an
angry corner and feel that they must blow up and leave, and then
talking them down and defusing the situation. This is in my
experience the typical (or at least, a major and common) exit mode of
longtime highly involved contributors.
Our existing policy and precedent really don't address this problem.
We have had individual admins and experienced editors spot the pattern
start and work to calm situations down on an individual basis, with
mixed results. But typically the pattern is not really recognized
until it's too late.
Posed for consideration - This is a problem worth putting more time
and effort into, and which the project will benefit significantly from
getting right over the long term.
The question is - what exactly do we do about it?
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
Hello all,
New here; first post. I'm a longtime Wikipedia user and recent first-time
editor. Had a rather discouraging incident with regard to my first article
on the site, rather an eye-opener as I've attempted to study up on how
things work -- or are supposed to work, and finding out that the loftier
philosophies of the site really don't seem to hold a great reverence within
the system.
This is not just based on my one experience -- I was trying to save the
article I'd written from deletion and trekked around the site looking for
proper reasons it should survive. And I found them! Presenting them --
another matter. I then researched other such situations and found a very
common theme. I also found external articles with numerous examples of
discouraged editors -- and especially former editors.
So on point with this situation, "how do you talk the guy off the ledge" --
naturally that's situational, but after that's resolved, the good question
for prevention is "why did he get there?" And from what I've seen, there
seems so much room for frustration, and so much room for conflict. The site
has an article for so many "internal" situations, too -- and it almost
begins to seem like the Bible in that someone can find a section to address
nearly every circumstance. i.e., you can justify both "yes" and "no" some
way or another. Hard to believe then, that conflicts arise?
The site sounds so wonderful as you enter -- "Come on in! Start writing!
Be bold! Break the rules!" and you're heartened by the seeming generosity
of spirit. Until you actually encounter some experienced editors. The
problem here then becomes something I've seen over and again in my own
career -- people are actually more comfortable with "rules" than with vague
standards which could allow for wiggle room. They all KNOW about the
pillars and IAR and pay lip service -- but in practice, they have little
real application. What's surprising is -- administrators seem to behave the
same!
My own philosophy as a supervisor/manager in my own career has been: if
you're only there to make sure the rules are adhered to -- then you make
yourself obsolete. No company needs a walking, talking version of the policy
manual. What a supervisor exists for is more toward making sure the spirit
of several objectives are met, including the policy's intent weighed against
what's actually best for all concerned. If the policy says you close at 6:00
and the customer gets there at 6:01, you can turn him away and be "right"
but suffer loss of goodwill and business for the company -- so how good was
your judgement in that situation? And would you expect the company's owner
to pat you on the back after that customer gets ahold of him?
This may be overly simple in an interest to keep this short-ish, but it
feels like the starting point of sorts would seem to lie with these
administrators. Maybe they are "just" editors with better tools, but they
have the experience with the site and they are the ones looked to for fair
judgement and good example-setting. Special attention should be given to
them as they are the de-facto frontline conflict resolution sources, and
their education on how to do that well will serve to stave off larger
conflicts and ALSO keep conflicts from escalating into the laps of the
higher-ups, who would likely rather spend their time dealing with loftier
matters!
I don't know what the actual screening process is here; perhaps it does
contain elements of the higher intentions of the site before approval is
reached. Usually as advancement goes in most companies, a front-line worker
does a good job and expects a promotion -- but everything he learned as a
worker is not geared toward supervision. Soon after that promotion, his
former fellow workers start grumbling and complaining about his "power
trips." Because -- as a new supervisor, he is overly diligent toward that
policy manual, and tries to gain respect by insisting on his authority. So
who really trained him on wiggle room and "earning" respect? Who teaches
them that "real" power is had by knowing how to lead without carrying a
sledgehammer by one's side?
That's part of the goal then -- to get rid of the sledgehammers so that
people don't keep getting clobbered.