Combining bits of various posts: Erik wrote: Thanks. That's helpful. Erik wrote: No, you deleted a bunch of messages that were still useful to me. I understand that this was an inadvertent mistake on your part, and that you believed them to be useless. Erik wrote: I don't think that's a fair comment. Anthere is annoyed at the lack of communication - which could have prevented this mistake. This is not a big issue in the sense of the particular thread deleted. It was inconvenient to me that it was deleted before I was finished with it - no biggie. But I think her concern is that similar situations are likely unless this is discussed. Erik wrote: Is it possible to have more than one admin? If so I'm willing to learn how to administrate the board and become admin for the mediation board. I realise that this would give me access to admin abilities for all parts of the boards - but in the same way you have agreed not to moderate on the mediation board, I would agree not to on the other boards. Only if the rest of the mediation committee agrees of course. --sannse

Erik Moeller wrote: Please consider rethinking this philosophy, Erik, and consider the possibility that (a) your view of what is "of possible value" may not coincide with everyone else's, and (b) your action *may* have been wrong *from the point of view of others*. Even if nothing in the thread had been "of possible value" indeed, it can nevertheless be viewed as wrong of you to intervene with the operation of a board that you are not even participating in. Please realise that this *can* be a cause for grief and annoyance, and if so, that you are responsible for it. Other than the inappropriate reference to the de-sysopping of 168, which has nothing to do with this issue, I do not see anything in this thread that Anthère should be required to apologise for. Quite to the contrary, if I followed this all correctly, you were the one who deleted that thread. It seems more appropriate that you should apologise for that, and consider not doing it again in the future. It seems that you feel that your ability to administer the board is being questioned. I understand that it can be taken that way. But, as has been said, even the greatest leaders make mistakes, and they are not great leaders if they cannot admit their mistakes and learn from them. Timwi

Erik Moeller a écrit: This is a message Bird posted today on Sannse page, on Wikipedia, not on a volatil board. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Sannse&curid=17272… He wrote The message you missed on the board was one in which I replied in kind to your appreciation for my time and thanked you for helping clean up after the party. [[User:Bird|Bird]] 03:43, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC) The incentive for spending most of your free time as a mediator is very very very low. Mediation is a solitary activity. It is not very rewarding. Few mediations have succeeded till now. No one sees what you do. Few wikipedians think of thanking you. Even among the disputants themselves. On top of it, not only do you get little reward for trying to help bringing a little bit of peace in the committee, but some people also tell us you are not doing well, that mediation/arbitration is crap, even refuse to even try because they set up their minds we are wortless, and sometimes even some say you did not put enough effort in the mediation and that with more discussions, it would have succeeded. There are few things that can help you going on. One of these things is that a disputant thanks you for the time you spent. A thank you note is not "crap". It is something important for the well-being of a mediator. It is worthwhile, at least for a second, the second you spend reading the note. I recognise your hard work Erik, and I recognise your dedication. I never said you did this deletion ill-meaning, not even that it was an error, because I know you did so thinking well. But this post was important, and it was not your to decide it was crap. All we ask is that housekeeping responsabilities are in the hands of those taking care of the matter.

Erik Moeller wrote: Ah, so you even knew that there was something other than "deleted"/"yesterday" in the thread. The more you insist on this, the more I'm worried you might do it again, which in turn diminuates my trust in you as a moderator. Not that I care much, since I'm not using the board either, nor am I a mediator, but I feel that Anthère and the other mediators deserve better treatment for their work for Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that I could set up several more of those boards each day, configure them and even delete a few threads here and there. I believe it is a much greater step to volunteer to mediate. It's much more delicate and much less rewarding business. I agree with you that the latter insinuation was inappropriate, but I already said that. I don't remember seeing the first, and the second one is entirely correct. As far as I understood this, nobody knew who actually deleted the thread. It was therefore perfectly justified to post to the mailing list. Given the frustration and annoyance caused by the thread deletion, the tone of the posting was perfectly understandable. says the "administrator" of the board who deleted a thread without a trace of interpersonal communication... Timwi

Erik Moeller wrote: How about: Don't delete threads in boards you don't participate in? Is that so much to ask? Why is it so difficult for you to appreciate that your deletion caused annoyance?

Anthere wrote: Oh my gosh, I so totally completely know what you are talking about. I can sympathise with this so much, it's almost scary. Yes, I know, I'm not a mediator... but I'm a LiveJournal Support volunteer, and the situation you describe is almost the same there. Timwi

Rick wrote: I'd say that it depends on the entire context. It can certainly be valid to mention some restaurants or establishments of any type in an article, if they are actually of some cultural importance in that city. It seems that on the last revision, Nunh-huh is agreeing to leave out the pizza joints, but wants to leave in the refernece to Louis' Lunch. If the description is true _and verifiable_, then it should stay, because a restaurant that claims to have invented the hamburger and which has "queues ten deep at lunchtime" does sound like a useful bit of local color/culture for the article. http://www.louislunch.com/ has several links to newspaper articles and the Library of Congress which appear to confirm the cultural importance of this place. By and large, we can do away with disputes of this type by simply citing confirmability. In this case, the info about Louis' Lunch appears to meet that test. For the others, I didn't check. --Jimbo

Rick wrote: Is it really an 'ad'? I'd say it's only an 'ad' if the person inserting it is trying to promote her or her own business, or the business of a client, and that there's no reason for the information to be there otherwise. Of course even if it isn't an ad, that doesn't mean that it necessarily should go in the article, but depending on the entire context of the situation, perhaps it should. I think it will only rarely ever be the case that there's an actual irreconcilable difference between reasonable parties to a discussion. Usually there will be a way to improve the article generally in a way that is satisfactory to both sides. If one party is actually being completely unreasonable, and will not compromise, then of course it ends up eventually in mediation and arbitration, right? --Jimbo

Be nice to get our backlog of serious problems so cleared up that we could deal with something as light and fun as this. I think whoever wants the three pizza places should let us test em out. Fly us in, put us up, etc. Fred From: Rick &lt;giantsrick13(a)yahoo.com&gt; Reply-To: English Wikipedia &lt;wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org&gt; Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:07:54 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia &lt;wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]] Yeah, right. RickK Jimmy Wales &lt;jwales(a)bomis.com&gt; wrote: If one party is actually being completely unreasonable, and will not compromise, then of course it ends up eventually in mediation and arbitration, right? --Jimbo Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mailtag_us/*http://mail.yahoo.com> - More reliable, more storage, less spam _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Ray Saintonge wrote: I think that's right. It's best, whenever possible, to think creatively about what sort of olive branch might be offered to the other person. In this particular case, the joyful compromise seems to have been to leave in "Louis' Lunch" which is undeniably of encyclopedia importance, and to remove the others. Outside of one person who screamed at us in all caps and got booted from the mailing list for it, I'm not sure that there's really a lot of tension between "those who condemn the excesses of capitalism" and "those who praise the freedom of the marketplace" (or whatever we might call each side) _on this issue_. I'd say that the real tension in this area might come from people with a slightly different 'stylistic vision' of what sort of information goes into an encyclopedia. --Jimbo

Yeah, I had no problem with leaving Louis' Lunch in there, but it was the three other pizza places that he kept trying to re-insert. I haven't checked the latest version yet, if he's willing to leave those out then I'm satisfied. But what do we do in the future if an editor insists on adding two or three stores or restaurants and won't let the ads be removed? RickK Jimmy Wales &lt;jwales(a)bomis.com&gt; wrote: Rick wrote: I'd say that it depends on the entire context. It can certainly be valid to mention some restaurants or establishments of any type in an article, if they are actually of some cultural importance in that city. It seems that on the last revision, Nunh-huh is agreeing to leave out the pizza joints, but wants to leave in the refernece to Louis' Lunch. If the description is true _and verifiable_, then it should stay, because a restaurant that claims to have invented the hamburger and which has "queues ten deep at lunchtime" does sound like a useful bit of local color/culture for the article. http://www.louislunch.com/ has several links to newspaper articles and the Library of Congress which appear to confirm the cultural importance of this place. By and large, we can do away with disputes of this type by simply citing confirmability. In this case, the info about Louis' Lunch appears to meet that test. For the others, I didn't check. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam

Erik wrote: So my judgement, as the mediator involved, has no value? My annoyance level has just gone up from "slightly grumpy" to "seriously miffed". But I'm going to drop this now. I have great respect for you and for all you do for the 'pedia. And I think the solution we have come up with is a good one - not because I have any doubts as to your ability or integrity, simply because it makes sense for the mediators to maintain the mediation board. Thank you. I'm waiting for the other mediator's opinion on this. Regards, sannse

Erik wrote: Maybe my level That's what I felt your words implied, I'm glad it was not the case. I apologise for my misunderstanding. --sannse p.s. everyone else - it's sorted. Drop it eh?

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Rick wrote: On a related note, there was an AP wire story this morning about the death of print encyclopedias. Even the CD-ROM encyclopedias are falling on hard times, according to this article by May Wong. The article mentions two reasons why the Web is considered a better resource: 1. Google's usefulness, & 2. Multimedia -- this article concludes with a quote from the president of the Associatino for Library Service to Children: "Kids can hear and see Martin Luther King deliver his 'I have a Dream' speech, and there's nothing in a book that can do that." I guess my lack of skills with Multimedia make me the 21st cnetury equivalent of a buggy whip manufacturer. ;-) Geoff