The Cunctator wrote: One question: are calls to the Foundation considered confidential? What is the standard policy for disclosing the reasons for actions taken by employees of the Foundation with respect to content on Wikipedia? My understanding from the above is that people who pick up the phone to get things edited on Wikipedia get to operate under a different set of guidelines from all other contributors.
Danny answers: There is no set answer--it all depends on circumstances. For instance, I received a call from a Senator's office complaining that the number of grandchildren he had was 8, not 6. It was fixed. No need for discussion. No need to make a big deal out of it. On the other hand, I received a call from a popular singer that information is misstated-it is fixed quietly, without attracting trolls by announcing it.I receive a call from a lawyer--the same. I will however add this: I spend at least one-third of my time just answering the calls. It is very time consuming, and they come in at all hours of the day, interrupting what I am otherwise doing (donor management, for instance). I CANNOT spend another one-third or more of my time explaining every phone call to the community. There are too many other things that have to be done. And no, phone calls are not treated differently from regular edits. BUT these are not discussions by the community. They are often valid issues raised by the people we write about. I will NOT tell a senator, artist, news-figure, etc. to GOFIXIT. It is our responsibility, not theirs, to get the information correct. These are not contributors--they are the subjects of whom our contributors write.
Danny
On 3/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote: One question: are calls to the Foundation considered confidential? What is the standard policy for disclosing the reasons for actions taken by employees of the Foundation with respect to content on Wikipedia? My understanding from the above is that people who pick up the phone to get things edited on Wikipedia get to operate under a different set of guidelines from all other contributors.
Danny answers: There is no set answer--it all depends on circumstances. For instance, I received a call from a Senator's office complaining that the number of grandchildren he had was 8, not 6. It was fixed. No need for discussion. No need to make a big deal out of it. On the other hand, I received a call from a popular singer that information is misstated-it is fixed quietly, without attracting trolls by announcing it.I receive a call from a lawyer--the same. I will however add this: I spend at least one-third of my time just answering the calls. It is very time consuming, and they come in at all hours of the day, interrupting what I am otherwise doing (donor management, for instance). I CANNOT spend another one-third or more of my time explaining every phone call to the community. There are too many other things that have to be done. And no, phone calls are not treated differently from regular edits. BUT these are not discussions by the community. They are often valid issues raised by the people we write about. I will NOT tell a senator, artist, news-figure, etc. to GOFIXIT. It is our responsibility, not theirs, to get the information correct. These are not contributors--they are the subjects of whom our contributors write.
That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:44:12 -0500, you wrote:
That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.
Do you have evidence that it needs to be? Guy (JzG)
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:44:12 -0500, you wrote:
That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.
Do you have evidence that it needs to be? Guy (JzG)
My understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that we don't plan the Foundation staff size to scale directly with the userbase of Wikipedia.
Furthermore this could all get wildly out of control if calling the Foundation to report errors in Wikipedia becomes an official route of action. So far as I can tell, though I've heard different versions from non-Foundation members, it's not an official route.
And if it's not, it probably shouldn't happen.
And if it needs to happen, then official policy should be set.
IMHO.
On 3/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Furthermore this could all get wildly out of control if calling the Foundation to report errors in Wikipedia becomes an official route of action. So far as I can tell, though I've heard different versions from non-Foundation members, it's not an official route.
And if it's not, it probably shouldn't happen.
I don't see how allowing people to report errors by telephone causes problems to anyone other than the person answering the phone: Danny. When there are too many problems reported, I'm sure he'll come up with a solution. His posts here seem to indicate a reasonable level of cluefulness :)
Steve
On 3/13/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Furthermore this could all get wildly out of control if calling the Foundation to report errors in Wikipedia becomes an official route of action. So far as I can tell, though I've heard different versions from non-Foundation members, it's not an official route.
And if it's not, it probably shouldn't happen.
I don't see how allowing people to report errors by telephone causes problems to anyone other than the person answering the phone: Danny. When there are too many problems reported, I'm sure he'll come up with a solution. His posts here seem to indicate a reasonable level of cluefulness :)
Steve
Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem. The problems are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts, and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in that article are inaccurate. Then of course there's the problem of protecting articles, though that one's probably arguable (now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
Anthony
On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:58:02 -0500, you wrote:
Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem. The problems are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts, and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in that article are inaccurate.
If someone removes information from an article and states on the Talk page that it is incorrect, it tends to stay out. If an edit war ensues the article tends to get protected. I really don't see any difference in principle. The one practical difference is that the calls to Danny seem to represent a credible threat to the Foundation and the reputation of the project, hence escalation to protection is quicker. What am I missing here? Guy (JzG)
On 3/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:58:02 -0500, you wrote:
Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem. The problems are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts, and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in that article are inaccurate.
If someone removes information from an article and states on the Talk page that it is incorrect, it tends to stay out. If an edit war ensues the article tends to get protected. I really don't see any difference in principle.
I think there's a fundamental difference between removing a disputed sentence and "blank and rewrite with proper cites". The latter might be quick and easy, but it also fails to assume good faith.
Anthony
On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:31:37 -0500, you wrote:
I think there's a fundamental difference between removing a disputed sentence and "blank and rewrite with proper cites". The latter might be quick and easy, but it also fails to assume good faith.
In the case about which I know most, blank and rewrite was the correct action, so little of the original content was accurate. Guy (JzG)
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
(now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
I take it you don't agree with protecting articles that are the subject of an edit war between established editors?
-Matt
On 3/13/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
(now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
I take it you don't agree with protecting articles that are the subject of an edit war between established editors?
-Matt
No, I think it's better to temporarily block those established editors for edit warring. Why block *everyone* from editing an article just because two people can't get along? But like I said, that one's arguable.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 3/13/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
(now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
I take it you don't agree with protecting articles that are the subject of an edit war between established editors?
-Matt
No, I think it's better to temporarily block those established editors for edit warring. Why block *everyone* from editing an article just because two people can't get along? But like I said, that one's arguable.
Because if two (or more) people have come to the point of I'll-revert-you-every-thirty-seconds edit warring, they probably won't be averse to finding an undocumented open proxy, creating sockpuppets, and continuing on their merry way...
On 3/14/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 3/13/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
(now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
I take it you don't agree with protecting articles that are the subject of an edit war between established editors?
-Matt
No, I think it's better to temporarily block those established editors for edit warring. Why block *everyone* from editing an article just because two people can't get along? But like I said, that one's arguable.
Because if two (or more) people have come to the point of I'll-revert-you-every-thirty-seconds edit warring, they probably won't be averse to finding an undocumented open proxy, creating sockpuppets, and continuing on their merry way...
Actually I think the number of people who are going to go through all that trouble is much smaller than the number who are going to get involved in an edit war.
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 3/13/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Furthermore this could all get wildly out of control if calling the Foundation to report errors in Wikipedia becomes an official route of action. So far as I can tell, though I've heard different versions from non-Foundation members, it's not an official route.
And if it's not, it probably shouldn't happen.
I don't see how allowing people to report errors by telephone causes problems to anyone other than the person answering the phone: Danny. When there are too many problems reported, I'm sure he'll come up with a solution. His posts here seem to indicate a reasonable level of cluefulness :)
Steve
Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem. The problems are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts, and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in that article are inaccurate. Then of course there's the problem of protecting articles, though that one's probably arguable (now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
The argument is that since any form of protection is an unwanted state, it's in certain senses better when it bothers more people -- it motivates people to fix the underlying problems.
For a tortured analogy, I'd think of how cities deal with homelessness -- some "solve" it by just making sure that the homeless aren't allowed to be where "good" people go; whereas others try to confront the causes of the problem.
Another thing to consider is that the vast majority of people who come to Wikipedia are *not* registered users, so semi-protection hurts them instead of the comparative few who are already inside the gates and can ignore the lock.
Similarly, admins don't notice the minor annoyances of say, not being able to remove a protection of an article that was accidentally left on for too long. Because they can just do it.
If this doesn't make sense I can try to do a better job of explaining.
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
(now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
Pages being hit repeatedly by vandles useing sleeper accounts.
Very high profile pages
multi participant edit war particularly for three or more
Pages I don't want even admins to edit (election pages and the like).
-- geni
On 3/13/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
(now that semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where full protection is *ever* a good idea).
Pages being hit repeatedly by vandles useing sleeper accounts.
Surely there can't be enough sleeper accounts to keep this up for very long. Maybe I'm wrong here, though. I always thought it was strange that there was no minimum number of edits factored into the semi-protection criteria.
Very high profile pages
Good point. I was thinking of articles, but I can see why you might want to protect some administrative pages.
multi participant edit war particularly for three or more
Wouldn't it be better to block the edit warriors?
Pages I don't want even admins to edit (election pages and the like).
Along with high profile pages, good point.
Anthony
On 3/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Surely there can't be enough sleeper accounts to keep this up for very long. Maybe I'm wrong here, though. I always thought it was strange that there was no minimum number of edits factored into the semi-protection criteria.
I'm not going to go into exact details but yes it is posible to have a large number of sleeper accounts. Not easy but posible
Good point. I was thinking of articles, but I can see why you might want to protect some administrative pages.
I was more thinking the main page.
multi participant edit war particularly for three or more
Wouldn't it be better to block the edit warriors?
Can't. They will stay within policy. Blocking won't help anyway since they can't disscuss while blocked.
-- geni
On 3/13/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Surely there can't be enough sleeper accounts to keep this up for very long. Maybe I'm wrong here, though. I always thought it was strange that there was no minimum number of edits factored into the semi-protection criteria.
I'm not going to go into exact details but yes it is posible to have a large number of sleeper accounts. Not easy but posible
Fair enough. I think it should be possible to set things up so that the sleeper accounts would have to contribute far more than they can mess up before getting blocked, but maybe you're right that this can never be protected against.
Good point. I was thinking of articles, but I can see why you might want to protect some administrative pages.
I was more thinking the main page.
And I was specifically avoiding *that* argument :).
multi participant edit war particularly for three or more
Wouldn't it be better to block the edit warriors?
Can't. They will stay within policy. Blocking won't help anyway since they can't disscuss while blocked.
I thought edit warring was in itself against policy.
Actually, forget that phrasing. I *know* edit warring is in itself against policy. I've been told as much by Jimbo himself.
As for not being able to discuss while blocked, so what? They can discuss after the block is over. Or maybe some other editors will have come up with a solution in the mean time.
Anthony
On 3/14/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Can't. They will stay within policy. Blocking won't help anyway since they can't disscuss while blocked.
It's a real pity that it's not possible to selectively block a single editor against a single page. That and the fact that blocking an IP also blocks registered users that use that IP.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/14/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Can't. They will stay within policy. Blocking won't help anyway since they can't disscuss while blocked.
It's a real pity that it's not possible to selectively block a single editor against a single page. That and the fact that blocking an IP also blocks registered users that use that IP.
The ideal solution to bug 550 is:
- Editors can be dettached from/re-attached to the IP address they are using; when attached, they are hit by IP blocks, and when they are dettached, they are not; this is configurable per-block (eg. "Re-attach this user?" (if dettached), "Dettach this user?" (if attached), "Re-attach all users?" (if blocking an IP), "Dettach all users?" (if blocking an IP), etc.
- Blocking on a per-page (or even per-namespace) basis
On 3/14/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/14/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Can't. They will stay within policy. Blocking won't help anyway since they can't disscuss while blocked.
It's a real pity that it's not possible to selectively block a single editor against a single page. That and the fact that blocking an IP also blocks registered users that use that IP.
Steve
FWIW, I completely disagree. I think blocks should be all or nothing (certainly technical ones, but I'd include soft blocks too, though not of course self-imposed blocks). Besides filling the code and the policies with unnecessary bloat, narrow blocking tends to give admins too much power to dictate content.
If it weren't for the latter consideration, it would be really easy to soft-block an editor from a particular page anyway. Block them for 5 minutes with a message on their talk page to stop editing that page. Then block them more permanently if they ignore that command. But IMO admins shouldn't have that power in the first place. All Wikipedians should be equal (which isn't the same as saying that all people have the right to be Wikipedians).
Now I suppose I'm breaking my rule when I say that I can understand an exception for allowing talk on the users own talk page. And semi-protection/lessened powers for new contributors seems like an acceptable solution for guarding against sockpuppets, though of course its effectiveness is dependent on a decent implementation.
Anthony
On 14/03/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Pages being hit repeatedly by vandles useing sleeper accounts.
Surely there can't be enough sleeper accounts to keep this up for very long. Maybe I'm wrong here, though.
Anecdotal evidence suggests this isn't the case. We have a *lot* of accounts.
Very high profile pages
Good point. I was thinking of articles, but I can see why you might want to protect some administrative pages.
Templates are high on the list. I've seen someone inserting images into {{bio-stub}}, for example, or {{otheruses}}. Guess how many pages this can deface?
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 14/03/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Pages being hit repeatedly by vandles useing sleeper accounts.
Surely there can't be enough sleeper accounts to keep this up for very long. Maybe I'm wrong here, though.
Anecdotal evidence suggests this isn't the case. We have a *lot* of accounts.
Very high profile pages
Good point. I was thinking of articles, but I can see why you might want to protect some administrative pages.
Templates are high on the list. I've seen someone inserting images into {{bio-stub}}, for example, or {{otheruses}}. Guess how many pages this can deface?
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Perhaps all pages in template space should be semi-protected by default: templates are an advanced feature that probably does not make sense for new users to experiment with, in any case.
-- Neil
On 3/14/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 14/03/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Pages being hit repeatedly by vandles useing sleeper accounts.
Surely there can't be enough sleeper accounts to keep this up for very long. Maybe I'm wrong here, though.
Anecdotal evidence suggests this isn't the case. We have a *lot* of accounts.
Very high profile pages
Good point. I was thinking of articles, but I can see why you might want to protect some administrative pages.
Templates are high on the list. I've seen someone inserting images into {{bio-stub}}, for example, or {{otheruses}}. Guess how many pages this can deface?
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Perhaps all pages in template space should be semi-protected by default: templates are an advanced feature that probably does not make sense for new users to experiment with, in any case.
More complexity is probably less desired than more simplicity.
The Cunctator wrote:
On 3/14/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Perhaps all pages in template space should be semi-protected by default: templates are an advanced feature that probably does not make sense for new users to experiment with, in any case.
More complexity is probably less desired than more simplicity.
It follows that replacement of templates by real text should be e3ncouraged.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
On 3/14/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Perhaps all pages in template space should be semi-protected by default: templates are an advanced feature that probably does not make sense for new users to experiment with, in any case.
More complexity is probably less desired than more simplicity.
It follows that replacement of templates by real text should be e3ncouraged.
I can put a nice message explaining why someone has been reverted onto their talk page with a single mouse click. If I wrote a personalised message for each schoolkid ("One test message per child"?), RC patrol would be a lot worse than it is now. Of coure, having bots working RC patrol helps...