Daniel Mayer wrote:

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a) Most people have their freedom abruptly denied before recieving any notice. Cops show up, say "you're under arrest", and cart them off to jail. The analogy really doesn't work.

That is talking about probable cause for cops to make an arrest. My analogy is akin to providing proper notices to appear in court. The analogy is very sound and mentioning cops making arrests is a strawman.

I'd like to also add that the entire analogy is strained from the outset. Wikipedia is a privately run website. While the privilege of editing is extended very generously, Wikipedia is nonetheless *not* a city park or free speech zone. No one has an inherent right to edit on our website, except as authorized by the Wikimedia Foundation. (Which is *very* generous about this, obviously.)

No one is ever locked up, not even figuratively. It's a free country, and people can always take the database and open their own website if they want, and write whatever they please.

[Actually, I realize that 'It's a free country' is a peculiarly American, er, United States-ian expression, and I tried to retype it as 'It's a free world', but that's not really true. Well, you know what I mean.]

I just say all this so that people remember that our policies of openness and due process are policies, not constitutional rights, and so any discussion of what we ought to do should be founded in the best interests of the encyclopedia, as opposed to abstract and stretched analogies to what rights governments must respect in order to be proper governments. It isn't the same thing at all.

--Jimbo

On Tuesday 19 August 2003 00:24, Daniel Mayer wrote:

Nicholas Knight wrote:

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a) Most people have their freedom abruptly denied before recieving any notice. Cops show up, say "you're under arrest", and cart them off to jail. The analogy really doesn't work.

That is talking about probable cause for cops to make an arrest. My analogy is akin to providing proper notices to appear in court. The analogy is very sound

I apologize, I was extrapolating in a flawed manner.

and mentioning cops making arrests is a strawman.

"Strawman" implies it was an intentional attempt to be underhanded. It wasn't.

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b) Speaking of the analogy not working... The article is on trial, not the author.

Thus the notice goes on the article itself; the author may or may want to act in the article's defense. Your reasoning is weak.

I don't see how it's any weaker than the rest of the reasoning that's gone into this policy decision and its ex post facto discussion. In your analogy, you need to give notice to the person being put on trial. That person can then decide who they want to notify.

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The article should have all the time in the world to check vfd and prepare its defense

You have any idea how odd that sounds? The article cannot be its own advocate.

Of course I realize how odd it sounds. My entire argument is intentionally absurd to point out the ridiculousness of the analogy and the situation itself. Do you not bother reading things in parentheses? You certainly have no trouble removing them from quoting when they provide vital context. I was making a point.

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"unwiki" means very different things to very different people. To me, personally, "wiki" is purely a TECHNICAL term, not a philosophy.

Wiki is a philosophy, a very radical one in which websites are open to contributions by complete strangers. Thus "unwiki" is anything which tends to make things less open (like listing articles for deletion without providing notice on the article itself).

That is YOUR assertion. Not everyone agrees with you. And furthermore, not everyone who shares your idea that "wiki" is a philosophy may agree with your definition of this "philosophy".

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What I have a problem with is being told I'll have to go through yet another irritating step that was never needed until somebody decided for themselves that it was.

It became necessary once the volume of submissions to the VfD page became as large as it is today. Since so many things are listed there is less debate on each item. Thus the chances of something being unfairly deleted increases. Our policies have evolved this way; at first everything was very informal and lax, but as we have grown we have needed to develop written policies to make things run smoothly.

And these written policies are apparently developed in back rooms with no input from the community. Convenient for you until you realize it goes directly against your "policy" of forcing openness upon the unwashed masses. Pick a way and stick with it, please, so I can decide whether to jump ship and stop wasting my time.

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Why wasn't this little "policy" decision advertised far and wide?

It was an extension of our current largely un-written policies of openness, accountability and fairness. IMO, the Admin that made the written change was just codifying these precepts to apply in this particular case.

What would have been wrong with the "admin" giving some notice before he made what some view as a unilateral policy change? Or would that have been too inconvenient, since people might disagree?

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I never saw any mention of it until Saturday.

You are well aware of it now.

Only because someone I have no respect for complained about it on the list. Not everyone subscribes to or reads the archives of the list, just like not everyone monitors every policy page; and if they do, some may entirely ignore threads started by certain people in an effort to avoid wasting their own time. If you want to be forcefully open, you're going to need to make a greater effort to dissiminate information about what is being done with policies.