This is something I thought about after the latest Main page deletion. You go to a local library, webcafe, or kiosk to do something on Wikipedia and find yourself logged in to somebody else's administrator account.
What are you tempted to do?
What do you actually do?
What I'm tempted to do, delete the administrator's noticeboard with the comment "I'm a moron who forgets to log out from public terminals, please LART me".
What I actually do. Log his stupid ass out, log in as myself and send him a polite and civil email telling him what happened and to be careful next time. If email is not enabled, leave same message on his talk page for all the world to see.
On 5/7/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
This is something I thought about after the latest Main page deletion. You go to a local library, webcafe, or kiosk to do something on Wikipedia and find yourself logged in to somebody else's administrator account.
What are you tempted to do?
What do you actually do?
What I'm tempted to do, delete the administrator's noticeboard with the comment "I'm a moron who forgets to log out from public terminals, please LART me".
What I actually do. Log his stupid ass out, log in as myself and send him a polite and civil email telling him what happened and to be careful next time. If email is not enabled, leave same message on his talk page for all the world to see.
Saw the subject line and thought it was for me personally. :-) ~~~~
I'd be tempted to use his (or her) own admin account to block him and point out his mistake in the block reason. That should get his attention.
I would then log in as myself and post a message about him to WP:AN - if we have stupid admins around, the community deserves to know. Trying not to hurt the admin's feelings would not be foremost in my mind.
If I found myself logged into someone else's account I'd definitely tell people they were a security risk and keep an eye out to see if it happens more often.
Mgm
On 5/7/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I'd be tempted to use his (or her) own admin account to block him and point out his mistake in the block reason. That should get his attention.
I would then log in as myself and post a message about him to WP:AN - if we have stupid admins around, the community deserves to know. Trying not to hurt the admin's feelings would not be foremost in my mind.
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On 5/7/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
This is something I thought about after the latest Main page deletion. You go to a local library, webcafe, or kiosk to do something on Wikipedia and find yourself logged in to somebody else's administrator account.
What are you tempted to do?
What do you actually do?
For system administrators, there's a fairly standard procedure if you manage to get unauthorized access to such an account: send the administrator an email from his own account detailing what he did wrong that let you have access.
On 5/7/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
This is something I thought about after the latest Main page deletion. You go to a local library, webcafe, or kiosk to do something on Wikipedia and find yourself logged in to somebody else's administrator account.
What are you tempted to do?
Copy the cookie so I can log on from home.
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
What do you actually do?
Probably that.
Anthony
On Mon, 7 May 2007 20:16:40 -0400, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
Result: terabytes of dross. Trust me on that.
Guy (JzG)
I once went to check my email at a public terminal and found myself logged in to another person's account. If not for time constraints, I would have emailed them a letter on their email about how important it is to protect a person's privacy. If it was on wikipedia though, I don't think I would leave the note on their talkpage--I would email them instead, because no one deserves so much public humiliation for an honest mistake. One time is enough to remind them, and I'm not going to take down their reputation due to that one instance.
On 5/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 7 May 2007 20:16:40 -0400, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
Result: terabytes of dross. Trust me on that.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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On 5/8/07, ikiroid ikiroid@gmail.com wrote:
the note on their talkpage--I would email them instead,
So would I, if they had email set. If not then it goes to the talk page.
On 5/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 7 May 2007 20:16:40 -0400, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
Result: terabytes of dross. Trust me on that.
From my experience at least *some* of it would be useful. Not enough
that it's worth it to go through the hassle of requesting temporary undeletion, though.
Anthony
On 5/9/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 7 May 2007 20:16:40 -0400, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
Result: terabytes of dross. Trust me on that.
From my experience at least *some* of it would be useful. Not enough that it's worth it to go through the hassle of requesting temporary undeletion, though.
Anthony
Yes, it's quite possible to find something useful in there, but I suspect the amount of useful content in such a dump is about the percentage we have of FAs on the live site: 0.08%.
Mgm
On 5/9/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/9/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 7 May 2007 20:16:40 -0400, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
Result: terabytes of dross. Trust me on that.
From my experience at least *some* of it would be useful. Not enough that it's worth it to go through the hassle of requesting temporary undeletion, though.
Anthony
Yes, it's quite possible to find something useful in there, but I suspect the amount of useful content in such a dump is about the percentage we have of FAs on the live site: 0.08%.
Mgm
Not sure. I'd be interested in doing a study on how accurate that estimate is, but as I'm not an admin, I can't.
Anthony
What concerns me is that we might find some FA candidates in there. Can we think of an algorithm? DGG
On 5/9/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/9/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/9/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 7 May 2007 20:16:40 -0400, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Set up a bot to download and archive all the deleted articles.
Result: terabytes of dross. Trust me on that.
From my experience at least *some* of it would be useful. Not enough that it's worth it to go through the hassle of requesting temporary undeletion, though.
Anthony
Yes, it's quite possible to find something useful in there, but I suspect the amount of useful content in such a dump is about the percentage we have of FAs on the live site: 0.08%.
Mgm
Not sure. I'd be interested in doing a study on how accurate that estimate is, but as I'm not an admin, I can't.
Anthony
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David Goodman wrote:
What concerns me is that we might find some FA candidates in there. Can we think of an algorithm? DGG
Well, for one, there's plenty of vandalistic nonsense and copyright violations in the stacks of deleted stuff. The things we lose (and thus harm the project in ways that can't ever be truly measured) are the types that are speedied for spam or notability or because a random administrator deems them too short.
On the notabilty ones alone, depending on who you talk to, between 10% and 40% of those could be poor judgement without any research, and one can easily figure that, truly, all spammy articles could be rewritten to be encyclopedic. That's a lot of articles.
So if you can filter out the vandalism and copyvios, you might actually have a stronger group than what's assumed.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
On the notabilty ones alone, depending on who you talk to, between 10% and 40% of those could be poor judgement without any research, and one can easily figure that, truly, all spammy articles could be rewritten to be encyclopedic. That's a lot of articles.
Yeah, but Jeff we have tens of thousands of pathetic articles marked for cleanup at it stands - more than we can possibly cope with. So why are you so keen to to keep more spammy stubs that /could/ be cleaned up?
If people want to clean up spam, we got stacks of it. The day backlogs clear is the day I'll begin to wonder if we could tweek the deletion processes to keep a little more 'spam with hypothetical potential'. Until then - keep deleting crud.
doc wrote:
Yeah, but Jeff we have tens of thousands of pathetic articles marked for cleanup at it stands - more than we can possibly cope with. So why are you so keen to to keep more spammy stubs that /could/ be cleaned up?
Because there's an unfortunate scarlet letter of sorts that gets attached to previously-deleted material, and there's a vocal sect of editors who work very hard to make sure that, if they still don't like the article, it'll stay away.
Furthermore, the cleanup issue, while necessary, is often overblown. Much of it is simple formatting issues that could be dealt with on an easier basis, some are citation issues for things that are completely uncontroversial and non-troublesome. Many are simply waiting for the right editors to come along and do the dirty work, and we get closer to that as our popularity grows.
This entire mentality feeds into the next point...
If people want to clean up spam, we got stacks of it. The day backlogs clear is the day I'll begin to wonder if we could tweek the deletion processes to keep a little more 'spam with hypothetical potential'. Until then - keep deleting crud.
...that when you continue to arbitrarily delete "crud," (whatever crud is) what's the incentive to clean up what's there? We've already alienated a large, potentially invaluable, group of possible editors because it was decided that most webcomic articles fall into this "crud" label. What next? How can we complain about the condition on one end when we do nothing to foster it on the other?
-Jeff
On 5/9/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
doc wrote:
Yeah, but Jeff we have tens of thousands of pathetic articles marked for cleanup at it stands - more than we can possibly cope with. So why are you so keen to to keep more spammy stubs that /could/ be cleaned up?
Because there's an unfortunate scarlet letter of sorts that gets attached to previously-deleted material, and there's a vocal sect of editors who work very hard to make sure that, if they still don't like the article, it'll stay away.
Furthermore, the cleanup issue, while necessary, is often overblown. Much of it is simple formatting issues that could be dealt with on an easier basis, some are citation issues for things that are completely uncontroversial and non-troublesome. Many are simply waiting for the right editors to come along and do the dirty work, and we get closer to that as our popularity grows.
This entire mentality feeds into the next point...
If people want to clean up spam, we got stacks of it. The day backlogs clear is the day I'll begin to wonder if we could tweek the deletion processes to keep a little more 'spam with hypothetical potential'. Until then - keep deleting crud.
...that when you continue to arbitrarily delete "crud," (whatever crud is) what's the incentive to clean up what's there? We've already alienated a large, potentially invaluable, group of possible editors because it was decided that most webcomic articles fall into this "crud" label. What next? How can we complain about the condition on one end when we do nothing to foster it on the other?
-Jeff
-- If you can read this, I'm not at home.
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From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and
that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
Todd Allen wrote:
From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
Of course, never mind that our reliable source guideline is irresponsibly tipped toward dead-tree media, and because of this, it allows for arguments such as the one you've presented. As a result, we lose out on a significant number of worthwhile articles, look like idiots when we speedy an important webcomic, and lose a substantial amount of possible editors who could a) improve our coverage in that topic area, and b) do things in other subjects to improve things.
But sure, we can have it this way, too.
-Jeff
On 10/05/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Of course, never mind that our reliable source guideline is irresponsibly tipped toward dead-tree media
I disagree with that. It's much easier to cite a URL than a hard copy document.
James Farrar wrote:
On 10/05/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Of course, never mind that our reliable source guideline is irresponsibly tipped toward dead-tree media
I disagree with that. It's much easier to cite a URL than a hard copy document.
Easier, sure, but not weighted the same way, and generally not considered a reliable source in most cases.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Of course, never mind that our reliable source guideline is irresponsibly tipped toward dead-tree media, and because of this, it allows for arguments such as the one you've presented. As a result, we lose out on a significant number of worthwhile articles, look like idiots when we speedy an important webcomic, and lose a substantial amount of possible editors who could a) improve our coverage in that topic area, and b) do things in other subjects to improve things.
Can we *please* have a 9,000-repetition rule cutting off endless iterations on the mailing list? Doing a 9,001th iteration isn't going to make everybody slap their foreheads and say "OMG, you were right all along!" Look at the subject line, this even started from a comment about admins forgetting to log out...
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Can we *please* have a 9,000-repetition rule cutting off endless iterations on the mailing list? Doing a 9,001th iteration isn't going to make everybody slap their foreheads and say "OMG, you were right all along!" Look at the subject line, this even started from a comment about admins forgetting to log out...
Would this screed qualify?
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
Can we *please* have a 9,000-repetition rule cutting off endless iterations on the mailing list? Doing a 9,001th iteration isn't going to make everybody slap their foreheads and say "OMG, you were right all along!" Look at the subject line, this even started from a comment about admins forgetting to log out...
Would this screed qualify?
No doubt. Hmmm, don't have any knitting needles to plunge into my eyes, let me look around for a substitute...
:-) (maybe)
Stan
On 5/9/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
I don't really disagree with any of that. But an article can be full of original research, and be about a comic which isn't mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, but still be useful.
It wouldn't be useful for Wikipedia, but still something I'd like to have access to. It's actually a good example of the reason I'd like to be able to access deleted articles. Useless in Wikipedia doesn't mean useless altogether.
Anthony
On 5/9/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/9/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
I don't really disagree with any of that. But an article can be full of original research, and be about a comic which isn't mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, but still be useful.
It wouldn't be useful for Wikipedia, but still something I'd like to have access to. It's actually a good example of the reason I'd like to be able to access deleted articles. Useless in Wikipedia doesn't mean useless altogether.
Anthony
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I've never refused to userfy a deleted article on request, if someone really thinks they can bring it up to snuff or wants a copy to use elsewhere. The only circumstances in which I could think that I would refuse would be if the deleted article were a copyvio or BLP issue, or if the person has a history of recreating deleted articles.
On Wed, 9 May 2007, Todd Allen wrote:
From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and
that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
Web comics are on the web, and that also means they get *covered* on the web. Our policy on sources prohibits using most of the coverage that web comics receive. That is a flaw with our policy, not with the webcomic articles.
On 10/05/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 9 May 2007, Todd Allen wrote:
From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and
that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
Web comics are on the web, and that also means they get *covered* on the web. Our policy on sources prohibits using most of the coverage that web comics receive. That is a flaw with our policy, not with the webcomic articles.
And it was largely set up this way by people who hate web comics in general, and targeting Phil Sandifer in particular. Are the weird little twists in the webcomic guidelines trying to define experts writing about webcomics as a "conflict of interest" still in there?
- d.
I hate webcomics myself, but articles on them in WP don't bother me--and why should they?--I don't have to read them. As with anything else some will be notable to those who like them and others not, and the way to find out is the web.
It's ironic that WP should be in a position of not being able to cope with the current media, and is keeping criteria for sourcing that have become fossilized. What made sense in 2004 may not make sense in 2007. A community-driven wiki should be capable of making the changes.
On 5/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/05/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 9 May 2007, Todd Allen wrote:
From what I saw, most of those the webcomic articles -were- crud, and
that includes many that got kept. Most of them were trivially, if at all, mentioned in any secondary reliable sources, they were full of original research (effectively unfixable, due to that lack of secondary sources), and the main arguments for keeping were ILIKEIT from fans. If some webcomic is genuinely going to be of long-lasting, truly encyclopedic value, it'll get covered by secondary sources, and we can have an article. Until then, we don't need articles about passing web fads.
Web comics are on the web, and that also means they get *covered* on the web. Our policy on sources prohibits using most of the coverage that web comics receive. That is a flaw with our policy, not with the webcomic articles.
And it was largely set up this way by people who hate web comics in general, and targeting Phil Sandifer in particular. Are the weird little twists in the webcomic guidelines trying to define experts writing about webcomics as a "conflict of interest" still in there?
- d.
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On 5/10/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
On the notabilty ones alone, depending on who you talk to, between 10%
and
40% of those could be poor judgement without any research, and one can easily figure that, truly, all spammy articles could be rewritten to be encyclopedic. That's a lot of articles.
Yeah, but Jeff we have tens of thousands of pathetic articles marked for cleanup at it stands - more than we can possibly cope with. So why are you so keen to to keep more spammy stubs that /could/ be cleaned up?
Your definition of spam is different than his (and mine). There's nothing wrong with a stub unless it specifically violates a policy.
Mgm
What concerns me is that we might find some FA candidates in there. Can we think of an algorithm? DGG
You could narrow it down by looking at all deleted articles over a certain size which don't have "copyvio" or "copyright" in the deletion reason. You should be able to narrow it down a fair bit that way - you then have to plough through the articles manually. A deleted article that might be almost an FAC is quite likely not formatted correctly yet, so you won't be able to automatically search for links and refs etc.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
You could narrow it down by looking at all deleted articles over a certain size which don't have "copyvio" or "copyright" in the deletion reason. You should be able to narrow it down a fair bit that way - you then have to plough through the articles manually. A deleted article that might be almost an FAC is quite likely not formatted correctly yet, so you won't be able to automatically search for links and refs etc.
I personally read "candidates" as "articles that could, theoretically, be improved to FA-level." Mostly because many comprehensive articles simply cannot.
-Jeff
On 5/10/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
What concerns me is that we might find some FA candidates in there. Can we think of an algorithm? DGG
You could narrow it down by looking at all deleted articles over a certain size which don't have "copyvio" or "copyright" in the deletion reason. You should be able to narrow it down a fair bit that way - you then have to plough through the articles manually. A deleted article that might be almost an FAC is quite likely not formatted correctly yet, so you won't be able to automatically search for links and refs etc.
Since there's articles getting tagged as unreferenced, while they actually have references, I wouldn't be at all surprised if articles get deleted for various reasons because the deleter and the nominator failed to do their research and didn't ask anyone else to help.
Mgm
On 5/7/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
What are you tempted to do?
Mass delete images with a botnet to remind the developers how important backups are.
My understanding is that image deletion cannot be reverted and the last backup was a long time ago.
-- nyenyec
On 10/05/07, Nyenyec N nyenyec@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/7/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
What are you tempted to do?
Mass delete images with a botnet to remind the developers how important backups are.
My understanding is that image deletion cannot be reverted and the last backup was a long time ago.
Image undeletion has been possible since sometime around mid-2006.
On 5/7/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
This is something I thought about after the latest Main page deletion. You go to a local library, webcafe, or kiosk to do something on Wikipedia and find yourself logged in to somebody else's administrator account.
What are you tempted to do?
What do you actually do?
What I'm tempted to do, delete the administrator's noticeboard with the comment "I'm a moron who forgets to log out from public terminals, please LART me".
What I actually do. Log his stupid ass out, log in as myself and send him a polite and civil email telling him what happened and to be careful next time. If email is not enabled, leave same message on his talk page for all the world to see.
And the lesson that should be learned is that most people aren't dicks.
People who live in communities where it's safe to keep their doors unlocked aren't "morons" or "stupid asses". They live in healthy communities. Like Canada.