Michael Snow wikipedia at earthlink.net : "On the other hand, if 172 wants to deny any significance to the name he has chosen and give us no personal information, then we have no evidence to back up his claims to expertise and might as well disregard them."
I agree wholeheartedly. This is case with every other editor who choses to contribute to Wikipedia anonymously.
In case it wasn't clear earlier, I'd never asked to be afforded any special status based on my work outside Wikipedia. I made this clear a few months ago. After I'd initiated the Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards page, I used that new forum to propose a system for editorial arbitration. I then declared that as an anonymous editor, I would be unqualified to serve on such a pannel. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Forum_for_Encyclopedic_Standards... Some users, such as Adam Carr, took note of this observation: "I commend [172's] acknowledgement that he, as an anonymous editor, should not be a member of such a group.")
I'd like to use the above claification as a chance to illustrate my salient point concerning expertise. My frustration was never that I'd failed to receive sufficient deference from 'non-experts'; the root of the problem was never my treatment. The problem is that there are mechanisms for enforcing some policies but not others.
Wikipedia has a court reprimanding users for breaking the 3RR and making personal attacks. But it lacks an authority reprimanding users for chronically undermining Wikipedia's progress with original research, POV nonsense, and ungrammatical prose. My suggestion on Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards was an alternative arbitration committee with public credibility, composed of qualified encyclopedists who have the calhones not to edit anonymously. (Such a review board would "kill two birds with one stone": making Wikipedia more "expert"-friendly and solidifying its public credibility.) However, other people may have better ideas, and my suggestion is certainly not the only one on the table warranting attention.
Since the behavior of contributors is influenced by the options afforded to them by Wikipedia's governance-- as behavior is rooted in process and structure in every organizations-- a formal organ on Wikipedia delegating a special role for **non-anonymous** professionals, academics, graduate students, etc. would have a profound, positve effect on the culture of Wikipedia. Right now, far more talk is generated when a serious user commits a faux pax (e.g., violating the 3RR or 'calling a troll a troll') than when a troll spews crap into an article. Here's the reason: Wikipedia has mechanisms enforsing rules of PROCESS (e.g., Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement) but lacks mechanisms enforsing rules of PRODUCT (e.g., Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). As a result, when a policy related to product is broken, the dispute usually stays on talk, handled only by a handful of serious editors actively watching the page; but when a policy related to process is broken, it will attract a huge contingent of users fussing over who reverted whom, how many reverts there were, and what did or did not constitute a revert. The rules are shaping a culture on Wikipedia utterly obsessed with process, but incognizant of product.
I'm not arguing that rules of process ought to be discarded. Instead, they ought to be supplemented by rules emphasizing and ENFORCING quality. I say "supplemented" because of the likelihood that far fewer good users would act rashly if already-existing rules mandating encyclopedic standards were enforced.
In short, I'm not laying out a detailed case for policy changes here. I'm just pointing to a problem that ought to be addressed. Right now the rules create a culture on Wikipedia resulting in large amounts of attention to some policies but a lack of attention to others. This asymmetry ought to be addressed, before more users committed to undermining NPOV, no original research, and stylistic conventions figure out how to accomplish their ends by exploiting the over-emphasis on other policy guidelines. Others may disagree with solutions that I am proposing. But that doesn't mean that the problem does not exist. If my proposals are wrong, please come up with better ways of handeling the problem.
-172
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but when a policy related to process is broken, it will attract a huge contingent of users fussing over who reverted whom, how many reverts there were, and what did or did not constitute a revert. The rules are shaping a culture on Wikipedia utterly obsessed with process, but incognizant of product.
Go on name names. When it comes to keeping an eye on the 3RR section of the admins notice board I would be impressed if you come up with more than three. That is hardly a huge crowd.
I do think 172 has a point about the dangers of becoming a rules-bound, process-bound culture. The complexity of the Wikipedia process has grown incredibly in the last year or so.
-Matt (User:Morven)
It was trying to deal with editors like 172 which made it that way. Freedom to do whatever he wanted made it difficult to edit for many other editors and resulted in biased articles in important areas.
Fred
From: Matt Brown morven@gmail.com Reply-To: Matt Brown morven@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 23:39:27 -0800 To: geni geniice@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
I do think 172 has a point about the dangers of becoming a rules-bound, process-bound culture. The complexity of the Wikipedia process has grown incredibly in the last year or so.
-Matt (User:Morven) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The problem here is that 172, a confirmed revert warrior, got put on revert parole and was unable to conform to its requirements. He needed to be able to revert frequently in order to maintain the ideological bias he advocates. Trapped, he is lashing out.
Fred
From: geni geniice@gmail.com Reply-To: geni geniice@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 03:29:18 +0000 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
but when a policy related to process is broken, it will attract a huge contingent of users fussing over who reverted whom, how many reverts there were, and what did or did not constitute a revert. The rules are shaping a culture on Wikipedia utterly obsessed with process, but incognizant of product.
Go on name names. When it comes to keeping an eye on the 3RR section of the admins notice board I would be impressed if you come up with more than three. That is hardly a huge crowd.
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000, Abe Sokolov abesokolov@hotmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia has a court reprimanding users for breaking the 3RR and making personal attacks. But it lacks an authority reprimanding users for chronically undermining Wikipedia's progress with original research, POV nonsense, and ungrammatical prose. My suggestion on Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards was an alternative arbitration committee with public credibility, composed of qualified encyclopedists who have the calhones not to edit anonymously.
Exactly right, and I can't think of a single reason that anyone would want to oppose this. It wouldn't prioritize content over process, but would simply put the two on a par, which is the right approach because the two are inextricably linked. The content-related policies are already in place; all we need is a committee able and willing to enforce them.
Sarah
The only reason the current Arbitration Committee does not consider content is because we believe there is a community consensus that we should not. We do, in effect, consider content when the problem is aggressive POV editing, but as to deciding the essential nature of gravity we might be out of our depth. It is ok for Lieutenant Commander Data to throw about talk about gravitons but there are necessarily limits. However an editor who claims Scotland in Asia, that we might be able to deal with. As to whether Mongolia is in Central Asia or East Asia, well the problem is really with the editors who thinks it's important enough to revert over and over and over and over.
Fred
From: slimvirgin@gmail.com Reply-To: slimvirgin@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 01:27:02 -0700 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000, Abe Sokolov abesokolov@hotmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia has a court reprimanding users for breaking the 3RR and making personal attacks. But it lacks an authority reprimanding users for chronically undermining Wikipedia's progress with original research, POV nonsense, and ungrammatical prose. My suggestion on Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards was an alternative arbitration committee with public credibility, composed of qualified encyclopedists who have the calhones not to edit anonymously.
Exactly right, and I can't think of a single reason that anyone would want to oppose this. It wouldn't prioritize content over process, but would simply put the two on a par, which is the right approach because the two are inextricably linked. The content-related policies are already in place; all we need is a committee able and willing to enforce them.
Sarah _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
The only reason the current Arbitration Committee does not consider content is because we believe there is a community consensus that we should not. We do, in effect, consider content when the problem is aggressive POV editing, but as to deciding the essential nature of gravity we might be out of our depth. It is ok for Lieutenant Commander Data to throw about talk about gravitons but there are necessarily limits. However an editor who claims Scotland in Asia, that we might be able to deal with. As to whether Mongolia is in Central Asia or East Asia, well the problem is really with the editors who thinks it's important enough to revert over and over and over and over.
A natural consequence of allowing the Arbitration Committee seriously consider contents would be ArbCom elections based on such issues as where one stands in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Voting is no way to arrive at neutrality. To the extent that the content review is acceptable as with a discussion of Scotland's place in Asia the members of the ArbCom need a keen ability to distinguish between gravitons and levitons.
Ec
Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
... the members of the ArbCom need a keen ability to distinguish between gravitons and levitons.
Which we have, of course: gravitons are what give our decisions their all-important gravitas, and levitons are planned communities, the first one of which was constructed in Pennsylvania.
Sean Barrett wrote:
Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
... the members of the ArbCom need a keen ability to distinguish between gravitons and levitons.
Which we have, of course: gravitons are what give our decisions their all-important gravitas, and levitons are planned communities, the first one of which was constructed in Pennsylvania.
Thank you for letting my mind wander in yet another direction. There is no community named Leviton in the USA. The place in Pennsylvania is really Levittown, and there are three places with that name. The first one was in Nassau County, NY, then the one in PA, and finally a third one in Puerto Rico, all developed by the same William Levitt. See http://www.capitalcentury.com/1951.html
This kind of makes him the father of ticky-tacky.
Ec
On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 01:02:33 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sean Barrett wrote:
Which we have, of course: gravitons are what give our decisions their all-important gravitas, and levitons are planned communities, the first one of which was constructed in Pennsylvania.
Thank you for letting my mind wander in yet another direction. There is no community named Leviton in the USA. The place in Pennsylvania is really Levittown, and there are three places with that name. The first one was in Nassau County, NY, then the one in PA, and finally a third one in Puerto Rico, all developed by the same William Levitt. See http://www.capitalcentury.com/1951.html
This kind of makes him the father of ticky-tacky.
Ec
I love the way that, on wikipedia mailing lists, segues from heated discussion into random trivia are somehow supremely on-topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Levitt
Abe Sokolov:
My suggestion on Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards was an alternative arbitration committee with
public
credibility, composed of qualified encyclopedists who have the calhones
not
to edit anonymously.
slimvirgin:
Exactly right, and I can't think of a single reason that anyone would want to oppose this. It wouldn't prioritize content over process, but would simply put the two on a par, which is the right approach because the two are inextricably linked. The content-related policies are already in place; all we need is a committee able and willing to enforce them.
Hmm. 'What Wikipedia needs more than anything else is a movement of genuine editors to insist on quality control and the weeding out of non-encyclopaedic editors.' (From WP:FES.)
If I have had reservations about the thing, that just about sums it up. It's the old joke about "I supported this until I heard X speak in favour of the proposal".
I don't doubt that things have moved on, since I first decided to suspend judgement on this structure. I chose instead to nail my flag to the Systemic Bias thing (for all the good it did that or me).
I'm certainly bothered by the idea that someone with access to an academic library will be able to trump someone without, more-or-less routinely, in a citation arms race. That is obviously not what enforcing content-related policies should be. I feel 'no original research' is OK as subordinate to NPOV; 'cite sources' ought really to be used mostly to unblock logjams in discussion. There is after all plenty of wrong-headed stuff in the academic literature.
Enforcement is a tricky area for WP. Basically we have little of it. As far as page content is concerned my past suggestion has been pendulum arbitration and periods of page protection, in the most vexed cases.
Charles
I remember a number of claims you made in that regard. According to you, your advocacy of your point of view represented an objective academic point of view in sharp contrast to other editors who had only published reports of eye-witness accounts to go on. You claimed to be a political scientist and that trumped the experience of the people who actually lived under the systems you advocated.
Fred
From: "Abe Sokolov" abesokolov@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
I never asked to be afforded any special status based on my work outside Wikipedia.
"POV nonsense" you say. Yet you seem to have engaged with enthusiasm in systematic POV editing, while covering behind the thin defense that modification of your carefully crafted apolgetics was McCarthyism.
Fred
From: "Abe Sokolov" abesokolov@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
Wikipedia has a court reprimanding users for breaking the 3RR and making personal attacks. But it lacks an authority reprimanding users for chronically undermining Wikipedia's progress with original research, POV nonsense, and ungrammatical prose.
They do have a special role. Provided they edit responsibly and are respectful to other users. Your experience is only applicable in support of the proposition that a user who edits aggressively in a point of view way and is disrespectful to other editors will gradually build strong opposition against them despite professional credentials.
Fred
From: "Abe Sokolov" abesokolov@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
a special role for **non-anonymous** professionals, academics, graduate students, etc.
The problem with this is that systemic POV editing in the Wikipedia context is not QUALITY by definition when NPOV is our policy. Nor is contempt for other editors who do not share your ideological orientation.
Fred
From: "Abe Sokolov" abesokolov@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
they ought to be supplemented by rules emphasizing and ENFORCING quality.
Obviously we need to be far more aggressive in identifying and discipling those users who engage in systemic point of view editing. And not be mislead by technical expertise or smokesceens alleging persecution.
Fred
From: "Abe Sokolov" abesokolov@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:42:57 +0000 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards
If my proposals are wrong, please come up with better ways of handeling the problem.