Stormie wrote:
Angela_ wrote:
Antonio, since you're a sysop you can unblock yourself. Make a note of the IP that is blocked (the message you get when you try to edit will tell you this). Then go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist, find that IP and click the "unblock" link next to it.
I expect the reason you are blocked is because you share an IP with an AOL vandal.
Well, according to the block log, the reason he was blocked is because he shares an IP with his father, who was blocked for "repeatedly recreating duplictate article despite repeated requests to stop."
There's something wrong in the tone of that response. I have not looked at the article but I do understand that it was a biographical article, and the dispute was over whether the person's middle name should appear in the title of the article. The reference to "repeated requests to stop" suggests that the person making those requests was operating on the premise that the existing article was absolutely correct. What attempts did that person make to find a compromise solution?
Ec
This is utterly false.
There was already an existing article at [[Joaquin Phoenix]].
Marine69-71 created a new article at [[Joaqui'n Phoenix]] (the "i" was accented, I can't reproduce it here) with no new material that did not already exist at the current page. I redirected the page to the existing page. Marine then undid the redirection and continued to edit the page. I wrote on his talk page that there was already a page and he should edit that, and restored the redirection. He ignored my comment on his talk page, and then MOVED [[Joaqui'n Phoenix]] to [[Joaquin Phoenix (Actor)]] and continued to edit there. I again explained to him that there was already an article and to please edit there, and he once again ignored me. I changed the move back to a redirect and edited the Actor page to a redirect as well, which he then proceeded to unredirect and continue to edit. I said for the THIRD time on his talk page that he needed to stop doing what he was doing, re-edited the Actor page to a redirect, and when he undid the redirect and continued to edit again, in a HIGHLY POV style, I blocked him and fixed the redirects again.
How am I supposed to find a "compromise solution" when the other person refuses to discuss it?
RickK
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote: Stormie wrote:
Angela_ wrote:
Antonio, since you're a sysop you can unblock yourself. Make a note of the IP that is blocked (the message you get when you try to edit will tell you this). Then go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist, find that IP and click the "unblock" link next to it.
I expect the reason you are blocked is because you share an IP with an AOL vandal.
Well, according to the block log, the reason he was blocked is because he shares an IP with his father, who was blocked for "repeatedly recreating duplictate article despite repeated requests to stop."
There's something wrong in the tone of that response. I have not looked at the article but I do understand that it was a biographical article, and the dispute was over whether the person's middle name should appear in the title of the article. The reference to "repeated requests to stop" suggests that the person making those requests was operating on the premise that the existing article was absolutely correct. What attempts did that person make to find a compromise solution?
Ec
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How am I supposed to find a "compromise solution" when the other person
refuses to discuss it?
RickK
Try sending an email, before taking an extreme step? (Blocking for a story simply about title changes and redirects _is_ an extreme step; you allege POV editing also. This may be annoying, but blocking?)
Charles
I agree, and think that pages should be protected far more easily than a user should be blocked. The current rigid, tie-our-hands protection policy seems to force people to think in terms of arbitration and blocking, rather than protecting. This in turn makes the arbitration commitees job harder, I think, wheras the proactive settle it on the page approach seems more wikifaithful.
S
--- Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Try sending an email, before taking an extreme step? (Blocking for a story simply about title changes and redirects _is_ an extreme step; you allege POV editing also. This may be annoying, but blocking?)
Charles
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Since I was involved in the redirecting and reverting, I was not allowed to protect the page, much as I would have liked to.
And why should I send an email when THREE attempts to discuss it on the user's page were ignored?
RickK
"S.Vertigo" sewev@yahoo.com wrote: I agree, and think that pages should be protected far more easily than a user should be blocked. The current rigid, tie-our-hands protection policy seems to force people to think in terms of arbitration and blocking, rather than protecting. This in turn makes the arbitration commitees job harder, I think, wheras the proactive settle it on the page approach seems more wikifaithful.
S
--- Charles Matthews wrote:
Try sending an email, before taking an extreme step? (Blocking for a story simply about title changes and redirects _is_ an extreme step; you allege POV editing also. This may be annoying, but blocking?)
Charles
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Rick wrote:
Since I was involved in the redirecting and reverting, I was not allowed to protect the page, much as I would have liked to.
I detect an anomaly or contradiction in our policies. An admin is not allowed to get into a fight with a user over the content of a page and then protect the page, but the admin *is* allowed to block that user after having fought with them?
I offer no solution to this; I just pose it as a problem.
In a case like this, what I would have advised Rick to do is just make a little note, either to himself, or in a public place (perhaps we need a standard public place for such things), in effect saying: "Something weird going on _here_ and _here_, check it out in 24 hours."
Then, 24 hours later, simply delete the duplicate page and be done with it.
This has the same effect on the site in 24 hours, but it also relieves Rick of the need to fight with a user who is plainly doing something goofy.
The old saying "Don't feed the trolls" is very apt in these situations. Someone who is behaving in this fashion is very likely acting, Rick, just to get a rise out of you. Deprive them of that gift. Let them be stupid, and then just revert it all 24 hours later.
This will save you a lot of grief, and it will remove from them the joy of getting into a fight. They live for that, remember.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Rick wrote:
Since I was involved in the redirecting and reverting, I was not allowed to protect the page, much as I would have liked to.
I detect an anomaly or contradiction in our policies. An admin is not allowed to get into a fight with a user over the content of a page and then protect the page, but the admin *is* allowed to block that user after having fought with them?
I offer no solution to this; I just pose it as a problem.
I didn't think we had such an anomaly. It comes as quite a surprise to me that a party to a dispute is supposedly allowed to ban his or her opponent in the dispute. Generally using sysop powers for personal disputes is considered a misuse of power, for the exact same reasons protecting a page is. Similarly, arbitration committee members recuse themselves from cases involving users with whom they've had disputes. Certainly if there's enough of an involvement that protecting a page would be inappropriate, banning the user would be highly inappropriate, not to mention quite unseemly.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
I didn't think we had such an anomaly. It comes as quite a surprise to me that a party to a dispute is supposedly allowed to ban his or her opponent in the dispute. Generally using sysop powers for personal disputes is considered a misuse of power, for the exact same reasons protecting a page is.
Well, I agree with you completely, and it surprised me as well.
The reason I said it is that in this discussion, people seemed to be accepting it as valid. Rick said he couldn't protect the page because he had been editing it. But Rick did ban the user, and the discussions of that banning centereed mainly on whether there was a better way, not on whether there was inappropriateness due to Rick's prior editing.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
I detect an anomaly or contradiction in our policies. An admin is not allowed to get into a fight with a user over the content of a page and then protect the page, but the admin *is* allowed to block that user after having fought with them?
I offer no solution to this; I just pose it as a problem.
I don't see that as an anomaly, because page protection and banning are two different pairs of shoes. In summary: I think protecting a page when you're involved in an edit war is essentially declaring your version as "better" or "more valid". Banning a user is declaring that the user has acted against Wikipedia's interests.
In my mind, a sysop should be allowed to ban a user if common sense tells us that the user is trying to work against Wikipedia's interests (and not just against the sysop's taste). The Joaquin Phoenix case seems like a clear breach to me: The user was banned because they were attempting to circumvent the Wiki process.
In practice, of course, "common sense" and "Wikipedia's interests" aren't well-defined, so please feel free to substitute rules and policies for that.
Page protection is different. If the edits in question were clearly vandalism, the user should be banned, and not the page protected. Hence, when talking about page protection, we're dealing with edits that aren't wrong or against Wikipedia's interests. The page should only be protected if the reason for the edit war is that people disagree on the content of the article, but both versions are legitimate articles (as opposed only to vandalism). A sysop has no right to protect the page on their version, thereby declaring it as "better" or "more valid", if the other user did not commit vandalism.
One flaw I can see in my own argument is that if someone *else* protects the page, they can also be seen as declaring the version they protected as "better" or "more valid". Yes, I know we explicitly state all over the place that this is never the intention of a sysop protecting a page; but why does this only work for sysops that are not involved in the edit war? The one time that I made this faux-pas (protecting a page where I was involved in an edit war) it was my genuine intention to discuss the issue with the user and unprotect the page again later.
Timwi
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Let them be stupid, and then just revert it all 24 hours later. This will save you a lot of
grief.
Nope; the article will be incorrect or ususable for the x amount of page hits that it gets that day and night.
*They live for that, remember.
Yes, *they "hate our freedom."
S
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S.Vertigo wrote:
Let them be stupid, and then just revert it all 24 hours later. This will save you a lot of grief.
Nope; the article will be incorrect or ususable for the x amount of page hits that it gets that day and night.
In some cases, that's true. But in the case in question, if I understood it, the person was making a new article when we already had one. That new article would likely not be seen by anyone.
I do concede that leaving people alone for 24 hours rather than reverting them instantly can be a judgment call depending in part on the importance/popularity of the page in question.
*They live for that, remember.
Yes, *they "hate our freedom."
Well, they do.
--Jimbo
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
leaving people alone for 24 hours rather than reverting them instantly can be a
judgment call depending in part on
the importance/popularity of the page in question.
OK, there seems to be some general agreement that blocking is OK for vandalism and unreasonable behaviour, while not OK for problems users regarding particular pages; hence, too highly subjective to leave to the whims of sysops, if recent squabbles are any indication. Ill echo the claim that the page protection policy needs some attenuation; to better align it with the needs of the mod and arb processes. IHMO.
*They live for that, remember.
Yes, *they "hate our freedom."
Well, they do.
If by "freedom," you mean "the illusion of greater freedom shared among those of relatively greater means, regardless of the means (free or not) by which they are gotten," then I *totally agree.
S
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S.Vertigo wrote:
*They live for that, remember.
Yes, *they "hate our freedom."
Well, they do.
If by "freedom," you mean "the illusion of greater freedom shared among those of relatively greater means, regardless of the means (free or not) by which they are gotten," then I *totally agree.
I'm sorry, I'm afraid I misunderstood what you were originally talking about, because I certainly don't understand what you're talking about now. I thought you were talking about trolls, but it seems you were talking about... well, I have no idea. So I withdraw my comment.
--Jimbo
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I thought you were talking about trolls, but it seems you were talking about... well, I have no idea. So I withdraw my comment.
I thought you were talking about trolls too.
S
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Rick wrote:
Since I was involved in the redirecting and reverting, I was not allowed to protect the page, much as I would have liked to.
The odd thing here is that this implies that protecting a page is a more serious action than blocking a user.
That seems backwards to me. If a page is protected the user is still free to edit other articles.
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The odd thing here is that this implies that protecting a page is a more serious action than blocking a user.
That seems backwards to me. If a page is protected the user is still free to edit other articles.
Hmm: A restraining order vs. deportation... The difference is *slight, but perhaps you are correct.
S
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Just for the record, in case anyone gives a crap, I fully support Rick here. The user was *extensively* warned for his disruptive behaviour. Yeah, the idea of exhausting all options before blocking is nice, but sometimes people are just hell-bent and unwilling to even discuss it, and need to be blocked for a bit so they can learn that we don't operate like that, and that it's better to discuss things than to make disruptive edits.
Thank you. I did nothing wrong, and would not change a thing I did.
RickK
blankfaze blankfaze@gmail.com wrote: Just for the record, in case anyone gives a crap, I fully support Rick here. The user was *extensively* warned for his disruptive behaviour. Yeah, the idea of exhausting all options before blocking is nice, but sometimes people are just hell-bent and unwilling to even discuss it, and need to be blocked for a bit so they can learn that we don't operate like that, and that it's better to discuss things than to make disruptive edits. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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blankfaze wrote:
Just for the record, in case anyone gives a crap, I fully support Rick here.
I do too. I would have acted differently, but we need not shed a tear over a user who is behaving in this fashion.
I support Rick but advise a different course of action, one which I think will be more effective in combatting people like this.
Wiki means quick, I guess, but sometimes slow is faster.
--Jimbo
blankfaze wrote:
Just for the record, in case anyone gives a crap, I fully support Rick here. The user was *extensively* warned for his disruptive behaviour. Yeah, the idea of exhausting all options before blocking is nice, but sometimes people are just hell-bent and unwilling to even discuss it, and need to be blocked for a bit so they can learn that we don't operate like that, and that it's better to discuss things than to make disruptive edits.
The problem is with the presumption of guilt.
This leaves no room for the possibility that the newbie may have a better solution. It presumes that the way something has always been done must be the right way, or that the title and placement of articles is set in stone. Some people also need to learn that vigilante justice is also a way in which we do not operate.
Ec
I DID NOT block him because the article he was writing is POV, and I DID NOT say in the block summary that that was the case.
RickK
Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
How am I supposed to find a "compromise solution" when the other person
refuses to discuss it?
RickK
Try sending an email, before taking an extreme step? (Blocking for a story simply about title changes and redirects _is_ an extreme step; you allege POV editing also. This may be annoying, but blocking?)
Charles
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