On Friday 14 February 2003 04:00 am, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I forwarded this information to the administrators there. If it's real, perhaps they can help. If it's a prank, hopefully they can deal with that, too.
Yes it was the real thing and after I asked if anybody had contacted the local police Stevertigo then called the Cheshire PD about it.
In the future we should act on this even faster than we did (it was nearly 3 hours before the cops were called). It is up the cops, not us, to determine whether or not stuff like this is a prank and take the appropriate action (even if it is just to give a warning to a prankster).
Forward:
To: 'steve' Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 4:38 AM Subject: RE: thank you
Thank you, Cheshire PD alerted us and we took immediate action. The Student is in Yale-New Haven Hospital for assessment/observation. Thank you for your assistance.
I agree with Daniel on this one. We should have acted faster. As for me, when I saw it, it was already a few hours old and I assumed that something had been done, or it was too late. In retrospect, I would have acted differently.
So, what's the proper course of action in a case like this? I mean, who should one call? The police in that town?
--Jimbo
I apologize for being so slow with this message that Zoe became alarmed.
As a result of the discussion on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)]], I have written a datebot that will convert dates of the form "[[March 2]], [[2003]]" to "[[2 March]] [[2003]]" (and also the simpler case of "[[March 2]]" to "[[2 March]]"). I have tested it in my own sandbox and on a few naval ship pages.
Currently it has no automatic article selection mechanism; it only munges the single article it's pointed at. I intend to run it manually and slowly on the ship articles and make sure I haven't missed anything about its operation.
I have no intention of doing anything precipitous.
-- Sean Barrett | How am I supposed to hallucinate sean@epoptic.com | with all these swirling colors | distracting me? --Lisa Simpson
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu...)
This page is a very good example of what's wrong with voting, as opposed to a more complex and subtle process of seeking general consensus. The voting method used here is not invariant to irrelevant alternatives. Blocks of votes can be split by clever advocates who partition the decision-space on minor lines.
Let's say I strongly prefer [[1 Janauary]], [[1984]]. Why? Well, if we're seeking consensus, I have to say why. But if we're voting, I can vote for any non-NPOV reason that I want. Let's imagine that I want it that way because that's not the American way, and the Americans can shove it. (This is not *my* position, nor anyone's, I'm sure, I'm just making an example.)
The individual alternatives listed aren't presented in an NPOV fashion. The page contains little discussion on the merits.
Basically, the voting idea pushes us to "take sides" and look for a "resolution" of an issue prematurely, rather than seeking to change minds and get everyone on the same page.
---------------------------------------
Despite all this, there are benefits to the voting method, as well. I think the benefits often don't overcome the drawbacks.
--Jimbo
Jimbo-
Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu
mbers)
This page is a very good example of what's wrong with voting, as opposed to a more complex and subtle process of seeking general consensus.
It is obvious that there is not going to be consensus for or against using a particular date style. Maybe there is going to be pseudoconsensus for a particular compromise solution, but that does not necessarily mean that's a good one. For example, the solution most likely to be more or less acceptable to most contributors in terms of date style is "Do what you want". It is only a relatively small number of contributors who fight for consistency. But consistency is important for professionality.
But I agree with you that the voting method used here was flawed, as have been all methods used in the past. We've been over this: If you want to make a decision, you should
1) Announce the upcoming discussion/vote in a prominent place, depending on its potential impact.
2) Have a discussion period -- length again depending on the impact of any decision. (In the case of date styles, the impact is pretty big, as a bot has to go over thousands of articles.) Try to find consensus if possible.
3) Refactor the discussion, sort out options and advantages/disadvantages of each one.
4) Depending on the type of decision, choose a voting method (fptp or approval), e.g. yes/no works better with fptp because it's simpler.
5) Require everyone who votes, by an "unenforcable policy", to read the arguments for and against each option.
6) Vote. Depending on the decision impact, a certain minimum number of votes needs to be gathered before a decision is made.
There was no clear discussion/vote separation here, no defined period or minimum number of votes. The whole thing was not initially announced and only came to my attention through the mailing list. The voting method used was a very primitive form of approval voting that allows for all kinds of clever manipulation.
All this is the result of the fact that we still have no official decision making process that works. People come up with very basic, simplistic voting solution because they are at least likely to get us somewhere, unlike the pseudoconsensus process that almost never works. It is now generally recognized that you are the benevolent dictator, Jimbo, and that is the decision making process we use most of the time we actually get something controversial done.
The examples you like to uphold to refute this are examples where consensus is blindingly obvious anyway -- nobody but the most annoying crank would argue that an encyclopedia should not strive to be neutral and rely on verifiable sources, for example. On Votes for deletion, nobody would argue that a page containing "jjalosdfjlkö HELLO WORLD" should not be deleted. But on VfD, pages often linger for months because a single person has expressed doubts -- sysops then eventually make often arbitrary decisions. With a real process, we would just try to see where most (in the case of deleting, 80-90%) people stand, and then make a quick decision.
When there is real controversy, consensus usually becomes impossible. We need to either formalize voting, or rely on your great-but-not-infinite wisdom whenever that happens.
Regards,
Erik
I'm listening, and everyone else should listen, too.
I'm not sure that Erik and I agree on all the details, but he's very patiently been working on me with some success that we are going to need a more formalized process in the future.
One area where this really comes up a lot is in non-English wikis, where my near-infinite-wisdom is rendered powerless by the Kryptonite of other languages. :-)
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimbo-
Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu
mbers)
This page is a very good example of what's wrong with voting, as opposed to a more complex and subtle process of seeking general consensus.
It is obvious that there is not going to be consensus for or against using a particular date style. Maybe there is going to be pseudoconsensus for a particular compromise solution, but that does not necessarily mean that's a good one. For example, the solution most likely to be more or less acceptable to most contributors in terms of date style is "Do what you want". It is only a relatively small number of contributors who fight for consistency. But consistency is important for professionality.
But I agree with you that the voting method used here was flawed, as have been all methods used in the past. We've been over this: If you want to make a decision, you should
- Announce the upcoming discussion/vote in a prominent place, depending
on its potential impact.
- Have a discussion period -- length again depending on the impact of any
decision. (In the case of date styles, the impact is pretty big, as a bot has to go over thousands of articles.) Try to find consensus if possible.
- Refactor the discussion, sort out options and advantages/disadvantages
of each one.
- Depending on the type of decision, choose a voting method (fptp or
approval), e.g. yes/no works better with fptp because it's simpler.
- Require everyone who votes, by an "unenforcable policy", to read the
arguments for and against each option.
- Vote. Depending on the decision impact, a certain minimum number of
votes needs to be gathered before a decision is made.
There was no clear discussion/vote separation here, no defined period or minimum number of votes. The whole thing was not initially announced and only came to my attention through the mailing list. The voting method used was a very primitive form of approval voting that allows for all kinds of clever manipulation.
All this is the result of the fact that we still have no official decision making process that works. People come up with very basic, simplistic voting solution because they are at least likely to get us somewhere, unlike the pseudoconsensus process that almost never works. It is now generally recognized that you are the benevolent dictator, Jimbo, and that is the decision making process we use most of the time we actually get something controversial done.
The examples you like to uphold to refute this are examples where consensus is blindingly obvious anyway -- nobody but the most annoying crank would argue that an encyclopedia should not strive to be neutral and rely on verifiable sources, for example. On Votes for deletion, nobody would argue that a page containing "jjalosdfjlkö HELLO WORLD" should not be deleted. But on VfD, pages often linger for months because a single person has expressed doubts -- sysops then eventually make often arbitrary decisions. With a real process, we would just try to see where most (in the case of deleting, 80-90%) people stand, and then make a quick decision.
When there is real controversy, consensus usually becomes impossible. We need to either formalize voting, or rely on your great-but-not-infinite wisdom whenever that happens.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l