O.k., I hereby proclaim the following:
- We will not tolerate biased content. The neutral point of view is not
open to vote; it's decided. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
- There are certain other policies as well that basically define us as a
community. We have arrived at them by broad consensus, and they should be respected. Wikipedians working in good faith should feel empowered to enforce those policies. They shouldn't have to apologize for doing so!
- We will not stop banning vandals. We should seek out the best ways we
know how to make sure that non-vandals are not lumped in with the vandals, but please stop talking as if we'll just stop banning them, because it ain't gonna happen.
- We try to help newcomers who want to contribute but don't quite
understand the body of good habits (and rules) we've built up. But we should not and *will* not tolerate forever people who are essentially attempting to undermine the system. See below.
- To whatever extent we are or are not, or should be, a democracy, the
following is also true. We are a benevolent monarchy ruled by a "constitution" or, anyway, a developing body of common law that is not open to interpretation, but not vote. This has been the case from the beginning, and we aren't going to change that.
None of this is new.
In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be banned for being really egregiously difficult. There has to be a *reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued presence. The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir. Let's have a discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all. We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer. You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon, we *will* determine a policy.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that, IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all"?
--Jimbo
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 03:57:08AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that, IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all"?
The Cunctator springs to mind. As an anarchist myself, I can't say I agree with him though.
I don't know about Wikipedia "really suffering and losing people", but I am clear that Lirs efforts create vastly more work than the rest of us can keep up with in "fixing" her edits.
I mean, her edit to the article on Sir Isaac Newton to include "prisms"... maybe it might be appropriate to mention prisms in the article, but the way she did it was like she was just trying to fill someones shoes with wet sloppy diarrhea.
Jonathan
Jonathan Walther wrote:
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all"?
The Cunctator springs to mind. As an anarchist myself, I can't say I agree with him though.
I'm reasonably well-acquainted with the Cunc's views, and I am under the distinct impression that he supports temporary ip-based bans for raw vandalism. He prefers it when we have soft security rather than hard security. He prefers to try to reform people than to ban them, and so on.
I imagine that he would support not banning people at all, _only if_ viable and superior alternatives can be found. (And I imagine he supports the search for those viable and superior alternatives.)
So I don't count him as an "anarchist" in the relevant sense.
I don't know about Wikipedia "really suffering and losing people", but I am clear that Lirs efforts create vastly more work than the rest of us can keep up with in "fixing" her edits.
I mean, her edit to the article on Sir Isaac Newton to include "prisms"... maybe it might be appropriate to mention prisms in the article, but the way she did it was like she was just trying to fill someones shoes with wet sloppy diarrhea.
In what sense do you refer to yourself as an "anarchist"? I think it's important to get beyond the political meaning of the term, which some people have some affinity for, and recognize that Larry means it in a specific sense.
Basically, I think that Larry's concerns are way overstated. All of the things he said we needed were already in place.
--Jimbo
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 04:20:29AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
In what sense do you refer to yourself as an "anarchist"? I think it's important to get beyond the political meaning of the term, which some people have some affinity for, and recognize that Larry means it in a specific sense.
In the sense that I have read the standard works by Berkman, Proudhon, and similar, and am in agreement with them. Not in the other sense of nihilist "I can do whatever I want, let's go blow some stuff up, yay!" I read Ayn Rand and Adam Smith before reading any anarchist writings, so I don't think I was uninformed or deluded when making up my mind as to which philosophy I sympathized with.
Basically, I think that Larry's concerns are way overstated. All of the things he said we needed were already in place.
As long as you are here to enforce the banning policy you just posted, I am happy with the status quo as it is. It really can take a while sometimes to figure out if someone is sincerely trying to work with us, or just yanking our chain.
Thank you for your time and patience working on the Wikipedia, Jimmy.
Jonathan
Jonathan Walther wrote:
In the sense that I have read the standard works by Berkman, Proudhon, and similar, and am in agreement with them.
Right, well, I don't think that's the sense in which Larry intended the term. (Nor did he intend it in the sense of "anarchocapitalism".)
Not in the other sense of nihilist "I can do whatever I want, let's go blow some stuff up, yay!"
I think this is more or less the sense he intended. I think a good way to put it would be "I'm opposed to all standards! Isn't random crap just as informative as so-called thoughtful articles anyway?"
As long as you are here to enforce the banning policy you just posted, I am happy with the status quo as it is. It really can take a while sometimes to figure out if someone is sincerely trying to work with us, or just yanking our chain.
I'm going to continue to be guilty of waiting a bit too long.
Thank you for your time and patience working on the Wikipedia, Jimmy.
Oh, I don't do nearly as much as most of the regulars. My job is to sit here and reflect on what people are saying, and then to repeat it in such a way that it seems like I thought of it. ;-)
As Linus Torvalds likes to say "I'm basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do."
:-)
--Jimbo
On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:
O.k., I hereby proclaim the following:
- We will not tolerate biased content. The neutral point of view is not
open to vote; it's decided. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
- There are certain other policies as well that basically define us as a
community. We have arrived at them by broad consensus, and they should be respected. Wikipedians working in good faith should feel empowered to enforce those policies. They shouldn't have to apologize for doing so!
- We will not stop banning vandals. We should seek out the best ways we
know how to make sure that non-vandals are not lumped in with the vandals, but please stop talking as if we'll just stop banning them, because it ain't gonna happen.
- We try to help newcomers who want to contribute but don't quite
understand the body of good habits (and rules) we've built up. But we should not and *will* not tolerate forever people who are essentially attempting to undermine the system. See below.
- To whatever extent we are or are not, or should be, a democracy, the
following is also true. We are a benevolent monarchy ruled by a "constitution" or, anyway, a developing body of common law that is not open to interpretation, but not vote. This has been the case from the beginning, and we aren't going to change that.
None of this is new.
Thanks. Right, none of it is new, but the fact that you're saying it now, in the present context when various people are straining to cast one or more of them in doubt, might be useful to those of us who disagree with them.
Has anyone posted this on Wikipedia itself yet?
In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be banned for being really egregiously difficult. There has to be a *reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued presence. The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir. Let's have a discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all. We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer. You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon, we *will* determine a policy.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that, IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all"?
First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call* themselves anarchists with all the same views. I frankly don't care about the word. The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the nonbias policy). Those are the people I am calling "anarchists." I should probably call them "Wikianarchists" since their political views might very well not be in the anarchist camp.
Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and unambiguous about it: see http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ). So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir. TMC is another easy example. If you put the question explicitly, you'd find a number of others, I'm sure. One person who wrote to me privately certainly seems to be of this view.
In response to my "In addition to this..." paragraph above, Toby Bartels wrote:
IOW, let's decide before the discussion that we will change policy, and only leave the discussion open to *how*. I support a discussion about policy for banning what you call "trolls" (not that Helga, much less Lir, is *actually* a troll), but let's not a priori rule out the views of a sizable group.
So he supports a banning policy himself but thinks that there's "a sizable group" that opposes it.
To put this all in perspective, it really would help to read through Wikipedia-l discussion from October and November. It won't be fun, but I predict it will be enlightening.
Larry
On 11/21/02 12:30 PM, "Larry Sanger" lsanger@nupedia.com wrote:
On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that, IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all"?
First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call* themselves anarchists with all the same views. I frankly don't care about the word. The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the nonbias policy). Those are the people I am calling "anarchists." I should probably call them "Wikianarchists" since their political views might very well not be in the anarchist camp.
Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and unambiguous about it: see http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ). So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir. TMC is another easy example. If you put the question explicitly, you'd find a number of others, I'm sure. One person who wrote to me privately certainly seems to be of this view.
I do not hate what in Jimbo's opinion defines Wikipedia, nor am I trying to weaken or eliminate it. Larry's assertion that I want to weaken the nonbias policy radically is a gross and unfortunate misinterpretation.
Yes, I think banning people is bad. But it may help the situation since everyone needs to take a few steps back and relax, Lir especially. Since I trust that Jimbo isn't happy and self-satisfied about banning Lir, I'm not overly upset. What we *don't* need is people like Clutch being juvenile with Lir's userpage, because public shaming in this manner isn't really the right tactic to handle someone like Lir.
In other words, it's not people making wrong or somewhat harmful decisions that upsets me--we all do that, and often necessarily. It's people taking pleasure from making those kinds of decisions.
Or to use analogy: I think prisons are dehumanizing institutions that harm society by their mere existence. That does not mean that I think that everyone in prison should be released, and that we should dismantle our criminal justice system. I do think that it means that we should spend more money on education and civic empowerment than on building jails, and that we should not criminalize homeless, etc. In other words, try to change society so that prisons are needed as little as possible.
But as Mr. Sanger has said, the record exists, and people can derive their own interpretation as they wish.
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 01:28:34PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
Yes, I think banning people is bad. But it may help the situation since everyone needs to take a few steps back and relax, Lir especially. Since I trust that Jimbo isn't happy and self-satisfied about banning Lir, I'm not overly upset. What we *don't* need is people like Clutch being juvenile with Lir's userpage, because public shaming in this manner isn't really the right tactic to handle someone like Lir.
If public shaming isn't available to us, then what other methods can we use? I don't think Lir is going to shape up within a week. I didn't see anyone trying to "shame" Lir; what I saw was Clutch offering an article that looked like it could really benefit Lir, if he would read it and take it seriously.
Lir enjoys the community here, but has a strong trollish streak. He alienated a lot of people so badly, they may never be able to look at his edits in an unbiased way. Maybe his user account should stay locked, but at the end of the week his IP be unblocked so he can make a new account, and take a fresh start, with a fresh name, without all the poisonous bile which makes any attempt at reconciliation impossible.
I further propose that if Lir shows any sign that he hasn't learned his lesson, he be banned right away again. He has already wasted an incredible amount of time and energy of Wikipedians who have tried to help him and work with him. He rejected all such help and delighted in fucking people around.
His edits were trash, and they were all the worse because of our policy of never deleting information. I feel that policy needs to be reevaluated. Not all information is appropriate to an encyclopedia, no matter how interesting and factual it is. Like Lirs edits to "Wealth of the Nations", which just consists of a string of quotes from the book.
Jonathan
On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, The Cunctator wrote:
I do not hate what in Jimbo's opinion defines Wikipedia, nor am I trying to weaken or eliminate it. [snip]
I'm sorry I even mentioned your views, Cunc.
Larry
Larry Sanger wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Larry Sanger wrote:
In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be banned for being really egregiously difficult. There has to be a *reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued presence. The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir. Let's have a discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all. We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer. You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon, we *will* determine a policy.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that, IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish behavior at all"?
First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call* themselves anarchists with all the same views. I frankly don't care about the word. The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the nonbias policy). Those are the people I am calling "anarchists." I should probably call them "Wikianarchists" since their political views might very well not be in the anarchist camp.
Knowing from a later post that you never meant me anyway, I now have to say that I don't know anybody of that sort either. There's some newbies and the people that you think are trolls, of course, but you listed the anarchists as a powerful block on the list in addition, and I don't know who they are, if they hate part of what defines Wikipedia.
Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and unambiguous about it: see http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ).
You know, that seems like one of The Cunctator's more ambiguous posts to me. In it, he tries to stay firmly on the fence between approving and disapproving of banning in situations like 24's. Did you mean a different one? (Or are you dropping this claim, per your later reply to The Cunctator?)
So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir. TMC is another easy example. If you put the question explicitly, you'd find a number of others, I'm sure. One person who wrote to me privately certainly seems to be of this view.
TMC is part of a bloc on the mailing list? I didn't think that he'd got so far already. Good for him! But I don't see any hate from him.
In response to my "In addition to this..." paragraph above, Toby Bartels wrote:
IOW, let's decide before the discussion that we will change policy, and only leave the discussion open to *how*. I support a discussion about policy for banning what you call "trolls" (not that Helga, much less Lir, is *actually* a troll), but let's not a priori rule out the views of a sizable group.
So he supports a banning policy himself but thinks that there's "a sizable group" that opposes it.
I think that there may have been a misunderstanding here too. I interpreted your call as for deciding on reasons for which we, the ordinary Wikipedia administrators, would ban users such as 24, Helga, and Lir. I think that many people oppose this, and in any case, it's hardly clear that there's a consensus for it. But perhaps you meant deciding on reasons for which we would ask Jimmy to ban them, as he's banned them before. This is a different matter, and if that's what you meant, then I don't believe that it required any gall whatsoever ^_^.
-- Toby
Larry Sanger wrote:
First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call* themselves anarchists with all the same views. I frankly don't care about the word. The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the nonbias policy).
I'm not aware of him wanting to eliminate or weaken radically the NPOV policy. I think he has trouble with some of the explanation/definition, but I think he agrees with the general thrust of it. At any rate, I haven't seem him saying that the wikipedia should be deliberately biased.
Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and unambiguous about it: see http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ). So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir.
I imagine that he does, to a degree, although he's said nothing against it. His views are well-known and not extraordinary. WikipediAhimsa explains it quite well.
When possible, and to the best of our finite and flawed abilities, we should work to never have to ban people. It is better if the system is set up in such a fashion that through humility, forbearance, love and diligence, we bring people into our community in a positive fashion.
Cunctator says "I think that most people would agree that in an ideal situation, banning would be unnecessary." I certainly do. I hold forth hope that over time we will develop both social customs and soft security procedures that make outrights bans largely unnecessary. A ban is a primitive and crude tool with great risk of abuse.
[Having said all of that, let me add that I do think that there is a very tiny minority of people who are just plain evil assholes. I don't imagine that such people can be reached at all.]
To put this all in perspective, it really would help to read through Wikipedia-l discussion from October and November. It won't be fun, but I predict it will be enlightening.
Well, I've been reading it on a daily basis as it has happened -- I always read everything on wikipedia-l, with a few exceptions. (I.E. sometimes I get bored with a particular thread and skip over parts of it). I try to especially pay attention to big-picture policy issues, since I consider attentiveness to that my primary WikiDuty.
I think it's very important to distinguish between "Person A advocates that Wikipedia have no standards of any kind" and "Person A advocates policy changes that _in my view_ would lead to Wikipedia having no standards of any kind".
If we take someone to be of the first type, when they are really of the second type, we will have a hard time listening to and understanding their position.
--Jimbo