And naturally it's gone as a result of what looks to me like a rather messy process.
The 14th AfD just closed. The result was the usual 200 kilobytes of keep and delete !votes, and the closing admin interpreted the result as a consensus to split up and merge the material into the articles [[NameBase]], [[CIA HTTP cookies controversy]], [[Google Watch]] and [[Criticism of Wikipedia]]. He promptly turned the article into a redirect to [[NameBase]] and indefinitely protected it.
Naturally, a DRV is underway. I'm a bit surprised by how strongly it's swinging "endorse" right now, this outcome strikes me as really bizarre. Is this more BLP mania in action? Why can't we have even a stub biography of someone who's featured significantly in four other articles? Shouldn't BLP apply just the same no matter where the material winds up?
I hate to start complaint threads like this one, but this really caught me by surprise and I'm wondering if I'm really so far out of touch that this should be making sense to me.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I hate to start complaint threads like this one, but this really caught me by surprise and I'm wondering if I'm really so far out of touch that this should be making sense to me.
And, I just notice, one of the four articles it's been merged into is already up for deletion itself and two of the others have had pre-AfD "notability dispute" templates put on them in preparation for it.
Meanwhile there's now discussion on talk:Daniel Brandt about deleting the article's history once the merge is complete, and when I pointed out that this would violate the GFDL I got a response from Slim Virgin that "This is no time to worry about the GFDL."
This is the messiest stealth deletion attempt I've ever seen. Come on, either the 14th AfD was a consensus to delete or it wasn't.
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I pointed out that this would violate the GFDL I got a response from Slim Virgin that "This is no time to worry about the GFDL."
I've blocked people for less.
I pointed out that this would violate the GFDL I got a response from Slim Virgin that "This is no time to worry about the GFDL."
I've blocked people for less.
If he really did say that then a desysoping should be considered. One of the jobs of admins is dealing with copyvios - such a blatant lack of understanding of copyright suggests he is not capable of being an admin.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I pointed out that this would violate the GFDL I got a response from Slim Virgin that "This is no time to worry about the GFDL."
I've blocked people for less.
If he really did say that then a desysoping should be considered. One of the jobs of admins is dealing with copyvios - such a blatant lack of understanding of copyright suggests he is not capable of being an admin.
In Slim's defense (imagine that, coming from me), what she appears to have actually been recommending was to remove the article *and* the merged content and rewrite any relevant text from scratch. Her full statement was actually, "Any material we want to merge can be researched and written from scratch if need be. This is no time to worry about the GFDL.".
On 14/06/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
In Slim's defense (imagine that, coming from me), what she appears to have actually been recommending was to remove the article *and* the merged content and rewrite any relevant text from scratch. Her full statement was actually, "Any material we want to merge can be researched and written from scratch if need be. This is no time to worry about the GFDL.".
Indeed. That's why BLP stubification is usually done with a delete and complete rewrite as a stub.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 14/06/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
In Slim's defense (imagine that, coming from me), what she appears to have actually been recommending was to remove the article *and* the merged content and rewrite any relevant text from scratch. Her full statement was actually, "Any material we want to merge can be researched and written from scratch if need be. This is no time to worry about the GFDL.".
Indeed. That's why BLP stubification is usually done with a delete and complete rewrite as a stub.
But in this case the merge has already been done. And besides which, the AfD result was clearly not a "delete" so it's unwarranted even to begin with.
In Slim's defense (imagine that, coming from me), what she appears to have actually been recommending was to remove the article *and* the merged content and rewrite any relevant text from scratch. Her full statement was actually, "Any material we want to merge can be researched and written from scratch if need be. This is no time to worry about the GFDL.".
Ah, that's always the problem with making judgements based on half a quote. Thanks for clearing that up.
G'day Tom,
In Slim's defense (imagine that, coming from me), what she appears to have actually been recommending was to remove the article *and* the merged content and rewrite any relevant text from scratch. Her full statement was actually, "Any material we want to merge can be researched and written from scratch if need be. This is no time to worry about the GFDL.".
Ah, that's always the problem with making judgements based on half a quote. Thanks for clearing that up.
Speaking of making judgments, SlimVirgin is actually female, so "he" should definitely not be desysopped for Bryan's sneaky little quotation.
Funny thing, the editors who attract the biggest creeps tend to be female. Why is that, I wonder?
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:04:12 +0100, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If he really did say that then a desysoping should be considered. One of the jobs of admins is dealing with copyvios - such a blatant lack of understanding of copyright suggests he is not capable of being an admin.
History is still there in the deleted revisions tables.
Guy (JzG)
On 6/14/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:04:12 +0100, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If he really did say that then a desysoping should be considered. One of the jobs of admins is dealing with copyvios - such a blatant lack of understanding of copyright suggests he is not capable of being an admin.
History is still there in the deleted revisions tables.
That argument didn't get much traction in the BJAODN brouhaha.
-- Jonel
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Meanwhile there's now discussion on talk:Daniel Brandt about deleting the article's history once the merge is complete
As [[Special:Export]] no longer works for exporting the full history of an article, is there any way to do this without downloading the entire history dump?
On 6/14/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Meanwhile there's now discussion on talk:Daniel Brandt about deleting the article's history once the merge is complete
As [[Special:Export]] no longer works for exporting the full history of an article, is there any way to do this without downloading the entire history dump?
Use api.php
For instance this will download the last five revisions of "John Lennon" in xml format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=xmlfm&action=query&titles=J...
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/14/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Meanwhile there's now discussion on talk:Daniel Brandt about deleting the article's history once the merge is complete
As [[Special:Export]] no longer works for exporting the full history of an article, is there any way to do this without downloading the entire history dump?
Use api.php
For instance this will download the last five revisions of "John Lennon" in xml format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=xmlfm&action=query&titles=J...
That maxes out at 500 revisions. Is there a way to change the offset? [[Daniel Brandt]] has over 2000 revisions.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/14/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Meanwhile there's now discussion on talk:Daniel Brandt about deleting the article's history once the merge is complete
As [[Special:Export]] no longer works for exporting the full history of an article, is there any way to do this without downloading the entire history dump?
Use api.php
For instance this will download the last five revisions of "John Lennon" in xml format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=xmlfm&action=query&titles=J...
That maxes out at 500 revisions. Is there a way to change the offset? [[Daniel Brandt]] has over 2000 revisions.
My mistake, it actually maxes out at 50 for non-bot accounts. That's not even as good as [[Special:Export]]. I also see now that there are parameters for setting spans of revision IDs, but in chunks of 50 that's over 40 queries to hand-craft.
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
My mistake, it actually maxes out at 50 for non-bot accounts. That's not even as good as [[Special:Export]]. I also see now that there are parameters for setting spans of revision IDs, but in chunks of 50 that's over 40 queries to hand-craft.
Worse than that for [[Special:Export]], as it doesn't accept GET requests. I wound up creating a form locally to POST requests with the additional parameter for the spans and ran the thirty-some (IIRC) requests by hand.
Turns out I could have instead used my bot account and cut the queries down to 4, although at this point I can't remember the password on it - and I don't have email set up for it to get a new one.
Wish I could get that live feed...
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Use api.php
For instance this will download the last five revisions of "John Lennon" in xml format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=xmlfm&action=query&titles=J...
That maxes out at 500 revisions. Is there a way to change the offset? [[Daniel Brandt]] has over 2000 revisions.
Try this url for help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
It's a bit fiddly but it's probably possible to specify a "since" date or a revision id or something.
Someone said that it doesn't accept GET. Well obviously it does, though obviously it would make more sense to script this than to to do it by hand.
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Naturally, a DRV is underway. I'm a bit surprised by how strongly it's swinging "endorse" right now, this outcome strikes me as really bizarre. Is this more BLP mania in action? Why can't we have even a stub biography of someone who's featured significantly in four other articles? Shouldn't BLP apply just the same no matter where the material winds up?
I hate to start complaint threads like this one, but this really caught me by surprise and I'm wondering if I'm really so far out of touch that this should be making sense to me.
We need to get rid of that article. We've subjected Brandt to hundreds of thousands of words of debate, 14 AfDs, I don't know how many DRVs -- wall-to-wall bickering and childishness for 18 sorry months. We've allowed his article to be edited by any anonymous teenager who turns up with a grudge, and the decision to keep the wretched thing has been made 13 times by people who normally edit Star Trek. We've made complete fools of ourselves as a project.
No matter the merits of the article, the process he's been put through is totally unacceptable by any standard. We've shown we can't be trusted with a Brandt bio, and we should delete it for that reason alone, no matter how notable any of us thinks he is.
I'm hopeful. Once we've seen the back of that article, I'll begin to consider that Wikipedia has come of age.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I'm hopeful. Once we've seen the back of that article, I'll begin to consider that Wikipedia has come of age.
Seems more like giving up on the Wikipedia process entirely. What else will we decide we "can't be trusted" to write articles about next? And will that decision be made in the same haphazard back-channel way this one is being made in?
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I'm hopeful. Once we've seen the back of that article, I'll begin to consider that Wikipedia has come of age.
Seems more like giving up on the Wikipedia process entirely. What else will we decide we "can't be trusted" to write articles about next? And will that decision be made in the same haphazard back-channel way this one is being made in?
It was an open discussion followed by almost certainly the most comprehensively documented close we have ever seen. You can see the comments the closer made as he considered each point. The result is on deletion review but seems to be holding up very well indeed.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I'm hopeful. Once we've seen the back of that article, I'll begin to consider that Wikipedia has come of age.
Seems more like giving up on the Wikipedia process entirely. What else will we decide we "can't be trusted" to write articles about next? And will that decision be made in the same haphazard back-channel way this one is being made in?
It was an open discussion followed by almost certainly the most comprehensively documented close we have ever seen. You can see the comments the closer made as he considered each point. The result is on deletion review but seems to be holding up very well indeed.
What I'm talking about here is not just the AfD result on its own, but the rush to go _beyond_ it and turn the "merge" result into an outright deletion.
Why is it that seven other Wikipedias are apparently "trustworthy" enough to have articles about Daniel Brandt but the English Wikipedia can't have anything more than a redirect, if that? What if we were to translate one of those other articles and put it here on en?
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I'm hopeful. Once we've seen the back of that article, I'll begin to consider that Wikipedia has come of age.
Seems more like giving up on the Wikipedia process entirely. What else will we decide we "can't be trusted" to write articles about next? And will that decision be made in the same haphazard back-channel way this one is being made in?
It was an open discussion followed by almost certainly the most comprehensively documented close we have ever seen. You can see the comments the closer made as he considered each point. The result is on deletion review but seems to be holding up very well indeed.
What I'm talking about here is not just the AfD result on its own, but the rush to go _beyond_ it and turn the "merge" result into an outright deletion.
Why is it that seven other Wikipedias are apparently "trustworthy" enough to have articles about Daniel Brandt but the English Wikipedia can't have anything more than a redirect, if that? What if we were to translate one of those other articles and put it here on en?
It strikes me that the recurrence of debates about Brandt is more than anything reflective of an obsessive mania to censor anything about the man. To suggest that no one can be trusted to write a neutral article, and that that fact alone is enough reason not to have an article at all is a gross insult to all those of us who try to maintain a balanced approach to what we do, whether on not we have participated in editing that and related articles.
There are clearly some people who want the article to remain, and I seriously doubt that they are all teenies and trekkies. Nor can I believe that all those who support the article are out to fill it with half-truths, or other questionable material It's about time that the obsessives began to accept that there are other constructive contributors than themselves.
Ec
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:45:15 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It strikes me that the recurrence of debates about Brandt is more than anything reflective of an obsessive mania to censor anything about the man.
It strikes me that when censorship is invoked it is very often an indication of lack of a more rational basis for the argument.
Have you read the comments of others about this? This is a "biography" teased from numerous sources which are fundamentally about something else. Even if you have no problem with that, others may, and that does not indicate censorship, it indicates a credible concern with the abuse of article space to further an agenda (in this case attacking Brandt, or maybe just having an article because he doesn't want one).
To dismiss valid concerns held by apparently significant numbers of people as "censorship" is at best a gross oversimplification.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:45:15 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
It strikes me that the recurrence of debates about Brandt is more than anything reflective of an obsessive mania to censor anything about the man.
It strikes me that when censorship is invoked it is very often an indication of lack of a more rational basis for the argument.
Not necessarily. If the intention of some of the people involved is to insure that no such article ever exists let's call a spade a spade.
Have you read the comments of others about this? This is a "biography" teased from numerous sources which are fundamentally about something else. Even if you have no problem with that, others may, and that does not indicate censorship, it indicates a credible concern with the abuse of article space to further an agenda (in this case attacking Brandt, or maybe just having an article because he doesn't want one).
"Teased from numerous sources" would put into doubt some of the copyvio arguments that have been raised.
I have no interest in either attacking or supporting what Brandt is doing, and I would be just as critical of those who would abuse the article for the sake of attacking him as I am of those who would want to completely delete the article. With all that has been said about him I find it hard to believe that there is absolutely nothing that is verifiable and neutral.
I also don't believe that whether a person wants an article about himself should be a major factor in deciding to have one. It should probably be considered where the notability is marginal, and there is nothing but trivial information about the person, but even then it should not be _the_ deciding criterion.
To dismiss valid concerns held by apparently significant numbers of people as "censorship" is at best a gross oversimplification.
It's not the validity of those concerns that I dismiss, it's their inflexibility.
Ec
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:45:04 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that we probably agree on more than you'd think here, but just to pick up on one thing:
It's not the validity of those concerns that I dismiss, it's their inflexibility.
That is precisely my point - "censor" is a word which is a pretty reliable marker for inflexibility. AMiB's Brandt close was the precise opposite, it was a thoughtful rather than an absolutist judgment. It is supported by a number of people who have advocated both keep and delete in the past. It is opposed by a number of people who appear to take an absolutist stance, one way or the other.
I don't actually care overmuch whether we have an article on Brandt or not, I think I have !voted keep in the past if only to end the ridiculous fighting, but this close does seem to me to be a genuine attempt to resolve the tension between those who want to cover someone because they have done something good/bad/stupid, and those who feel (reasons which are at least as good) that we should aspire to rise above such foolishness.
Guy (JzG)
WP is in the peculiar situation where any one of over 1200 people can on their own initiative decide on the outcome of a deletion debate--or a DRV. The result in seriously disputed matters depends on the personal judgment of whoever steps forward
I know of no successful organization with a comparable size and procedure. Historical precedents are not reassuring. The Roman tribunes & consuls had similar power, but the total number never exceeded 12; even so, the Republic's history was marked by frequent civil wars. The Polish liberum veto in the sejm of approximately 400 is generally thought to have destroyed the country. And both were merely vetoes, not the promulgation of decisions.
In this case, the self-selected admin pronounced: "A COMPLEX MERGE. I think I've arrived at a solution." -- self-admittedly his own solution, not the consensus of the dispute seen rightly or wrongly--this specific merge had not been mentioned in the discussion--and there were only 2 or 3 voices supporting any merge at all. .
Deletion policy lets closers disregard particular arguments "not made in good faith," and to "use their best judgement...to determine when a rough consensus has been reached." I don't think either statement covers this case. I'm too new an admin & editor to feel comfortable proposing a desysop--and it might not be fair, because there were other recent arbitrary single-handed actions taken by individual initiative.
On 6/14/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:45:04 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that we probably agree on more than you'd think here, but just to pick up on one thing:
It's not the validity of those concerns that I dismiss, it's their inflexibility.
That is precisely my point - "censor" is a word which is a pretty reliable marker for inflexibility. AMiB's Brandt close was the precise opposite, it was a thoughtful rather than an absolutist judgment. It is supported by a number of people who have advocated both keep and delete in the past. It is opposed by a number of people who appear to take an absolutist stance, one way or the other.
I don't actually care overmuch whether we have an article on Brandt or not, I think I have !voted keep in the past if only to end the ridiculous fighting, but this close does seem to me to be a genuine attempt to resolve the tension between those who want to cover someone because they have done something good/bad/stupid, and those who feel (reasons which are at least as good) that we should aspire to rise above such foolishness.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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On 6/14/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Deletion policy lets closers disregard particular arguments "not made in good faith," and to "use their best judgement...to determine when a rough consensus has been reached." I don't think either statement covers this case. I'm too new an admin & editor to feel comfortable proposing a desysop--and it might not be fair, because there were other recent arbitrary single-handed actions taken by individual initiative.
Desysopping A Man in Black for stepping forward to wrestle with this octopus would be absurd. He's proposed a solution that will put an end to the drama, so long as everyone behaves sensibly and the article(s) are written properly.
The problem doesn't lie with the procedure for closing, but with the fact that we allow anyone, almost certainly including people with multiple accounts, to have an equal say in deciding matters of importance to the project. It's one thing to be the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but it's another to be a top-ten website that anyone of any age determines the direction of, even if it includes running over a cliff like a bunch of lemmings.
At some point, we'll have to face that allowing any account, even a very recent one, to take part in policy discussions, BLP issues, and important AfDs is editorial, moral, and legal folly.
On 6/14/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Desysopping A Man in Black for stepping forward to wrestle with this octopus would be absurd. He's proposed a solution that will put an end to the drama, so long as everyone behaves sensibly and the article(s) are written properly.
Your proof of that claim should be interesting. Particularly your attempt to reason around the trouble the ==author== section of the NameBase article will cause.
The problem doesn't lie with the procedure for closing, but with the fact that we allow anyone, almost certainly including people with multiple accounts, to have an equal say in deciding matters of importance to the project.
So far all suggested alternatives are worse. I would have thought the Essjay incident with have convinced you that the self selecting elite idea is even worse.
It's one thing to be the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but it's another to be a top-ten website that anyone of any age determines the direction of, even if it includes running over a cliff like a bunch of lemmings.
Legally anyone over the age of 18 in the US can determine the direction of wikipedia. They don't even need any edits.
At some point, we'll have to face that allowing any account, even a very recent one, to take part in policy discussions, BLP issues, and important AfDs is editorial, moral, and legal folly.
Anything else however is not logically supportable. Arguments gain strength through their logic and their consistency with observed reality. Not who makes them.
Slim Virgin wrote:
The problem doesn't lie with the procedure for closing, but with the fact that we allow anyone, almost certainly including people with multiple accounts, to have an equal say in deciding matters of importance to the project. It's one thing to be the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but it's another to be a top-ten website that anyone of any age determines the direction of, even if it includes running over a cliff like a bunch of lemmings.
I am not so insecure as to worry about the age of any contributor, whether to articles or policies. Over an extended period of time they will be affected by policies, so why shouldn't they have input? Why shouldn't their views be taken as equally important to the views of those who by chance happened to be here to write the policies in the first place.
Individuals with multiple accounts are a completely different matter, and that has nothing to do with age.
At some point, we'll have to face that allowing any account, even a very recent one, to take part in policy discussions, BLP issues, and important AfDs is editorial, moral, and legal folly.
That kind of abject elitism would make us a very different place.
Ec
On 6/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Slim Virgin wrote:
At some point, we'll have to face that allowing any account, even a very recent one, to take part in policy discussions, BLP issues, and important AfDs is editorial, moral, and legal folly.
That kind of abject elitism would make us a very different place.
Not necessarily a worse one.
I'm not about to suggest that we require accounts registered in real identities, but it might make sense to divide the Wikipedia community from the people who edit Wikipedia. The members of the community aren't trolls, for the most part they're not anonymous and they don't conceal their identities (although I recognise that there are significant exceptions to the latter two).
I don't see any reason why a Wikipedian should demand that his voice be heard while his identity is uncertain.
I'm not proposing that we go down that path, but it's a very respectable position that deserves consideration.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Slim Virgin wrote:
At some point, we'll have to face that allowing any account, even a very recent one, to take part in policy discussions, BLP issues, and important AfDs is editorial, moral, and legal folly.
That kind of abject elitism would make us a very different place.
Not necessarily a worse one.
I'm not about to suggest that we require accounts registered in real identities, but it might make sense to divide the Wikipedia community from the people who edit Wikipedia. The members of the community aren't trolls, for the most part they're not anonymous and they don't conceal their identities (although I recognise that there are significant exceptions to the latter two).
I don't see any reason why a Wikipedian should demand that his voice be heard while his identity is uncertain.
I'm not proposing that we go down that path, but it's a very respectable position that deserves consideration.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Isn't there already a Citizendium?
Now, personally, I don't care all that much if anyone knows my real name. I've gotten death threats and the like before, and I'm still alive (though more than one person might wish otherwise). But I can understand why some people may wish to conceal their real-world identity. If that person still consistently shows consideration and good judgment, I'm certainly still willing to give them a presumption of trust. (Do you know me better because you know Seraphimblade's real name is Todd Allen, or do you mainly know me through what you've interacted with me?)
As to the rest-if someone, whether they're new or have been around forever, comes along and makes thoughtful, considered arguments, they're deserving of consideration. If someone else, whether they're new or have been around forever, comes around to post a long flaming rant devoid of critical thought, that's not deserving of much consideration. The content of the post, not the signature at the end, should be the deciding factor.
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Slim Virgin wrote:
At some point, we'll have to face that allowing any account, even a very recent one, to take part in policy discussions, BLP issues, and important AfDs is editorial, moral, and legal folly.
That kind of abject elitism would make us a very different place.
Not necessarily a worse one.
I'm not about to suggest that we require accounts registered in real identities, but it might make sense to divide the Wikipedia community from the people who edit Wikipedia. The members of the community aren't trolls, for the most part they're not anonymous and they don't conceal their identities (although I recognise that there are significant exceptions to the latter two).
I don't see any reason why a Wikipedian should demand that his voice be heard while his identity is uncertain.
I'm not proposing that we go down that path, but it's a very respectable position that deserves consideration.
There have been various suggestions in the past. (1) That only admins be allowed to edit policy pages, and we could extend that to BLP issues, which would include BLP AfDs; (2) same as (1) but using a minimum edit count rather than adminship; (3) that only users willing to identify themselves be allowed to be edit BLPs or decide on BLP deletions or policies. I do think it's time we started discussing these options seriously.
On 6/15/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not proposing that we go down that path, but it's a very respectable position that deserves consideration.
There have been various suggestions in the past. (1) That only admins be allowed to edit policy pages, and we could extend that to BLP issues, which would include BLP AfDs; (2) same as (1) but using a minimum edit count rather than adminship; (3) that only users willing to identify themselves be allowed to be edit BLPs or decide on BLP deletions or policies. I do think it's time we started discussing these options seriously.
I do think it might help a bit. The number of editors who take part in policy discussions and process pages is relatively low in any case. In connection with another matter, I'm sending my scanned passport off to Wikimedia in a few days anyway, so it isn't as if we don't already require it for some functions.
Would it help? Well I don't know overall. But it would make accountability better.
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
-george william herbert gherbert@gmail.com
George Herbert wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
Having the words "Daniel Brandt" in the title seems to be sufficient right now.
I had a quick look through some randomly selected previous Daniel Brandt AfDs and none of them are blanked, why this particular one?
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
If you are serious, you need to make a good argument why, not just a couple of throwaway lines. That we had an article once will be archived in places; unless you're arguing to blank and delete history, then the history is available if someone wants to go looking for it. The degree of protection delivered by such a courtesy blanking seems rather meager, and it's definitely against all other standard archive policy...
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
Do we need a "coherent case" for something so obvious?
If you are serious, you need to make a good argument why, not just a couple of throwaway lines. That we had an article once will be archived in places; unless you're arguing to blank and delete history, then the history is available if someone wants to go looking for it. The degree of protection delivered by such a courtesy blanking seems rather meager, and it's definitely against all other standard archive policy...
"Standard policy", where it suggests that stupidity is an option, can and should be ignored.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
Do we need a "coherent case" for something so obvious?
You seem to forget that your notion of what is obvious is idiosyncratic.
If you are serious, you need to make a good argument why, not just a couple of throwaway lines. That we had an article once will be archived in places; unless you're arguing to blank and delete history, then the history is available if someone wants to go looking for it. The degree of protection delivered by such a courtesy blanking seems rather meager, and it's definitely against all other standard archive policy...
"Standard policy", where it suggests that stupidity is an option, can and should be ignored.
That sounds like a good reason for ignoring your proposal.
Ec
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
So... What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
Um, no, we do it lots on AFDs of BLPs.
- d.
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
We have been doing it, on an ad-hoc basis, for a year or so - generally after a complaint. It tends to be low-profile, because no-one ever watches archived deletion discussion pages so no-one notices...
If you are serious, you need to make a good argument why, not just a couple of throwaway lines. That we had an article once will be archived in places; unless you're arguing to blank and delete history, then the history is available if someone wants to go looking for it. The degree of protection delivered by such a courtesy blanking seems rather meager, and it's definitely against all other standard archive policy...
The purpose is to stop the first google hit on someone's name being "self-promotional vanity tripe", which is a little cruel even when they did write the article - and when, as so often happens, they *didn't*, it's just nasty.
Most AFDs on people are filled with not particularly nice comments. It's dine we keep them for internal purposes, but it seems fair to stop leaving them obviously public to be stumbled upon. Blanking doesn't hide that there was a debate or hide the decision; what it *does* do is hide the most stupid excesses of the discussion.
(If AFD could use words like "vanity" a little less often that'd be nice too, but I don't see it happening much)
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The purpose is to stop the first google hit on someone's name being "self-promotional vanity tripe", which is a little cruel even when they did write the article - and when, as so often happens, they *didn't*, it's just nasty.
Most AFDs on people are filled with not particularly nice comments. It's dine we keep them for internal purposes, but it seems fair to stop leaving them obviously public to be stumbled upon. Blanking doesn't hide that there was a debate or hide the decision; what it *does* do is hide the most stupid excesses of the discussion.
The same could be said of requests for arbitration. Can we blank them too?
On 15/06/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The purpose is to stop the first google hit on someone's name being "self-promotional vanity tripe", which is a little cruel even when they did write the article - and when, as so often happens, they *didn't*, it's just nasty.
Most AFDs on people are filled with not particularly nice comments. It's dine we keep them for internal purposes, but it seems fair to stop leaving them obviously public to be stumbled upon. Blanking doesn't hide that there was a debate or hide the decision; what it *does* do is hide the most stupid excesses of the discussion.
The same could be said of requests for arbitration. Can we blank them too?
Well, we routinely dump frivolous ones...
The major difference is that arbitration, &c, are things dealing with members of the community; the people engaged in verbal rough-and-tumble there chose to get involved, to some degree or another. This sort of problematic AFD, however, often involves as its subject someone who *isn't* part of the project, someone who didn't invite this kind of thing. I think that's fair enough justification to deal with the two differently.
(Even in the cases where the subject gets involved in the discussion, they're still usually not involved in the community in the same way that someone in an arbitration case is)
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/06/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The purpose is to stop the first google hit on someone's name being "self-promotional vanity tripe", which is a little cruel even when they did write the article - and when, as so often happens, they *didn't*, it's just nasty.
Most AFDs on people are filled with not particularly nice comments. It's dine we keep them for internal purposes, but it seems fair to stop leaving them obviously public to be stumbled upon. Blanking doesn't hide that there was a debate or hide the decision; what it *does* do is hide the most stupid excesses of the discussion.
The same could be said of requests for arbitration. Can we blank them too?
Well, we routinely dump frivolous ones...
Sure, but I wasn't talking about "frivolous ones". Rather, I was thinking of one in particular which contains such libel as "Anthony is a troll if there ever was one" and "I find Anthony a bit disturbed, to say the least". It's really fun to have that as the second Google hit for one's name.
The major difference is that arbitration, &c, are things dealing with members of the community; the people engaged in verbal rough-and-tumble there chose to get involved, to some degree or another. This sort of problematic AFD, however, often involves as its subject someone who *isn't* part of the project, someone who didn't invite this kind of thing. I think that's fair enough justification to deal with the two differently.
(Even in the cases where the subject gets involved in the discussion, they're still usually not involved in the community in the same way that someone in an arbitration case is)
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Anthony wrote:
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray wrote:
On 15/06/07, Anthony wrote:
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray wrote:
The purpose is to stop the first google hit on someone's name being "self-promotional vanity tripe", which is a little cruel even when they did write the article - and when, as so often happens, they *didn't*, it's just nasty.
Most AFDs on people are filled with not particularly nice comments. It's dine we keep them for internal purposes, but it seems fair to stop leaving them obviously public to be stumbled upon. Blanking doesn't hide that there was a debate or hide the decision; what it *does* do is hide the most stupid excesses of the discussion.
The same could be said of requests for arbitration. Can we blank them too?
Well, we routinely dump frivolous ones...
Sure, but I wasn't talking about "frivolous ones". Rather, I was thinking of one in particular which contains such libel as "Anthony is a troll if there ever was one" and "I find Anthony a bit disturbed, to say the least". It's really fun to have that as the second Google hit for one's name.
I'm glad to see that you appreciate your true worth. ;-)
The more over the top a comment, the less the likelihood that it will be believed, especially if there is no reason given for making that statement.
Ec
On 15/06/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Well, we routinely dump frivolous ones...
Sure, but I wasn't talking about "frivolous ones". Rather, I was thinking of one in particular which contains such libel as "Anthony is a troll if there ever was one" and "I find Anthony a bit disturbed, to say the least". It's really fun to have that as the second Google hit for one's name.
I don't see any particular conceptual reason we shouldn't do something like this for RFArs - perhaps consigning all the discussion to history and then leaving only the "ruling" visible without bouncing back to the second-newest revision - but I also don't care enough to start trying to implement it against a thousand screams of "censorship!" :-)
On 6/15/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Sure, but I wasn't talking about "frivolous ones". Rather, I was thinking of one in particular which contains such libel as "Anthony is a troll if there ever was one" and "I find Anthony a bit disturbed, to say the least". It's really fun to have that as the second Google hit for one's name.
Libel? Those are insults, not libel.
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
We have been doing it, on an ad-hoc basis, for a year or so - generally after a complaint. It tends to be low-profile, because no-one ever watches archived deletion discussion pages so no-one notices...
And nobody thought that it might be controversial and should be discussed by the wider policy community...?
I don't think the reasons are stupid or dumb or wrong. I understand why a BLP article subject might not want the Google hit to come up.
I also am unconvinced that it's obviously necessary or useful as a policy in other than the most extreme cases.
In any case, the reasoning for it needs to be made clear and open. I'm perfectly happy for the community or the community of policy-oriented-people to conclude that it's ok to do. I don't think this was appropriate to do in more than a corner case handful of special cases without airing it as a policy question to this group.
If you are serious, you need to make a good argument why, not just a couple of throwaway lines. That we had an article once will be archived in places; unless you're arguing to blank and delete history, then the history is available if someone wants to go looking for it. The degree of protection delivered by such a courtesy blanking seems rather meager, and it's definitely against all other standard archive policy...
The purpose is to stop the first google hit on someone's name being "self-promotional vanity tripe", which is a little cruel even when they did write the article - and when, as so often happens, they *didn't*, it's just nasty.
Most AFDs on people are filled with not particularly nice comments. It's dine we keep them for internal purposes, but it seems fair to stop leaving them obviously public to be stumbled upon. Blanking doesn't hide that there was a debate or hide the decision; what it *does* do is hide the most stupid excesses of the discussion.
(If AFD could use words like "vanity" a little less often that'd be nice too, but I don't see it happening much)
I suppose that blanking is easier than figuring out how to have Google ignore them...
I would feel better if there was a clear link on the blanked page to the closing admin's final version, as part of the page blanked explanation.
I would also feel better if you took the arguments above and created at least an essay on this on-wiki so that the policy discussion is public and the result openly available.
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We have been doing it, on an ad-hoc basis, for a year or so - generally after a complaint. It tends to be low-profile, because no-one ever watches archived deletion discussion pages so no-one notices...
[Low-profile here is "the reason people don't hear about it unless they go looking", not "our cunning plan to keep it secret", I hastily clarify...]
And nobody thought that it might be controversial and should be discussed by the wider policy community...?
(...)
I don't think this was appropriate to do in more than a corner case handful of special cases without airing it as a policy question to this group.
It was aired on wikien-l, in January 2006, when first proposed.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-January/037246.html
There's a thread of maybe fifty replies there discussing it, and it may well have also been discussed in some of the related AFD-is-a-PR-nightmare threads that month.
I would also feel better if you took the arguments above and created at least an essay on this on-wiki so that the policy discussion is public and the result openly available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Courtesy_blanking has been on the wiki since September 2006, though it seems to have been merged and redirected to the main deletion policy page a few days ago.
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We have been doing it, on an ad-hoc basis, for a year or so - generally after a complaint. It tends to be low-profile, because no-one ever watches archived deletion discussion pages so no-one notices...
[Low-profile here is "the reason people don't hear about it unless they go looking", not "our cunning plan to keep it secret", I hastily clarify...]
And nobody thought that it might be controversial and should be discussed by the wider policy community...?
(...)
I don't think this was appropriate to do in more than a corner case handful of special cases without airing it as a policy question to this group.
It was aired on wikien-l, in January 2006, when first proposed.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-January/037246.html
There's a thread of maybe fifty replies there discussing it, and it may well have also been discussed in some of the related AFD-is-a-PR-nightmare threads that month.
I would also feel better if you took the arguments above and created at least an essay on this on-wiki so that the policy discussion is public and the result openly available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Courtesy_blanking has been on the wiki since September 2006, though it seems to have been merged and redirected to the main deletion policy page a few days ago.
Ok. Thanks for pointing that out.
I was unaware that had been done, and didn't recall the discussions here. Which probably says something about the policy having become too big and unwieldy.
However, I stand corrected on the record.
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Courtesy_blanking has been on the wiki since September 2006, though it seems to have been merged and redirected to the main deletion policy page a few days ago.
Ok. Thanks for pointing that out.
I was unaware that had been done, and didn't recall the discussions here. Which probably says something about the policy having become too big and unwieldy.
However, I stand corrected on the record.
No worries. Like I say, it's inherently a low-profile thing - it only ever happens to obscure administrative subpages which are no longer read by anyone in the community. Unless you're actively ferreting around old AFD debates a lot, in which case you're prebably the sort of person who already knows about it, you're very unlikely to run across an example of it.
Short of having monthly refresher bulletins on all the minutae of administrative behaviour, I'm not sure we can really keep everyone informed about this sort of tangential thing :-)
On 6/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Short of having monthly refresher bulletins on all the minutae of administrative behaviour, I'm not sure we can really keep everyone informed about this sort of tangential thing :-)
Everyone be sure to read the memo before the monthly meeting. The department secretary assures us that the memo will be shorter than 150 pages this time. We are, however, reinstating the quiz...
On 15/06/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
No worries. Like I say, it's inherently a low-profile thing - it only ever happens to obscure administrative subpages which are no longer read by anyone in the community. Unless you're actively ferreting around old AFD debates a lot, in which case you're prebably the sort of person who already knows about it, you're very unlikely to run across an example of it.
And anyone who would go looking for old AFDs can work Wikipedia readily enough to look in the history.
- d.
G'day Andrew,
On 15/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
We've never done it before, and I don't think anyone's tried to make a coherent case for why we should do so on BLP incident AFDs.
We have been doing it, on an ad-hoc basis, for a year or so - generally after a complaint. It tends to be low-profile, because no-one ever watches archived deletion discussion pages so no-one notices...
We've been doing it since at least mid-February 2006, although the exact date that Jimbo proposed it eludes me (I dare say it was sometime in late January or early February).
Courtesy blanking of AfDs and other places where living persons are commonly abused is, I had thought, not a controversial prospect. If someone wants to blink their eyes against the harsh light of reason and say, "Gosh, why would anyone want to do THAT? You must stop immediately until I am satisfied," after we've been at it for the past 16 months, then it's their problem, not ours.
<snip recount of what led to courtesy blanking and afd-privacy/>
Cheers,
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
This sounds like the kind of proposal that would be supported by a gang that's wanting to form a secret cabal. Accountability depends on openness. If you feel so hurt by having this kind of accountability, it's time you had a thicker skin.
Ec
On 6/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/15/07, George Herbert wrote:
So...
What was the logic on the "Courtesy blanking" of the AFD???
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
This sounds like the kind of proposal that would be supported by a gang that's wanting to form a secret cabal. Accountability depends on openness. If you feel so hurt by having this kind of accountability, it's time you had a thicker skin.
I don't understand this response at all. I'm suggesting that discussions pertaining to a deletion proposal of a biography of a living person be routinely blanked. In case it isn't obvious, the purpose is to stop the rather nasty things that are often said about the subject of the biography appearing as a google hit. This can be especially problematic where the person in question is rather obscure.
This is about the privacy of the *subjects* of our articles, not our editors.
So quite where cabals and thick skins come into it, I've no idea.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
You're joking, surely. We should probably courtesy-blank all AfDs of living people, successful or not. These are real people. This stuff hurts.
This sounds like the kind of proposal that would be supported by a gang that's wanting to form a secret cabal. Accountability depends on openness. If you feel so hurt by having this kind of accountability, it's time you had a thicker skin.
I don't understand this response at all. I'm suggesting that discussions pertaining to a deletion proposal of a biography of a living person be routinely blanked. In case it isn't obvious, the purpose is to stop the rather nasty things that are often said about the subject of the biography appearing as a google hit.
I would've thought this was common knowledge, at least among old-timers like you, but AfD discussion pages are *not indexed by Google* or any other search engines that follow the robots.txt standard.
(It turns out that AfD *talk* pages, however, are indexed. I've just filed a bug about this at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10288. I'd hope it'll get fixed soon.)
Incidentally, Tony, this is why your "Come on, it's obvious!" debating tactic isn't exactly conductive to resolving disputes. By failing to state your assumptions, you're not only making it harder for others to find common ground and correct any mistaken assumptions they might've had, but you're also preventing them from correcting any mistakes that you yourself might've made in your own assumptions.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/15/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
There have been various suggestions in the past. (1) That only admins
be allowed to edit policy pages, and we could extend that to BLP issues, which would include BLP AfDs; (2) same as (1) but using a minimum edit count rather than adminship; (3) that only users willing to identify themselves be allowed to be edit BLPs or decide on BLP deletions or policies. I do think it's time we started discussing these options seriously.
I do think it might help a bit. The number of editors who take part in policy discussions and process pages is relatively low in any case.
That's not because we attach no importance to it. It's because the whole experience is so mind-numbing, and it conflicts with the time that people want to spend making real contributions to real articles.
I would rather wait until I'm directly affected before opening a discussion on these policy points.
Ec
I can't easily thing of anything more harmful to WP. The only possible way of improving policy is to get new people in, and the way admins get their training is by participating in AfD's. Most people here think decision making in WP is much too narrowly concentrated in the first place, and for senior people to propose shutting junior people out shows an amazing unawareness of the general feeling. For senior people to think that ordinary wikipedians can't tell the contributions of anonymous POV-pushers from anonymous well-intentioned people shows an amazing unawareness of actual dynamics in discussions. It wholly confirms what I said earlier today, that there is no admin or editor (myself included), whom I trust to always have common sense. Tony & SV, don't you realize how such sentiments can be used against you?
DGG
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/15/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not proposing that we go down that path, but it's a very respectable position that deserves consideration.
There have been various suggestions in the past. (1) That only admins be allowed to edit policy pages, and we could extend that to BLP issues, which would include BLP AfDs; (2) same as (1) but using a minimum edit count rather than adminship; (3) that only users willing to identify themselves be allowed to be edit BLPs or decide on BLP deletions or policies. I do think it's time we started discussing these options seriously.
I do think it might help a bit. The number of editors who take part in policy discussions and process pages is relatively low in any case. In connection with another matter, I'm sending my scanned passport off to Wikimedia in a few days anyway, so it isn't as if we don't already require it for some functions.
Would it help? Well I don't know overall. But it would make accountability better.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Slim Virgin wrote:
There have been various suggestions in the past. (1) That only admins
be allowed to edit policy pages, and we could extend that to BLP issues, which would include BLP AfDs; (2) same as (1) but using a minimum edit count rather than adminship; (3) that only users willing to identify themselves be allowed to be edit BLPs or decide on BLP deletions or policies. I do think it's time we started discussing these options seriously.
I have no problem with discussing it, but I would strongly object to implementing that kind of thing. Why would you object to the opinions of all but a select few?
Ec
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:24:32 -0400, "David Goodman" dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
WP is in the peculiar situation where any one of over 1200 people can on their own initiative decide on the outcome of a deletion debate--or a DRV. The result in seriously disputed matters depends on the personal judgment of whoever steps forward
In theory, yes. In practice the pool of admins who close debates is much smaller, of course.
I know of no successful organization with a comparable size and procedure. Historical precedents are not reassuring. The Roman tribunes & consuls had similar power, but the total number never exceeded 12; even so, the Republic's history was marked by frequent civil wars. The Polish liberum veto in the sejm of approximately 400 is generally thought to have destroyed the country. And both were merely vetoes, not the promulgation of decisions.
no, that's not really a valid analogy. We have ArbCom as our sort-of-senate and communications links are so fast that anything obviously batshit will rapidly result in desysopping.
In this case, the self-selected admin pronounced: "A COMPLEX MERGE. I think I've arrived at a solution." -- self-admittedly his own solution, not the consensus of the dispute seen rightly or wrongly--this specific merge had not been mentioned in the discussion--and there were only 2 or 3 voices supporting any merge at all. .
A solution which had previously been mooted by others and was based on other recent actions such as merging of "biographies" into articles on conjoined twins and other concepts.
But so what if it was a bold idea? We are supposed to prize boldness and creative solutions.
Deletion policy lets closers disregard particular arguments "not made in good faith," and to "use their best judgement...to determine when a rough consensus has been reached." I don't think either statement covers this case. I'm too new an admin & editor to feel comfortable proposing a desysop--and it might not be fair, because there were other recent arbitrary single-handed actions taken by individual initiative.
Yup. And yet it kind of works.
Apparently bumblebees can't fly, either.
Guy (JzG)
I'm getting crazy of this ever-ongoing Brandt thing, tbh. Every now and then a WP:OFFICE deletion, then it gets placed back, then another AfD, then a DRV and it goes on and on. Let's just keep the article per WP:CENSOR and WP:DISCLAIMER and stop this. Sorry for not being able to give an intelligent response right now. Pfff...
2007/6/20, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net:
On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:24:32 -0400, "David Goodman" dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
WP is in the peculiar situation where any one of over 1200 people can on their own initiative decide on the outcome of a deletion debate--or a DRV. The result in seriously disputed matters depends on the personal judgment of whoever steps forward
In theory, yes. In practice the pool of admins who close debates is much smaller, of course.
I know of no successful organization with a comparable size and procedure. Historical precedents are not reassuring. The Roman tribunes & consuls had similar power, but the total number never exceeded 12; even so, the Republic's history was marked by frequent civil wars. The Polish liberum veto in the sejm of approximately 400 is generally thought to have destroyed the country. And both were merely vetoes, not the promulgation of decisions.
no, that's not really a valid analogy. We have ArbCom as our sort-of-senate and communications links are so fast that anything obviously batshit will rapidly result in desysopping.
In this case, the self-selected admin pronounced: "A COMPLEX MERGE. I think I've arrived at a solution." -- self-admittedly his own solution, not the consensus of the dispute seen rightly or wrongly--this specific merge had not been mentioned in the discussion--and there were only 2 or 3 voices supporting any merge at all. .
A solution which had previously been mooted by others and was based on other recent actions such as merging of "biographies" into articles on conjoined twins and other concepts.
But so what if it was a bold idea? We are supposed to prize boldness and creative solutions.
Deletion policy lets closers disregard particular arguments "not made in good faith," and to "use their best judgement...to determine when a rough consensus has been reached." I don't think either statement covers this case. I'm too new an admin & editor to feel comfortable proposing a desysop--and it might not be fair, because there were other recent arbitrary single-handed actions taken by individual initiative.
Yup. And yet it kind of works.
Apparently bumblebees can't fly, either.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 6/14/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I'm hopeful. Once we've seen the back of that article, I'll begin to consider that Wikipedia has come of age.
Seems more like giving up on the Wikipedia process entirely. What else will we decide we "can't be trusted" to write articles about next? And will that decision be made in the same haphazard back-channel way this one is being made in?
It was an open discussion followed by almost certainly the most comprehensively documented close we have ever seen. You can see the comments the closer made as he considered each point. The result is on deletion review but seems to be holding up very well indeed.
What I'm talking about here is not just the AfD result on its own, but the rush to go _beyond_ it and turn the "merge" result into an outright deletion.
Why is it that seven other Wikipedias are apparently "trustworthy" enough to have articles about Daniel Brandt but the English Wikipedia can't have anything more than a redirect, if that? What if we were to translate one of those other articles and put it here on en?
It strikes me that the recurrence of debates about Brandt is more than anything reflective of an obsessive mania to censor anything about the man. To suggest that no one can be trusted to write a neutral article, and that that fact alone is enough reason not to have an article at all is a gross insult to all those of us who try to maintain a balanced approach to what we do, whether on not we have participated in editing that and related articles.
There are clearly some people who want the article to remain, and I seriously doubt that they are all teenies and trekkies. Nor can I believe that all those who support the article are out to fill it with half-truths, or other questionable material It's about time that the obsessives began to accept that there are other constructive contributors than themselves.
Seconded.
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Why is it that seven other Wikipedias are apparently "trustworthy" enough to have articles about Daniel Brandt but the English Wikipedia can't have anything more than a redirect, if that? What if we were to translate one of those other articles and put it here on en?
I was wondering the same thing. Nobody's complained about the following entries, to name two:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nigger_Association_of_America http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Dramatica
Of course everybody could register screen names on those wikis the moment they read this message, and mob their way to AFD (or whatever those wikis have — cynically, I can see this actually happening).
But... you would probably soon be fingered and blocked as puppet/single-purpose accounts, which would not really be an unfair assessment, whether you know how to say "non-notable, delete" in a dozen languages or not.
I mean, think about it. Imagine if the same sort of thing happened here.
—C.W.
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
It was an open discussion followed by almost certainly the most comprehensively documented close we have ever seen. You can see the comments the closer made as he considered each point. The result is on deletion review but seems to be holding up very well indeed.
What I'm talking about here is not just the AfD result on its own, but the rush to go _beyond_ it and turn the "merge" result into an outright deletion.
Well yes. That doesn't seem very sensible to me, at least at this stage. I don't think those talking of deletion are thinking it through.
Why is it that seven other Wikipedias are apparently "trustworthy" enough to have articles about Daniel Brandt but the English Wikipedia can't have anything more than a redirect, if that? What if we were to translate one of those other articles and put it here on en?
I don't know. Public relations aside, you have to remember that the second and third largest Wikimedia projects are much smaller in manpower than English Wikipedia, so article quality and coverage may not be up to our standards. For instance the French article *manque de sources* and the German article *existiert nicht.*
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen wrote:
Why is it that seven other Wikipedias are apparently "trustworthy" enough to have articles about Daniel Brandt but the English Wikipedia can't have anything more than a redirect, if that? What if we were to translate one of those other articles and put it here on en?
I don't know. Public relations aside, you have to remember that the second and third largest Wikimedia projects are much smaller in manpower than English Wikipedia, so article quality and coverage may not be up to our standards. For instance the French article *manque de sources* and the German article *existiert nicht.*
Maybe the writers in those languages are not so personally involved in the issues discussed in the articles. Perhaps that allows them to be more objective. There is no German Daniel Brandt article. Of the seven that exist, only the Polish one seems lengthy. They all do have sources.
Ec
On 6/13/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
No matter the merits of the article, the process he's been put through is totally unacceptable by any standard. We've shown we can't be trusted with a Brandt bio, and we should delete it for that reason alone, no matter how notable any of us thinks he is.
Despite the bickering, throughout most of that period the article has actually been pretty good from what I've seen; occasionally a little too obsessed with small if verifiable detail, but sourced to a pretty high quality most of the time.
I feel no pity for a immoral self-publicist like Brandt, who's loved the attention from the beginning. I'm in favor of the article being deleted simply because deleting it and not talking about him any more is what he'll hate the worst. If that's possible; I'm not sure a deletion will stick, personally, nor stop the squabble - at best it'll move it to other pages.
-Matt
On 0, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com scribbled:
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Naturally, a DRV is underway. I'm a bit surprised by how strongly it's swinging "endorse" right now, this outcome strikes me as really bizarre. Is this more BLP mania in action? Why can't we have even a stub biography of someone who's featured significantly in four other articles? Shouldn't BLP apply just the same no matter where the material winds up?
I hate to start complaint threads like this one, but this really caught me by surprise and I'm wondering if I'm really so far out of touch that this should be making sense to me.
We need to get rid of that article. We've subjected Brandt to hundreds of thousands of words of debate, 14 AfDs, I don't know how many DRVs -- wall-to-wall bickering and childishness for 18 sorry months. We've allowed his article to be edited by any anonymous teenager who turns up with a grudge, and the decision to keep the wretched thing has been made 13 times by people who normally edit Star Trek. We've made complete fools of ourselves as a project.
...
Nice way to smear anyone who has ever supported keeping the article. Way to go there.
-- Gwern Inquiring minds want to know.
On 6/14/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
We need to get rid of that article. We've subjected Brandt to hundreds of thousands of words of debate, 14 AfDs, I don't know how many DRVs -- wall-to-wall bickering and childishness for 18 sorry months. We've allowed his article to be edited by any anonymous teenager who turns up with a grudge, and the decision to keep the wretched thing has been made 13 times by people who normally edit Star Trek. We've made complete fools of ourselves as a project.
First off all, would you please stay away from characterizing people who disagree with you in such an offensive way? It's rude and it lowers the tone of the debate. I realise WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF doesn't apply directly to the mailing list, but they are generally prettu good policies to follow in general.
No matter the merits of the article, the process he's been put through is totally unacceptable by any standard. We've shown we can't be trusted with a Brandt bio, and we should delete it for that reason alone, no matter how notable any of us thinks he is.
This is a good point, but aren't you rewriting history a bit? I mean, why is it that Brandt is such a controversial subject on wikipedia? Is it our fault, did we start harassing a completely innocent man just because we're such bastards?
Of course not! Brandt has made it his life mission to destroy wikipedia, in any way he can. He puts up admins names, addresses and pictures and he loves to screw with them. Wikipedia needs good critics, that makes us better, but he is the worst of the worst. Whatever painful experience he has gone through due to wikipedia is entirely his fault. There may be reasons for his article to be deleted, but "We're being so mean to him!" is not one of them, not in this case.
--Oskar
On 6/14/07, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
Of course not! Brandt has made it his life mission to destroy wikipedia, in any way he can. He puts up admins names, addresses and pictures and he loves to screw with them. Wikipedia needs good critics, that makes us better, but he is the worst of the worst. Whatever painful experience he has gone through due to wikipedia is entirely his fault. There may be reasons for his article to be deleted, but "We're being so mean to him!" is not one of them, not in this case.
No, his painful experience is partly his fault, but a lot of what's happened is down to people digging their heels in and shouting keep only because he wants it to be deleted, which is where the childishness kicks in. What you're coming close to saying is we should keep his article out of malice. He's been unpleasant, so we can't be expected to behave decently?
On 6/14/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
No, his painful experience is partly his fault, but a lot of what's happened is down to people digging their heels in and shouting keep only because he wants it to be deleted, which is where the childishness kicks in. What you're coming close to saying is we should keep his article out of malice. He's been unpleasant, so we can't be expected to behave decently?
I absolutely don't think we should keep it out of spite. I think that real life considerations should factor in, that marginally notable people who don't want bios should be allowed for them to be taken down. I don't think this applies here though. The problems he has had with wikipedia are entirely due to himself. This is not an innocent victim that we happened to pick on, this is a man who has led an organised crusade to harass and hurt wikipedians. It's not our fault that this has happened, it is his (this is not John Seigenthaler, for instance. In that case, we did a grave wrong to him and we should feel ashamed about it. Not so now.) He's the bad guy here.
As for whether we should keep or delete this article, I don't really have an opinion. I would lean towards deletion, but I'm not too fussed if it stays. I'm just saying that considerations about his "feelings" shouldn't be applied as a criterion. He has forfeited that privilege.
--Oskar
Slim Virgin could put it better, but here I think she's spot on. The main motivation for retaining the article for all this time seems to me to have been spite.
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Slim Virgin could put it better, but here I think she's spot on. The main motivation for retaining the article for all this time seems to me to have been spite.
I don't think its so much spite as a reluctance to admit that, when it comes to the matter of whether or not this article should be kept, Brandt was right. There's also a feeling among some that giving in on this matter would send a message that legal threats (and other behaviors) are a valid way to get what you want.
I also think there are a lot of people who think this article should be kept for reasons which have nothing at all to do with the fact that Brandt is the subject. Wikipedia has an article on Angela, despite the fact that she has requested its removal, despite the fact that the article has at times contained libel and privacy violations, and despite the fact that Angela is not a particularly famous person (personally I'd say Brandt is slightly *more* famous, judging from the Google Trends results, though Angela gets 3 Google News results compared to Brandt's 2).
So no, spite it seems is not a determining factor in whether or not this article was kept. In fact, using Angela as an example perhaps an overreaction to this fear was actually the reason it was deleted.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Slim Virgin could put it better, but here I think she's spot on. The main motivation for retaining the article for all this time seems to me to have been spite.
I don't think its so much spite as a reluctance to admit that, when it comes to the matter of whether or not this article should be kept, Brandt was right. There's also a feeling among some that giving in on this matter would send a message that legal threats (and other behaviors) are a valid way to get what you want.
I also think there are a lot of people who think this article should be kept for reasons which have nothing at all to do with the fact that Brandt is the subject. Wikipedia has an article on Angela, despite the fact that she has requested its removal, despite the fact that the article has at times contained libel and privacy violations, and despite the fact that Angela is not a particularly famous person (personally I'd say Brandt is slightly *more* famous, judging from the Google Trends results, though Angela gets 3 Google News results compared to Brandt's 2).
So no, spite it seems is not a determining factor in whether or not this article was kept. In fact, using Angela as an example perhaps an overreaction to this fear was actually the reason it was deleted.
Anthony
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It seems to me, quite realistically, that while it is indeed true that many of those who argued to keep were acting out of spite ("We'll show him!"), that many of those who argued to delete were doing so to "spite the spiteful", as it were-to specifically repudiate such behavior by disagreeing with those who behaved that way. There was, quite unfortunately, very little discussion of the -article- on either side.
If this should teach us anything, it should be that careful consideration rather than flippant dismissal of others' viewpoints should always occur, and that to ignore this tends to cause tremendous amounts of drama, polarization, and ill will. Unfortunately, I can't say I have a great deal of hope that this lesson will actually be learned by the time the next contentious topic comes up. But I do hope so.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Slim Virgin could put it better, but here I think she's spot on. The main motivation for retaining the article for all this time seems to me to have been spite.
Actually, I haven't been too closely involved in previous deletion debates but my main motivation right now is that it's nonsensical to split up a biography and spread it out over four different articles, then redirect to just one of them. Someone looking for information about Daniel Brandt will wind up getting information about NameBase, as if that were all there was to him, with the rest of the stuff hidden away in non-obvious places. Normally a disambiguation page would be used when splitting up an article but that doesn't really make sense here either.
What would really be handy is a short summary of the man's involvement in each of these organizations. Something akin to a biography.
On 6/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Actually, I haven't been too closely involved in previous deletion debates but my main motivation right now is that it's nonsensical to split up a biography and spread it out over four different articles, then redirect to just one of them. Someone looking for information about Daniel Brandt will wind up getting information about NameBase, as if that were all there was to him, with the rest of the stuff hidden away in non-obvious places. Normally a disambiguation page would be used when splitting up an article but that doesn't really make sense here either.
It would be better to have one article on Public Information Research and include information about the various projects in that. I've written a draft, and I'm going to ask the closing admin if he has any objection to doing it that way rather than having four articles. Then all other titles can redirect to PIR.
On 14/06/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
And naturally it's gone as a result of what looks to me like a rather messy process.
The 14th AfD just closed.
That says a lot. Why should the 14th AfD be any different from all the other AfDs?
James Farrar wrote:
On 14/06/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
And naturally it's gone as a result of what looks to me like a rather messy process.
The 14th AfD just closed.
That says a lot. Why should the 14th AfD be any different from all the other AfDs?
And furthermore, the article's been around since September 2005 so that means on average it's gone up for AfD roughly every 1.3 months. Some sort of rate limit would be nice.
Don't the endorsers realise that they are providing him and WR and all our other enemies with really excellent ammunition? every additional step to try to delete this shows us susceptible to pressure. ~~~~
On 6/14/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/06/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
And naturally it's gone as a result of what looks to me like a rather messy process.
The 14th AfD just closed.
That says a lot. Why should the 14th AfD be any different from all the other AfDs?
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On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:01:55 +0100, "James Farrar" james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
That says a lot. Why should the 14th AfD be any different from all the other AfDs?
Looking at it, the answer appears to be that we have found a better way to cover the subject.
Guy (JzG)