On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
When a victim tries to get a correction, the whole deck is stacked against them. Edit Wikipedia and get hit with COI. E-mail OTRS and you're dealing with a non-editorial non-authority, who might not believe who you are, and probably won't accept your own testimony as other than worthless. Even if you convince the OTRS person, he might well get reverted by someone who can't see the e-mails.
OTRS is not that bad, at least as far as I know. The volunteers there are supposed to be friendly (at least polite) as long as the person does not behave very aggresively. The only problem I am aware of is backlog ([[m:OTRS/volunteering]] is the only answer here).
Now, along comes another way of people setting the record straight, and you reject it because a) it doesn't comply with policy b) people may pay $1,000 to impersonate someone c) you choose to be cynical about their identity checking d) it doesn't make sense to you.
It would have the same value as the statement published on the person's own website; I see no reason to give it more value than any other statement issued by the person in question themselves.
The bottom line is that you are representative of the most cynical, irresponsible BLP attitudes on Wikipedia, and if we were serious about our responsibilities here, people with you cavalier attitude would be banned from BLPs, and BLP process, as a positive menace.
That sort of personal attack would do no good, please refrain from it.
--vvv
On 28 March 2011 16:13, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
OTRS is not that bad, at least as far as I know. The volunteers there are supposed to be friendly (at least polite) as long as the person does not behave very aggresively. The only problem I am aware of is backlog ([[m:OTRS/volunteering]] is the only answer here).
The problem is - well, OTRS will usually be polite and helpful and correct the mistake, if it seems uncontroversioal. But six weeks later, someone might come along and "correct it back", usually entirely in good faith, because there's a source floating around that says differently. What can the OTRS agent do? Without a valid public source to point to, it's quite hard to achieve anything here - "trust me, the source is wrong" is a sentence that understandably gets people's backs up. And we've historically been very relucant to use OTRS as a sort of "private editorial corrections database", for various reasons, not least that it would probably produce more drama than it prevents!
It works well initially, but it breaks down if it gets disputed.
On 28 March 2011 16:13, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
OTRS is not that bad, at least as far as I know. The volunteers there are supposed to be friendly (at least polite) as long as the person does not behave very aggresively. The only problem I am aware of is backlog ([[m:OTRS/volunteering]] is the only answer here).
The problem is - well, OTRS will usually be polite and helpful and correct the mistake, if it seems uncontroversioal. But six weeks later, someone might come along and "correct it back", usually entirely in good faith, because there's a source floating around that says differently. What can the OTRS agent do? Without a valid public source to point to, it's quite hard to achieve anything here - "trust me, the source is wrong" is a sentence that understandably gets people's backs up. And we've historically been very relucant to use OTRS as a sort of "private editorial corrections database", for various reasons, not least that it would probably produce more drama than it prevents!
It works well initially, but it breaks down if it gets disputed.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.
Fred
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:55 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.
Fred
Where do you suggest to store it?
--vvv
The main issue with OTRS is the mismatch between the subject's reasonable expectation that he's dealing with the "editorial authority" and the fact that the volunteer is just an editor. If the complaint is about vandalism or unsourced content it works fine, but if the complaint is complex, not so much.
Many moons ago, I set down my thoughts here. I bet dated now, but still: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Doc_glasgow/The_BLP_problem#Difficulty_wit h_OTRS
Scott
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gray Sent: 28 March 2011 16:38 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] iCorrect
On 28 March 2011 16:13, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
OTRS is not that bad, at least as far as I know. The volunteers there are supposed to be friendly (at least polite) as long as the person does not behave very aggresively. The only problem I am aware of is backlog ([[m:OTRS/volunteering]] is the only answer here).
The problem is - well, OTRS will usually be polite and helpful and correct the mistake, if it seems uncontroversioal. But six weeks later, someone might come along and "correct it back", usually entirely in good faith, because there's a source floating around that says differently. What can the OTRS agent do? Without a valid public source to point to, it's quite hard to achieve anything here - "trust me, the source is wrong" is a sentence that understandably gets people's backs up. And we've historically been very relucant to use OTRS as a sort of "private editorial corrections database", for various reasons, not least that it would probably produce more drama than it prevents!
It works well initially, but it breaks down if it gets disputed.
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:55 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.
Fred
Where do you suggest to store it?
--vvv
<ref>Note from [subject], or link to iCorrect page, might include quote</ref>
{{Reflist}}
Fred
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.
Where do you suggest to store it?
There's no reason an ordinary comment on the talk page can't be used for this purpose. While it's true that talk pages can be edited by others, the history cannot be edited and will always show what text actually came from the subject. It will still have to be verified that it really is from the subject, but that's true for all such notes whether on the talk page or not.
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:20 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.
Where do you suggest to store it?
There's no reason an ordinary comment on the talk page can't be used for this purpose. While it's true that talk pages can be edited by others, the history cannot be edited and will always show what text actually came from the subject. It will still have to be verified that it really is from the subject, but that's true for all such notes whether on the talk page or not.
Always corner cases, 'tho - on the article Geni referred to earlier, the subject and several family members are banned for various reasons.
On 28 March 2011 16:55, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.
Mmm. But those authors and editors usually have the personal note sitting in their files, and are entirely confident that it's verifiable - because it is, for them. But on a collaborative project, this doesn't scale; we can't have the "personal communication" copied to a thousand editors. So we fall back on services like this "iCorrect", or encouraging people to post things on their own websites, etc etc.
The issue of whether or not we'd accept a personal note is less critical - I think most reasonable editors are willing to accept first-hand commentary as valid for uncontroversial points, and are capable of weighing it accordingly (or ignoring it, where appropriate) for controversial ones. There's no danger that we'd feel obligated to change articles purely on the subject's say-so if it didn't seem a good idea from an editorial perspective - we're good at handling that sort of concern!.
Mainly, we need to worry about the best way of getting first-hand commentary out there for us to use it, and of doing so in a manner appropriate to a collaborative project. So something which can validate ID, and do so with appropriate reliability and privacy, in a manner that makes it trustworthy, but then makes the correction (or rebuttal, or what have you) public. iConnect seems to do this, but has the undesirable aspect of charging a high fee to do so - thus severely limiting its practicality.
So, how can we square the circle of making the correction public, whilst keeping the information which verifies the identity of the author private, in a trustable fashion - and do this all in a way that works for *us*. Are there existing services out there which *do* undertake to verify the identity of their users which we could work off, or are we going to have to create one - at suitable arms length from WMF?