<<In a message dated 2/9/2009 2:00:14 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com writes:
David Gerard wrote:
Suggestion posted to AC noticeboard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboar...
More input needed for the idea, general support, general revulsion, etc.
I would go broader, for a cleanup of userspace, now widely used for blogging and personal attacks. Basically we want to get back to the point where it is understood that (a) Wikipedia pages relate to the mission, not anyone's felt need for self-expression, and (b) although this tenet needs to be relaxed somewhat around elections, the pages are also not for battling and campaigning for personal attitudes and beefs.
In short, as far as I'm concerned, the yelling and personalia can all go offwiki, even if there needs to be a special site set up for that. People, we are a serious organisation, with something as technical as FR getting broad coverage (another column in today's London Independent).
Charles>> ----- I disagree with equating "blogging and personal attacks" with "self-expression".
Most of our editors enjoy marking up their user page with details about themselves, and I see no harm to the project in that and it's my believe that those who do it, constitute the majority of the editors and thus the "consensus" that it should be viewed as just fine.
Will Johnson
**************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. AOL Music takes you there. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?ncid=emlcntusmusi00000002)
2009/2/9 WJhonson@aol.com:
Most of our editors enjoy marking up their user page with details about themselves, and I see no harm to the project in that and it's my believe that those who do it, constitute the majority of the editors and thus the "consensus" that it should be viewed as just fine.
I view it as similar to decorating your cubicle at work.
- d.
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:48 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/9 WJhonson@aol.com:
Most of our editors enjoy marking up their user page with details about themselves, and I see no harm to the project in that and it's my believe
that
those who do it, constitute the majority of the editors and thus the
"consensus"
that it should be viewed as just fine.
I view it as similar to decorating your cubicle at work.
At the very least , let's try to keep "focusing only on Encyclopedia activities" separate from "focusing on abusive and rude behavior". They are not related in any way. I don't know of any significant objection in principle to people treating each other politely, but I do know of plenty of opposition (and count myself among it) on sterilizing the environment of any personalization.
The target of the day is rude abusive behavior - stay on target.
George Herbert wrote:
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:48 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/9 WJhonson@aol.com:
Most of our editors enjoy marking up their user page with details about themselves, and I see no harm to the project in that and it's my believe
that
those who do it, constitute the majority of the editors and thus the
"consensus"
that it should be viewed as just fine.
I view it as similar to decorating your cubicle at work.
At the very least , let's try to keep "focusing only on Encyclopedia activities" separate from "focusing on abusive and rude behavior". They are not related in any way. I don't know of any significant objection in principle to people treating each other politely, but I do know of plenty of opposition (and count myself among it) on sterilizing the environment of any personalization.
The target of the day is rude abusive behavior - stay on target.
With respect, there are other ways of "lowering the tone", besides "rude abusive". A somewhat large and scarlet herring having been drawn across that point, I seem to have to point it out once more.
Charles
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:48 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/9 WJhonson@aol.com:
Most of our editors enjoy marking up their user page with details about themselves, and I see no harm to the project in that and it's my
believe
that
those who do it, constitute the majority of the editors and thus the
"consensus"
that it should be viewed as just fine.
I view it as similar to decorating your cubicle at work.
At the very least , let's try to keep "focusing only on Encyclopedia activities" separate from "focusing on abusive and rude behavior". They
are
not related in any way. I don't know of any significant objection in principle to people treating each other politely, but I do know of plenty
of
opposition (and count myself among it) on sterilizing the environment of
any
personalization.
The target of the day is rude abusive behavior - stay on target.
With respect, there are other ways of "lowering the tone", besides "rude abusive". A somewhat large and scarlet herring having been drawn across that point, I seem to have to point it out once more.
There is no disagreement (among admins / experienced users) that people using Wikipedia as a social networking site are violating the point of the project and site, and when identified they're asked to stop and eventually blocked. That's not controversial.
Your comment ( "(a) Wikipedia pages relate to the mission, not anyone's felt need for self-expression" ) goes, or seems to imply (and is being read that way by several of us...) much further. I don't think there's support or a consensus for much further. Wikipedia isn't a blog, social networking site, or user homepage - but it is a community, and a working environment (volunteer as it is), and as David points out, people like to decorate their cubes (in whatever form cubes take). This is normal human behavior and not something to be arbitrarily squashed.
Your other comment ( "(b) although this tenet needs to be relaxed somewhat around elections, the pages are also not for battling and campaigning for personal attitudes and beefs" ) is reasonable but somewhat harder to pull off than asking for civility in the main project spaces. We already enforce NPA and CIVIL to some degree in the userspace, but making that an overriding priority would likely raise more objections and resistance than is useful.
George Herbert wrote:
Your comment ( "(a) Wikipedia pages relate to the mission, not anyone's felt need for self-expression" ) goes, or seems to imply (and is being read that way by several of us...) much further. I don't think there's support or a consensus for much further. Wikipedia isn't a blog, social networking site, or user homepage - but it is a community, and a working environment (volunteer as it is), and as David points out, people like to decorate their cubes (in whatever form cubes take). This is normal human behavior and not something to be arbitrarily squashed.
Well then, please read in the on-topic fashion - if done in such a way as to "lower the tone", I recall, userpages are not really welcome to contain just anything. But the misreading of userspace=user page here is vexing. The problem comes, re blogging, when people really do "blog" on dedicated user pages, in violation of WP:USER, and apparently stand on their rights to do that.
Charles
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
Your comment ( "(a) Wikipedia pages relate to the mission, not anyone's felt need for self-expression" ) goes, or seems to imply (and is being read that way by several of us...) much further. I don't think there's support or a consensus for much further. Wikipedia isn't a blog, social networking site, or user homepage - but it is a community, and a working environment (volunteer as it is), and as David points out, people like to decorate their cubes (in whatever form cubes take). This is normal human behavior and not something to be arbitrarily squashed.
Well then, please read in the on-topic fashion - if done in such a way as to "lower the tone", I recall, userpages are not really welcome to contain just anything. But the misreading of userspace=user page here is vexing. The problem comes, re blogging, when people really do "blog" on dedicated user pages, in violation of WP:USER, and apparently stand on their rights to do that.
Ok. I am not trying to be needlessly confrontational here, your earlier comments seemed to imply something else.
What you're describing doesn't seem to me to be all that prevalent on en.wp now. I am open to examples and discussion to demonstrate a pattern requiring action.
George Herbert wrote:
What you're describing doesn't seem to me to be all that prevalent on en.wp now. I am open to examples and discussion to demonstrate a pattern requiring action. mailto:george.herbert@gmail.com
Well, I don't want to get into names. I recommend looking at subpage usage (easy for a given user now, link at the bottom of contributions) to get an idea of how userspace is applied. My past concerns range from "record keeping", i.e. making a point of logging things on the site as they happen so that anyone checking your recent contributions will see you've noticed), to "evidence gathering" when there is no dispute resolution in sight, to "essay writing" that is not really designed to produce an essay or position paper, but to allow commentary on the behaviour of others. These share the properties of being insidious (quite close to apparently legitimate usage) but also deleterious to the community.
Charles
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:40 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
What you're describing doesn't seem to me to be all that prevalent on en.wp now. I am open to examples and discussion to demonstrate a pattern requiring action. mailto:george.herbert@gmail.com
Well, I don't want to get into names. I recommend looking at subpage usage (easy for a given user now, link at the bottom of contributions) to get an idea of how userspace is applied. My past concerns range from "record keeping", i.e. making a point of logging things on the site as they happen so that anyone checking your recent contributions will see you've noticed), to "evidence gathering" when there is no dispute resolution in sight, to "essay writing" that is not really designed to produce an essay or position paper, but to allow commentary on the behaviour of others. These share the properties of being insidious (quite close to apparently legitimate usage) but also deleterious to the community.
Clicking on "random" for user pages is also quite, um, instructive. Just remember to make a note of the user pages you see that really set red flags off, or set you laughing, YMMV. Once you click away using Special:Random, and you shut the browser and lose the history, you may never remember where that page was!
As Charles says, though, most of the borderline stuff is in user subpages. Not sure if those show up in random clicks. I suspect they don't, as otherwise special:random would bring up archives all the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random/user
On the other hand, my first click led me to a subpage. <shrug>
But then again, it took me only five or so clicks to find this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Debeo_Morium/Chats
Please don't run off and do something based on reading this. That would be a bit unfair. But is that a good example of the sort of thing Charles was talking about or not? Is that "community" or "blogging" or "chatting" or "encyclopedia building"?
To pick another example. The reference desks (which I think are great) are technically a bit divorced from the encyclopedia building, but I think are a legitimate side operation, especially when article do (sometimes) get improved as a result. It's also legitimate because some people prefer to ask humans a question and have them look it up, rather than look things up themselves. The side effect is quite a lot of chatter around the questions and answers.
Carcharoth
2009/2/9 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
To pick another example. The reference desks (which I think are great) are technically a bit divorced from the encyclopedia building, but I think are a legitimate side operation, especially when article do (sometimes) get improved as a result. It's also legitimate because some people prefer to ask humans a question and have them look it up, rather than look things up themselves. The side effect is quite a lot of chatter around the questions and answers.
It's definitely right in line with the mission. Also a chance for us to show off our erudition.
(e.g. going down the pub, there's three Wikipedians at the table talking obscure military history they've picked up in the course of just hanging around and a fourth person looking slightly boggled.)
- d.
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:12 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/9 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
To pick another example. The reference desks (which I think are great) are technically a bit divorced from the encyclopedia building, but I think are a legitimate side operation, especially when article do (sometimes) get improved as a result. It's also legitimate because some people prefer to ask humans a question and have them look it up, rather than look things up themselves. The side effect is quite a lot of chatter around the questions and answers.
It's definitely right in line with the mission. Also a chance for us to show off our erudition.
(e.g. going down the pub, there's three Wikipedians at the table talking obscure military history they've picked up in the course of just hanging around and a fourth person looking slightly boggled.)
The person looking slightly boggled was you, right? :-)
Carcharoth
2009/2/9 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
(e.g. going down the pub, there's three Wikipedians at the table talking obscure military history they've picked up in the course of just hanging around and a fourth person looking slightly boggled.)
The person looking slightly boggled was you, right? :-)
A non-Wikipedian! *hrmph*
- d.
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:19 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/9 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
(e.g. going down the pub, there's three Wikipedians at the table talking obscure military history they've picked up in the course of just hanging around and a fourth person looking slightly boggled.)
The person looking slightly boggled was you, right? :-)
A non-Wikipedian! *hrmph*
Oops! Should have picked up on that. Sorry. Were you one of the three military historians then? I must admit that when I helped out with the FAR for James I of England (and VI of Scotland), I did bore people for months afterwards with potted stories about James's life. So I recognise what you are talking about here.
Carcharoth
David Gerard wrote:
2009/2/9 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
To pick another example. The reference desks (which I think are great) are technically a bit divorced from the encyclopedia building, but I think are a legitimate side operation, especially when article do (sometimes) get improved as a result. It's also legitimate because some people prefer to ask humans a question and have them look it up, rather than look things up themselves. The side effect is quite a lot of chatter around the questions and answers.
It's definitely right in line with the mission. Also a chance for us to show off our erudition.
(e.g. going down the pub, there's three Wikipedians at the table talking obscure military history they've picked up in the course of just hanging around and a fourth person looking slightly boggled.)
I tend to agree; there are occasions where two editors can engage constructively in an academic discourse which would probably not attract much interest on an article's talk page. Far better that they sort it out between themselves, and if that happens to be on-Wiki, dissenting editors can be directed to such a subpage for further discussion; with the proviso that such discussions be flagged on article talk pages, if they are of sufficient moment, and potential contributors be made aware that those discussions are ongoing.
Personally, I'm usually the fourth person, totally boggled as to why people care about "Celebrity Come Dancing" in the slightest, as an unconstructive intersection of two concepts lacking in long-term cultural significance, but then, perhaps that's why I've become more interested in medieval Wiltshire monasteries of late. P.Ss, if you know of anyone who would, er, pay me money for doing this, please let me know, as I do miss being able to afford cheese. And meat.
Regards
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Phil Nash pn007a2145@blueyonder.co.ukwrote:
Personally, I'm usually the fourth person, totally boggled as to why people care about "Celebrity Come Dancing" in the slightest, as an unconstructive intersection of two concepts lacking in long-term cultural significance, but then, perhaps that's why I've become more interested in medieval Wiltshire monasteries of late. P.Ss, if you know of anyone who would, er, pay me money for doing this, please let me know, as I do miss being able to afford cheese. And meat.
There is the Institute of Historical Review, and has the VCH of Wiltshire been completed yet?
Sam Blacketer wrote:
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Phil Nash pn007a2145@blueyonder.co.ukwrote:
Personally, I'm usually the fourth person, totally boggled as to why people care about "Celebrity Come Dancing" in the slightest, as an unconstructive intersection of two concepts lacking in long-term cultural significance, but then, perhaps that's why I've become more interested in medieval Wiltshire monasteries of late. P.Ss, if you know of anyone who would, er, pay me money for doing this, please let me know, as I do miss being able to afford cheese. And meat.
There is the Institute of Historical Review, and has the VCH of Wiltshire been completed yet?
Just point me at them, and I'll happily root through their archives.
2009/2/9 Phil Nash pn007a2145@blueyonder.co.uk:
Personally, I'm usually the fourth person, totally boggled as to why people care about "Celebrity Come Dancing" in the slightest, as an unconstructive intersection of two concepts lacking in long-term cultural significance,
I have a fake news blog for that sort of thing. I find it works well if you combine Celebrity Big Brother with assisted suicide. Either they like it or they look at you funny and go away, either of these counts as a win.
This may be getting off-topic ...
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
2009/2/9 Phil Nash pn007a2145@blueyonder.co.uk:
Personally, I'm usually the fourth person, totally boggled as to why people care about "Celebrity Come Dancing" in the slightest, as an unconstructive intersection of two concepts lacking in long-term cultural significance,
I have a fake news blog for that sort of thing. I find it works well if you combine Celebrity Big Brother with assisted suicide. Either they like it or they look at you funny and go away, either of these counts as a win.
Assisted suicide would be helpful. I put in a repeat prescription request a week ago for Fluoxetine, Zopiclone, Ativan and Nembutal, but haven't heard anything back yet. You do wonder what the NHS is actually for. Not helping, obviously.
Mandated regulations for forcing politeness generally don't work well. If you don't trust people to have common sense, they won't exercise it.
But I know I'm in the minority here, so have fun.
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:48 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/9 WJhonson@aol.com:
Most of our editors enjoy marking up their user page with details about themselves, and I see no harm to the project in that and it's my
believe
that
those who do it, constitute the majority of the editors and thus the
"consensus"
that it should be viewed as just fine.
I view it as similar to decorating your cubicle at work.
At the very least , let's try to keep "focusing only on Encyclopedia activities" separate from "focusing on abusive and rude behavior". They
are
not related in any way. I don't know of any significant objection in principle to people treating each other politely, but I do know of plenty
of
opposition (and count myself among it) on sterilizing the environment of
any
personalization.
The target of the day is rude abusive behavior - stay on target.
With respect, there are other ways of "lowering the tone", besides "rude abusive". A somewhat large and scarlet herring having been drawn across that point, I seem to have to point it out once more.
Charles
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/2/9 The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com:
Mandated regulations for forcing politeness generally don't work well. If you don't trust people to have common sense, they won't exercise it.
I don't either. However, it was interesting to note KPBotany's claims in the WT:ACN thread that en:wp is notably worse than other Wikipedias in this regard.
- d.