Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
I don't get this. Timwi
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
Rob Church
On 5/12/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
So it doesn't really matter unless the admins agree to enforce it.
Anthony
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
So it doesn't really matter unless the admins agree to enforce it.
Anthony
I don't think you'll have much trouble finding admins to enforce it.
Ryan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Ryan Delaney wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
So it doesn't really matter unless the admins agree to enforce it.
I don't think you'll have much trouble finding admins to enforce it.
*EVIL GRIN*
- -- Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
Rob Church wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
By who? I don't see how this is within the competence of anyone other than the community.
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
By who? I don't see how this is within the competence of anyone other than the community.
Jimbo Wales. I can't find the original addition in history, but it's reaffirmed with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ACriteria_for_speedy_de....
Rob Church
On 5/12/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
By who? I don't see how this is within the competence of anyone other than the community.
Jimbo Wales. I can't find the original addition in history, but it's reaffirmed with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ACriteria_for_speedy_de....
Rob Church
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
Anthony
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
Doesn't Jimbo have total autocratic powers? I don't think he needs to ask the board for anything. Could be wrong.
Steve
On 5/12/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
Doesn't Jimbo have total autocratic powers? I don't think he needs to ask the board for anything. Could be wrong.
Other than his cult of personality (which is probably what is being used in this case), he only has whatever powers the board gives him. They may have given him the power to do anything he wants, but I'm not aware of it.
Anthony
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
Doesn't Jimbo have total autocratic powers? I don't think he needs to ask the board for anything.
He needs to ask the community though. If a majority disagree with his decision, then he is de facto powerless. If he loses face with the community, but attempts to continue to exercise dictatorial force, forks will likely appear very soon. It is therefore in both his own and in Wikipedia's interests that he take a step back and not try to push this one through no matter what anyone thinks.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
He needs to ask the community though. If a majority disagree with his decision, then he is de facto powerless. If he loses face with the community, but attempts to continue to exercise dictatorial force, forks will likely appear very soon. It is therefore in both his own and in Wikipedia's interests that he take a step back and not try to push this one through no matter what anyone thinks.
This is all rather charming and interesting, but totally out of context. I have exercised no "dictatorial force" and I always ask the community about everything. In the ongoing userbox wars, I think I have been admirably constrained in my actions, even for me.
--Jimbo
On May 15, 2006, at 8:01 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
This is all rather charming and interesting, but totally out of context. I have exercised no "dictatorial force" and I always ask the community about everything. In the ongoing userbox wars, I think I have been admirably constrained in my actions, even for me.
That's an understatement. The most potent criticism of Jimbo's actions here is that he hasn't been decisive enough in simply resolving the issue himself instead of waiting on the community.
On 5/15/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
That's an understatement. The most potent criticism of Jimbo's actions here is that he hasn't been decisive enough in simply resolving the issue himself instead of waiting on the community.
I have some sympathy with that view. Being told "All your base are going to get belong to us some day, unless you destroy them first" does rather create ambiguity and uncertainty. But ultimately probably less damaging than "Userboxes must die today'.
Steve
On 5/15/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
That's an understatement. The most potent criticism of Jimbo's actions here is that he hasn't been decisive enough in simply resolving the issue himself instead of waiting on the community.
I have some sympathy with that view. Being told "All your base are going to get belong to us some day, unless you destroy them first" does rather create ambiguity and uncertainty. But ultimately probably less damaging than "Userboxes must die today'.
"Userboxes must die today" would solve the userbox problem once and for all. Unfortunately, there is a bit of collateral damage...
On 12/05/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
By who? I don't see how this is within the competence of anyone other than the community.
Jimbo Wales. I can't find the original addition in history, but it's reaffirmed with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ACriteria_for_speedy_de....
Rob Church
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policy#How_are_policies_enforced.3F. The CSD is classed as policy.
"Much of Wikipedia policy dates from before 2002. Policy change now comes from three sources:
* A proposed policy being adopted by consensus. (See Wikipedia:How to create policy) * A slow evolution of convention and common practice eventually codified as a policy. * Jimbo, the Board, or the Developers, particularly for copyright, legal issues, or server load."
Rob Church
On 5/12/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/05/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
By who? I don't see how this is within the competence of anyone other than the community.
Jimbo Wales. I can't find the original addition in history, but it's reaffirmed with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ACriteria_for_speedy_de....
Rob Church
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policy#How_are_policies_enforced.3F. The CSD is classed as policy.
"Much of Wikipedia policy dates from before 2002. Policy change now comes from three sources:
* A proposed policy being adopted by consensus. (See Wikipedia:Howto create policy) * A slow evolution of convention and common practice eventually codified as a policy. * Jimbo, the Board, or the Developers, particularly for copyright, legal issues, or server load."
Rob Church
So you read it on a Wikipedia project page, and this makes it so?
I can't even find out where this CSD "was decreed from above" in the first place.
I think I've been misled.
Anthony
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I can't even find out where this CSD "was decreed from above" in the first place.
I think I've been misled.
No, you haven't been misled. It is an accepted part of policy, confirmed by Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee.
On 5/13/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I can't even find out where this CSD "was decreed from above" in the first place.
I think I've been misled.
No, you haven't been misled. It is an accepted part of policy, confirmed by Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee.
So is Jimbo making secret decrees, or do you have evidence of this decree? Either is possible IMO.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/13/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I can't even find out where this CSD "was decreed from above" in the first place.
I think I've been misled.
No, you haven't been misled. It is an accepted part of policy, confirmed by Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee.
So is Jimbo making secret decrees, or do you have evidence of this decree? Either is possible IMO.
I have no idea why anyone is talking about decrees. CSD T1 is normal policy, created and confirmed in the normal way. It is a very simple natural extension of all our other policies which, despite our ongoing tolerance of people trolling on the mailing list, *ahem*, have always urged people in no uncertain terms not to be divisive and inflammatory.
--Jimbo
On 5/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I have no idea why anyone is talking about decrees. CSD T1 is normal policy, created and confirmed in the normal way. It is a very simple natural extension of all our other policies which, despite our ongoing tolerance of people trolling on the mailing list, *ahem*, have always urged people in no uncertain terms not to be divisive and inflammatory.
--Jimbo
Err
[[Piss_Christ]] [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]] [[Proof that 0.999... equals 1]] [[Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars]] has a tendancy to be inflammatory
[[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct]] is a case where being inflammatory appears to have been built into policy (RFC on articles ok RFC on people.. less so)
People seem to find our copyright policies inflammatory.
[[Alan S. Chartock]] is either heading in the dirrection of WP:OFFICE or in the dirrection of being inflammatory posebly both (see some of the history to understand why).
On 5/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
[[Piss_Christ]] [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]] [[Proof that 0.999... equals 1]] [[Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars]] has a tendancy to be inflammatory
[[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct]] is a case where being inflammatory appears to have been built into policy (RFC on articles ok RFC on people.. less so)
People seem to find our copyright policies inflammatory.
[[Alan S. Chartock]] is either heading in the dirrection of WP:OFFICE or in the dirrection of being inflammatory posebly both (see some of the history to understand why).
-- geni
I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and posting inflammatory statements on your userpage! I can't even begin to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.
Look, if an article is needlessly POV-style inflammatory, then ofcourse that should be fixed. But if an article presents just the facts in an NPOV fashion, then it's a good article, no matter how many people it offends.
So stop using the cartoons controversy to justify behaving like asses! It's not the same thing!
--Oskar
On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
[[Piss_Christ]] [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]] [[Proof that 0.999... equals 1]] [[Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars]] has a tendancy to be inflammatory
[[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct]] is a case where being inflammatory appears to have been built into policy (RFC on articles ok RFC on people.. less so)
People seem to find our copyright policies inflammatory.
[[Alan S. Chartock]] is either heading in the dirrection of WP:OFFICE or in the dirrection of being inflammatory posebly both (see some of the history to understand why).
-- geni
I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and posting inflammatory statements on your userpage! I can't even begin to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.
Hey are you know going to argue that user namespace shouldn't be inflamitory?
How about [[User:Cyde/Weird pictures]] (seriously not safe for work)?
Look, if an article is needlessly POV-style inflammatory, then ofcourse that should be fixed. But if an article presents just the facts in an NPOV fashion, then it's a good article, no matter how many people it offends.
Of course. Now think about how that effects our editor pool.
So stop using the cartoons controversy to justify behaving like asses! It's not the same thing!
--Oskar
I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly framed argument. The problem is that if you try to reframe the argument to get around the obvious problem it runs into a whole load of new ones.
On 5/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and posting inflammatory statements on your userpage! I can't even begin to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.
Hey are you know going to argue that user namespace shouldn't be inflamitory?
How about [[User:Cyde/Weird pictures]] (seriously not safe for work)?
Is it so nuts to think that people shouldn't do try to do inflammatory things, just to be inflammatory? Is it really ok to piss people off, *just to piss people off*. I'm going to come out and say no, you shouldn't be inflammatory just for it's own sake. You should be civil to your fellow wikipedians. We have a policy on that, it's called WP:CIVIL.
So yeah, having inflammatory webpages is against policy.
As a side note, User:Cyde really has behaved very badly lately (see [[Template:User christian]]), and he justified defaming the crucifix for fun by saying "Hey, since we piss muslims off by haveing the mohammad picture, that must mean we have free license to behave like jack-asses just for fun!"
Let's just say that, for me, I'm fine with invoking "evidence to the contrary"-clause of WP:AGF.
Look, if an article is needlessly POV-style inflammatory, then ofcourse that should be fixed. But if an article presents just the facts in an NPOV fashion, then it's a good article, no matter how many people it offends.
Of course. Now think about how that effects our editor pool.
So stop using the cartoons controversy to justify behaving like asses! It's not the same thing!
--Oskar
I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly framed argument. The problem is that if you try to reframe the argument to get around the obvious problem it runs into a whole load of new ones.
-- geni
I don't really see these problems. Here's how I see it:
"Don't be dicks. Be civil. Don't insult people just for the hell of it. And write good neutral articles, presenting the facts in a neutral way."
Why is this so hard?
--Oskar
On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
So yeah, having inflammatory webpages is against policy.
That page is hardly unique ( you find them when cheacking to make sure than no fair use images appear on userpages).
geni wrote:
I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly framed argument.
? Bringing up a completely irrlevant and rather obvious red herring does nothing to knock out the fact that our community has repeatedly and constantly rejected the notion that behaving in a divisive and inflammatory fashion is bad.
But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a subjective one? A userbox which seems inflammatory/divise to one user may not appear that way to another. An example of such a scenario would be when a user named Anwar Saadat declared, using such a template, his opinion that Kashmir should be granted independence. Clearly, this did not seem divisive/inflammatory to Saadat who was of the view that he was merely expressing his personal feelings on that issue. However a Wikipedian named Bhadani took this matter very seriously and accused Saadat of committing "treason" against India. Here it is apparent that Bhadani (being an Indian and hence, presumably, opposed to the separatist movement in Kashmir) obviously considered the userbox to be a a divisive/inflammatory one. So the aforementioned adjectives are themselves subject to ambguity.
Prasad J wrote:
But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a subjective one? A userbox which seems inflammatory/divise to one user may not appear that way to another. An example of such a scenario would be when a user named Anwar Saadat declared, using such a template, his opinion that Kashmir should be granted independence. Clearly, this did not seem divisive/inflammatory to Saadat who was of the view that he was merely expressing his personal feelings on that issue. However a Wikipedian named Bhadani took this matter very seriously and accused Saadat of committing "treason" against India. Here it is apparent that Bhadani (being an Indian and hence, presumably, opposed to the separatist movement in Kashmir) obviously considered the userbox to be a a divisive/inflammatory one. So the aforementioned adjectives are themselves subject to ambguity.
It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a crucial and necessary one) that contributors should leave their political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions designed to divide the editing community into political factions can be seen as unhelpful.
Frankly it sounds like everyone in the case you mention above needs a good sound slapping.
Cheers,
N.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
Prasad J wrote:
But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a
subjective
one? ...
It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a crucial and necessary one) that contributors should leave their political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions designed to divide the editing community into political factions can be seen as unhelpful.
Where is this "long-standing tenet" defined? NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level of support. People are free to express their political opinions so long as it is done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner. [[Abortion]] and its associated discussion page is a case in point - community criticism is directed at those who act in an uncivil manner, rather than against those who display their opinion on their sleeve.
-- Peter in Canberra
On Tue, 16 May 2006, Peter Mackay wrote:
It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a crucial and necessary one) that contributors should leave their political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions designed to divide the editing community into political factions can be seen as unhelpful.
Where is this "long-standing tenet" defined? NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes. Consistent with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
People are free to express their political opinions so long as it is done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.
They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to inflict them on articles.
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
Cheers,
N.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
On Tue, 16 May 2006, Peter Mackay wrote:
It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a crucial and necessary one) that contributors should leave their political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions
designed to
divide the editing community into political factions can
be seen as
unhelpful.
Where is this "long-standing tenet" defined? NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes. Consistent with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
Beg pardon, but I think you've got that the wrong way around...
People are free to express their political opinions so long as it is done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.
They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to inflict them on articles.
That's precisely what I *do* mean. Articles are written by people with political views, and where I know an editor's political opinions (if they are revealed on user or talk pages), I find it extremely rare that they write something in an article that is contrary to those opinions.
A good editor will do it in a civil, factual, sourced and non-inflammatory manner, consistent with NPOV.
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
Likewise I am told we have self-confirmed Nazis editing articles on Nazism, homosexual folk editing material om homosexuality and so on. By and large, contributions of partisan or opinionated editors are usually consistent with their opinions and rarely in opposition.
NPOV doesn't mean we present a totally neutral point of view. It means we present diverse views consistent with the level of support, where the views are inconsistent. [[Abortion debate]] for instance (rather than [[Abortion]] itself which deals mainly with methods and history, though the talk page suggests otherwise).
Peter in Canberra
Peter Mackay wrote:
NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes. Consistent with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
Beg pardon, but I think you've got that the wrong way around...
I don't think so. Take [[Criticism of Wikipedia]], for instance. I imagine that most regular Wikipedia editors disagree with many of those criticisms. For example, I doubt that many of us agree with Robert McHenry and Andrew Orlowski that it is improper and unsuitable for Wikipedia to call itself an encyclopaedia. However, this is an opinion
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
People are free to express their political opinions so long as it is done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.
They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to inflict them on articles.
That's precisely what I *do* mean. Articles are written by people with political views, and where I know an editor's political opinions (if they are revealed on user or talk pages), I find it extremely rare that they write something in an article that is contrary to those opinions.
A good editor will do it in a civil, factual, sourced and non-inflammatory manner, consistent with NPOV.
Yes. Which is exactly what I said above. Writing consistently with NPOV is not 'inflicting your opinion on an article'. Biasing an article towards your own opinions *is* inflicting your opinion on an article, is obviously not consistent with NPOV. I don't particularly want to end up rehashing the whole userbox debacle, but we *have* seen groups of users banding together with the specific, identified purpose of systematically applying bias to Wikipedia articles.
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
NPOV doesn't mean we present a totally neutral point of view. It means we present diverse views consistent with the level of support, where the views are inconsistent.
Once again, this means consistent with the level of support in the world at large, not just consistent with the level of support among the subset of us who happen to be editing Wikipedia.
Cheers,
N.
On 5/16/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
Peter Mackay wrote:
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
I'd say that's pretty much impossible. If nothing else, what you believe is going to affect what you know, and that's going to have a significant influence on the way you write an article. IMO the way Wikipedians should produce an NPOV article is through the consensus of people with multiple points of view. Templates regarding points of view can very much support this.
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
Again just my opinion, but I don't think there's a consensus on this matter, and his majesty Jimbo has explicitly stated that he has not made an edict on the matter, so speedy deletion should be out of the question.
Anthony
On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
You're going out on a limb here, any chance you can show us some evidence that this actually happens in reality? That is, people deliberately contacting people of the opposite persuasion to find some middle ground?
Steve
On 5/16/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
You're going out on a limb here, any chance you can show us some evidence that this actually happens in reality? That is, people deliberately contacting people of the opposite persuasion to find some middle ground?
Steve
Definitely not right now, which is not to say that I concede that it hasn't happened, but I definitely don't have time right now to look. It'd be a hard thing to look for though, and I'm not sure how I'd go about making such a search. I probably won't bother to look.
That said, I have occassionally glanced at someone's user page after seeing them make some strange edits, only to see a userbox which put the edits into perspective. In the particular case I'm thinking about (though I forget the specifics), the user was actually arguing the opposite point from that expressed in the userbox, and I believe they were doing so in good faith.
Anthony
On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
That said, I have occassionally glanced at someone's user page after seeing them make some strange edits, only to see a userbox which put the edits into perspective. In the particular case I'm thinking about (though I forget the specifics), the user was actually arguing the opposite point from that expressed in the userbox, and I believe they were doing so in good faith.
Fair enough. It could probably be said that had they expressed themselves in their own words rather than with a cookie cutter userbox, this goal would be achieved even better.
Steve
On 5/16/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
That said, I have occassionally glanced at someone's user page after seeing them make some strange edits, only to see a userbox which put the edits into perspective. In the particular case I'm thinking about (though I forget the specifics), the user was actually arguing the opposite point from that expressed in the userbox, and I believe they were doing so in good faith.
Fair enough. It could probably be said that had they expressed themselves in their own words rather than with a cookie cutter userbox, this goal would be achieved even better.
Steve
True, and I've never personally used templates to search for people, whether for good purposes or bad ones, so I really don't have any *proof* that such userboxes are used that way. But I've always been of the opinion that the good effects of giving people more information outweighs the bad effects. In fact, it's that opinion that brought me to Wikipedia in the first place.
Anthony
It is probably significant to note that Anthony DiPierro and Peter McKay are on the same side of this question.
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/16/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
Peter Mackay wrote:
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
I'd say that's pretty much impossible. If nothing else, what you believe is going to affect what you know, and that's going to have a significant influence on the way you write an article. IMO the way Wikipedians should produce an NPOV article is through the consensus of people with multiple points of view. Templates regarding points of view can very much support this.
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
Again just my opinion, but I don't think there's a consensus on this matter, and his majesty Jimbo has explicitly stated that he has not made an edict on the matter, so speedy deletion should be out of the question.
Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 5/16/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It is probably significant to note that Anthony DiPierro and Peter McKay are on the same side of this question.
Why? Who is Peter McKay? Or is it Peter Mackay?
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/16/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
Peter Mackay wrote:
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
I'd say that's pretty much impossible. If nothing else, what you believe is going to affect what you know, and that's going to have a significant influence on the way you write an article. IMO the way Wikipedians should produce an NPOV article is through the consensus of people with multiple points of view. Templates regarding points of view can very much support this.
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
Again just my opinion, but I don't think there's a consensus on this matter, and his majesty Jimbo has explicitly stated that he has not made an edict on the matter, so speedy deletion should be out of the question.
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From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony DiPierro
On 5/16/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It is probably significant to note that Anthony DiPierro and Peter McKay are on the same side of this question.
Why? Who is Peter McKay? Or is it Peter Mackay?
I couldn't work it out either, but I did make a mental note that perhaps Jimbo's standards of editing aren't quite as high as he'd like.
-- Peter in Canberra
On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/16/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
Peter Mackay wrote:
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
I'd say that's pretty much impossible. If nothing else, what you believe is going to affect what you know, and that's going to have a significant influence on the way you write an article. IMO the way Wikipedians should produce an NPOV article is through the consensus of people with multiple points of view. Templates regarding points of view can very much support this.
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
Apparently labelling yourself is divisive and inflammatory, taking the most general definition of divisive (aka. categorising) and saying that because you disagree with atheism this person is deliberately trying to inflame you or some other person. On the other hand, when you are making personal attacks on someone it is clearly inflammatory to people who believe that you shouldn't say things like that about the US president, or any other figure. How did a simple statement about your faith in a certain religion get put together with being divisive?
Again just my opinion, but I don't think there's a consensus on this matter, and his majesty Jimbo has explicitly stated that he has not made an edict on the matter, so speedy deletion should be out of the question.
Anthony
On 5/18/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
Apparently labelling yourself is divisive and inflammatory, taking the most general definition of divisive (aka. categorising) and saying that because you disagree with atheism this person is deliberately trying to inflame you or some other person. On the other hand, when
That's too general. "Wikipedians who can't spell" is not a divisive category if applied to oneself.
Steve
On 5/18/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
Apparently labelling yourself is divisive and inflammatory, taking the most general definition of divisive (aka. categorising) and saying that because you disagree with atheism this person is deliberately trying to inflame you or some other person. On the other hand, when
That's too general. "Wikipedians who can't spell" is not a divisive category if applied to oneself.
Steve
I was using a touch of irony to point out that divisive and inflammatory are not clear to all people. I agree that applying a category about your personal abilities is not divisive when someone labels themself with it. However I still can't see how labelling oneself as a member of an organisation is necessarily divisive and inflammatory, as opposed to stating an undefined level of interest in said organisation.
Peter
On 5/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I was using a touch of irony to point out that divisive and inflammatory are not clear to all people. I agree that applying a category about your personal abilities is not divisive when someone labels themself with it. However I still can't see how labelling oneself as a member of an organisation is necessarily divisive and inflammatory, as opposed to stating an undefined level of interest in said organisation.
Member of Hamas? Hmm...
Seriously though, to me stating any kind of political affiliation or ideology has a touch of "up yours" to it. This may have to do with the people I have actually met who would do such a thing. But I have trouble explaining why. For a start, I would not find a great big "This user is a republican!" or "This user supports the Front National!" userbox a great invitation to start a conversation with that user. It's like saying "Here are my political leanings, and you're going to hear all about them".
Steve
On 5/19/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I was using a touch of irony to point out that divisive and inflammatory are not clear to all people. I agree that applying a category about your personal abilities is not divisive when someone labels themself with it. However I still can't see how labelling oneself as a member of an organisation is necessarily divisive and inflammatory, as opposed to stating an undefined level of interest in said organisation.
Member of Hamas? Hmm...
Seriously though, to me stating any kind of political affiliation or ideology has a touch of "up yours" to it. This may have to do with the people I have actually met who would do such a thing. But I have trouble explaining why. For a start, I would not find a great big "This user is a republican!" or "This user supports the Front National!" userbox a great invitation to start a conversation with that user. It's like saying "Here are my political leanings, and you're going to hear all about them".
Steve
I am one of the more liberal australians around, and as such I take a nonchalant view on most political issues... (liberal has a bit of a different meaning down under). But I do understand what you mean about the statement of views being a reflection of ones personality. I got in a discussion today because I was wondering why some editors were being quick about taking out "trolling" comments. I came to the conclusion that I am very naive about the issue of editor personalities and their worth to wikipedia. I haven't changed, I just dont know how much I am going to comment on it for a while.
Peter
On 5/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I am one of the more liberal australians around, and as such I take a nonchalant view on most political issues... (liberal has a bit of a different meaning down under). But I do understand what you mean about
Well, I'm from Melbourne, and I think you must be using a third meaning of liberal! Apparently it's not Liberal as in Johnny, not liberal as in US "left-wing"...maybe "liberal" as in "liberally butter the cake tin"? :)
Steve
On 5/19/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I am one of the more liberal australians around, and as such I take a nonchalant view on most political issues... (liberal has a bit of a different meaning down under). But I do understand what you mean about
Well, I'm from Melbourne, and I think you must be using a third meaning of liberal! Apparently it's not Liberal as in Johnny, not liberal as in US "left-wing"...maybe "liberal" as in "liberally butter the cake tin"? :)
Steve
Something like that... I assumed you would put liberal together with radical, but obviously thats not something you would do. Maybe its a Brisbane thing :) Maybe I should have said mid-right, if you get what I mean. I dont mind the "Liberal" party, but im more liberal than they are conservative. Ughh.. Its so hard to describe things that are named against their definition. Maybe I was wrong to class myself as liberal at all. And really I am just someone who tries to accept the best in everything without getting carried away about convictions on too many things. I hope someone understands that, because I don't exactly understand it fully myself.
Peter
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
Peter Mackay wrote:
NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level
of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes.
Consistent
with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
Beg pardon, but I think you've got that the wrong way around...
I don't think so. Take [[Criticism of Wikipedia]], for instance. I imagine that most regular Wikipedia editors disagree with many of those criticisms. For example, I doubt that many of us agree with Robert McHenry and Andrew Orlowski that it is improper and unsuitable for Wikipedia to call itself an encyclopaedia. However, this is an opinion
Hardly an average Wikipedia article, wouldn't you agree?
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
That's the problem. In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, they aren't.
WP articles are not written by the general community, they are written by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV works out to what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
This especially applies to articles on specialist or relatively obscure topics. High-profile articles fare better because there are more eyes on them.
People are free to express their political opinions so
long as it is
done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.
They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to inflict them on articles.
That's precisely what I *do* mean. Articles are written by
people with
political views, and where I know an editor's political
opinions (if
they are revealed on user or talk pages), I find it extremely rare that they write something in an article that is contrary to those opinions.
A good editor will do it in a civil, factual, sourced and non-inflammatory manner, consistent with NPOV.
Yes. Which is exactly what I said above.
It may be what you meant to say, but it certainly is not what I understood you to say. Hence my response.
Writing consistently with NPOV is not 'inflicting your opinion on an article'. Biasing an article towards your own opinions *is* inflicting your opinion on an article, is obviously not consistent with NPOV.
Beg pardon, but it is. If (say) a Republican and a Democrat write an article, each one only writing material that supports and reinforces their partisan views, but the end result is balanced and consistent with community support, then that is NPOV.
I don't particularly want to end up rehashing the whole userbox debacle, but we *have* seen groups of users banding together with the specific, identified purpose of systematically applying bias to Wikipedia articles.
Sure. Wikipedia is generally able to handle this.
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way
it happens.
Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks,
but editors
don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we
want them
to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the
Republican
Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
That's plain bizarre. There's absolutely nothing wrong with editors inserting their own opinions into articles. It happens every day. So long as it is done with NPOV in mind it works fine. Here is the fundamental statement of NPOV, taken from [[WP:NPOV]]:
"The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly, but not asserted. All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one. It should not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions."
May I highlight that sentence: "All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one."
-- Peter in Canberra
Peter Mackay wrote:
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
That's the problem. In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, they aren't.
WP articles are not written by the general community, they are written by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV works out to what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
Indeed. The point is that those editors
Writing consistently with NPOV is not 'inflicting your opinion on an article'. Biasing an article towards your own opinions *is* inflicting your opinion on an article, is obviously not consistent with NPOV.
Beg pardon, but it is. If (say) a Republican and a Democrat write an article, each one only writing material that supports and reinforces their partisan views, but the end result is balanced and consistent with community support, then that is NPOV.
That is entirely dependent on where you draw the line on what the 'end result' is. I am perfectly happy with the idea of Wikipedia articles gradually improving over long amounts of time towards some future goal, but NPOV is non-negotiable and, regardless of how eventualist your philosophy is, an article must always be NPOV. Now. Not at some time in the future. Now. Therefore I'm not happy with the editing process you suggest above, which implies one editor biasing the article towards one particular viewpoint then another editor coming along later and biasing it in a different direction. Every version should always be NPOV.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
That's plain bizarre. There's absolutely nothing wrong with editors inserting their own opinions into articles. It happens every day. So long as it is done with NPOV in mind it works fine.
Now I think you're deliberately misinterpreting what I mean in order to throw up an irrelevant straw man (note that this is a discussion tactic that I have absolutely no 'due respect' for).
Obviously writing an NPOV-compliant article isn't a problem. Unduly biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
Cheers,
N.
Nick Boalch wrote:
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
That's the problem. In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, they aren't.
WP articles are not written by the general community, they are written by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV works out to what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
Indeed. The point is that those editors
...should agree on what is NPOV based on the mixture of points-of-view *in the real world*, not just on their own opinions.
(Oops.)
Cheers,
N.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
Nick Boalch wrote:
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
That's the problem. In theory, theory and practice are
identical. In
practice, they aren't.
WP articles are not written by the general community, they are written by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV works out to what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
Indeed. The point is that those editors
...should agree on what is NPOV based on the mixture of points-of-view *in the real world*, not just on their own opinions.
(Oops.)
Yeah, I was wondering what happened - if only we could edit our posts, hey?
But you keep on saying what WP "should" be like. I'm not disagreeing with you on this. I'm merely saying that what actually happens is often a long way from ideal.
-- Peter in Canberra
Peter Mackay wrote:
WP articles are not written by the general community, they are written by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV works out to what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
Indeed. The point is that those editors
...should agree on what is NPOV based on the mixture of points-of-view *in the real world*, not just on their own opinions.
(Oops.)
Yeah, I was wondering what happened - if only we could edit our posts, hey?
The more I use Wikipedia, the more I wish that facility existed. :)
But you keep on saying what WP "should" be like. I'm not disagreeing with you on this. I'm merely saying that what actually happens is often a long way from ideal.
Ah! Ok -- I understand where this difference of opinion is arising from (and maybe it isn't actually a difference of opinion at all).
Cheers,
N.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
Peter Mackay wrote:
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
That's the problem. In theory, theory and practice are
identical. In
practice, they aren't.
WP articles are not written by the general community, they
are written
by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV
works out to
what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
Indeed. The point is that those editors
Writing consistently with NPOV is not 'inflicting your
opinion on an
article'. Biasing an article towards your own opinions *is*
inflicting your opinion on
an article, is obviously not consistent with NPOV.
Beg pardon, but it is. If (say) a Republican and a Democrat
write an
article, each one only writing material that supports and
reinforces
their partisan views, but the end result is balanced and consistent with community support, then that is NPOV.
That is entirely dependent on where you draw the line on what the 'end result' is. I am perfectly happy with the idea of Wikipedia articles gradually improving over long amounts of time towards some future goal, but NPOV is non-negotiable and, regardless of how eventualist your philosophy is, an article must always be NPOV. Now. Not at some time in the future. Now. Therefore I'm not happy with the editing process you suggest above, which implies one editor biasing the article towards one particular viewpoint then another editor coming along later and biasing it in a different direction. Every version should always be NPOV.
As noted, there is a difference between what WP *should* be and what it actually is. You may talk theory all you like, and I will agree with your ideals 100%, but that doesn't change what actually happens out in articlespace.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
That's plain bizarre. There's absolutely nothing wrong with editors inserting their own opinions into articles. It happens
every day. So
long as it is done with NPOV in mind it works fine.
Now I think you're deliberately misinterpreting what I mean in order to throw up an irrelevant straw man (note that this is a discussion tactic that I have absolutely no 'due respect' for).
I'm sorry you think that. You are wrong.
Obviously writing an NPOV-compliant article isn't a problem. Unduly biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
I don't think you understand NPOV. NPOV allows for multiple points of view, not one. We present the facts and let the reader decide.
Peter Mackay wrote:
Obviously writing an NPOV-compliant article isn't a problem. Unduly biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
I don't think you understand NPOV. NPOV allows for multiple points of view, not one. We present the facts and let the reader decide.
I can assure you that I understand NPOV perfectly.
I will reiterate: unduly biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
Cheers,
N.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch Peter Mackay wrote:
Obviously writing an NPOV-compliant article isn't a
problem. Unduly
biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
I don't think you understand NPOV. NPOV allows for multiple
points of
view, not one. We present the facts and let the reader decide.
I can assure you that I understand NPOV perfectly.
I will reiterate: unduly biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
I wasn't talking about biasing articles. That's something you brought in, and I'll agree with your motherhood strawman: unduly biasing an article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
What I'm saying - again - is that it's fine to have editors putting their own partisan opinions into articles so long as this is done in accordance with NPOV. NPOV allows for multiple viewpoints.
I think we've both reached agreement on all the above points and we can let the list get on with discussing other trivia?
Pete, anxious to see a 3-armed Wookie
Nick Boalch wrote:
It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a crucial and necessary one) that contributors should leave their political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions designed to divide the editing community into political factions can be seen as unhelpful.
Where is this "long-standing tenet" defined? NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes. Consistent with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
Gold stars for you. :) That is exactly right.
Prasad J wrote:
But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a subjective one?
Somewhat, but not particularly, no.
A userbox which seems inflammatory/divise to one user may not appear that way to another.
Right.
An example of such a scenario would be when a user named Anwar Saadat declared, using such a template, his opinion that Kashmir should be granted independence.
A perfect example of a userbox that should have been nuked on sight.
The key here is that people have traditionally been free to express themselves on their userpages. The problem is that userboxes which are promoted in the official namespaces tend to do two things:
1. They encourage the formation of cliques and factions and teams to go around doing war in Wikipedia
2. They tell newcomers and the outside world that "this is how to be a good wikipedian: pick all the things you believe in and trumpet them on your userpage".
Traditionally, we have always thought that a really great wikipedian is one whose editing record is so exemplary that one could not possibly guess his or her biases.
--Jimbo
On 5/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote:
I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly framed argument.
? Bringing up a completely irrlevant and rather obvious red herring does nothing to knock out the fact that our community has repeatedly and constantly rejected the notion that behaving in a divisive and inflammatory fashion is bad.
Could you clarrify this. Did you really mean to say that you think ther community thinks it is fine to behave in divisive and inflammatory fashion?
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of geni
On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
[[Piss_Christ]] [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]]...
I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and posting inflammatory statements on your userpage! I can't even begin to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.
Hey are you know going to argue that user namespace shouldn't be inflamitory?
User pages aren't NPOV. The userbox problem is a direct result of this - the debate is where to draw the line.
And yes, I'm back. I checked into my hostel in Frankfurt and spotted a leftover Wikimania banner proudly displayed behind the desk. Didn't quite get to Jordanhill Station, but I inadvertently visited Welshpool.
Pete in Canberra
On May 13, 2006, at 5:32 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
No, you haven't been misled. It is an accepted part of policy, confirmed by Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee.
As I recall, the Arbirtation Committee doesn't set policy, although Jimbo does.
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
The Arbitration Committee decided that he had this power. The Board doesn't generally interfere with the running of the wikis.
On 5/12/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
The Arbitration Committee decided that he had this power.
The Arb Com doesn't have any right to make such a decision.
The Board doesn't generally interfere with the running of the wikis.
Which is fine. The problem is that one of the board members *is* interfering with it.
Anthony
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
The Arbitration Committee decided that he had this power.
The Arb Com doesn't have any right to make such a decision.
It is pretty hard to overule arbcom. Possible but pretty hard.
Which is fine. The problem is that one of the board members *is* interfering with it.
Anthony
Ad a minium we need someone to tell us about DMCA notices and the like.
On 5/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
The Arbitration Committee decided that he had this power.
The Arb Com doesn't have any right to make such a decision.
It is pretty hard to overule arbcom. Possible but pretty hard.
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Which is fine. The problem is that one of the board members *is* interfering with it.
Anthony
Ad a minium we need someone to tell us about DMCA notices and the like.
Sure, someone needs to take down illegal content. That's not what this is about.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com Date: Mar 11, 2006 3:02 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
And honestly, you should know me well enough by now. No amount of political, financial, or legal leverage in the entire universe would persuade me to do the wrong thing by our mission. We have, as a community, principles and integrity. This is what we are all about.
You've changed a lot from the early days. What started out as a laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown more and more despotic over time.
In what way? I think that's a pretty silly claim.
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
The Arbitration Committee decided that he had this power.
The Arb Com doesn't have any right to make such a decision.
It is pretty hard to overule arbcom. Possible but pretty hard.
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Historicaly admins are the group most likely to publicaly dissagree with arbcom (other than those on the reciving end).
Sure, someone needs to take down illegal content. That's not what this is about.
In terms of other activities board involvement is generaly kept to a minium simple because most of them don't have the time to spend the hours each day it requires to know what is going on en.wikipedia. On top of that the language barrier means they are going to have to accept most wikipeidia being run without significant involvement from them.
On 5/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Historicaly admins are the group most likely to publicaly dissagree with arbcom (other than those on the reciving end).
That's ridiculous. Admins are the ones that enforce the arb com decisions. If they disagree so strongly, then why would they enforce the decisions?
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Historicaly admins are the group most likely to publicaly dissagree with arbcom (other than those on the reciving end).
That's ridiculous. Admins are the ones that enforce the arb com decisions. If they disagree so strongly, then why would they enforce the decisions?
Because mostly they agree and when they don't it is normaly only a few who dissagree.
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Historicaly admins are the group most likely to publicaly dissagree with arbcom (other than those on the reciving end).
That's ridiculous. Admins are the ones that enforce the arb com decisions. If they disagree so strongly, then why would they enforce the decisions?
Not at all. Ever hear of the term [[Loyal opposition]]? Same idea.
Even if the idea of a loyal opposition is irrelvant, there are a lot of admins, and it doesn't take all that many to enforce Arbcom decisions in the absence of wheel wars- heck, Arbcom alone could account for a good deal if they absolutely had to.
~maru
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
It is pretty hard to overule arbcom. Possible but pretty hard.
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Anthony, you are free to ignore the ArbCom. You are also free to be banned.
I never saw anything wrong with userboxes, but it is very clear that constantly agitating or edit warring over them is very wrong.
Fred
On May 15, 2006, at 9:03 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
It is pretty hard to overule arbcom. Possible but pretty hard.
Sure, admins tend to listen to the arb com. That's very different from saying anyone has to listen to them.
Anthony, you are free to ignore the ArbCom. You are also free to be banned.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Fri, 12 May 2006 16:37:51 -0400, you wrote:
The problem is that one of the board members *is* interfering with it.
Who the hell does he think he is - Jimbo Wales? Oh, wait...
Guy (JzG)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Anthony DiPierro stated for the record:
On 5/12/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
The Arbitration Committee decided that he had this power.
The Arb Com doesn't have any right to make such a decision.
Sez who?
- -- Sean Barrett | There is more stupidity than hydrogen sean@epoptic.org | in the universe, and it has a | longer shelf life. --Frank Zappa
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
Anthony
IIRC, Jimbo has the power to ban anyone from Wikipedia. So I guess that he has the power to do anything else, because if push comes to shove, he could just ban the people who flaunt his authority.
My point is that there isn't much of anything that Jimbo has to ask anyone permission to do. And lawyering the political situation in Wikipedia isn't likely to get you much traction in getting his decision reversed. Some of us are glad that he stepped in and very depressed that people are nonetheless still arguing so vehemently over such a pointless issue.
Ryan
On 5/12/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
When did the board give Jimbo the power to pass CSD criteria?
Anthony
IIRC, Jimbo has the power to ban anyone from Wikipedia. So I guess that he has the power to do anything else, because if push comes to shove, he could just ban the people who flaunt his authority.
My point is that there isn't much of anything that Jimbo has to ask anyone permission to do. And lawyering the political situation in Wikipedia isn't likely to get you much traction in getting his decision reversed. Some of us are glad that he stepped in and very depressed that people are nonetheless still arguing so vehemently over such a pointless issue.
Ryan
I think you're wrong that Jimbo has any ultimate power over Wikipedia. Sure, if he wanted to ban someone he'd probably get away with it, but only if the community accepted it.
And if it's such a pointless issue, then why does it have to be addressed in the first place?
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think you're wrong that Jimbo has any ultimate power over Wikipedia. Sure, if he wanted to ban someone he'd probably get away with it, but only if the community accepted it.
You might want to reread the banning policy and some recent Arbcom cases. The view that Jimbo cannot ban people by fiat or dictate Wikipedia policy is a minority one. Those who disagree can fork.
Maybe I come off as a Jimbo defender or that I enjoy the situation. In fact, I don't have any feelings on it either way. He doesn't interfere with me writing the encyclopedia, which is what I'm here to do.
And if it's such a pointless issue, then why does it have to be
addressed in the first place?
Because people take it so seriously that they edit war, wheel war, and leave the project over it, as incomprehenible to me as that is. It's as if the result of this battle over userboxes will have any direct impact on the quality of the articles. It won't. Whether userboxes stay or not, I really wish we would all just let it go and write the fucking encyclopedia already. The fact that some people spend so much time on the mailing list trying to ensure that they get their way in this shitheap of an "issue" makes me wonder what you are all really here to do.
Ryan
On 5/13/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think you're wrong that Jimbo has any ultimate power over Wikipedia. Sure, if he wanted to ban someone he'd probably get away with it, but only if the community accepted it.
You might want to reread the banning policy and some recent Arbcom cases. The view that Jimbo cannot ban people by fiat or dictate Wikipedia policy is a minority one. Those who disagree can fork.
All that you say is true, but being written on a Wikipedia page does not make it fact.
Maybe I come off as a Jimbo defender or that I enjoy the situation. In fact, I don't have any feelings on it either way. He doesn't interfere with me writing the encyclopedia, which is what I'm here to do.
And if it's such a pointless issue, then why does it have to be
addressed in the first place?
Because people take it so seriously that they edit war, wheel war, and leave the project over it, as incomprehenible to me as that is.
And now that userboxes are banned, there's no more edit warring, wheel warring, or people leaving the project?
It's as if the result of this battle over userboxes will have any direct impact on the quality of the articles. It won't. Whether userboxes stay or not, I really wish we would all just let it go and write the fucking encyclopedia already. The fact that some people spend so much time on the mailing list trying to ensure that they get their way in this shitheap of an "issue" makes me wonder what you are all really here to do.
Ryan
I really don't see anyone doing that. I'm more concerned with people claiming that Jimbo is unilaterally passing CSD criteria despite a lack of consensus than I am with what the CSD criteria are.
Anthony
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
All that you say is true, but being written on a Wikipedia page does not make it fact.
It's fact. Deal with it or fork. I don't have anything else to say.
Ryan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/13/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think you're wrong that Jimbo has any ultimate power over Wikipedia. Sure, if he wanted to ban someone he'd probably get away with it, but only if the community accepted it.
You might want to reread the banning policy and some recent Arbcom cases. The view that Jimbo cannot ban people by fiat or dictate Wikipedia policy is a minority one. Those who disagree can fork.
All that you say is true, but being written on a Wikipedia page does not make it fact.
Common practice does make it fact, though. If you were reverting Jimbo's edits on-wiki I'd give you about five minutes before you were forced to make the decision between fork and leave. Most people do know who's in charge here. Just because you claim it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
- -- Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
On 5/13/06, Ben McIlwain cydeweys@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/13/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think you're wrong that Jimbo has any ultimate power over Wikipedia. Sure, if he wanted to ban someone he'd probably get away with it, but only if the community accepted it.
You might want to reread the banning policy and some recent Arbcom cases. The view that Jimbo cannot ban people by fiat or dictate Wikipedia policy is a minority one. Those who disagree can fork.
All that you say is true, but being written on a Wikipedia page does not make it fact.
Common practice does make it fact, though. If you were reverting Jimbo's edits on-wiki I'd give you about five minutes before you were forced to make the decision between fork and leave. Most people do know who's in charge here. Just because you claim it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
As I've said, I don't deny that he'd probably get away with it.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
And now that userboxes are banned, there's no more edit warring, wheel warring, or people leaving the project?
Anthony, this is just pure and simple trolling. Since userboxes are NOT banned, you are being incredibly dishonest here.
Anyone reading your messages in this thread would get the impression that I unilaterally banned userboxes by secret decree, over ruling the wishes of the community in a fit of autocratic tyranny.
This of course rather neatly ignores the facts of reality.
--Jimbo
On 5/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Anyone reading your messages in this thread would get the impression that I unilaterally banned userboxes by secret decree, over ruling the wishes of the community in a fit of autocratic tyranny.
You're a moron, Jimbo. I was the one arguing that you *didn't* unilaterally ban userboxes by secret decree.
Rob Church is the one who claimed that CSD T1 was decreed from above. At first I entertained the possibility that he might have been telling the truth, but a short while later I came to the conclusion that he was mistaken.
Anthony
On 15/05/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Rob Church is the one who claimed that CSD T1 was decreed from above. At first I entertained the possibility that he might have been telling the truth, but a short while later I came to the conclusion that he was mistaken.
I emphasise the "mistaken" since I believed that it was part of the measures taken to avert the wheel warring in Jan 06. Come to it, it was likely the short term spark for that whole incident.
I stand corrected.
Rob Church
On 13/05/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
Because people take it so seriously that they edit war, wheel war, and leave the project over it, as incomprehenible to me as that is. It's as if the result of this battle over userboxes will have any direct impact on the quality of the articles. It won't. Whether userboxes stay or not, I really wish we would all just let it go and write the fucking encyclopedia already. The fact that some people spend so much time on the mailing list trying to ensure that they get their way in this shitheap of an "issue" makes me wonder what you are all really here to do.
I don't usually agree with Ryan Delaney much, but let it go on the record that I fully endorse this particular viewpoint. Can't the whole userboxen issue be let go? We have a CSD and people are enforcing it. The bitching is slowly ceasing, so let's not do anything to provoke another full-scale riot, huh?
Rob Church
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote: likely to get you much traction in getting his decision reversed. Some of us are glad that he stepped in and very depressed that people are nonetheless still arguing so vehemently over such a pointless issue.
Some +1. I think you could justify this based on user name policy and WP:NOT. People already have blogs, my-things, bulletin boards, chat rooms, etc. to proclaim their beliefs, stomp up and down, and post photos, graphics, etc. An encyclopedia doesn't and shouldn't be providing yet another platform for unfounded rants. Besides, there's Wikibooks if you feel like you and your box buddies feel like you have a book and cover in you.~~~~Pro-Lick
--------------------------------- New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.
Ryan Delaney wrote:
Some of us are glad that he stepped in and very depressed that people are nonetheless still arguing so vehemently over such a pointless issue.
It might be an indication that it's not as "pointless" an issue to some people as it is to you and/or possibly Jimbo. Which in turn means that neither you nor Jimbo should think you know for definite that it is truly objectively pointless.
Timwi
On Sat, 13 May 2006 00:57:05 +0100, you wrote:
It might be an indication that it's not as "pointless" an issue to some people as it is to you and/or possibly Jimbo. Which in turn means that neither you nor Jimbo should think you know for definite that it is truly objectively pointless.
I don't know. I always remember at times like this whose ball it is we're playing with.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2006 00:57:05 +0100, you wrote:
It might be an indication that it's not as "pointless" an issue to some people as it is to you and/or possibly Jimbo. Which in turn means that neither you nor Jimbo should think you know for definite that it is truly objectively pointless.
I don't know. I always remember at times like this whose ball it is we're playing with.
Guy (JzG)
The ball of the individuals who donated to the foundation.
Anthony
On Sat, 13 May 2006 09:01:11 -0400, you wrote:
I don't know. I always remember at times like this whose ball it is we're playing with.
The ball of the individuals who donated to the foundation.
That would be me, then. And I choose to defer to Jimbo, since his understanding of the nature of his idea is likely to be better than mine.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2006 09:01:11 -0400, you wrote:
I don't know. I always remember at times like this whose ball it is we're playing with.
The ball of the individuals who donated to the foundation.
That would be me, then. And I choose to defer to Jimbo, since his understanding of the nature of his idea is likely to be better than mine.
You're not the only donator though. And the default position is for the deference to be to the board, not to Jimbo.
Anthony
On 5/12/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/05/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
By who? I don't see how this is within the competence of anyone other than the community.
Jimbo Wales. I can't find the original addition in history, but it's reaffirmed with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ACriteria_for_speedy_de....
Rob Church
That edit says that "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory" are CSD candidates. The current version says "Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or any other templates which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory."
Anthony
On Fri, 12 May 2006 19:43:44 -0400, you wrote:
That edit says that "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory" are CSD candidates. The current version says "Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or any other templates which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory."
Because some people have to be beaten vigorously with a cluebat before they realise that their userboxes are divisive - as far as some people are concerned an opinion which is shared by all "right-thinking" people can't possibly be divisive.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2006 19:43:44 -0400, you wrote:
That edit says that "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory" are CSD candidates. The current version says "Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or any other templates which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory."
Because some people have to be beaten vigorously with a cluebat before they realise that their userboxes are divisive - as far as some people are concerned an opinion which is shared by all "right-thinking" people can't possibly be divisive.
Guy (JzG)
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is. In fact, after looking further, someone on that page made the claim that Jimbo has explicitly stated that it's *not* an edict from above.
Anthony
On 13/05/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2006 19:43:44 -0400, you wrote:
That edit says that "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory" are CSD candidates. The current version says "Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or any other templates which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory."
Because some people have to be beaten vigorously with a cluebat before they realise that their userboxes are divisive - as far as some people are concerned an opinion which is shared by all "right-thinking" people can't possibly be divisive.
Guy (JzG)
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is. In fact, after looking further, someone on that page made the claim that Jimbo has explicitly stated that it's *not* an edict from above.
As far as I can remember, it was policy made by Jimbo around New Year's 2006, when all hell broke loose in what some Septemberised fools call the "Great Userbox Purge" or similar.
My memory is subject to being totally incorrect at times, however. Perhaps we should just wait for Wales to comment on this himself, unless someone can dig up the exact diff. when it was added by him, or the wikien-l post where he "made it so" ?
Rob Church
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is. In fact, after looking further, someone on that page made the claim that Jimbo has explicitly stated that it's *not* an edict from above.
I don't think that's a correct statement. In the event that it is, I suggest that you examine finding of fact 2 in the Tony Sidaway arbitration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Tony_Sidaway...
This probably won't satisfy you because you don't recognise Jimbo's authority or the Arbitration Committee's authority. However that is not a problem for those of us who do.
On 5/13/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is. In fact, after looking further, someone on that page made the claim that Jimbo has explicitly stated that it's *not* an edict from above.
I don't think that's a correct statement. In the event that it is, I suggest that you examine finding of fact 2 in the Tony Sidaway arbitration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Tony_Sidaway...
Just a few messages up I commented on this. 1) "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory" is not equivalent to "Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues". In fact, I believe the former is obviously a CSD, while the latter should not be. However, I now see these two CSDs have been split. 2) Jimbo's comment was " At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist." That seems to me to be a statement which explicitly states he is *not* making an edict.
This probably won't satisfy you because you don't recognise Jimbo's authority or the Arbitration Committee's authority. However that is not a problem for those of us who do.
Well, it's still important to know whether or not this *is* an edict, even if the fact that it is is not necessarily conclusive.
Anthony
On 5/13/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is. In fact, after looking further, someone on that page made the claim that Jimbo has explicitly stated that it's *not* an edict from above.
I don't think that's a correct statement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_dele...
"Removed. Jimbo has clarified that he did not impose this by edict. The criterion is subjective and better applied with discussion at TfD than by solitary admins. See talk page."
Now, whether or not Haukurth's statement is correct is another question, but someone *did claim* that Jimbo said it is not an edict.
On Sat, 13 May 2006 09:04:47 -0400, you wrote:
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is.
Like I said, you are well behind the curve here. See the archives of this list, the proceedings of ArbCom around January and any one of a hundred other places around the project, like the userbox debates subsection of DRV. It was discussed to death, which probably explains why nobody is over keen to rehash the argument right now.
But let me ask you a question: why should it be a problem having userboxes spread by copy & paste or by subst from userspace, rather than provided through template space?
Guy (JzG)
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2006 09:04:47 -0400, you wrote:
The point is, those of you claiming that this CSD is an edict from above have so far provided no evidence that it actually is.
Like I said, you are well behind the curve here. See the archives of this list, the proceedings of ArbCom around January and any one of a hundred other places around the project, like the userbox debates subsection of DRV. It was discussed to death, which probably explains why nobody is over keen to rehash the argument right now.
I've done quite a bit of research on this, and I haven't seen a single edict.
But let me ask you a question: why should it be a problem having userboxes spread by copy & paste or by subst from userspace, rather than provided through template space?
Hasn't this been discussed to death?
Copy and paste is more difficult than using templates. If it's made absolutely clear that the template rule does not apply to templates in the user space, then I suppose that's an acceptable compromise.
Anthony
On Sat, 13 May 2006 12:03:28 -0400, you wrote:
If it's made absolutely clear that the template rule does not apply to templates in the user space, then I suppose that's an acceptable compromise.
For my money they should be under User:Box/foo, with the usual proviso that blatantly divisive ones are removed, and they should be substed for preference.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2006 12:03:28 -0400, you wrote:
If it's made absolutely clear that the template rule does not apply to templates in the user space, then I suppose that's an acceptable compromise.
For my money they should be under User:Box/foo, with the usual proviso that blatantly divisive ones are removed, and they should be substed for preference.
It has been tried. The anti userbox bunch slightly deleted it.
G'day geni,
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2006 12:03:28 -0400, you wrote:
If it's made absolutely clear that the template rule does not apply to templates in the user space, then I suppose that's an acceptable compromise.
For my money they should be under User:Box/foo, with the usual proviso that blatantly divisive ones are removed, and they should be substed for preference.
It has been tried. The anti userbox bunch slightly deleted it.
Err, not exactly. From memory, a userbox was deleted under T1. Some damn fool recreated it in the article space with the name [[Userbox:User hates admins]] or something like that, and then said "nyah nyah nyah you can't touch it, it's not in Template: namespace".
On 5/13/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
Err, not exactly. From memory, a userbox was deleted under T1. Some damn fool recreated it in the article space with the name [[Userbox:User hates admins]] or something like that, and then said "nyah nyah nyah you can't touch it, it's not in Template: namespace".
-- Mark Gallagher
I think there have been a couple of attempts. been a long time though. In any case [[User:Sam Hocevar/burninhell]] still exists so it appears that userpages do provide some kind of protection.
geni wrote:
On 5/13/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
Err, not exactly. From memory, a userbox was deleted under T1. Some damn fool recreated it in the article space with the name [[Userbox:User hates admins]] or something like that, and then said "nyah nyah nyah you can't touch it, it's not in Template: namespace".
-- Mark Gallagher
I think there have been a couple of attempts. been a long time though. In any case [[User:Sam Hocevar/burninhell]] still exists so it appears that userpages do provide some kind of protection.
Consensus provides the best protection of all.
On 5/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Consensus provides the best protection of all.
But not from irony.
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Because some people have to be beaten vigorously with a cluebat before they realise that their userboxes are divisive - as far as some people are concerned an opinion which is shared by all "right-thinking" people can't possibly be divisive.
Guy (JzG)
Nothing wrong with admitting an opinion and anyone who has problems with the idea of people haveing opinions different to themselves isn't going to last long on wikipedia anyway.
On Sat, 13 May 2006 18:18:03 +0100, you wrote:
Nothing wrong with admitting an opinion and anyone who has problems with the idea of people haveing opinions different to themselves isn't going to last long on wikipedia anyway.
For some values of opinion (and indeed expressing).
Guy (JzG)
Rob Church wrote:
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
Not decreed, no. Sannse wrote it, I believe. It is just a simple deduction from all our other policies. Behaving in a divisive and inflammatory way anywhere in Wikipedia is not welcome.
I'm proposing this as part of official Wikipedia policy at [[Wikipedia:Divisive and inflammatory behavior]] because I think we need to voice this principle as the basis for a number of other fundamental Wikipedia policies.
Put simply, we are here to work, not to struggle; actions which lead us down the path of "fight or flight" are not productive (after Wilfred Bion). I think making these thoughts explicit will be helpful.
Fred
On May 15, 2006, at 8:59 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
CSD T1 was decreed from above.
Not decreed, no. Sannse wrote it, I believe. It is just a simple deduction from all our other policies. Behaving in a divisive and inflammatory way anywhere in Wikipedia is not welcome.
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On 5/16/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
I'm proposing this as part of official Wikipedia policy at [[Wikipedia:Divisive and inflammatory behavior]] because I think we need to voice this principle as the basis for a number of other fundamental Wikipedia policies.
Put simply, we are here to work, not to struggle; actions which lead us down the path of "fight or flight" are not productive (after Wilfred Bion). I think making these thoughts explicit will be helpful.
Fred
How does this differ from the policy forbidding disruptive behavior? Doesn't "divisive and infammatory" constitute a subset of "disruptive"?
Ryan
On 5/16/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
How does this differ from the policy forbidding disruptive behavior? Doesn't "divisive and infammatory" constitute a subset of "disruptive"?
Ryan
True enough, but it happens so much and in so many related ways that it wouldn't hurt to expand on it. After all, vandalism could reasonably be argued to be a subset of disruption as well, yet we have many pages dealing with vandalism -- vandalism definitions, pages dedicated to vandal-fighting, we have vandalism outlined in the blocking rationales, etc.
k
I don't think we have a policy which prohibits disruptive behavior in so many words. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines speaks of "problematic or disruptive behavior" and there is [[WP:POINT]], Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Restating the principle will not make it policy; it is already policy. Stating the principle just makes it explicit rather than implicit.
Fred
On May 16, 2006, at 7:13 AM, Ryan Delaney wrote:
On 5/16/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
I'm proposing this as part of official Wikipedia policy at [[Wikipedia:Divisive and inflammatory behavior]] because I think we need to voice this principle as the basis for a number of other fundamental Wikipedia policies.
Put simply, we are here to work, not to struggle; actions which lead us down the path of "fight or flight" are not productive (after Wilfred Bion). I think making these thoughts explicit will be helpful.
Fred
How does this differ from the policy forbidding disruptive behavior? Doesn't "divisive and infammatory" constitute a subset of "disruptive"?
Ryan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On May 16, 2006, at 6:38 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
I don't think we have a policy which prohibits disruptive behavior in so many words.
True, but the blocking policy allows blocking for disruption, in so many words. Something being prohibited is essentially the same as something being a valid reason to block according to the blocking policy.
On 5/16/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
True, but the blocking policy allows blocking for disruption, in so many words. Something being prohibited is essentially the same as something being a valid reason to block according to the blocking policy.
Yep. This is what I was referring to.
Ryan
On 5/16/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
How does this differ from the policy forbidding disruptive behavior? Doesn't "divisive and infammatory" constitute a subset of "disruptive"?
Is "disruptive" behaviour banned? It shouldn't be. Upgrading MediaWiki could be disruptive. An AfD of a popular article is disruptive. Banning userboxes would be disruptive :)
Rather, unnecessarily or unbeneficially disruptive behaviour should be discouraged, and not all heated debates fall into those categories. A passionate debate about a near-featured-article could be quite beneficial, for example.
However, divisive and inflammatory behaviour is generally disruptive without having any benefits to the Wikipedia project.
Steve
On 5/17/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/16/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
How does this differ from the policy forbidding disruptive behavior? Doesn't "divisive and infammatory" constitute a subset of "disruptive"?
Is "disruptive" behaviour banned? It shouldn't be. Upgrading MediaWiki could be disruptive. An AfD of a popular article is disruptive. Banning userboxes would be disruptive :)
Rather, unnecessarily or unbeneficially disruptive behaviour should be discouraged, and not all heated debates fall into those categories. A passionate debate about a near-featured-article could be quite beneficial, for example.
However, divisive and inflammatory behaviour is generally disruptive without having any benefits to the Wikipedia project.
Steve
I have not been able to discern a difference between the disruptive and inflammatory causal mechanism of the categorisation or transclusion of templates onto user pages, and the fact that user boxes express POV's of users.
Divisive and inflammatory implies the type of effect that votestacking has. It also describes the current outcry over the userbox deletion according to the T1 class of deletions, perhaps ironically the cause and the effect are based in the same action to delete.
I can easily imagine a status quo where categories are banned from userboxes and transclusion is replaced with subst: all userboxes without deleting the source. The subst and delete opinion of many "experienced" (and therefore more worthy to make consensus decisions in cabal type atmospheres) editors seems to be the cause of more divisive and inflammatory behaviour than if they had waited for a so called "wikipedia consensus" to appear.
Peter
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Timwi wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
I don't get this.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a battleground for social, moral, or religious issues. Userbox templates and user templates group Wikipedians into competing factions. This infrastructure has been used in the past to abuse our decision-making policies by vote-stacking.
If you really feel it is necessary to proclaim your religion on your userpage, you can do it, but you don't need a template to do so.
- -- Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a battleground for social, moral, or religious issues. Userbox templates and user templates group Wikipedians into competing factions. This infrastructure has been used in the past to abuse our decision-making policies by vote-stacking.
The obvious logical conclusion is not that userbox templates are unsuitable for Wikipedia, but that voting is unsuitable for decision-making.
If you really feel it is necessary to proclaim your religion on your userpage, you can do it, but you don't need a template to do so.
If you really feel it is necessary to stop people from proclaiming anything about them (not even specifically religions) using templates, you are free to voice this opinion, but you are not entitled to delete any such templates without community concensus.
Timwi
On Fri, 12 May 2006 20:04:25 +0100, you wrote:
If you really feel it is necessary to stop people from proclaiming anything about them (not even specifically religions) using templates, you are free to voice this opinion, but you are not entitled to delete any such templates without community concensus.
You are way behind the curve here, this has been discussed to death. The redux as far as I recall is that templates proclaiming a point of view are divisive, that the declaration of a point of view on a user page is not in itself wrong even so, but that it is a poor use of server resources to transclude such declarations and a poor precedent to imply that such declarations are officially sanctioned by including them in template space. Some of them were patently inflammatory, and those were removed first and fastest. Others included unfree images, a problem in itself.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2006 20:04:25 +0100, you wrote:
If you really feel it is necessary to stop people from proclaiming anything about them (not even specifically religions) using templates, you are free to voice this opinion, but you are not entitled to delete any such templates without community concensus.
You are way behind the curve here, this has been discussed to death.
Forgive me for not reading absolutely every edit to absolutely every page in the Wikipedia namespace, the Wikipedia talk namespace, the Template talk namespace, and whatever else.
The redux as far as I recall is that templates proclaiming a point of view are divisive, that the declaration of a point of view on a user page is not in itself wrong even so, but that
The templates do not provide any additional possibility of proclamation that plain text on the user page wouldn't already provide. Since you agree that the declaration of a point of view on a user page is not in itself wrong, it logically follows that the mere fact that the templates proclaim a point of view does not make them wrong.
it is a poor use of server resources to transclude such declarations
It is highly doubtful that any significant amounts of server resources are at stake. It is even more doubtful that the load would be significantly increased compared to the current situation which already allows a significant number of humorous (and therefore irrelevant) userboxes. Either way, a proper analysis of the consumption of server resources has not been made.
a poor precedent to imply that such declarations are officially sanctioned by including them in template space.
There is nothing about the templates that makes them any more "officially sanctioned" than text on a user page on a Wikimedia-controlled server already is.
Some of them were patently inflammatory, and those were removed first and fastest. Others included unfree images, a problem in itself.
These are separate issues that I am not contesting. A proclamation of any belief is possible without breaching any of those two requirements (not being inflammatory and not using non-free images).
Timwi
On Sat, 13 May 2006 00:35:30 +0100, you wrote:
You are way behind the curve here, this has been discussed to death.
Forgive me for not reading absolutely every edit to absolutely every page in the Wikipedia namespace, the Wikipedia talk namespace, the Template talk namespace, and whatever else.
And there was me thinking that it was pretty much unavoidable on the mailing list and in Project space for at least a month.
The templates do not provide any additional possibility of proclamation that plain text on the user page wouldn't already provide. Since you agree that the declaration of a point of view on a user page is not in itself wrong, it logically follows that the mere fact that the templates proclaim a point of view does not make them wrong.
Some of them were blatant trolling, of course. Others are informative but irrelevant to the process of building an encyclopaedia.
It is highly doubtful that any significant amounts of server resources are at stake. It is even more doubtful that the load would be significantly increased compared to the current situation which already allows a significant number of humorous (and therefore irrelevant) userboxes. Either way, a proper analysis of the consumption of server resources has not been made.
Nor does it need to be since the benefit to the encyclopaedia is zero and the cost non-zero.
a poor precedent to imply that such declarations are officially sanctioned by including them in template space.
There is nothing about the templates that makes them any more "officially sanctioned" than text on a user page on a Wikimedia-controlled server already is.
So you say. Others disagree. A Template space userbox which is listed in a directory of userboxen appeared to many to imply precisely that: "official" support for divisive userboxen.
Some of them were patently inflammatory, and those were removed first and fastest. Others included unfree images, a problem in itself.
These are separate issues that I am not contesting. A proclamation of any belief is possible without breaching any of those two requirements (not being inflammatory and not using non-free images).
It's a separate issue right up to the point that someone has to make a judgment call about *your* particular userbox. Some felt that the endlessly protracted decisions on each individual userbox (is it divisive to say that you accept or reject Ayn Rand's philosophy?) were an even worse use of time and resources.
Guy (JzG)
The templates do not provide any additional possibility of proclamation that plain text on the user page wouldn't already provide. Since you agree that the declaration of a point of view on a user page is not in itself wrong, it logically follows that the mere fact that the templates proclaim a point of view does not make them wrong.
Some of them were blatant trolling, of course. Others are informative but irrelevant to the process of building an encyclopaedia.
They are no more irrelevant to the process of building an encyclopedia than most userpages already are (take mine, for example). Yet nobody calls for the deletion of those userpages on the grounds that they are "divisive" or "inflammatory".
It is highly doubtful that any significant amounts of server resources are at stake. It is even more doubtful that the load would be significantly increased compared to the current situation which already allows a significant number of humorous (and therefore irrelevant) userboxes. Either way, a proper analysis of the consumption of server resources has not been made.
Nor does it need to be since the benefit to the encyclopaedia is zero and the cost non-zero.
It is doubtful that the cost is greater than that of having userpages. Quite to the contrary, using categories and "What Links Here", the userboxes produce semi-automatic organisation and structure. This reduces cost.
There is nothing about the templates that makes them any more "officially sanctioned" than text on a user page on a Wikimedia-controlled server already is.
So you say. Others disagree. A Template space userbox which is listed in a directory of userboxen appeared to many to imply precisely that: "official" support for divisive userboxen.
The argument is irrelevant (because, as I already pointed out, it equally applies to userpages, a list of which can be created on [[Special:Allpages]]). It is the typical kind of argument people come up with hastily when they're just looking for something to corroborate their theory or to further their goal.
A proclamation of any belief is possible without breaching any of those two requirements (not being inflammatory and not using non-free images).
It's a separate issue right up to the point that someone has to make a judgment call about *your* particular userbox. Some felt that the endlessly protracted decisions on each individual userbox (is it divisive to say that you accept or reject Ayn Rand's philosophy?) were an even worse use of time and resources.
It is odd that, instead of precluding those "endlessly protracted" discussions, you think you are solving the problem by instead forbidding certain userboxes entirely, while it is plainly obvious that this controversial prohibition causes a lot more discussion. There is nothing wrong with a userbox stating "This user accepts Ayn Rand's philosophy" -- there is, rather, something wrong with someone going "OMG this userbox is divisive, it must go!!" So prohibit the latter.
Timwi
On Sat, 13 May 2006 11:16:42 +0100, you wrote:
Some of them were blatant trolling, of course. Others are informative but irrelevant to the process of building an encyclopaedia.
They are no more irrelevant to the process of building an encyclopedia than most userpages already are (take mine, for example). Yet nobody calls for the deletion of those userpages on the grounds that they are "divisive" or "inflammatory".
You miss the point: your userpage is not made available through a mechanism which implies that it is officially sanctioned.
It is highly doubtful that any significant amounts of server resources are at stake.
Nor does it need to be since the benefit to the encyclopaedia is zero and the cost non-zero.
It is doubtful that the cost is greater than that of having userpages. Quite to the contrary, using categories and "What Links Here", the userboxes produce semi-automatic organisation and structure. This reduces cost.
The cost is necessarily greater than the user pages, because the templates are rendered within the user pages by transclusion. Nobody (that I know of) has prevented the creation of user categories, which serve the limited practical benefit. I see no encyclopaedic benefit from being able to collect together all users who self-identify as, say, pro-choice - and plenty of disbenefits given the way some editors choose to use Wikipedia - but I don't discount the possibility that user categories might serve some encyclopaedic purpose.
There is nothing about the templates that makes them any more "officially sanctioned" than text on a user page on a Wikimedia-controlled server already is.
So you say. Others disagree. A Template space userbox which is listed in a directory of userboxen appeared to many to imply precisely that: "official" support for divisive userboxen.
The argument is irrelevant (because, as I already pointed out, it equally applies to userpages, a list of which can be created on [[Special:Allpages]]). It is the typical kind of argument people come up with hastily when they're just looking for something to corroborate their theory or to further their goal.
And as I pointed out, not it doesn't apply *equally* to userpages. But in the end this debate has already been had, and settled. Which was my original point. I see no great benefit from rehashing it.
It is odd that, instead of precluding those "endlessly protracted" discussions, you think you are solving the problem by instead forbidding certain userboxes entirely, while it is plainly obvious that this controversial prohibition causes a lot more discussion. There is nothing wrong with a userbox stating "This user accepts Ayn Rand's philosophy" -- there is, rather, something wrong with someone going "OMG this userbox is divisive, it must go!!" So prohibit the latter.
Look back a short way on the list and in the arbitration queue and so on. Trust me, the debates were massively disruptive. Massively. And nobody is "forbidding" anything - only saying that it should not be done through transclusion from Template space.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Look back a short way on the list and in the arbitration queue and so on. Trust me, the debates were massively disruptive. Massively. And nobody is "forbidding" anything - only saying that it should not be done through transclusion from Template space.
Guy (JzG)
What exactly is it about the transclusion that disrupts wikipedia? I still don't understand what the significant difference between using what links here on templates and using what links here on articles which people are free to wikilink to from their user pages, after all, they are likely to state their opinion next to the link anyway.
Peter
On Mon, 15 May 2006 06:38:39 +1000, you wrote:
What exactly is it about the transclusion that disrupts wikipedia? I still don't understand what the significant difference between using what links here on templates and using what links here on articles which people are free to wikilink to from their user pages, after all, they are likely to state their opinion next to the link anyway.
Two points: first, transclusion takes up additional server resources, which should be avoided unless an encyclopaedic purpose is served (Babel being the obvious example); second, having them in template space implies a degree of "official" sanction which is absent in many cases.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
second, having them in template space implies a degree of "official" sanction which is absent in many cases.
Guy (JzG)
How? Loads of stuff in most namespaces that are not "officialy" sanctioned.
On Mon, 15 May 2006 02:18:50 +0100, you wrote:
second, having them in template space implies a degree of "official" sanction which is absent in many cases.
How? Loads of stuff in most namespaces that are not "officialy" sanctioned.
By being in the Template space, where official templates live.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
By being in the Template space, where official templates live.
Guy (JzG)
All two (template:office and Template:reset) of them. Somehow I doubt people will make the assocation.
On Mon, 15 May 2006 10:36:51 +0100, you wrote:
By being in the Template space, where official templates live.
All two (template:office and Template:reset) of them. Somehow I doubt people will make the assocation.
Funny, I could have sworn that there were more than two templates. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TPL there are quite a few, all related to building an encyclopaedia (in a way that stating a POV, often in very aggressive terms, is, by common consent, not).
Guy (JzG)
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 15 May 2006 10:36:51 +0100, you wrote:
By being in the Template space, where official templates live.
All two (template:office and Template:reset) of them. Somehow I doubt people will make the assocation.
Funny, I could have sworn that there were more than two templates. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TPL there are quite a few, all related to building an encyclopaedia
That doens't make them official.
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement. I don't see any problem with emphasising the difference between those things which are encouraged as helping the building of an encyclopaedia, from those which are tolerated but recognised as not doing so, and in some cases actively impeding the process.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement. I don't see any problem with emphasising the difference between those things which are encouraged as helping the building of an encyclopaedia, from those which are tolerated but recognised as not doing so, and in some cases actively impeding the process.
The problem is reaching agreement on which is which.
Anthony
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement.
To who?
I don't see any problem with emphasising the difference between those things which are encouraged as helping the building of an encyclopaedia, from those which are tolerated but recognised as not doing so,
I don't see any reason to do so. I don't see how any of your proposal would do that.
and in some cases actively impeding the process.
Sorry are we talking about AFD, admins, Jimbo, process, IAR, 1-click answers, deletionists, inclusionists, userboxes or methodists here? Some accusions get thrown about so much I generaly ignore them
On 15/05/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement.
To who?
To readers and new editors, who don't know the ropes. Let's not forget that.
Rob Church
On 5/15/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/05/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement.
To who?
To readers and new editors, who don't know the ropes. Let's not forget that.
How do readers know about namespaces?
I just wanted to state here that I was infact accused of violating policy when I added userbox to my userpage stating that I was against the war in Iraq. I was was informed that anti-American bigotry was not tolerated by the concerned administrator as a result of which I was in violation of policy. I'm still not sure this accusation was justified-can anyone tell me if it was.
On 5/15/06, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
I just wanted to state here that I was infact accused of violating policy when I added userbox to my userpage stating that I was against the war in Iraq. I was was informed that anti-American bigotry was not tolerated by the concerned administrator as a result of which I was in violation of policy. I'm still not sure this accusation was justified-can anyone tell me if it was.
There is currently no policy about Userboxes in general, save the heavily debated CSD TX criterion. They were not following community consensus in telling you that, and as such are doing more harm than good in the discussion of a possible policy about userboxes.
Peter
On 15/05/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/05/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement.
To who?
To readers and new editors, who don't know the ropes. Let's not forget that.
How do readers know about namespaces?
They don't necessarily, although they could have encountered them from another wiki running MediaWiki or wiki software which supports them, or something similar. Your response intensifies my argument; readers who *don't* will assume it's all part of the main site content.
Rob Church
G'day Guy,
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
[This has been bothering me for a while. Do you think you could maybe change this to refer to the person you're talking to? Sometimes it's obvious --- like when you're replying to geni (sorry geni), or Yours Truly, or a message that has stuck in the brain. But often I'll have no idea who said what.]
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement. I don't see any problem with emphasising the difference between those things which are encouraged as helping the building of an encyclopaedia, from those which are tolerated but recognised as not doing so, and in some cases actively impeding the process.
During the heyday of the userboxen, I saw people --- you may have, as well --- actually welcoming newbies with "and here are some Wikipedia templates you can use to decorate your userpage". Couldn't have been less subtle if they'd tried to clobber us with one of the damn things.
Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Guy,
On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
[This has been bothering me for a while. Do you think you could maybe change this to refer to the person you're talking to? Sometimes it's obvious --- like when you're replying to geni (sorry geni), or Yours Truly, or a message that has stuck in the brain. But often I'll have no idea who said what.]
That doens't make them official.
It implies a degree of endorsement. I don't see any problem with emphasising the difference between those things which are encouraged as helping the building of an encyclopaedia, from those which are tolerated but recognised as not doing so, and in some cases actively impeding the process.
During the heyday of the userboxen, I saw people --- you may have, as well --- actually welcoming newbies with "and here are some Wikipedia templates you can use to decorate your userpage". Couldn't have been less subtle if they'd tried to clobber us with one of the damn things.
Oh, sorta like:
"Welcome to Wikipedia! Before you can do anything else, please fill in your userpage to let us know how much of a {left|right|up|down|in|out|Klein bottle}-wing looney you are."
Am I on the right track?
On 5/16/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
"Welcome to Wikipedia! Before you can do anything else, please fill in your userpage to let us know how much of a {left|right|up|down|in|out|Klein bottle}-wing looney you are."
Out of curiosity, just what the hell is an "down-wing"-looney? I do however support the notion that the wide spectrum of different human philosophies, developed for more than 2 millennia by the greatest thinkers in history, can be readily summed up in a regex :D (imagine what Machiavelli could have done with Perl!)
--Oskar
On 5/12/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
Yeah, because religious or controversial topics never did any harm to anyone...
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/12/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Uhm... I'm completely flattered. WTH is the reasoning behind CSD T1? How did that ever pass community concensus? I can't believe more than a handful of people would agree to that! What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
Yeah, because religious or controversial topics never did any harm to anyone...
And, like, unilateral deletions from people who feel no need to justify themselves never did any harm to anyone...
On 5/12/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
As far as I can see, CSD T1 only prohibits me from creating [[Template:User thinks religion is an irrational construction of the mind]], not from putting the same information on my user page without a template (inside a colored box or without one). It seems more like a structural measure than a content-related policy. From that point of view, I find it hard to get very excited about this change. We didn't even have templates until Tim added the feature to MediaWiki.
Templates are meant for the encyclopedia and its processes. When you allow highly individual/personal content in the template space, you effectively encourage userpage policy creeping into the template namespace, i.e. claims of content ownership and lack of NPOV. As for the "vote-stacking" and grouping, that issue has two sides, a good one and a bad one, but I tend to agree that on highly divisive issues, the disadvantages tend to prevail.
Erik
On 5/13/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/12/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
What on Earth is supposed to be harmful about users proclaiming their view on religious or controversial topics?
As far as I can see, CSD T1 only prohibits me from creating [[Template:User thinks religion is an irrational construction of the mind]], not from putting the same information on my user page without a template (inside a colored box or without one). It seems more like a structural measure than a content-related policy. From that point of view, I find it hard to get very excited about this change. We didn't even have templates until Tim added the feature to MediaWiki.
Its not even the content that they are really pushing against, it is the simple votestacking issue. Its not like people would not otherwise link to their controversial topic and people could use what links here from the article page anyway. Thats just the second most easy method of vote-stacking, there have to be others.
Templates are meant for the encyclopedia and its processes. When you allow highly individual/personal content in the template space, you effectively encourage userpage policy creeping into the template namespace, i.e. claims of content ownership and lack of NPOV. As for the "vote-stacking" and grouping, that issue has two sides, a good one and a bad one, but I tend to agree that on highly divisive issues, the disadvantages tend to prevail.
Erik
The purposes of templates in my view are not just for the encyclopedia. I haven't seen a decree stating that, and userboxes have been accepted as a way of life. How else would you describe the existence of DRVU, if they hadn't been accepted outright in concept? I think that the possibly keeping categories out of userboxes is the furthest that I would go to reduce divisive and inflammatory factors. For example, if something goes back for a second "vote", there are many people who are prepared to take the last vote and contact everyone who voted the same as them in order to tell them about the second vote, how exactly do you keep that from happening by taking away userboxes?
Peter