Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
Guy (JzG)
On 27/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
http://wikiabuse.com Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
What, in between the stated intent to be a stalkers' site?
- d.
On 6/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
http://wikiabuse.com Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
What, in between the stated intent to be a stalkers' site?
How can any site which Willy on Wheels visited and left his precious droppings all over be bad?
On 6/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
http://wikiabuse.com Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
What, in between the stated intent to be a stalkers' site?
How can any site which Willy on Wheels visited and left his precious droppings all over be bad?
To be serious, though... Rootology put in a policy stating that they wouldn't use real names unless the WP users in question use them widely and openly on WP, and from a random sampling of pages over there, they seem to be enthusiastically enforcing that.
Ex: http://wikiabuse.com/index.php?title=JoshuaZ&action=history
(second edit was someone taking his real name out, 2 min after article creation...).
There seems to be far less info on most of us there than on WP.
As annoying as it may feel, having them archive public info about us, and public comments we make or are made about us, doesn't seem to me to rise to the level of stalking. Especially if they are actually following the no-real-names-unless-it's-pointless policy.
This is totally asinine. It's just a personal attack site. At least Wikitruth is A: funny at times and B:actually contains recognized criticisms of Wikipedia, not just personal vendettas.
On 6/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
http://wikiabuse.com Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
What, in between the stated intent to be a stalkers' site?
How can any site which Willy on Wheels visited and left his precious droppings all over be bad?
To be serious, though... Rootology put in a policy stating that they wouldn't use real names unless the WP users in question use them widely and openly on WP, and from a random sampling of pages over there, they seem to be enthusiastically enforcing that.
Ex: http://wikiabuse.com/index.php?title=JoshuaZ&action=history
(second edit was someone taking his real name out, 2 min after article creation...).
There seems to be far less info on most of us there than on WP.
As annoying as it may feel, having them archive public info about us, and public comments we make or are made about us, doesn't seem to me to rise to the level of stalking. Especially if they are actually following the no-real-names-unless-it's-pointless policy.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:58:52 -0700, "Steven Walling" steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
This is totally asinine. It's just a personal attack site. At least Wikitruth is A: funny at times and B:actually contains recognized criticisms of Wikipedia, not just personal vendettas.
Speaking as one of those being documented in both places, I think you are wrong. Wikitruth allows Jonathan Barber and Greg Kohs to portray anything they like as an "abuse". WikiAbuse makes at least some pretence at editorial judgment.
According to WR I am "mean to school kids" because of this one edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Krauseclassroom&diff... - there is a fair chance that will be removed from WA.
The difference is that WR is a discussion board where grudges are simply recorded and not edited.
Guy (JzG)
On 6/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
http://wikiabuse.com Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
What, in between the stated intent to be a stalkers' site?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
'Stalking' is a mischaracterisation. There's nothing stalkery in looking at a publicly available log (i.e. your contributions list). They're not turning up at your house. They're not sending you kinky emails. They're not getting in the way of you doing anything that you want to do. How are they stalking you?
On 27/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Usual collection of malcontents there to pretend that blocking spammers is Bad and Evil, but some evidence of sanity as well.
Guy (JzG)
Flame tedium - who cares anymore?
Sometimes I wonder, with the exception of a few BLP issues, can one really be "abused" on Wikipedia the same way they can be abused in real life[1]? After all, it's just an Internet website and not even a social networking one. If you can't have your way here then pick up your ball and go play elsewhere.
This is one of the reasons I left the anti spam newsgroups. As much as I hate spam, when it comes right down to it, it's just email.
1. Ironically, the closest to "real life" abuse one can run into with Wikipedia is being outed by one of the detractor sites. Let's see if this new one enforces their "no meatspacing" policy.
On 6/27/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
- Ironically, the closest to "real life" abuse one can run into with
Wikipedia is being outed by one of the detractor sites. Let's see if this new one enforces their "no meatspacing" policy.
To quote my wife: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cut clear to the heart." Wikipedia is in the real world too.
Ron Ritzman wrote:
Sometimes I wonder, with the exception of a few BLP issues, can one really be "abused" on Wikipedia the same way they can be abused in real life[1]? After all, it's just an Internet website and not even a social networking one. If you can't have your way here then pick up your ball and go play elsewhere.
This is one of the reasons I left the anti spam newsgroups. As much as I hate spam, when it comes right down to it, it's just email.
- Ironically, the closest to "real life" abuse one can run into with
Wikipedia is being outed by one of the detractor sites. Let's see if this new one enforces their "no meatspacing" policy.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I don't think you're correct there. A lot of people use hobbies, be that editing Wikipedia, rebuilding classic cars, collecting postage stamps, whatever the case may be, because they personally enjoy it and it keeps their mind sharp. Ruining the ability to do that for them, whether it's dropping their stamp collection in a puddle or running them off of Wikipedia, is not a harmless action. If it were simply "just a website", and no one cares, we wouldn't have a blocking policy, we'd just block whoever we damn well like (or don't like). Just a website, right?
That isn't by any means to say people don't take it way too seriously (again, as is the case with many people and their hobbies of all stripes). But it's not true you can't do harm at all. This isn't Counterstrike, where you're only blowing up pixels, there are living, breathing people on the other end of the line.
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:31:48 -0700, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think you're correct there. A lot of people use hobbies, be that editing Wikipedia, rebuilding classic cars, collecting postage stamps, whatever the case may be, because they personally enjoy it and it keeps their mind sharp. Ruining the ability to do that for them, whether it's dropping their stamp collection in a puddle or running them off of Wikipedia, is not a harmless action. If it were simply "just a website", and no one cares, we wouldn't have a blocking policy, we'd just block whoever we damn well like (or don't like). Just a website, right?
I haven't seen many people run off Wikipedia who didn't badly need to be run off in order to allow the rest of the million or so editors enjoy the project.
Guy (JzG)
On 6/28/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
I haven't seen many people run off Wikipedia who didn't badly need to be run off in order to allow the rest of the million or so editors enjoy the project.
Most people get blocked/banned for continuously doing "X" after polite requests from reasonable people to stop doing "X". A reasonable person would do something else on Wikipedia besides "X" or go somewhere else where "X" is acceptable. (go play elsewhere) Most of the people who get blocked/banned were only here to do "X" in the first place.
These are the people who are claiming they were "abused" when the only thing that happened to them was that they were prevented from doing "X" on Wikipedia which is "just a website". How does this compare with people who suffer real abuse in real life?
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:04:25 -0400, "Ron Ritzman" ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
These are the people who are claiming they were "abused" when the only thing that happened to them was that they were prevented from doing "X" on Wikipedia which is "just a website". How does this compare with people who suffer real abuse in real life?
Indeed. And in most cases X is self-promotion. But there are cases where long-term trends in admin actions could do with critiquing, and I don't mind being the subject of such a critique. It is not especially surprising that the contributions thus far are mainly from frustrated vanity spammers, since frustrating vanity spammers is one of the things I am known for. Rootology does seem to want to rise above the level of assuming that every action not backed by three months of ArbCom deliberation is necessarily evil.
That said, we can already identify Gregory Kohs, Jonathan Barber and Jon Awbrey laying out their grudges for all the world to see yet again.
Guy (JzG)
On 28/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:04:25 -0400, "Ron Ritzman" ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
These are the people who are claiming they were "abused" when the only thing that happened to them was that they were prevented from doing "X" on Wikipedia which is "just a website". How does this compare with people who suffer real abuse in real life?
Indeed. And in most cases X is self-promotion. But there are cases where long-term trends in admin actions could do with critiquing, and I don't mind being the subject of such a critique. It is not especially surprising that the contributions thus far are mainly from frustrated vanity spammers, since frustrating vanity spammers is one of the things I am known for. Rootology does seem to want to rise above the level of assuming that every action not backed by three months of ArbCom deliberation is necessarily evil.
That said, we can already identify Gregory Kohs, Jonathan Barber and Jon Awbrey laying out their grudges for all the world to see yet again.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
What is the point listing every admin on the site? and the broken link page runs into 651 with many non admins, useful contributors who have never been involved in anything bar an occassional war of words.
The place to discuss problems is within the project. Creating new sites that back-stab (ok I agree there is a way to debate on that site) is just boring. And despite all its good intentions the talk pages are meant to provoke. Leave the project and slag it off, it doesn't help anybody, it just shows the conceit some ppl have for their own opinion. Will they have sysops, i seriously doubt it.
On 6/28/07, michael west michawest@gmail.com wrote:
The place to discuss problems is within the project.
That is a rather simplistic view of things. Our problems get blogged, web boardded, show up on Usenet, and from time to time on CNN, the New York Times, etc.
Creating new sites that back-stab (ok I agree there is a way to debate on that site) is just boring. And despite all its good intentions the talk pages are meant to provoke. Leave the project and slag it off, it doesn't help anybody, it just shows the conceit some ppl have for their own opinion. Will they have sysops, i seriously doubt it.
I don't know who are admins there and who aren't, but they have some people going around cleaning up stuff which violates the standards they've set. And the standards are reasonable, on first inspection.
A functional feedback system works best with both internal and external critics. We've had a fairly bad string of luck with external critics either being transient or just really bad. Rootology could end up doing us a world of good if this works out, by setting up an external forum for non-rabid, ongoing thoughtful challenging criticism of the WP project.
Who knows how it will turn out, but you never know.
On 6/28/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/28/07, michael west michawest@gmail.com wrote:
The place to discuss problems is within the project.
That is a rather simplistic view of things. Our problems get blogged, web boardded, show up on Usenet, and from time to time on CNN, the New York Times, etc.
Creating new sites that back-stab (ok I agree there is a way to debate on that site) is just boring. And despite all its good intentions the talk pages are meant to provoke. Leave the project and slag it off, it doesn't help anybody, it just shows the conceit some ppl have for their own opinion. Will they have sysops, i seriously doubt it.
I don't know who are admins there and who aren't, but they have some people going around cleaning up stuff which violates the standards they've set. And the standards are reasonable, on first inspection.
A functional feedback system works best with both internal and external critics. We've had a fairly bad string of luck with external critics either being transient or just really bad. Rootology could end up doing us a world of good if this works out, by setting up an external forum for non-rabid, ongoing thoughtful challenging criticism of the WP project.
Who knows how it will turn out, but you never know.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Sensible comment, as usual, George. Yes, most things need some external criticism in order to reach higher levels of success. Still, the sites are incredibly boring, poorly done, repetitive, so I don't see either of the two I looked at as being the source of useful criticism for improving Wikipedia. In a way it is better to have something like them rather than a reactionary response to every negative comment in the mainstream press, but these sites are not the ones that will improve Wikipedia.
Your comment in general is on target, the examples discussed in this exchange don't fit the billl, though.
KP
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:44:09 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Rootology could end up doing us a world of good if this works out, by setting up an external forum for non-rabid, ongoing thoughtful challenging criticism of the WP project.
Yes. He needs to ban Jonathan Barber first, of course...
Guy (JzG)
On 28/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
end up doing us a world of good if this works out, by setting up an external forum for non-rabid, ongoing thoughtful challenging criticism of the WP project. Who knows how it will turn out, but you never know.
In practice, most of that comes from blogs.
- d.
On 6/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
end up doing us a world of good if this works out, by setting up an external forum for non-rabid, ongoing thoughtful challenging criticism of the WP project. Who knows how it will turn out, but you never know.
In practice, most of that comes from blogs.
I don't have the bandwidth to regularly follow a lot of blogs about Wikipedia. That's my problem, of course, but a website I can scan every couple of days is much more useful to me. If, of course, it turns out to be useful in the long term.
(back to determining if I need another welder)
On 01/07/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/06/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
end up doing us a world of good if this works out, by setting up an external forum for non-rabid, ongoing thoughtful challenging criticism of the WP project. Who knows how it will turn out, but you never know.
In practice, most of that comes from blogs.
I don't have the bandwidth to regularly follow a lot of blogs about Wikipedia. That's my problem, of course, but a website I can scan every couple of days is much more useful to me. If, of course, it turns out to be useful in the long term.
Google alert on "Wikipedia" works well for me. Also following either http://open.wikiblogplanet.com or http://en.planet.wikimedia.org .
- d.
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:37:11 +0100, "michael west" michawest@gmail.com wrote:
The place to discuss problems is within the project.
Or here. But they tend to get kicked from both in the end, of course.
Guy (JzG)
G'day Michael,
The place to discuss problems is within the project. Creating new sites that back-stab (ok I agree there is a way to debate on that site) is just boring.
That strikes me as a bit simplistic, for two reasons:
1) People will want to discuss Wikipedia without actually hopping into the project. There's nothing wrong with that.
2) Many of the people who want to highlight problems with Wikipedia cannot do so within the project, because they've been banned, or for one reason or another they aren't taken seriously any longer.
At present the majority of external criticism of Wikipedia is rather, well, *crap*, because it's in the press and the journo didn't bother to come to grips with what's going on before submitting his story ("You can hack Wikipedia! Think of the children!"), or because it's written by someone who was quite deservedly banned for being a Dick.
I've yet to see someone banned for being a Dick who was not, in fact, a Dick. This, obviously, causes some problems for the Dick and his followers, who find they can't do anything to get us to pay attention to their legitimate gripes (I'm pretending for the sake of argument that Rootology has a legitimate gripe). It's getting so that even extreme measures, like dressing in drag and changing your name to Cassandra, is not enough to get people to listen to what you have to say. In such a case, setting up a site somewhere for people to come chat about Wikipedia and maybe even come up with solutions from outside --- since you can't get arrested inside --- could be seen as a Good Thing.
In practice, of course, a group of Dicks complaining that Wikipedia is unfair to Dicks doesn't amount to much. But in theory ... it's beautiful. Can you see it? It's full of stars!
And despite all its good intentions the talk pages are meant to provoke.
The talk pages of WikiAbuse?
Leave the project and slag it off, it doesn't help anybody, it just shows the conceit some ppl have for their own opinion. Will they have sysops, i seriously doubt it.
Some people leave the project and slag it off because they're Dicks, or because they have mental problems. Others have legitimate gripes and can't get a hearing on Wikipedia (in theory; I haven't seen it in practice, but I know my fellow editors enough to know it's very probable that it has happened and will happen again). Others just like being cruel for no good reason, and see Wikipedia as a target just as juicy as goth girls or LiveJournal freaks or bad spellers or furries. I don't see the utility of saying "don't slag us off" to the people who mock us for saying things like that.
As for: will WikiAbuse have sysops? If the project grows as much as I assume Joe wants it to, it will almost certainly attract sysops, for the same reason Wikipedia did.
(A minor stylistic point. Please don't say "ppl" or anything like that on the mailing list. That's all right for IM or IRC or politics, where you try to say as much as possible as quickly as possible in the hopes that some of it will somehow impress, but on the list we like to adopt a more steady, sedate, dignified pace, and to make fun of people who spell as if they've spent too much time involved with IM or IRC or politics).
Cheers,
On 04/07/07, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
- People will want to discuss Wikipedia without actually hopping into the project. There's nothing wrong with that.
We also have to remember: this is a top-ten website. It's mainstream famous. So the people with power on it may be a subject of legitimate interest out there in the world.
At what point does discussion of someone's public actions and public trail in Wikipedia history and Google cross from research into stalking? I submit this is not a simple question susceptible to broad-brush answers such as "attack sites" policies, which are actively being misused.
(and yes, one misuse is one misuse too many, and deserves to have a great big fuss made about it.)
I feel almost reluctant to point this out, because Wikipediareview, Wikitruth, ED and so forth are in fact odious shite of almost no reasonable human utility, and I don't like even seeming to suggest they have a point. But we do have plenty of sane critics - as I said before, get a Google alert on blogs mentioning "Wikipedia" - it's just the sites specially for the topic have tended in practice to be troll. nutter and sociopath magnets.
- d.
On 6/28/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:04:25 -0400, "Ron Ritzman" ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
These are the people who are claiming they were "abused" when the only thing that happened to them was that they were prevented from doing "X" on Wikipedia which is "just a website". How does this compare with people who suffer real abuse in real life?
Indeed. And in most cases X is self-promotion. But there are cases where long-term trends in admin actions could do with critiquing, and I don't mind being the subject of such a critique. It is not especially surprising that the contributions thus far are mainly from frustrated vanity spammers, since frustrating vanity spammers is one of the things I am known for. Rootology does seem to want to rise above the level of assuming that every action not backed by three months of ArbCom deliberation is necessarily evil.
That said, we can already identify Gregory Kohs, Jonathan Barber and Jon Awbrey laying out their grudges for all the world to see yet again.
...And, so far, some effort made to ameliorate that.
It does give me hope that we can get a functional external critic/gadfly site which is working with a reasonable set of assumptions.
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:31:48 -0700, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think you're correct there. A lot of people use hobbies, be that editing Wikipedia, rebuilding classic cars, collecting postage stamps, whatever the case may be, because they personally enjoy it and it keeps their mind sharp. Ruining the ability to do that for them, whether it's dropping their stamp collection in a puddle or running them off of Wikipedia, is not a harmless action. If it were simply "just a website", and no one cares, we wouldn't have a blocking policy, we'd just block whoever we damn well like (or don't like). Just a website, right?
I haven't seen many people run off Wikipedia who didn't badly need to be run off in order to allow the rest of the million or so editors enjoy the project.
Guy (JzG)
Katefan? (I'm aware we didn't run her off, but she was run off nonetheless.) And I've seen a lot of other people disappear quietly who I was quite sad to see go. I'm aware that a lot of the people that have been shown the door needed to go (indeed, many of them were threatening to run good editors off), but that's far from uniformly the case.
G'day Guy,
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:31:48 -0700, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think you're correct there. A lot of people use hobbies, be that editing Wikipedia, rebuilding classic cars, collecting postage stamps, whatever the case may be, because they personally enjoy it and it keeps their mind sharp. Ruining the ability to do that for them, whether it's dropping their stamp collection in a puddle or running them off of Wikipedia, is not a harmless action. If it were simply "just a website", and no one cares, we wouldn't have a blocking policy, we'd just block whoever we damn well like (or don't like). Just a website, right?
I haven't seen many people run off Wikipedia who didn't badly need to be run off in order to allow the rest of the million or so editors enjoy the project.
This is ... *broadly* correct (FACVO "broadly"). It also depends how you define "run off".
I've yet to see someone receive a year ban from ArbCom who didn't deserve it, even when I'm sympathetic to that person (e.g. SkyRing, a chap for whom I have a lot of time ... but who also sorely needed banning). Admittedly, I don't keep a close eye on every single ArbCom case, so I might have missed one or two bad ones.
On the other hand, I *have* seen plenty of potentially valuable newbies leave in tears after being bitten by some insensitive jerk from CVU, WikiProject Spam, AfD, whatever.
Sometimes the clueless idiot with the overbearing sense of entitlement is the Wikipedia regular, not the bloke we kicked out.