On 20/02/2008, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's the first time I've seen the name, but I don't like it either. It seems deliberately offensive, to me...

Steven Walling wrote: I do note that "Wikipediot" does not appear in the main body of Cool Hand Luke's article. It's easy to draw parallels between this and the thread about pictures of Muhammed. It shows that it takes much less than talking about a major religious figure for people to choose to be offended. Phrasing your reference to journalists as newsies as a rhetorical question isn't helpful. I have no way of knowing whether you have or not. For that matter I can't remember whether I have myself used it that way or not. It's not that I wouldn't; I simply don't remember doing that. We are a large organization that is very much in the public eye. Parody and seemingly defamatory comments are just a normal part of the landscape. I choose not to waste my time getting offended over such designations. As for the "grammatically nonsensical", this argument fails. One of the features that has made English so dominant in today's world is its ability to form new words without restrictions from some academy. If the term "Wikipediot" evoked some image in your mind it works. The image does not need to be one with which you agree. Had it been grammatical nonsense, you would have been unable to make the response that you did. Ec

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 5:09 PM, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: No offence intended, but it's hard to respond to a "All admins are abusive and powerful" without sounding smarmy. I typed about three responses before I said to myself "fuck it, these are all inflammatory and unhelpful". But yes, when an admin performs the correct action in circumstances where it might've been preferable they let someone else do it, what should anyone do about it, beyond say something to the admin in question? If we start discipling admins for taking correct actions too often, soon they'll be nobody around to keep order & do housekeeping. Cheers WilyD

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 5:34 PM, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: The short answer is "Policy does not work that way" - the longer answer is "Even if policy did work that way, it's allowed by policy (i.e. [[WP:IAR]])". WP:PROT also reads "Administrators should not protect or unprotect a page for this reason if they are in any way involved in the dispute." which grammatically means Admins are allowed to protect or unprotect pages when they're involved in a dispute, it's simply discouraged. If it was supposed to be forbidden it would read "Administrators may not protect or unprotect a page for this reason if they are in any way involved in the dispute." which would forbid it. The reality is that if you're involved, you're less likely to take the correct action and need to be extra diligent. In short, they're not violating policy. Cheers WilyD

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 6:09 PM, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: One, of course, still has the legs of IAR, the general principle of "no lawyering" and so forth to stand on from time to time, but in general no. Of course "content dispute" is a nebulous term, and oft times overly broadly defined by those who're misbehaving - if you removing trolling, for instance, the person trolling will inevitably claim they're in a content dispute with you, which is simply not true. But if they make a correct block in that situation, what is it you're hoping someone else would do? Unblock then reblock? In an "all volunteer" justice system, it's hard to get people roused about technicalities when justive has been done. Cheers WilyD

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: Sure, admins make terrible decisions all the time. I've altered at least one admin action I've taken afterwards based on feedback from other editors, and as recently as today I asked another admin to reconsider his admin action, he did so and reverted his decision. Admins are these odd creatues called "humans" that make stacks of bad decisions. It's easy to abuse your power when you're judge and executioner, but admins don't really have these rolls. Anyone an admin "sentences" can be unsentenced, anyone we "execute" can be resurrected. These actions do happen all the time - review of administrative actions are easy to obtain. Nothing prevents me from making ad-hominem arguments in content disputes. Of course, that's a terrible method and I'd likely lose such a dispute, but I could do it, same as anyone from the lowliest IP to Jimbo Wales. The ArbCom has shown a willingness of late to bust the chops of any admin who looks like they've done anything remotely wrong, and if there were any substance to the assumptions behind these questions one could employ it with good success. Cheers WilyD

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: You take them to arbitration. I believe one admin lost their privileges just a few days ago, for example. If you don't want to do that, please quit whining. - d.

Wily D schrieb: <snip/> The "community" isn't even involved in the admin-only unblock mailing list. There is no public supervision possible at all! -- Raphael

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 02:14:33AM -0800, George Herbert wrote: As I told you on the unblock list, it has never been my intention to "fight the Muhammed images issue" on the unblock list. In fact it was Yamla, who started with the IMHO ridiculous claim, that I'd need strong evidence that my edit was in accord with consensus, before I can change [[Muhammad]]. Where is the strong evidence, that the current state of [[Muhammad]] is in accord with consensus? In fact [[Talk:Muhammad/Images]] and the article History is a strong evidence, there is no consensus for its current state. Where is the paragraph in [[WP:BLOCK]] that "tenditious editing" in article Talk-pages(!!) (I didn't edit any main article >24h before I was blocked) warrants a block? Well the thing is, that I've been blocked in violation of [[WP:BLOCK]], *because* the admin who blocked me, disagreed with my POV in a content dispute. I never intended to solve the content dispute on the unblock list. But I have to mention, that there *is* a content dispute, and the admin who blocked me, was engaged in it. That hasn't been a problem, before the unblock list was created. Private matters could still be discussed off-list. That's not what I call public scrutiny. I'm not very impressed, that there is a normal user of your choosing allowed on this list. -- Raphael

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 02:23:48PM +0000, David Gerard wrote: I didn't start it. -- Raphael

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Wily D wrote: By this reasoning, we shouldn't make edits by banned users revert-on-sight, either.

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Wily D wrote: But clearly the policy results in reversions that that would never have been made if the editor hadn't been banned. Otherwise the policy would have no effect at all.

On 20/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann &lt;raphael(a)psi.co.at&gt; wrote: Oddly enough, it's a different thread on the same list. In any case, I was going to save responding to your post in the other thread because I wouldn't have had anything to say other than "you have reached obsessive gibbering conspiracy theorist stage" - being unable to accept that you're wrong and that nobody cares, you claim a vast admin conspiracy - but, y'know, if you really want to keep asking I'll happily tell you that. - d.

Hi, Raphael, you might have noticed that this is a different thread. In fact, its completely separate from the thread that includes the text you quoted. Perhaps you have an e-mail client that doesn't allow you to differentiate between threads, and perhaps this explains why you have diverged threads on a few occasions recently. Unless you intend to create a new thread, you should use replies with the same subject as the original (without adding a Re: beforehand). Additionally, it could be confusing to continue discussions on the same topic across threads. Folks contribute to different threads on different topics, and its handy to keep them separate. Re: vast admin conspiracy. Its true, there is a Cabal. All of the admins are in on it. There are secret meetings on an admin only IRC channel, where strategy is discussed for limiting the power of non-admins and determining which chosen few should be able to join them. Have you never noticed that all voters on RfAs are admins as well, except for those few hapless users who haven't got the notice? That the control of Wikipedia by this cabal has not been widely discussed among the media is a result of the uniformity of worldview and opinion among current administrators. By and large, they tend to have very similar opinions on nearly every subject - perhaps it is a result of a racial or socioeconomic uniformity enforced by control over the RfA process. Inevitably, however, someone will notice that administrators hardly ever disagree with eachother on matters of policy, process or content. When it blows up in the press, you can expect the shit to really hit the fan - casual readers will know that the content (even referenced content!) can't be trusted if policy and process is controlled by a vicious, secretive cabal. Nathan