On 10 Mar 2006 at 20:25, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Else you may be blocked or temporarily desysopped. These tags are bloody serious, the WP:OFFICE rule is only used in case of actual problems, and the Foundation handles them as expeditiously as they possibly can. I expect everyone will piss and moan, but removing a WP:OFFICE tag is a really really dickish thing to do. So please don't.
Not that I have any intention of doing such a thing... but I still have some concerns about the whole WP:OFFICE business. Sure, I realize the necessity for something like that; as long as Wikipedia and its parent foundation exist as real-world entities rather than just disembodied Internet phenomena, there will be people in charge who have bills to pay, legalities to comply with, servers to keep running, and so on... and, hence, concerns for which their butts are on the line in a manner not shared by the typical geek just editing Wikipedia for the fun of it. Nevertheless, in a site which prides itself on openness and rule by community consensus, having actions take place unilaterally and secretively goes against the grain, and should be kept to an absolute minimum.
There's kind of a feel that, if an article happens to offend the "wrong" people (who have some kind of political, financial, or legal leverage to use against Wikipedia/Wikimedia?), the Wikipedia Secret Police can just make it disappear, and community consensus (and all the Wikipedia pillars) be damned.
We already know that the community is secondary to the goal of producing an excellent encyclopedia. But is that, in turn, secondary to some secret corporate agenda held by the Foundation Office? Blanking articles into sub-stubs and protecting them doesn't seem conducive to producing an excellent encyclopedia, and doing this without explanation is not conducive to the community.
On 3/11/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
On 10 Mar 2006 at 20:25, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Else you may be blocked or temporarily desysopped. These tags are bloody serious, the WP:OFFICE rule is only used in case of actual problems, and the Foundation handles them as expeditiously as they possibly can. I expect everyone will piss and moan, but removing a WP:OFFICE tag is a really really dickish thing to do. So please don't.
Not that I have any intention of doing such a thing... but I still have some concerns about the whole WP:OFFICE business. Sure, I realize the necessity for something like that; as long as Wikipedia and its parent foundation exist as real-world entities rather than just disembodied Internet phenomena, there will be people in charge who have bills to pay, legalities to comply with, servers to keep running, and so on... and, hence, concerns for which their butts are on the line in a manner not shared by the typical geek just editing Wikipedia for the fun of it. Nevertheless, in a site which prides itself on openness and rule by community consensus, having actions take place unilaterally and secretively goes against the grain, and should be kept to an absolute minimum.
There's kind of a feel that, if an article happens to offend the "wrong" people (who have some kind of political, financial, or legal leverage to use against Wikipedia/Wikimedia?), the Wikipedia Secret Police can just make it disappear, and community consensus (and all the Wikipedia pillars) be damned.
We already know that the community is secondary to the goal of producing an excellent encyclopedia. But is that, in turn, secondary to some secret corporate agenda held by the Foundation Office? Blanking articles into sub-stubs and protecting them doesn't seem conducive to producing an excellent encyclopedia, and doing this without explanation is not conducive to the community.
-- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Dan, I think if you actually *read* the policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_Actions you'll see that it's nothing like the secretive, corporate, anti-Wikipedia, anti-community type of thing you suggest. It says on the page that it is a "temporary action to allow us to be kind while we sort out the encyclopedic way forward". Community consensus won't tell us when we're in danger of being sued - that's more likely to be ascertained by the person who's just received the angry email/phonecall - but community consensus will, as always, be what actually writes the balanced article in the end.
N'est pas?
Cormac
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Cormac Lawler wrote:
Dan, I think if you actually *read* the policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_Actions you'll see that it's nothing like the secretive, corporate, anti-Wikipedia, anti-community type of thing you suggest. It says on the page that it is a "temporary action to allow us to be kind while we sort out the encyclopedic way forward". Community consensus won't tell us when we're in danger of being sued - that's more likely to be ascertained by the person who's just received the angry email/phonecall - but community consensus will, as always, be what actually writes the balanced article in the end.
N'est pas?
Very well put.
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
Not that I have any intention of doing such a thing... but I still have some concerns about the whole WP:OFFICE business. Sure, I realize the necessity for something like that; as long as Wikipedia and its parent foundation exist as real-world entities rather than just disembodied Internet phenomena, there will be people in charge who have bills to pay, legalities to comply with, servers to keep running, and so on... and, hence, concerns for which their butts are on the line in a manner not shared by the typical geek just editing Wikipedia for the fun of it. Nevertheless, in a site which prides itself on openness and rule by community consensus, having actions take place unilaterally and secretively goes against the grain, and should be kept to an absolute minimum.
It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy and good customer service. If you are thinking of this as "the foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
We, as a community, write articles. We write articles about some people who happen to be alive. Sometimes those articles are temporarily biased or contain misinformation, and sometimes that bias or misinformation can hurt someone's feelings. Sometimes, indeed, our articles are *not* biased and do *not* contain misinformation, and yet they can *still* hurt someone's feeelings (if they don't care for the neutral facts). The latter is, in my experience, quite rare. Quite. Rare.
Mostly, when people call us on the phone with a beef, quiet upset, they are not complaining about a neutral presentation of the facts. They are upset because someone has written a one-sided hack job. Often it is *not* libel, but just bad writing.
What should we do in such a case? Well, our fundamental goal *as a community* is to write a really great encyclopedia. Being jerks toward people who have their feelings hurt *and* who know nothing about how we operate, does not strike me as a very useful way to respond.
Rather, we should respond quickly and politely to their concerns, including in most cases, *blanking or deleting the article* and *starting over*, being *extremely* careful as a community to get all the facts right, to strike a fair and neutral tone, and to cite sources even more extensively than normal.
That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.
Ideally, it should be thought of as an action that could and should be taken by any good Wikipedian in the face of a bad article. A very firm "blank and rewrite with proper cites" is a perfectly valid move for articles like this.
There's kind of a feel that, if an article happens to offend the "wrong" people (who have some kind of political, financial, or legal leverage to use against Wikipedia/Wikimedia?), the Wikipedia Secret Police can just make it disappear, and community consensus (and all the Wikipedia pillars) be damned.
Why is there any such feel like this? That's absurd and inflammatory. WP:OFFICE *specifically* says that it is to be used sparingly, temporarily, and is not meant to override or replace community consensus.
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.
We already know that the community is secondary to the goal of producing an excellent encyclopedia. But is that, in turn, secondary to some secret corporate agenda held by the Foundation Office?
Again, this is really inflammatory and not helpful to a serious discussion of the issues. "secret corporate agenda" geez.
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy and good customer service. If you are thinking of this as "the foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
What should we do in such a case? Well, our fundamental goal *as a community* is to write a really great encyclopedia. Being jerks toward people who have their feelings hurt *and* who know nothing about how we operate, does not strike me as a very useful way to respond.
No. Explaining how things work is probably the best responce.
Rather, we should respond quickly and politely to their concerns, including in most cases, *blanking or deleting the article* and *starting over*, being *extremely* careful as a community to get all the facts right, to strike a fair and neutral tone, and to cite sources even more extensively than normal.
blanking or deleting the article= writeing off the work. Not a nice way to treat the previous writers. Telling them what is wrong might work better.
It is a bit difficult to tell how many references [[Jack Thompson (attorney)]] had since two different systems were being used but it was probably over 100 (absolute minium=99). how many do you want?
That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.
I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?
Ideally, it should be thought of as an action that could and should be taken by any good Wikipedian in the face of a bad article. A very firm "blank and rewrite with proper cites" is a perfectly valid move for articles like this.
/Temp exists for such purposes. Outright blanking is pretty much garenteeded to be reverted. -- geni
geni wrote:
It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy and good customer service. If you are thinking of this as "the foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
Everyone is a customer. :)
No. Explaining how things work is probably the best responce.
It is of course *part* of the best response.
I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?
Instead of "seem to recall" why don't you actually read it? And then we can have a coherent discussion, ok?
--Jimbo
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote: Everyone is a customer. :)
Then ignoreing the work of a large number of customers simply in order to keep one customer happy is not exactly logical
No. Explaining how things work is probably the best responce.
It is of course *part* of the best response.
True. You should use the article talk page to tell editors what the problem is. I still don't know why [[Harry Reid]] was protected although I guess it had something to do with the whole Abramoff thing.
Protecting is bad because it means we can't fix the article. Deletion is bad because it means we have problems getting acess to any of the past information.
I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?
Instead of "seem to recall" why don't you actually read it? And then we can have a coherent discussion, ok?
--Jimbo
I have but I also read the other contents of my inbox. Strangly most of the people yelling at me have been citing legal concerns. Probably because they relise how weak the "we should ignore the community in order to keep the subjects of articles happy" case is.
I'm sure you know about the fuss about the [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]]. We know that article is upseting people (indeed two people have been upset enough to tell me I'm going to Hell). Should we blank and delete it?
[[David Miscavige]] will probably complain about his article as will [[Kaz Demille-Jacobsen]] if she ever finds out about it. Blank and delete?
[[Uri Geller]] is not going to be happy that his article states that people think he is a con man. Blank and delete?
[[Sylvia Browne]] is unlikely to be too happy about the contents of her article. Blank and delete?
-- geni
On 3/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy and good customer service. If you are thinking of this as "the foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we have initiated a relationship.
We owe them a moral duty to be factual and fair, and this duty also jibes well with our aim of writing a great encyclopedia.
In the interests of the encyclopedia, we should also take reasonable steps to avoid any problems in our relationship with them escalating to the point where they completely lose confidence in our willingness to listen to their complaints. We could, after all, be in the wrong. Being the number one reference site in the world packs a sting, both ways.
Wikipedia is not a news site, it has no deadline. We can afford to put things away temporarily in order to facilitate discussion. Takedown is not only a recognised way of responding to legal complaints, it's also very good practise in public relations even where there are no legal issues.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy and good customer service. If you are thinking of this as "the foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we have initiated a relationship.
Right. It's probably a very "American" way of putting it. "Good customer service" in the case of Wikipedia should apply to everyone we are in contact with in any way.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy and good customer service. If you are thinking of this as "the foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we have initiated a relationship.
Right. It's probably a very "American" way of putting it. "Good customer service" in the case of Wikipedia should apply to everyone we are in contact with in any way.
Yes, but this absolutely cannot be done at the expense of our primary customers---people who are looking for information.
-Mark
G'day Mark,
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
[snip: who is a customer?]
Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we have initiated a relationship.
Right. It's probably a very "American" way of putting it. "Good customer service" in the case of Wikipedia should apply to everyone we are in contact with in any way.
Yes, but this absolutely cannot be done at the expense of our primary customers---people who are looking for information.
Like Hell! We've got thousands of articles yet to be written. The other night I finally got 'round to writing [[Raymond Garrett]], which I'd been planning to do for three months (and which, even now, isn't really that good). I recall that Wikipedia's been around since at least late 2001 (if not before), and yet ... nobody has complained that "you don't have any information about Raymond Garrett!" Not once, in all that time. And, here's the thing: now that Raymond Garrett has an article, he (and his colleague, Vasey Houghton) stands alone on the list of MLCs from the 50s, 60s and 70s Who Have Wikipedia Articles. There's dozens more people from that era who deserve articles and don't have them. Somehow, however, nobody is rushing to write the articles, and nobody is crying out in horror at the idea that some student might try to look up information and be faced with a redlink.
Wikipedia is a work in progress. It's in beta. It's under construction. It really needs those 1995-esque yellow digger GIFs and blinkenlights, as David Gerard likes to point out with a bit of a humorous lilt in his pommy-sounding voice every time he appears on the radio. And if we can use this excuse to explain why such-and-such article is poorly-written and full of lies and defamation, we can *surely* use it to explain why such-and-such article doesn't exist, and won't exist until someone gets around to writing it properly.
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse
--- geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
Every single person on the planet is a customer. We plan to serve all.
blanking or deleting the article= writeing off the work. Not a nice way to treat the previous writers. Telling them what is wrong might work better.
We can not leave potentially wrong, libelous, and/or slanderous text up while the article is being reviewed and checked per an Office Action. Everything is still in the history and all the good bits will be put back once they are confirmed and cited. Not doing this opens the foundation up to lawsuit by unnecessarily pissing off the complaining party while we clean up whatever valid issues (if any) they have with the article.
It is a bit difficult to tell how many references [[Jack Thompson (attorney)]] had since two different systems were being used but it was probably over 100 (absolute minium=99). how many do you want?
Without commenting on those particular references - Not all references are equal. Just because somebody publishes a completely wrong and biased fact somewhere else does not give us an OK to cite that information.
That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.
I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?
Good customer service is a great way to prevent pissing people off so much that they would be willing to sue. So the two are closely linked.
Ideally, it should be thought of as an action that could and should be taken by any good Wikipedian in the face of a bad article. A very firm "blank and rewrite with proper cites" is a perfectly valid move for articles like this.
/Temp exists for such purposes. Outright blanking is pretty much garenteeded to be reverted.
And reverting an Office Action is pretty much guaranteed to lead to at least temporary desysoping and blocking. We also need to feel bold enough to do the right thing when we see an utter piece of POV crap and start over by blanking and verifying each and every fact. Perhaps a better way to do that is via HTML comments ; text would be commented out until it is verified.
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
On 3/11/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
We can not leave potentially wrong, libelous, and/or slanderous text up while the article >is being reviewed and checked per an Office Action.
Can people make up their mind. Is the justifaction due to legal reasons or not?
Everything is still in the history and all the good bits will be put
back once they are >confirmed and cited.
Blank and delete remember?
Not doing this opens the foundation up to lawsuit by unnecessarily
pissing off the >complaining party while we clean up whatever valid issues (if any) they have with the >article.
A bit hard to clean up a protected article.
Without commenting on those particular references - Not all references are equal. Just >because somebody publishes a completely wrong and biased fact somewhere else does >not give us an OK to cite that information.
Depends who published it. [[Killian documents]] seems to exist.
Good customer service is a great way to prevent pissing people off so much that they >would be willing to sue. So the two are closely linked.
However WP:OFFICE actions seem desighned to maximise the number of people who threaten to sue us.
And reverting an Office Action is pretty much guaranteed to lead to at least temporary >desysoping and blocking.
So are many things.
We also need to feel bold enough to do the right thing when we see an
utter piece of
POV crap and start over by blanking and verifying each and every fact.
Problem is that WP:OFFICE actions have not for the most part touched our piles of POV crap.
Perhaps a better way to do that is via HTML comments ; text would be commented out >until it is verified.
-- mav
That is a tactic I have used from time to time.
-- geni
geni wrote:
Can people make up their mind. Is the justifaction due to legal reasons or not?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Blank and delete remember?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the case.
A bit hard to clean up a protected article.
In most cases there will be no need to protect an article. Semi-protection should be enough. Conditions may vary.
Assume Good Faith, ya see.
However WP:OFFICE actions seem desighned to maximise the number of people who threaten to sue us.
? Not at all.
--Jimbo
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote:
Can people make up their mind. Is the justifaction due to legal reasons or not?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Not helpful. People being upset is not a reason to use admin powers. Legit legal threat may be.
In most cases there will be no need to protect an article. Semi-protection should be enough. Conditions may vary.
Assume Good Faith, ya see.
[[Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy]] is very restictive on when semi-protection can be used.
However WP:OFFICE actions seem desighned to maximise the number of people who threaten to sue us.
? Not at all.
--Jimbo
Legal threats sent to the helpdesk mailing list jumped after the John Seigenthaler event. Repeated WP:OFFICE actions will have a simular effect.
-- geni
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:25:23 +0000, you wrote:
blanking or deleting the article= writeing off the work. Not a nice way to treat the previous writers. Telling them what is wrong might work better.
I think you've rather missed the point. An office action is a quick and temporary fix for an immediate problem: there is a clear implication that the problem will be solved by the community in the usual way we solve problems of accuracy and balance. After the pressing problem has been fixed.
And if the complaint was frivolous or vexatious, or was simply a misunderstanding, there is not much point in embarrassing whoever complained. It's not like it happens often enough to raise concerns over abuse, even if we didn't trust Jimbo and Danny's discretion. Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:25:23 +0000, you wrote:
blanking or deleting the article= writeing off the work. Not a nice way to treat the previous writers. Telling them what is wrong might work better.
I think you've rather missed the point. An office action is a quick and temporary fix for an immediate problem: there is a clear implication that the problem will be solved by the community in the usual way we solve problems of accuracy and balance. After the pressing problem has been fixed.
Jimbo wrote at 8:58 AM:
Rather, we should respond quickly and politely to their concerns, including in most cases, *blanking or deleting the article* and *starting over*, being *extremely* careful as a community to get all the facts right, to strike a fair and neutral tone, and to cite sources even more extensively than normal.
Deleting and starting over implies writing off the previous work. In fact, the it'd be really complicated to do otherwise since the GFDL requires attribution and in the case of deletion the edit history for the previous version is gone.
He also wrote at 9:04 AM:
I would say that in most cases, WP:OFFICE need not result in protection (semi-protection is more likely), and when there is protection it should normally not be for more than a couple of days.
There seem to be some mixed messages coming from him on this subject since this seems to suggest that most OFFICE actions would be nowhere near that drastic. Unless he means that the article would be deleted permanently (to "start over") but not protected in a deleted state for long?
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 10:52:20 -0700, you wrote:
Deleting and starting over implies writing off the previous work. In fact, the it'd be really complicated to do otherwise since the GFDL requires attribution and in the case of deletion the edit history for the previous version is gone.
No, because the people doing the job are all admins so if something does get deleted (rather than blanked) it can get undeleted when the facts become clear, and everything should be visible to an admin in the deleted history.
If people need data and citations from the deleted history of an article I for one am quite happy to help. But I've only seen one example where a complete rewrite was necessary, and in that case what was deleted was grossly inaccurate as well as defamatory: a blank sheet was a better starting point.
Do you have an example to hand where an Office action has resulted in permanent loss of good content? Guy (JzG)
geni wrote:
/Temp exists for such purposes. Outright blanking is pretty much garenteeded to be reverted.
Weird, I agreed with everything Geni just wrote. :) Requiring an article to be rewritten from the ground up when there's nothing actually _wrong_ with it, or at least nothing that a little editing can't fix, is silly. A lot of these articles that get complaints from their subjects have been the subject of a great deal of editor work and I think it's far better to be considered a "jerk" by the subject of the article than by the editors that wrote it and the readers who read it.
Ideally neither, of course - if the subject is tossing about legal threats and such a temporary blanking might be in order while that gets sorted out (_not_ temporary deletion - deletion is not a good way to "store" material out of sight for later use, as I've ranted about previously). But it must be dealt with in a timely manner and explained thoroughly and transparently to the people working on the article itself. A while back I restored Harlan Ellison's article several months after Jimbo had blanked it because there'd been no indication of any work being done on the dispute with Ellison since that time, not even after I asked for an update on Jimbo's talk page. I don't think it'd be appropriate to block me for taking such action today.
I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny is (who is Danny?)
Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny is (who is Danny?)
Danny is a longtime Wikipedia who is an admin in English Wikipedia, and globally a steward. He works for the foundation, primarily as my assistant, but increasingly in working on grant applications. At the present time, he's on the frontline for angry and/or strange phone calls of which the volume we get at the Foundation office I think too many people do not fully appreciate.
--Jimbo
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny is (who is Danny?)
Danny is a longtime Wikipedia who is an admin in English Wikipedia, and globally a steward. He works for the foundation, primarily as my assistant, but increasingly in working on grant applications. At the present time, he's on the frontline for angry and/or strange phone calls of which the volume we get at the Foundation office I think too many people do not fully appreciate.
Better communication from the front office would improve people's appreciation, naturally.
There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going on.
People talking about dickishness probably won't help either.
Apropos of nothing, it's "n'est-ce pas", not "n'est pas"...
I have to admit, I keep on seeing the "If you only understood..." argument repeatedly made; that doesn't seem helpful. When communication breaks down, it's the responsibility of both parties to repair it.
The Cunctator wrote:
There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going on.
Can you tell me about the "needlessly aggressive posture"? Can you tell me exactly what you would like to know, such that you feel that you're not being told what's going on?
I have to admit, I keep on seeing the "If you only understood..." argument repeatedly made; that doesn't seem helpful. When communication breaks down, it's the responsibility of both parties to repair it.
I am entirely unclear as to what else I could communicate here, nor how much less aggressive I could possibly be.
--Jimbo
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Can you tell me about the "needlessly aggressive posture"? Can you tell me exactly what you would like to know, such that you feel that you're not being told what's going on?
Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a week, or ten a day?
What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24 hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door step"?
How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries, in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or whatever?
These kinds of things would help us understand the plight of the foundation office.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a week, or ten a day?
The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public must be on the order of 50 per day. The phone is constantly ringing, say, every 10 minutes or so. 6 per hour.
That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate estimate.
What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24 hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door step"?
They vary widely. Some are just inquiries. Some are looooong explanations of some trivial point. Some are extremely upset. Some say that there is an error. Some say libel. Some are sane. Some are raving lunatics. Some are in tears.
How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries, in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or whatever?
It varies depending on the call.
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a week, or ten a day?
The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public must be on the order of 50 per day. The phone is constantly ringing, say, every 10 minutes or so. 6 per hour.
That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate estimate.
Which number is that? The one on your user page says everything but press inquiries will be ignored.
Anthony
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a week, or ten a day?
The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public must be on the order of 50 per day. The phone is constantly ringing, say, every 10 minutes or so. 6 per hour.
That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate estimate.
What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24 hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door step"?
They vary widely. Some are just inquiries. Some are looooong explanations of some trivial point. Some are extremely upset. Some say that there is an error. Some say libel. Some are sane. Some are raving lunatics. Some are in tears.
How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries, in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or whatever?
It varies depending on the call.
Incidently...
Wikipedia is not only in english. And complaints or requests for information also exist in other languages, thought not as numerous than in english of course. I'll speak only of the french case then.
My phone number is on the net, along with Nicolas Weeger's one (the president of the french chapter). It is necessary for proposals and mostly press requests (when a hot topic goes on the net, phone calls from press can be up to 5-10 people a day roughly).
In the past few weeks, I have observed an increasing number of phone calls (I think because of traffic increase). Last week, it was roughly about 10 phone calls per day.
Aside from days with a hot press topic, I would divide this 10 phone calls on average as
5 phone calls are from people who believe they are calling another office. They typed "red cross" on the net, found wikipedia article on the red cross. They think they are at the red cross. They follow the contact link. They find a phone number and they ask you for information on the situation in Africa, or how to get publishing rights for a famous author, or a seat for tonight in their favorite restaurant. TODO : explain to them that no, this is not the office of president Bush or their next sportwear shop, but Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. When you are in bad luck, they insult you for not giving you the address they are looking for. TODO : stay calm and remember you are trying to give free access to information to everyone in the world. You may not remember the post office number though.
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
1 phone call is from the press. Sometimes, they want YOU (neat !). Sometimes they want Jimbo (I give Florida office). Sometimes they want a spanish person (I succeeded to get interviewed instead last time though :-)). Sometimes they want the Technical Director... TODO : look franctically for the press interview partners page on internal to get the *right* number. Or go to irc speedily (I recognise Danny's speedy visits to irc as well to fix an issue :-))
1 phone call is someone looking for a job. Usually, the call comes from Nigeria. The line quality is very bad. They are nice, but generally sticky.
1 phone call is a business proposition. TODO : whilst you now feel like screaming, todo is to listen and tell them to write to board AT wikimedia.org. At least, they usually call at decent hours...
1 phone call is a complainer. My current most active one is actually a person from a sect. He started calling me during Christmas holidays. Last phone call was 3 days ago. One day, he called 5 times. The most peculiar characteristic about these ones is that they seem to be very careful to call you at 2 in the morning, on week-ends or when you just succeeded to put the baby to sleep. TODO : good question... I am still wondering :-)
-------
Now, the unfortunate fact is that, in reality, my home is not an office. The phone number is my personal phone number. At 2am, I usually sleep. And I am not paid to answer phone calls from lunatics :-)
Recently, I have removed my phone number from various places.
So, we have a long term issue, because I do not think phone calls will go down. Quite the opposite. And some of them (press, complaints, business proposals) are important to answer.
Note that many others choose to write to our email ticketing system on OTRS. Today, they are 150 emails pending in the board AT wikimedia.org queue. I go there every day to at least identify the *most* urgent requests... and let all others pending. But each time some one is complaining, it is necessary to distinguish what is reasonable complaint to what is pure raving... it takes time...
So yes, when those requests are pilling up, I suppose we are acting rather quickly on wiki. Without explaining in length why we do this :-) We hope those who know relay the information of *why* we remove an article or delete a picture.
Ant
On 3/12/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a week, or ten a day?
The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public must be on the order of 50 per day. The phone is constantly ringing, say, every 10 minutes or so. 6 per hour.
That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate estimate.
What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24 hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door step"?
They vary widely. Some are just inquiries. Some are looooong explanations of some trivial point. Some are extremely upset. Some say that there is an error. Some say libel. Some are sane. Some are raving lunatics. Some are in tears.
How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries, in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or whatever?
It varies depending on the call.
Incidently...
Wikipedia is not only in english. And complaints or requests for information also exist in other languages, thought not as numerous than in english of course. I'll speak only of the french case then.
My phone number is on the net, along with Nicolas Weeger's one (the president of the french chapter). It is necessary for proposals and mostly press requests (when a hot topic goes on the net, phone calls from press can be up to 5-10 people a day roughly).
In the past few weeks, I have observed an increasing number of phone calls (I think because of traffic increase). Last week, it was roughly about 10 phone calls per day.
Aside from days with a hot press topic, I would divide this 10 phone calls on average as
5 phone calls are from people who believe they are calling another office. They typed "red cross" on the net, found wikipedia article on the red cross. They think they are at the red cross. They follow the contact link. They find a phone number and they ask you for information on the situation in Africa, or how to get publishing rights for a famous author, or a seat for tonight in their favorite restaurant. TODO : explain to them that no, this is not the office of president Bush or their next sportwear shop, but Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. When you are in bad luck, they insult you for not giving you the address they are looking for. TODO : stay calm and remember you are trying to give free access to information to everyone in the world. You may not remember the post office number though.
Hmm...perhaps say so on the contact page?
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
TODO: Explain to them that all the information we have is already on the encyclopedia?
1 phone call is from the press. Sometimes, they want YOU (neat !).
Sometimes they want Jimbo (I give Florida office). Sometimes they want a spanish person (I succeeded to get interviewed instead last time though :-)). Sometimes they want the Technical Director... TODO : look franctically for the press interview partners page on internal to get the *right* number. Or go to irc speedily (I recognise Danny's speedy visits to irc as well to fix an issue :-))
Well that's sort of neat and yet kind of annoying?
1 phone call is someone looking for a job. Usually, the call comes from
Nigeria. The line quality is very bad. They are nice, but generally sticky.
1 phone call is a business proposition. TODO : whilst you now feel like screaming, todo is to listen and tell them to write to board AT wikimedia.org. At least, they usually call at decent hours...
Hmm..I want a job, but that's beside the point.
1 phone call is a complainer.
My current most active one is actually a person from a sect. He started calling me during Christmas holidays. Last phone call was 3 days ago. One day, he called 5 times. The most peculiar characteristic about these ones is that they seem to be very careful to call you at 2 in the morning, on week-ends or when you just succeeded to put the baby to sleep. TODO : good question... I am still wondering :-)
Hmm...
-------
Now, the unfortunate fact is that, in reality, my home is not an office. The phone number is my personal phone number. At 2am, I usually sleep. And I am not paid to answer phone calls from lunatics :-)
Recently, I have removed my phone number from various places.
So, we have a long term issue, because I do not think phone calls will go down. Quite the opposite. And some of them (press, complaints, business proposals) are important to answer.
Note that many others choose to write to our email ticketing system on OTRS. Today, they are 150 emails pending in the board AT wikimedia.org queue. I go there every day to at least identify the *most* urgent requests... and let all others pending. But each time some one is complaining, it is necessary to distinguish what is reasonable complaint to what is pure raving... it takes time...
So yes, when those requests are pilling up, I suppose we are acting rather quickly on wiki. Without explaining in length why we do this :-) We hope those who know relay the information of *why* we remove an article or delete a picture.
Ant
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Don't we have some sort of office for such things? I mean I'd hate to put individuals like you who are probably quite busy on the spot for such things.
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
Ilya N. wrote:
Don't we have some sort of office for such things? I mean I'd hate to put individuals like you who are probably quite busy on the spot for such things.
-- ~Ilya N.
No. We do not. We do not have an office for such things. The only office we have answers in English. So can not handle all those requests. And the only office we have is in Florida, so not so suitable for someone who want to complaint about something written on a non english-speaking project.
We do not because Danny's talking english only. And we will need people to answer the phone in dozen of languages. The Florida office could possibly hire one person to answer the phone in english/french/german/spanish/japanese. But I somehow doubt so.
Or we could have a collection of different people all over the world to answer in a reasonable enough number of languages. From their home, or from an office. The germans already have an office in Germany. I do not know how they handle phone call, but they are currently looking for a (paid) CEO. I presume we will need soon an office in France as well. Or at least a system of answering machines and people to take turn to call back only the relevant people. I suppose that this could be handled by local associations. If they are available.
Right now, it appears a pretty weird idea I suspect. And probably not one the board will be motivated to spend any kind of money on. Still, I think in 6 months, this will have become a requirement.
Ant
That's interesting.
Problem is, as Danny says, he spends 1/3rd of his time answering English phone calls alone. Most of which can be referred to some editor or other to be fixed.
BTW, How big is the FL office?
On 3/13/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Ilya N. wrote:
Don't we have some sort of office for such things? I mean I'd hate to
put
individuals like you who are probably quite busy on the spot for such things.
-- ~Ilya N.
No. We do not. We do not have an office for such things. The only office we have answers in English. So can not handle all those requests. And the only office we have is in Florida, so not so suitable for someone who want to complaint about something written on a non english-speaking project.
We do not because Danny's talking english only. And we will need people to answer the phone in dozen of languages. The Florida office could possibly hire one person to answer the phone in english/french/german/spanish/japanese. But I somehow doubt so.
Or we could have a collection of different people all over the world to answer in a reasonable enough number of languages. From their home, or from an office. The germans already have an office in Germany. I do not know how they handle phone call, but they are currently looking for a (paid) CEO. I presume we will need soon an office in France as well. Or at least a system of answering machines and people to take turn to call back only the relevant people. I suppose that this could be handled by local associations. If they are available.
Right now, it appears a pretty weird idea I suspect. And probably not one the board will be motivated to spend any kind of money on. Still, I think in 6 months, this will have become a requirement.
Ant
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
On 13/03/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
That's interesting.
Problem is, as Danny says, he spends 1/3rd of his time answering English phone calls alone. Most of which can be referred to some editor or other to be fixed.
BTW, How big is the FL office?
My understanding is that the Florida office consists of Danny plus one intern (full-time? part-time?) who does general admin things. So, basically, the office is Danny, and vice versa.
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but where I used to work, we did exactly that. When things got busy, we put more people on the phones who simply took down details, they went into the equivalent of the OTRS (god that thing needs a decent, comprehensible name...), and were returned by support staff in chronological order. Worked ok. But not the same line of business.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but where I used to work, we did exactly that. When things got busy, we put more people on the phones who simply took down details, they went into the equivalent of the OTRS (god that thing needs a decent, comprehensible name...), and were returned by support staff in chronological order. Worked ok. But not the same line of business.
From [[OTRS]]:
*OTRS*, which is short for /Open-source Ticket Request System/,...
It *can* handle phone calls; you can create a ticket for a phone call, and then attach a reply to say that you phoned the customer.
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
Sure it could. You'd just need a IVR that collected a phone message as a WAV or MP3 file and sent it as an attachment into the appropriate OTRS queue. The voicemail system that came as a part of the VoIP system we deployed at my employer can do this. (Actually I think the Foundation should look at setting up a VoIP network for internal coordination, meetings, and other useful functions. But I digress.)
Kelly
On Mar 13, 2006, at 1:17 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
Sure it could. You'd just need a IVR that collected a phone message as a WAV or MP3 file and sent it as an attachment into the appropriate OTRS queue. The voicemail system that came as a part of the VoIP system we deployed at my employer can do this. (Actually I think the Foundation should look at setting up a VoIP network for internal coordination, meetings, and other useful functions. But I digress.)
It's entirely unacceptable unless we use Ogg Vorbis :P
On 3/13/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
Sure it could. You'd just need a IVR that collected a phone message as a WAV or MP3 file and sent it as an attachment into the appropriate OTRS queue. The voicemail system that came as a part of the VoIP system we deployed at my employer can do this. (Actually I think the Foundation should look at setting up a VoIP network for internal coordination, meetings, and other useful functions. But I digress.)
Kelly
Asterisk is a GPLed software package which can do it. 'Course like many things GPL, you'll probably spend more money setting it up than you save vs. buying a prepackaged solution.
Additionally, I'd be surprised if Vonage or one of its competitors doesn't already have something prepackaged which can do it.
Anthony
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 3/13/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
What would be lovely is if we could magically create some OTRS-like system for phone calls. But that just wouldn't work...
Sure it could. You'd just need a IVR that collected a phone message as a WAV or MP3 file and sent it as an attachment into the appropriate OTRS queue. The voicemail system that came as a part of the VoIP system we deployed at my employer can do this. (Actually I think the Foundation should look at setting up a VoIP network for internal coordination, meetings, and other useful functions. But I digress.)
Kelly
Asterisk is a GPLed software package which can do it. 'Course like many things GPL, you'll probably spend more money setting it up than you save vs. buying a prepackaged solution.
I bet also that like many things GPL, if Wikipedia asked for help setting it up, some expert would do it for free.
Ilya N. wrote:
On 3/12/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
TODO: Explain to them that all the information we have is already on the encyclopedia?
A person who makes that kind of call is looking for a response with more human sensitivity than a computer.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Ilya N. wrote:
On 3/12/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
TODO: Explain to them that all the information we have is already on the encyclopedia?
A person who makes that kind of call is looking for a response with more human sensitivity than a computer.
Ec
Then how about a short "speed-bump" IVR session before they get put through...
"Hello, you've reached the French office of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia!"
"Please listen to the following options:"
"For press enquiries, dial 1"
"For contact information, dial 2"
"For more information about Wikipedia and its mission, dial 3"
"To speak to a person at the Wikipedia France office, please hold on the line..."
<15 secs of hold music>
The intro message lets them know that they have not called the Red Cross or the White House. 1 puts them straight through 2 and 3 play a short recorded message with the appropriate info, removing the need for human intervention. The next bit reiterates who they have called in case they didn't get it the first time, and lets them know they are not going to be talking to a helpline, again helping them to refocus their mind. The 15 seconds of hold music are gently discouraging to crank callers, a fair few of which will hang up...
Once they've been through the pre-screening process, anyone who's serious enough to have kept on the line gets put straight through.
-- Neil
On 3/14/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Ilya N. wrote:
On 3/12/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
TODO: Explain to them that all the information we have is already on the encyclopedia?
A person who makes that kind of call is looking for a response with more human sensitivity than a computer.
Ec
Then how about a short "speed-bump" IVR session before they get put through...
"Hello, you've reached the French office of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia!"
"Please listen to the following options:"
"For press enquiries, dial 1"
"For contact information, dial 2"
"For more information about Wikipedia and its mission, dial 3"
"To speak to a person at the Wikipedia France office, please hold on the line..."
<15 secs of hold music>
The intro message lets them know that they have not called the Red Cross or the White House. 1 puts them straight through 2 and 3 play a short recorded message with the appropriate info, removing the need for human intervention. The next bit reiterates who they have called in case they didn't get it the first time, and lets them know they are not going to be talking to a helpline, again helping them to refocus their mind. The 15 seconds of hold music are gently discouraging to crank callers, a fair few of which will hang up...
Once they've been through the pre-screening process, anyone who's serious enough to have kept on the line gets put straight through.
-- Neil
Replace the 15 seconds of hold music with the sound of nails scrapeing down blackboards. Should remove time wasters quite quickerly.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 3/14/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Ilya N. wrote:
On 3/12/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
TODO: Explain to them that all the information we have is already on the encyclopedia?
A person who makes that kind of call is looking for a response with more human sensitivity than a computer.
Then how about a short "speed-bump" IVR session before they get put through...
"Hello, you've reached the French office of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia!"
"Please listen to the following options:"
"For press enquiries, dial 1"
"For contact information, dial 2"
"For more information about Wikipedia and its mission, dial 3"
"To speak to a person at the Wikipedia France office, please hold on the line..."
<15 secs of hold music>
The intro message lets them know that they have not called the Red Cross or the White House. 1 puts them straight through 2 and 3 play a short recorded message with the appropriate info, removing the need for human intervention. The next bit reiterates who they have called in case they didn't get it the first time, and lets them know they are not going to be talking to a helpline, again helping them to refocus their mind. The 15 seconds of hold music are gently discouraging to crank callers, a fair few of which will hang up...
Once they've been through the pre-screening process, anyone who's serious enough to have kept on the line gets put straight through.
Replace the 15 seconds of hold music with the sound of nails scrapeing down blackboards. Should remove time wasters quite quickerly.
I thought we were talking about a call from someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy. You offer them automated responses from Big Brother to emphasize the insignificance of what they are feeling. I would hardly want to live in a world that is so insensitive to the human condition.
Ec
I thought we were talking about a call from someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy. You offer them automated responses from Big Brother to emphasize the insignificance of what they are feeling. I would hardly want to live in a world that is so insensitive to the human condition.
Wikipedia is not a support group for the distraught.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Philip Welch wrote:
I thought we were talking about a call from someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy. You offer them automated responses from Big Brother to emphasize the insignificance of what they are feeling. I would hardly want to live in a world that is so insensitive to the human condition.
Wikipedia is not a support group for the distraught.
Add that to [[WP:NOT]]
- -- Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
On Mar 21, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Ben McIlwain wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Philip Welch wrote:
I thought we were talking about a call from someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy. You offer them automated responses from Big Brother to emphasize the insignificance of what they are feeling. I would hardly want to live in a world that is so insensitive to the human condition.
Wikipedia is not a support group for the distraught.
Add that to [[WP:NOT]]
I don't think it's enough of a problem to justify that, but I suspect "Wikipedia is not your plaything" would be a good addition too.
On 3/21/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I thought we were talking about a call from someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy. You offer them automated responses from Big Brother to emphasize the insignificance of what they are feeling. I would hardly want to live in a world that is so insensitive to the human condition.
Ec
You already live in that world (try calling whatever your local equiverlent of the inland revinue is. We are not the samaritans.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 3/21/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I thought we were talking about a call from someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy. You offer them automated responses from Big Brother to emphasize the insignificance of what they are feeling. I would hardly want to live in a world that is so insensitive to the human condition.
You already live in that world (try calling whatever your local equiverlent of the inland revinue is. We are not the samaritans.
What does Inland Revenue have to do with it? Your attitude suggests that you would be an excellent employee there.. In the past we have had calls from people threatening suicide, and it sounds as if you support treating them as though we were IR. That sounds bloody disgusting to me.
Ec
On 3/25/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What does Inland Revenue have to do with it? Your attitude suggests that you would be an excellent employee there..
The IR often deal with people who have just been through the tramatic experence of haveing someone close to them die (inheritance tax and the like). They also tend to use automated responces
In the past we have had calls from people threatening suicide, and it sounds as if you support treating them as though we were IR. That sounds bloody disgusting to me.
Ec
If you are thinking of commiting suicie press 5 for the samaritans. I don't think we employ trained councelers. Thus it is logical to try and get them to someone who does have the training and skills to deal with them as quickly as posible.
-- geni
On 3/25/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
In the past we have had calls from people threatening suicide, and it sounds as if you support treating them as though we were IR. That sounds bloody disgusting to me.
Ec
If you are thinking of commiting suicie press 5 for the samaritans. I don't think we employ trained councelers. Thus it is logical to try and get them to someone who does have the training and skills to deal with them as quickly as posible.
I think we established that the Wikimedia foundation's "hotlines" is a guy called Danny. If you'd like him to be nicer to people who call up, just tell him directly.
Steve
On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24 hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door step"?
Well there is no public data on this but here is what one email may have been:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29#Here.27s_Why_...
-- geni
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I have to admit, I keep on seeing the "If you only understood..." argument repeatedly made; that doesn't seem helpful. When communication breaks down, it's the responsibility of both parties to repair it.
I am entirely unclear as to what else I could communicate here, nor how much less aggressive I could possibly be.
The main lack of communication is between the front office and Wikipedians who are editing (or interested in editing) an article when it's protected without any explanation.
Take a look at en:Talk:Harry_Reid, for example. There was just a message by Danny that there were "some concerns", without any comment on to what they were, how they might be fixed, or really anything else besides "Harry Reid doesn't like our article".
It's hardly only newcomers who are baffled and offended by this sort of thing, either. Among the numerous complaintants on that talk page are several Wikipedians who have been here for 2+ years (e.g. User:Jamesday).
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Take a look at en:Talk:Harry_Reid, for example. There was just a message by Danny that there were "some concerns", without any comment on to what they were, how they might be fixed, or really anything else besides "Harry Reid doesn't like our article".
The Harry Reid article is no longer protected, and hasn't been for some time. As has been explained repeatedly, the *length* of that protection was an error, due to Danny being out of town and us all being new to this sort of thing.
In my opinion, there was no need to *protect* that particular article in that particular case. Assume Good Faith as we work out the kinks in the process. :)
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
In my opinion, there was no need to *protect* that particular article in that particular case. Assume Good Faith as we work out the kinks in the process. :)
I guess I'm unsure what the process *is*. I've only ever encountered the process in the form of unilateral decrees: "This article is protected by order of the Wikimedia Foundation; don't touch!"
If it's supposed to be a softer process, why is it even a "process" at all? There are numerous ways in which incorrect or biased information can be brought to the attention of editors to be fixed. The preferred method is to post a message on the talk page, or just be bold and edit the article yourself. For people not that adventurous who want to call up the Foundation and complain by phone instead, whoever answers the phone can pass along those complaints by posting a message on the talk page of the article: "Harry Reid's office called us up and has issues with the following sections/information: [x], [y], [z]; it would be great if someone could fix this ASAP".
-Mark
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
In my opinion, there was no need to *protect* that particular article in that particular case. Assume Good Faith as we work out the kinks in the process. :)
I guess I'm unsure what the process *is*. I've only ever encountered the process in the form of unilateral decrees: "This article is protected by order of the Wikimedia Foundation; don't touch!"
If it's supposed to be a softer process, why is it even a "process" at all? There are numerous ways in which incorrect or biased information can be brought to the attention of editors to be fixed. The preferred method is to post a message on the talk page, or just be bold and edit the article yourself. For people not that adventurous who want to call up the Foundation and complain by phone instead, whoever answers the phone can pass along those complaints by posting a message on the talk page of the article: "Harry Reid's office called us up and has issues with the following sections/information: [x], [y], [z]; it would be great if someone could fix this ASAP".
-Mark
In most cases when people mail Wikimedia to complain that's exactly what happens.
But sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get people to do that (and it's simply unreasonable to expect Danny or anyone else answering complaints to do all the cleanup work; the volume of complaints is too high). And then the good editors, who know how to cite credible sources, and how to write from an NPOV, have to battle it out with all the people who want to add the questionable material back in. Meanwhile, the complaining party is getting more and more upset that the untrue/unverifiable information remains.
I note that for every WP:OFFICE protection there are loads and loads of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered about. Office actions are for when that won't suffice.
-Kat
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking "Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast upward. For there you have been and there you will always be." - Leonardo da Vinci
Kat Walsh wrote:
I note that for every WP:OFFICE protection there are loads and loads of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered about. Office actions are for when that won't suffice.
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases? Does the power and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it? It does seem that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere peons when they complain...
-Mark
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases? Does the power and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it? It does seem that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere peons when they complain...
Going by the Brian Peppers case, wealth and status are not the determinants.
Delirium wrote:
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases? Does the power and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it? It does seem that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere peons when they complain...
And it seems that you are making assertions with absolutely no facts to back them up.
No, powerful people are *not* given more deference. If anything, people who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
If you want to be angry just for the sake of being angry, I can't stop you, but what I can do is stop responding to comments like this.
--Jimbo
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases? Does the power and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it? It does seem that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere peons when they complain...
...
No, powerful people are *not* given more deference. If anything, people who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
Heh, true, the most deference ever given to the subject of an article lives in a nursing home and hadn't even complained!
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases? Does the power and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it? It does seem that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere peons when they complain...
...
No, powerful people are *not* given more deference. If anything, people who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
Heh, true, the most deference ever given to the subject of an article lives in a nursing home and hadn't even complained!
In that case, one of the overtly stated reasons for removing the article was that it could bring Wikipedia bad publicity. So, while the subject may not be powerful, apparently there was a fear that it would offend other people who are.
-Mark
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
In that case, one of the overtly stated reasons for removing the article was that it could bring Wikipedia bad publicity. So, while the subject may not be powerful, apparently there was a fear that it would offend other people who are.
-Mark
No the last formal reason given was that it was deleted in line with an AFD descision. -- geni
G'day Mark,
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
No, powerful people are *not* given more deference. If anything, people who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
Heh, true, the most deference ever given to the subject of an article lives in a nursing home and hadn't even complained!
In that case, one of the overtly stated reasons for removing the article was that it could bring Wikipedia bad publicity. So, while the subject may not be powerful, apparently there was a fear that it would offend other people who are.
"If I twist and turn enough, I can make this sound like we're the brave little fighter trying to take it to The Man! Oh, Jimbo, why won't you let us take it to The Man?"
Please, Mark. You're quite capable of making bloody good arguments; we all seen you! But this is just sad. It doesn't matter what Jimbo will say, does it? No matter what, he's the pawn of corporate aggression ...
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse
Mark Gallagher wrote:
Please, Mark. You're quite capable of making bloody good arguments; we all seen you! But this is just sad. It doesn't matter what Jimbo will say, does it? No matter what, he's the pawn of corporate aggression ...
I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either. I'm just worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias into the encyclopedia.
I'm certainly not opposed to people pointing out errors, and I'm not opposed to the Foundation having some sort of team that facilitates communication between complaintants and editors. That's not what's at issue here, though. We're no longer talking about correcting errors in the interest of accuracy---we're talking about mollifying angry complaintants, preventing bad publicity for the foundation, and other such things that are not equivalent to writing a factually accurate encyclopedia. This leads to some articles having different policies than other articles, based on who complains and which articles are likely to lead to publicity. The more such ancillary concerns influence things, the worse for the content, in my opinion.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
The more such ancillary concerns influence things, the worse for the content, in my opinion.
I thought I'd elaborate a bit on this, because I think various people are operating under fundamentally different assumptions of how Wikipedia should operate, and how its operation affects things outside itself.
From my perspective, the sole goal of Wikipedia should be to produce an encyclopedia that is as complete and accurate as possible. Any policy changes that contribute to that are welcome. For example, we could decide that Wikipedia is getting big enough to warrant being more judicious about what we write: require more stringent referencing, and remove (at least temporarily) unreferenced facts, especially ones that seem questionable. That's starting to happen already. We could also better label how good specific articles (and revisions) are. That would allow us to have good articles interspersed with work-in-progress articles, while keeping errors in the work-in-progress versions from being too damaging to the overall trustworthiness of our information (because those articles would be clearly marked as "in progress"). We have tags that do that to some extent (dispute tags, references-needed tags, etc.), and the long-anticipated sifter project (or whatever it's called now) would do it to a greater extent.
There is another viewpoint: that we should take into account concerns other than the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia. On this account, inaccurate negative information about living people is worse than other types of inaccurate information, and so should be treated specially. I disagree with that. It's certainly a direct case where harm could come about, but there are many other cases where much more harm could come about. Yes, if it's inaccurate, someone could read our article on [[Jack Thompson (lawyer)]] and get unwarranted negative views of him. But if we have inaccurate articles, someone could also read our articles on the Israeli-Arab conflict and come away with unwarranted views of *that*. The latter sort of inaccuracy has the potential to have a much greater negative effect on many more people than defaming Jack Thompson ever could.
There are a lot more examples, but the main point is that there are a *lot* of potential errors that could cause real-world problems if people read them and believe them. Defamatory information on specific individuals is neither the only nor the most problematic type of error. Therefore, trying to make fine-grained decisions about which errors are worse than others, and setting up special processes to deal with the ones deemed to be worse, is entirely the wrong approach, and likely to lead *neither* to a more accurate encyclopedia on the whole, *nor* to a reduction in the negative effects inaccuracies in Wikipedia have on real people. A better approach, in my view, is to attack the problem directly.
We don't want errors at all. Referencing standards and the like attack this problem, and perhaps there are additional things we could change. Since a work-in-progress is rarely error-free, we also want to better mark how trustworthy particular revisions should be considered, which will reduce the negative impact of any inaccuracies in the versions clearly marked "hey this might not be right!". Various tags and a future sifter project address this issue. And, finally, we want a streamlined way to vet facts. A number of things address this problem: a more intuitive referencing system (with references attached to specific bits of information); community culture about referencing and dealing with controversies; facilitation by the Foundation to pass along inaccuracies reported by people who don't edit Wikipedia; and so on.
Of course, legal issues may intervene in some cases; if the Foundation is the target of legal threats or lawsuits, then they can do what their lawyers advise them. The main issue at hand, though, is what we should do in other cases.
-Mark
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
We're no longer talking about correcting errors in the interest of accuracy---we're talking about mollifying angry complaintants, preventing bad publicity for the foundation, and other such things that are not equivalent to writing a factually accurate encyclopedia.
Not wholly true, I believe. I don't think the intention is to permanently remove information that is accurate; rather, it's to remove possibly inaccurate info until it can be checked against sources, tightly worded, and made as correct as we can have it.
Yes, it IS a process different than the standard.
-Matt
Delirium wrote:
I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either. I'm just worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias into the encyclopedia.
Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
This leads to some articles having different policies than other articles,
This is false.
--Jimbo
On 3/12/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either. I'm just worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias into the encyclopedia.
Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
This leads to some articles having different policies than other articles,
This is false.
Now I'm confused. Can you tell me which of the following is inaccurate / not true?
1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
2. Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff d) Various combinations of the above
3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.
If that is above, it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the above is that people can go over the head of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down manner, with some articles having different "de facto" policies than other articles. That's obviously an *interpretation*, but I have trouble seeing how it's false.
On 3/12/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote: <snip>
- Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
- Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to
a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff d) Various combinations of the above
- Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.
If that is above, it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the above is that people can go over the head of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down manner, with some articles having different "de facto" policies than other articles. That's obviously an *interpretation*, but I have trouble seeing how it's false.
Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective policy difference.
On 3/12/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective policy difference.
Yep, only those who know the secret back passage can get the number of grandchildren in their article changed to its correct date. It seems to me from what I've read that most of the changes that get made in these cases are made as normal edits by Danny or someone. Only a very small number of articles get the "office" treatment, and those are publicly signposted.
No one has yet pointed out a case where this avenue has been abused, either. That is, where an NPOV article become SymPOV due to threats by lawyers etc.
So you're probably taking it a little too seriously.
Steve
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:46:37 +0100, you wrote:
Yep, only those who know the secret back passage can get the number of grandchildren in their article changed to its correct date. It seems to me from what I've read that most of the changes that get made in these cases are made as normal edits by Danny or someone. Only a very small number of articles get the "office" treatment, and those are publicly signposted.
Which is actually little different from {{db-attack}}. Guy (JzG)
On 3/12/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/12/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective policy difference.
Yep, only those who know the secret back passage can get the number of grandchildren in their article changed to its correct date. It seems to me from what I've read that most of the changes that get made in these cases are made as normal edits by Danny or someone. Only a very small number of articles get the "office" treatment, and those are publicly signposted.
No one has yet pointed out a case where this avenue has been abused, either. That is, where an NPOV article become SymPOV due to threats by lawyers etc.
So you're probably taking it a little too seriously.
If you follow this thread, I'm trying to understand why Jimbo called Delirium's understanding of the situation "false". Do you agree with Jimbo?
The Cunctator wrote:
Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective policy difference.
This is a very contentious and misleading explanation. Appealing to the foundation *is* official policy, when the issue is serious, and we have long published the phone number of the foundation widely so that people who have any issue can call and complain. This is hardly "unwritten" and absolutely not "semi-secret".
And more... appealing to the foundation as a way to get around the editors or NPOV is going to be a failure, because WP:OFFICE does not permit that. WP:OFFICE allows Danny to temporarily deal with things during a time period when we are reveiewing the seriousness and validity of complaints.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Delirium wrote:
I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either. I'm just worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias into the encyclopedia.
Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
This leads to some articles having different policies than other articles,
This is false.
Come on Jimbo, you're better than this. The email quoted above just consists of "ur wrong", with no suggestions as to why. I must confess to being as confused as The Cunctator as to what you mean by such blatantly counterfactual assertions.
1) How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a page protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in a "top-down manner"? Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly doing just that.
2) You have explicitly stated that we ought to treat articles on living people in a different manner than other articles. Isn't that "some articles having different policies than other articles"?
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
- How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a page
protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in a "top-down manner"? Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly doing just that.
The same effect could be achieved by any knowledgeable person by popping into an irc channel and asking any of a large number of people to assist with a serious problem. If you, for example, protected a page with a short explanation on the talk page that you think there's a serious legal problem and asking people, as a courtesy, to leave the page protected until the Foundation legal team has had an opportunity to review the situation, then I would fully expect that to stick.
The problem is, people who are not part of our community don't know how to do that, and they don't have the social power to do that. Therefore, they call the office.
WP:OFFICE is *temporary* and is *not* going "over the head" of editors. It is just one more fully functional and reasonable way for people to interact with us -- one which is particularly helpful to people who are dealing with a problematic Wikipedia article but who do not know anything about the right way to edit wikipedia.
- You have explicitly stated that we ought to treat articles on living
people in a different manner than other articles. Isn't that "some articles having different policies than other articles"?
Of course not! It is no different than saying that articles about obscure and difficult mathematical concepts are (and should be) treated differently than articles on tourist landmarks.
The core policies are the same, but editorially speaking, the application of the policies depends upon the local context of the individual articles.
--Jimbo
On 3/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
- How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a page
protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in a "top-down manner"? Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly doing just that.
The same effect could be achieved by any knowledgeable person by popping into an irc channel and asking any of a large number of people to assist with a serious problem. If you, for example, protected a page with a short explanation on the talk page that you think there's a serious legal problem and asking people, as a courtesy, to leave the page protected until the Foundation legal team has had an opportunity to review the situation, then I would fully expect that to stick.
Are you withdrawing WP:OFFICE from those areas not involveing legal threats? If no the above defence fails.
-- geni
I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases? Does the power and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it? It does seem that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere peons when they complain...
And it seems that you are making assertions with absolutely no facts to back them up.
No, powerful people are *not* given more deference. If anything, people who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
If you want to be angry just for the sake of being angry, I can't stop you, but what I can do is stop responding to comments like this.
--Jimbo
-- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
Oh for fuck's sake. Is that a serious question, or is this thread to descend to naked trolling?
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
On 3/11/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article
about
him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
Oh for fuck's sake. Is that a serious question, or is this thread to descend to naked trolling? _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
It's not a likely senario. A more likely one is that a large number of mid level politcians (ie the ones for whome wikipedia is the top hit on google) figure out they can have anything embarising knocked out of wikipedia for say the week before the election.
-- geni
"geni" geniice@gmail.com wrote in message news:f80608430603111428p74b30b71ve7e5f645f7a828c7@mail.gmail.com... On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case scenario (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
It's not a likely scenario. A more likely one is that a large number of mid level politicians (i.e. the ones for whom wikipedia is the top hit on Google) figure out they can have anything embarrassing knocked out of wikipedia for say the week before the election.
At which point *our* article on said politician moves lower down the ranks at Google having been overtaken by the huge number of other web-pages commenting on their rank stupidity at trying to censor one of the most visible sites on the Internet :-)
HTH HAND
On 3/13/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
"geni" geniice@gmail.com wrote in message news:f80608430603111428p74b30b71ve7e5f645f7a828c7@mail.gmail.com... On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case scenario (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
It's not a likely scenario. A more likely one is that a large number of mid level politicians (i.e. the ones for whom wikipedia is the top hit on Google) figure out they can have anything embarrassing knocked out of wikipedia for say the week before the election.
At which point *our* article on said politician moves lower down the ranks at Google having been overtaken by the huge number of other web-pages commenting on their rank stupidity at trying to censor one of the most visible sites on the Internet :-)
HTH HAND
Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
You say that as though it's a good thing (or a joke). I'd say it's neither.
Anthony
On 3/13/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
"geni" geniice@gmail.com wrote in message news:f80608430603111428p74b30b71ve7e5f645f7a828c7@mail.gmail.com... On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case scenario (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
It's not a likely scenario. A more likely one is that a large number of mid level politicians (i.e. the ones for whom wikipedia is the top hit on Google) figure out they can have anything embarrassing knocked out of wikipedia for say the week before the election.
At which point *our* article on said politician moves lower down the ranks at Google having been overtaken by the huge number of other web-pages commenting on their rank stupidity at trying to censor one of the most visible sites on the Internet :-)
HTH HAND
Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
And what will all these sites link to? The wikipedia article. What will this do to the wikipedia articles page rank? So in what order will the results appear on google?
-- geni
Ok, I'll bite - my pure speculation, obviously not the foundation's. If that happened, the right thing to do would be to take down the article, report the request to the media, and watch the fallout.
Steve
On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I think it's better to be prepared)
If George W. Bush calls and "requires" that the article about him is to be removed indefinitely I'll laugh at him and call the New York Times.
Now, could we please get back on topic?
--Jimbo
On Mar 11, 2006, at 5:32 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
If George W. Bush calls and "requires" that the article about him is to be removed indefinitely I'll laugh at him and call the New York Times.
Now, could we please get back on topic?
Why the New York Times and not the Washington Post?
Oh. Wait. On topic. Sorry.
-Phil
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 3/11/06, Carl Fûrstenberg azatoth@gmail.com wrote:
I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
Oh for fuck's sake. Is that a serious question, or is this thread to descend to naked trolling?
Tony, please. You know that it's much more fun wearing lace.
Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
Of course not. Why are you even asking me that?
--Jimbo
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of The Cunctator Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 2:07 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
Better communication from the front office would improve people's appreciation, naturally.
There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going on.
Am I wrong, or is Jimmy the only one from the "front Office" to contribute to this thread? I think he's been perfectly civil and not at all aggressive.
Brian
At 18:32 +0100 11/3/06, Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny is (who is Danny?) _______________________________________________
Jimbo's familiar.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
geni wrote:
/Temp exists for such purposes. Outright blanking is pretty much garenteeded to be reverted.
Weird, I agreed with everything Geni just wrote. :) Requiring an article to be rewritten from the ground up when there's nothing actually _wrong_ with it, or at least nothing that a little editing can't fix, is silly.
And I agree with you.
Ideally neither, of course - if the subject is tossing about legal threats and such a temporary blanking might be in order while that gets sorted out (_not_ temporary deletion - deletion is not a good way to "store" material out of sight for later use, as I've ranted about previously). But it must be dealt with in a timely manner and explained thoroughly and transparently to the people working on the article itself. A while back I restored Harlan Ellison's article several months after Jimbo had blanked it because there'd been no indication of any work being done on the dispute with Ellison since that time, not even after I asked for an update on Jimbo's talk page. I don't think it'd be appropriate to block me for taking such action today.
Agreed completely.
The best thing to happen upon _any_ WP:OFFICE action is a quick swarm of good editors, particularly those with no prior interest in the subject. That hasn't always happened in the past, partly because there was no obvious WP:OFFICE tag/template to draw people's attention to it.
--Jimbo
At 10:58 -0500 11/3/06, Jimmy Wales wrote:
[[SNIP]]
That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.
[[SNIP]]
Indeed, and I agree with the sentiment.
But who are the "customers"? A customer is somebody who buys something. Nobody buys a view of Wikipedia, because it is free.
I turn to a well known source for confirmation.
:-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer
"A customer is someone who makes use of the paid products of an individual or organization. This is typically through purchasing or renting good (economics) or services."
And this page needs a cleanup, BTW.
Gordon Joly wrote:
At 10:58 -0500 11/3/06, Jimmy Wales wrote:
[[SNIP]]
That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.
[[SNIP]]
Indeed, and I agree with the sentiment.
But who are the "customers"? A customer is somebody who buys something. Nobody buys a view of Wikipedia, because it is free.
Right. I accidentally revealed my hopelessly American way of using language. :)
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.
Anthony
On 3/11/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
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.
Microsoft probably didn't have internal policies and procedure documents when it was just Gates and his buddies working in their apartment, either.
Jimbo seems to be demonstrating a responsible attitude in the face of one of the few threats that could really hamper Wikipedia's continued existence or growth. And at present, a grand total of one article is "office protected". Think about the Seigenthaler incident...*anything* that prevents that happening again is probably worthwhile, even if the odd toe gets stepped on, and even if we do temporarily give in to squeaky wheels.
My only question is...who *is* Danny, and why is he blessed with surnamelessless?
Steve
On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/11/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
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.
Microsoft probably didn't have internal policies and procedure documents when it was just Gates and his buddies working in their apartment, either.
Jimbo seems to be demonstrating a responsible attitude in the face of one of the few threats that could really hamper Wikipedia's continued existence or growth. And at present, a grand total of one article is "office protected". Think about the Seigenthaler incident...*anything* that prevents that happening again is probably worthwhile, even if the odd toe gets stepped on, and even if we do temporarily give in to squeaky wheels.
Wikipedia isn't Microsoft. There's a big difference between running a non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation. Even then, Wikipedia isn't really either. Wikipedia, after all, has been around before the foundation was even created. It is in essence a community of people, which can and will exist with or without the foundation. Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless the community gives itself over to the foundation.
Anthony
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:21:03 -0500, you wrote:
Wikipedia isn't Microsoft. There's a big difference between running a non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation. Even then, Wikipedia isn't really either. Wikipedia, after all, has been around before the foundation was even created. It is in essence a community of people, which can and will exist with or without the foundation. Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless the community gives itself over to the foundation.
How sure are you of this? If the foundation and its assets were closed down tomorrow, how long would it take to rebuild Wikipedia from mirrors and rebuild the community?
The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed irrevocably.
It strikes me that the foundation stands between the community and hostile reactions to what the community says and does. I've seen at least one case where people tried to use Wikipedia to further a grievance, and in that case killing the content was entirely correct: subsequent investigation showed that it bore only the most tenuous relationship to the truth.
I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right now. People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why? It's only been a couple of days. It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing; in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something else :-) Guy (JzG)
On 3/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:21:03 -0500, you wrote:
Wikipedia isn't Microsoft. There's a big difference between running a non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation. Even then, Wikipedia isn't really either. Wikipedia, after all, has been around before the foundation was even created. It is in essence a community of people, which can and will exist with or without the foundation. Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless the community gives itself over to the foundation.
How sure are you of this? If the foundation and its assets were closed down tomorrow, how long would it take to rebuild Wikipedia from mirrors and rebuild the community?
Foundations with their assets don't close overnight. Maybe the website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation (board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a few days before an injunction was issued. That said, a replacement site could be put up within hours. The community might become somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which that is actually a good thing. In the long run a peer-to-peer system is probably what's best for Wikipedia.
The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed irrevocably.
I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation, so I can't comment. Was h2g2 released under a free license?
It strikes me that the foundation stands between the community and hostile reactions to what the community says and does. I've seen at least one case where people tried to use Wikipedia to further a grievance, and in that case killing the content was entirely correct: subsequent investigation showed that it bore only the most tenuous relationship to the truth.
I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right now. People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why? It's only been a couple of days. It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing; in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something else :-) Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:51:11 -0500, you wrote:
Foundations with their assets don't close overnight. Maybe the website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation (board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a few days before an injunction was issued. That said, a replacement site could be put up within hours. The community might become somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which that is actually a good thing. In the long run a peer-to-peer system is probably what's best for Wikipedia.
Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up. Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that? Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money chugging down the drain :-) But seriously...
The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed irrevocably.
I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation, so I can't comment. Was h2g2 released under a free license?
No, it was a community of people drawn to the idea of an online encyclopaedia inspired by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was started by Douglas Adams in 1999, and a lot of the people who joined were fans, and also committed to the idea of contributing to the Guide (much like Wikipedia). All rights were released to the project, but being British in origin nobody cared over much that the license was not open. The biggest difference between h2g2 and WP for me is that on H2G2 an article had to go through peer review before it became part of the "edited guide". You could have as many articles as you liked, but only the ones which had been vetted by the community were formally endorsed. Otherwise many common themes - user spaces, Talk threads on every article, an aim to be accurate. Differences too - lighter tone, no anonymous posting.
Anyway, TDV was Adams' company and it went titsup.com during the .com crash. The project was offline for well over a month (it seemed like forever at the time) and when it came back a lot of the old contributors had gone.
Anyway, the point is, Wikipedia is the content, but also the community. Would it survive the period required to assemble new hosting hardware, a backer for the necessary infrastructure and so on, if the foundation was shut down by a court injunction?
In the end I think that having the project matters more than having any one individual article at any one time. Guy (JzG)
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:51:11 -0500, you wrote:
Foundations with their assets don't close overnight. Maybe the website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation (board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a few days before an injunction was issued. That said, a replacement site could be put up within hours. The community might become somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which that is actually a good thing. In the long run a peer-to-peer system is probably what's best for Wikipedia.
Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up. Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that? Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money chugging down the drain :-) But seriously...
C'mon now, even Enron didn't close "overnight", and I would think the Wikimedia foundation has much more accurate books than they do. If the foundation ran out of money, it would be clear a long time beforehand. And even if they did run out of money, there are lots of servers that could be sold and/or used as collateral for loans to pay for the bandwidth while the encyclopedia gets copied to others and the "no, we're really broke, send us money or we disappear" message goes out).
The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed irrevocably.
I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation, so I can't comment. Was h2g2 released under a free license?
No, it was a community of people drawn to the idea of an online encyclopaedia inspired by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was started by Douglas Adams in 1999, and a lot of the people who joined were fans, and also committed to the idea of contributing to the Guide (much like Wikipedia). All rights were released to the project, but being British in origin nobody cared over much that the license was not open. The biggest difference between h2g2 and WP for me is that on H2G2 an article had to go through peer review before it became part of the "edited guide". You could have as many articles as you liked, but only the ones which had been vetted by the community were formally endorsed. Otherwise many common themes - user spaces, Talk threads on every article, an aim to be accurate. Differences too
- lighter tone, no anonymous posting.
Anyway, TDV was Adams' company and it went titsup.com during the .com crash. The project was offline for well over a month (it seemed like forever at the time) and when it came back a lot of the old contributors had gone.
Anyway, the point is, Wikipedia is the content, but also the community. Would it survive the period required to assemble new hosting hardware, a backer for the necessary infrastructure and so on, if the foundation was shut down by a court injunction?
In the end I think that having the project matters more than having any one individual article at any one time. Guy (JzG)
I'd be so bold as to say that having the project is a negative in and of itself. We don't have an "Internet Foundation" where anyone can call to get some allegedly biased website shut down, do we?
I suppose in the short term the foundation is a useful entity to collect money from the public to buy some servers and pay for the bandwidth. So far the rest hasn't really panned out. In theory I suppose some of the money could be used to hire people to create content, but instead that extra money is being used to hire someone to delete content.
Anthony
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:06:20 -0500, you wrote:
Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up. Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that? Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money chugging down the drain :-) But seriously...
C'mon now, even Enron didn't close "overnight", and I would think the Wikimedia foundation has much more accurate books than they do. If the foundation ran out of money, it would be clear a long time beforehand. And even if they did run out of money, there are lots of servers that could be sold and/or used as collateral for loans to pay for the bandwidth while the encyclopedia gets copied to others and the "no, we're really broke, send us money or we disappear" message goes out).
You're rather missing the point, I think. There are circumstances under which the foundation could be shut down, and lawyers do exist, so precautionary temporary blanking or deletion of disputed content is not unreasonable.
The total resources devoted to ass-covering are negligible as a proportion of the total costs, and the proportion of articles affected is also negligible.
I think the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion. Guy (JzG)
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:06:20 -0500, you wrote:
Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up. Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that? Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money chugging down the drain :-) But seriously...
C'mon now, even Enron didn't close "overnight", and I would think the Wikimedia foundation has much more accurate books than they do. If the foundation ran out of money, it would be clear a long time beforehand. And even if they did run out of money, there are lots of servers that could be sold and/or used as collateral for loans to pay for the bandwidth while the encyclopedia gets copied to others and the "no, we're really broke, send us money or we disappear" message goes out).
You're rather missing the point, I think. There are circumstances under which the foundation could be shut down, and lawyers do exist, so precautionary temporary blanking or deletion of disputed content is not unreasonable.
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
If the foundation is facing a legitimate legal threat, then sure, it needs to comply. Jimmy seemed to suggest that wasn't always the case, in fact he said that most of the content was not libelous.
And finally, I don't have any problem with blanking disputed content. Anyone has the power and in many cases the responsibility to do that.
The total resources devoted to ass-covering are negligible as a proportion of the total costs, and the proportion of articles affected is also negligible.
I think the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion. Guy (JzG)
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight. Hopefully none of them will happen :)
Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over there are coming with me".
Steve
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Steve Bennett stated for the record:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight. Hopefully none of them will happen :)
Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over there are coming with me".
Steve
"Yessir. Right away, sir! Uh, which servers in particular, sir? This warrant specifies the Wikipedia servers, and some of these machines host other sites."
But both by and large you are right.
- -- Sean Barrett | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool. sean@epoptic.org |
Steve Bennett stated for the record:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight. Hopefully none of them will happen :)
Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over there are coming with me".
This might be a violation of WP:BEANS, but...
If that happened, this would be my understanding of the fallback plan:
#A quick topic change on #wikipedia (and #wikipedia-overflow ), along with a post by one of the Foundation members (unless the policeman also had a gag order, which is possible) #A massive influx of people to http://wikiinfo.org (or whatever it's called - the fork run by one of our Arbitrators) #Various wiki pages set up there to discuss new hosting, funding, etc.
#wikipedia could not be taken down unless the policeman was able to get a warrant to take down the entire freenode network, which would set up such massive shock waves that the removal of Wikipedia would be a small thing - freenode hosts a *lot* of projects.
While it might be possible to do a coordinated takedown of the main editable forks of Wikipedia, this would be considerably more trouble.
Also, don't we have database master replication across international borders, specifically, for the toolserver? If we're replicating the database from Florida to Germany, even if the servers in St. Petersberg were taken down, wouldn't the toolserver still work? And as some of our admins are not residents of the USA, couldn't they still work with the remaining servers to reconstruct a non-US based system? Or are we considering Interpol's involvement, and a coordinated set of policemen in multiple countries?
Just pointing this out, Jesse Weinstein
This just came to my mind: If the policemen removes the servers, doesn't they break the GFDL?
On 3/12/06, Jesse W jessw@netwood.net wrote:
Steve Bennett stated for the record:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight. Hopefully none of them will happen :)
Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over there are coming with me".
This might be a violation of WP:BEANS, but...
If that happened, this would be my understanding of the fallback plan:
#A quick topic change on #wikipedia (and #wikipedia-overflow ), along with a post by one of the Foundation members (unless the policeman also had a gag order, which is possible) #A massive influx of people to http://wikiinfo.org (or whatever it's called - the fork run by one of our Arbitrators) #Various wiki pages set up there to discuss new hosting, funding, etc.
#wikipedia could not be taken down unless the policeman was able to get a warrant to take down the entire freenode network, which would set up such massive shock waves that the removal of Wikipedia would be a small thing - freenode hosts a *lot* of projects.
While it might be possible to do a coordinated takedown of the main editable forks of Wikipedia, this would be considerably more trouble.
Also, don't we have database master replication across international borders, specifically, for the toolserver? If we're replicating the database from Florida to Germany, even if the servers in St. Petersberg were taken down, wouldn't the toolserver still work? And as some of our admins are not residents of the USA, couldn't they still work with the remaining servers to reconstruct a non-US based system? Or are we considering Interpol's involvement, and a coordinated set of policemen in multiple countries?
Just pointing this out, Jesse Weinstein
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
G'day Carl,
This just came to my mind: If the policemen removes the servers, doesn't they break the GFDL?
I think, in the hypothetical case of a police invasion of Wikimedia headquarters, the *last* thing on those cops' minds would be whether or not a few mirrors are linking to our page histories for GFDL purposes.
Cheers,
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse
On 3/12/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight. Hopefully none of them will happen :)
Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over there are coming with me".
Steve
The police are part of the executive branch of the government.
Anthony
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The police are part of the executive branch of the government.
Yes, but, for the warrent to allow the police to do the "this server's coming with me" routine, you must surely also have pissed off the judicial branch?
At least, that's how I *hope* it'd work, and how it'd work in the UK AFAIK.
-- Sam
On 13/03/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, but, for the warrent to allow the police to do the "this server's coming with me" routine, you must surely also have pissed off the judicial branch?
At least, that's how I *hope* it'd work, and how it'd work in the UK AFAIK.
The judicial branch, in the UK, would merely have to be satisfied that they got pissed off for a sufficiently important reason...
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 3/13/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/03/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, but, for the warrent to allow the police to do the "this server's coming with me" routine, you must surely also have pissed off the judicial branch?
At least, that's how I *hope* it'd work, and how it'd work in the UK AFAIK.
The judicial branch, in the UK, would merely have to be satisfied that they got pissed off for a sufficiently important reason...
Yes, yes, that's what I was trying to say...
-- Sam
On 3/13/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The police are part of the executive branch of the government.
Yes, but, for the warrent to allow the police to do the "this server's coming with me" routine, you must surely also have pissed off the judicial branch?
At least, that's how I *hope* it'd work, and how it'd work in the UK AFAIK.
Ha ha ha ha ha....
* [[Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service]] * [[Operation Sundevil]] * [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] * [[USA PATRIOT Act]] * [[DCMA]] * [[NSA warrantless surveillance controversy]] * [[Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act]]
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right now. People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why? It's only been a couple of days. It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing; in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something else :-)
Or, in the Justin Berry case, go out and write an article *on this topic*. It needs to be rewritten. There's nothing stopping people from doing it, and I would love to have a great article written quickly by trusted Wikipedians.
G'day Steve,
My only question is...who *is* Danny, and why is he blessed with surnamelessless?
If I recall correctly, he is indeed cursed with a real, live, honest-to-goodness surname.
At least, he introduces himself as "Danny Isme".
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse
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.
Anthony
Whoa. Despotic, you say?
Given the history of Wikipedia, Jimbo's been the most hands-off project leader in the history of the Internet. Indeed, the community has been left to decide almost everything for itself; and this has proved, in almost all cases, to be the right thing to do.
Perhaps some of the current problems, such as the userbox nonsense and general culture wars, are partly due to this -- without continual intervention from above, many people may be unaware, or have forgotten, that the Wikimedia Foundation and its corporate structure even exists (and, in some cases, may also have forgotten about the whole "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" mission thing).
Somebody's got to deal with these problems when they happen. Who would you prefer?
-- Neil
G'day Neil,
Given the history of Wikipedia, Jimbo's been the most hands-off project leader in the history of the Internet. Indeed, the community has been left to decide almost everything for itself; and this has proved, in almost all cases, to be the right thing to do.
Perhaps some of the current problems, such as the userbox nonsense and general culture wars, are partly due to this -- without continual intervention from above, many people may be unaware, or have forgotten, that the Wikimedia Foundation and its corporate structure even exists (and, in some cases, may also have forgotten about the whole "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" mission thing).
I recall a user --- but not, alas, his name --- who, in the midst of the userbox thing, suddenly leapt out of his chair with shock and cried out, "who the heck is this Jimbo person?"
Many noble Wikipedians took on the task of educating this poor fellow, who, upon enlightenment, was horrified to discover that he had been working for a tyrannical dictatorship all this time, and immediately undertook to convince various admins, and Jimbo himself, to pattern the website with notices to the effect of "WARNING! IF YOU EDIT HERE, YOU HATE FREEDOM!" Electroshock treatment starts next Tuesday.
Wikipedia has not grown so big that one needs to be hands-off, or ultra-respectful of policy, or abandon age-old techniques of editing and interacting. However, it *has* grown so big that some users can be here for months without even knowing that we're an encyclopaedia, let alone some of the fine detail. It would be nice if there were any easier way to educate them.
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse
Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Neil,
Given the history of Wikipedia, Jimbo's been the most hands-off project leader in the history of the Internet. Indeed, the community has been left to decide almost everything for itself; and this has proved, in almost all cases, to be the right thing to do.
Perhaps some of the current problems, such as the userbox nonsense and general culture wars, are partly due to this -- without continual intervention from above, many people may be unaware, or have forgotten, that the Wikimedia Foundation and its corporate structure even exists (and, in some cases, may also have forgotten about the whole "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" mission thing).
I recall a user --- but not, alas, his name --- who, in the midst of the userbox thing, suddenly leapt out of his chair with shock and cried out, "who the heck is this Jimbo person?"
Many noble Wikipedians took on the task of educating this poor fellow, who, upon enlightenment, was horrified to discover that he had been working for a tyrannical dictatorship all this time, and immediately undertook to convince various admins, and Jimbo himself, to pattern the website with notices to the effect of "WARNING! IF YOU EDIT HERE, YOU HATE FREEDOM!" Electroshock treatment starts next Tuesday.
That's not the one who asked "What is Wikipedia running on? ASP? Oracle? Slashdot.org says that MySQL is slow..."
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 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
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.
Well, looking back, it actually isn't quite as severe as I thought. Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=&user=Jim... there does seem to be a jump in relatively recent admin actions. And there's the whole arbcom election fiasco and the previous appointment of Kelly Martin. There's the "experiment" taking away the ability for users that aren't logged in from creating pages. There's the banning of anonymous proxies. And of course now there's the whole office action situation.
But looking back you seem to have been at least somewhat held back in dealing with the situations, moreso than my apparently faulty memory led me to believe.
Anthony
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Mostly, when people call us on the phone with a beef, quiet upset, they are not complaining about a neutral presentation of the facts. They are upset because someone has written a one-sided hack job. Often it is *not* libel, but just bad writing.
What should we do in such a case? Well, our fundamental goal *as a community* is to write a really great encyclopedia. Being jerks toward people who have their feelings hurt *and* who know nothing about how we operate, does not strike me as a very useful way to respond.
Rather, we should respond quickly and politely to their concerns, including in most cases, *blanking or deleting the article* and *starting over*, being *extremely* careful as a community to get all the facts right, to strike a fair and neutral tone, and to cite sources even more extensively than normal.
I was with you until this last paragraph, which seems to be so far off the mark as to be ludicrous.
What we should do, of course, is what we always do. Someone should tell us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article. Blanking and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.
I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to get staff to complain to us. Some Chinese leader? Sure, criticize him. But Harry Reid? Hands off!
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to get staff to complain to us. Some Chinese leader? Sure, criticize him. But Harry Reid? Hands off!
Not at all. Harry Reid? Edit it.
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to get staff to complain to us. Some Chinese leader? Sure, criticize him. But Harry Reid? Hands off!
Not at all. Harry Reid? Edit it.
Um no. It was formaly protected under WP:OFFICE and was never unprotected by them.
That is why I suspected that Danny may forget about cases (hardly uncommon admins offen forget what they have protected).
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to get staff to complain to us. Some Chinese leader? Sure, criticize him. But Harry Reid? Hands off!
Not at all. Harry Reid? Edit it.
Um no. It was formaly protected under WP:OFFICE and was never unprotected by them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE
"Current pages under protection
The following pages are currently under OFFICE protection
* Jack Thompson (attorney) Danny 20:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
All others may be unprotected."
On 3/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Um no. It was formaly protected under WP:OFFICE and was never unprotected by them.
That is why I suspected that Danny may forget about cases (hardly uncommon admins offen forget what they have protected).
So if you think he's forgotten about it (entirely possible), why not ask him (since he's around pretty much all the time) rather than removing a [[WP:OFFICE]] protection without discussion? If he has forgotten I expect it wouldn't hurt to wait a short period of time longer for a "yes, go ahead".
-Kat
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking "Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast upward. For there you have been and there you will always be." - Leonardo da Vinci
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
What we should do, of course, is what we always do. Someone should tell us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article. Blanking and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.
That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:
1. Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X 2. X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague "errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse off it if the article is not deleted instantly. 3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's lawyers?
The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.
I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to get staff to complain to us.
Sure, but that's life. There is a lot of stuff to write about in Wikipedia. If some articles about living people with lawyers are kept a bit shorter and less comprehensive, well it's not a great loss, in perspective...
Steve
Time for another fund raize? the foundation needs a stable of loyars. :)
On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
What we should do, of course, is what we always do. Someone should tell us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article. Blanking and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.
That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:
- Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X
- X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague
"errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse off it if the article is not deleted instantly. 3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's lawyers?
The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.
I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to get staff to complain to us.
Sure, but that's life. There is a lot of stuff to write about in Wikipedia. If some articles about living people with lawyers are kept a bit shorter and less comprehensive, well it's not a great loss, in perspective...
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/11/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
What we should do, of course, is what we always do. Someone should tell us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article. Blanking and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.
That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:
- Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X
- X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague
"errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse off it if the article is not deleted instantly. 3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's lawyers?
The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.
Jimmy claims that legal threats are rarely the issue, though, so this line of reasoning doesn't apply. If legal issues are involved, I'm willing to give more deference, at least long enough for the Foundation to be able to investigate further. But that doesn't seem to be the problem here.
-Mark
G'day Jimmy,
<many snips />
Mostly, when people call us on the phone with a beef, quiet upset, they are not complaining about a neutral presentation of the facts. They are upset because someone has written a one-sided hack job. Often it is *not* libel, but just bad writing.
Indeed. It's very easy to *say* "we're just in beta, some articles will be crap", but when someone is being defamed *right now* I'm sure they wouldn't find it at all easy to stand by for ~ five years and let the Wiki Way do its magic ...
Heck, just ask those editors who've edited articles about themselves, like Chip Berlet, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, or ... well ... Jimbo Wales. It's absurd to stand back and say "sure, the article was offensive, but what about community consensus?!"
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse