Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo -------------------
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
Sarah
On 15/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
As he's already said, he simply didn't consider the possibility that this could have happened without anyone at the foundation knowing. Perhaps if the foundation were more transparent more often, he would have thought it odd that they hadn't said anything, but it's pretty normal for the foundation to know stuff without mentioning it to us.
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told Jimbo - what would Jimbo have done differently?
Giacomo
On Dec 15, 2007 10:40 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
As he's already said, he simply didn't consider the possibility that this could have happened without anyone at the foundation knowing. Perhaps if the foundation were more transparent more often, he would have thought it odd that they hadn't said anything, but it's pretty normal for the foundation to know stuff without mentioning it to us.
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On Dec 15, 2007 5:45 PM, G MZ solebaciato@googlemail.com wrote:
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told Jimbo
- what would Jimbo have done differently?
He'd have had more time to have his PR people come up with a response. That's about it.
A: I cannot believe Jimbo had PR people, if he does considering some of the "cock ups" that are made he should either fire them or listen to them more.
B: I'm not 100% sure about all this story anyway - it's all too odd and too many things are not adding up at all. Am I the only person who has noticed the difference between the police mug shot and the glamorous blond who worked for Wikipedia. Has the woman had facial surgery? So I could forgive someone for not making the connection but not for failing to make basic checks and asking for references - people do that to the women who clean their floors in offices, yet alone handle the money. So I'm still thinking about this.
Giacomo
On Dec 16, 2007 3:28 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Dec 15, 2007 5:45 PM, G MZ solebaciato@googlemail.com wrote:
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told
Jimbo
- what would Jimbo have done differently?
He'd have had more time to have his PR people come up with a response. That's about it.
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B: I'm not 100% sure about all this story anyway - it's all too odd and too many things are not adding up at all. Am I the only person who has noticed the difference between the police mug shot and the glamorous blond who worked for Wikipedia. Has the woman had facial surgery? So I could forgive someone for not making the connection but not for failing to make basic checks and asking for references - people do that to the women who clean their floors in offices, yet alone handle the money. So I'm still thinking about this.
I think she was just wearing make up in the posed shot for Wikimedia and not in the mug shot. The lighting is also a little different. However, you're right that lots of things don't add up - that's because we don't have all the pieces since the WMF have been signing confidentiality agreements with no regard for the community - there's a big difference between a company signing such agreements and a charity with an almost exclusively volunteer workforce doing so.
On 17/12/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
However, you're right that lots of things don't add up - that's because we don't have all the pieces since the WMF have been signing confidentiality agreements with no regard for the community - there's a big difference between a company signing such agreements and a charity with an almost exclusively volunteer workforce doing so.
I bow to your superior knowledge of US employment law and the legal landscape thereof. Oh, wait.
- d.
On 17/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/12/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
However, you're right that lots of things don't add up - that's because we don't have all the pieces since the WMF have been signing confidentiality agreements with no regard for the community - there's a big difference between a company signing such agreements and a charity with an almost exclusively volunteer workforce doing so.
I bow to your superior knowledge of US employment law and the legal landscape thereof. Oh, wait.
There is no "legal landscape", we're talking about voluntary confidentiality agreements. It's up to the foundation whether they sign them or not.
Dalton, perhaps you could consider leaving off the direct bickering with the general counsel about legal issues (or present your credentials and... a cogent argument)? My experience has been that confidentiality agreements are not unusual for senior officers resigning under a cloud but not one that forces legal disclosure. Additionally, even in the absence of a confidentiality agreement there are limits to what employers can disclosure about former employees and the circumstances of termination. (IANAL, however).
I think the WMF folks have been very forthcoming, within limits outside of their control at the moment, and there is no purpose to badgering them for further information (or implying elements of a conspiracy to keep information from you). It is more productive to suggest what tools and structures ought to be in place going forward, perhaps you can focus your intellect on that.
On Dec 17, 2007 11:10 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/12/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
However, you're right that lots of things don't add up - that's because we don't have all the pieces since the WMF have been signing confidentiality agreements with no regard for the community - there's a big difference between a company signing such agreements and a charity with an almost exclusively volunteer workforce doing so.
I bow to your superior knowledge of US employment law and the legal landscape thereof. Oh, wait.
There is no "legal landscape", we're talking about voluntary confidentiality agreements. It's up to the foundation whether they sign them or not.
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On Dec 17, 2007 11:17 AM, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Dalton, perhaps you could consider leaving off the direct bickering with the general counsel about legal issues (or present your credentials and... a cogent argument)? My experience has been that confidentiality agreements are not unusual for senior officers resigning under a cloud but not one that forces legal disclosure. Additionally, even in the absence of a confidentiality agreement there are limits to what employers can disclosure about former employees and the circumstances of termination. (IANAL, however).
I think the WMF folks have been very forthcoming, within limits outside of their control at the moment, and there is no purpose to badgering them for further information (or implying elements of a conspiracy to keep information from you). It is more productive to suggest what tools and structures ought to be in place going forward, perhaps you can focus your intellect on that.
I haven't even seen any evidence that there was a confidentiality agreement in the first place.
Johnleemk
On 17/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Dalton, perhaps you could consider leaving off the direct bickering with the general counsel about legal issues (or present your credentials and... a cogent argument)? My experience has been that confidentiality agreements are not unusual for senior officers resigning under a cloud but not one that forces legal disclosure. Additionally, even in the absence of a confidentiality agreement there are limits to what employers can disclosure about former employees and the circumstances of termination. (IANAL, however).
Good work completely ignoring my point... I agree it's not unusual for profit making companies. If WMF was a standard company, there would be no-one with any real interest in the facts of the case outside the foundation, there would just be the media and general public. However, the WMF is not a standard company, it has hordes of volunteers with a very real interest is what goes on inside the foundation. Keeping things from those volunteers is a serious matter and requires a much better reason than "that's what everyone else does".
There may well be other restrictions on disclosure, but people in the foundation have been using confidentiality agreements as their reason for not revealing the facts of this case, so I think it's safe to assume they could have at least disclosed a few more details had they not signed the agreement.
As for things that can be put in place in the future - I do have one idea, I just need to do a little research to work out if it's feasible, and if it is, I'll start a new thread proposing it.
On 12/17/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
B: I'm not 100% sure about all this story anyway - it's all too odd and
too
many things are not adding up at all. Am I the only person who has noticed the difference between the police mug shot and the glamorous blond who worked for Wikipedia. Has the woman had facial surgery? So I could forgive someone for not making the connection but not for failing to make basic checks and asking for references - people do that to the women who clean their floors in offices, yet alone handle the money. So I'm still thinking about this.
I think she was just wearing make up in the posed shot for Wikimedia and not in the mug shot. The lighting is also a little different. However, you're right that lots of things don't add up - that's because we don't have all the pieces since the WMF have been signing confidentiality agreements with no regard for the community - there's a big difference between a company signing such agreements and a charity with an almost exclusively volunteer workforce doing so.
Utter bullshit. Sorry about the language.
What we need to know is that the Foundation does its work without disruption to facilitiating the consturcion and maintenance of hte infrastrucute to enable the community to continue doint the work.
That is all the community has an interest in, when all is said and done. That has never been at risk. And shan't be. I think the community has zero interest in what Carolyn Doran did in her private life, except to the point where it may have impacted her abilities to fulfil the matters she was payed for. I know for a fact I don't care if she was a serial murderer, as long as the wikimedia projects were not adversely affected, and she did it on her own time.
Well, the last bit is a bit strong, but I think needs to be to drive home the separation between staff and Trustees, and the community.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On Dec 17, 2007 3:16 AM, G MZ solebaciato@googlemail.com wrote:
A: I cannot believe Jimbo had PR people, if he does considering some of the "cock ups" that are made he should either fire them or listen to them more.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-December/036070.html
B: I'm not 100% sure about all this story anyway - it's all too odd and too many things are not adding up at all.
I find parts of it very strange, but the basic facts seem to check out.
G MZ wrote:
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told Jimbo
- what would Jimbo have done differently?
We could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, rather than the Register. I don't like having forums that have traditionally been considered irrationally critical of Wikipedia turn out to be the best place to go to find out about Wikipedia's inner workings. It boosts the credibility of those forums at the expense of our own.
On Dec 16, 2007 2:00 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
G MZ wrote:
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told Jimbo
- what would Jimbo have done differently?
We could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, rather than the Register. I don't like having forums that have traditionally been considered irrationally critical of Wikipedia turn out to be the best place to go to find out about Wikipedia's inner workings. It boosts the credibility of those forums at the expense of our own.
Well, first of all, I don't think we could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, since he is apparently restricted by a confidentiality agreement and/or some other legal constraints not to talk about it. Secondly, wouldn't it be better for Christiano to just tell us directly? Spin doesn't help us, whether it's Jimbo's positive spin or the Register's negative spin.
On 12/16/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Well, first of all, I don't think we could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, since he is apparently restricted by a confidentiality agreement and/or some other legal constraints not to talk about it. Secondly, wouldn't it be better for Christiano to just tell us directly? Spin doesn't help us, whether it's Jimbo's positive spin or the Register's negative spin.
20/20 hindsight, (or perhaps better as a suggestion for the future) would it be better than complete silence to just simply warn people openly on the list that there is generic knowledge that an unnamed muckraking journalist (no need to mention that it is the Register, the Sun or whatever or Orlowski or Metz or Finkelstein or whatever), is making a more concerted than usual effort to scoop up something unsavoury, and brace up for flying nappy contents, if they are lucky enough their spade will toss it right on the fan belt.
That is to say, no specific information, but just a heads up something is in the works. People seem to express the feeling that they would have appreciated a forewarning.
Personally I am conflicted on whether that would have helped. Without questioning the good faith of those who claim they would have liked a warning beforehand, I have to question whether they would have had the calmness to appreciate such a warning and restrain themselves from near panicky demands to know everything and everybody involved and preferably yesterday or before.
If you do decide in the light of experiences with this news story to begin giving such warnings, please be sure to phrase it in a way which calls for calm and making clear you don't know if anything will come of said investigations, but for the community to just wait and see if it turns out to be a false alarm or not.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 17/12/2007, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
20/20 hindsight, (or perhaps better as a suggestion for the future) would it be better than complete silence to just simply warn people openly on the list that there is generic knowledge that an unnamed muckraking journalist (no need to mention that it is the Register, the Sun or whatever or Orlowski or Metz or Finkelstein or whatever), is making a more concerted than usual effort to scoop up something unsavoury, and brace up for flying nappy contents, if they are lucky enough their spade will toss it right on the fan belt.
I don't even need to know if he is to say it's likely that Mr Metz has ever more revelations for us in the pipeline. I can hardly wait.
- d.
Anthony wrote:
Well, first of all, I don't think we could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, since he is apparently restricted by a confidentiality agreement and/or some other legal constraints not to talk about it. Secondly, wouldn't it be better for Christiano to just tell us directly? Spin doesn't help us, whether it's Jimbo's positive spin or the Register's negative spin.
Well, maybe not Jimbo then, but having almost _anyone_ on the "inside" be the one to break something like this to the public would be better than having it be the Register or Wikipedia Review or somesuch.
IMO it's not so much a question of spin as it is a question of getting the whole story out at once. That way there's less room for speculation, which usually tends toward worst-case scenarios, and it improves our credibility while depriving critics of an opportunity to lord it over us. Even if the whole story really _is_ a "worst case scenario", at least we'd get credit for coming clean on it.
Also perhaps this is a sign that Jimbo and the board need to reconsider the confidentiality agreements that they've signed onto, if something like that was what was preventing them from discussing matters that are already out in the public record anyway.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Well, maybe not Jimbo then, but having almost _anyone_ on the "inside" be the one to break something like this to the public would be better than having it be the Register or Wikipedia Review or somesuch.
IMO it's not so much a question of spin as it is a question of getting the whole story out at once. That way there's less room for speculation, which usually tends toward worst-case scenarios, and it improves our credibility while depriving critics of an opportunity to lord it over us. Even if the whole story really _is_ a "worst case scenario", at least we'd get credit for coming clean on it.
Also perhaps this is a sign that Jimbo and the board need to reconsider the confidentiality agreements that they've signed onto, if something like that was what was preventing them from discussing matters that are already out in the public record anyway.
I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was published.
Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that.
To all, Can we please get back to writing an encyclopedia? Pounding Jimbo, the foundation, each other or myself wont solve anything at this point. - White Cat
On Dec 17, 2007 4:39 AM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Well, maybe not Jimbo then, but having almost _anyone_ on the "inside" be the one to break something like this to the public would be better than having it be the Register or Wikipedia Review or somesuch.
IMO it's not so much a question of spin as it is a question of getting the whole story out at once. That way there's less room for speculation, which usually tends toward worst-case scenarios, and it improves our credibility while depriving critics of an opportunity to lord it over us. Even if the whole story really _is_ a "worst case scenario", at least we'd get credit for coming clean on it.
Also perhaps this is a sign that Jimbo and the board need to reconsider the confidentiality agreements that they've signed onto, if something like that was what was preventing them from discussing matters that are already out in the public record anyway.
I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was published.
Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that.
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On Dec 16, 2007 9:51 PM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
To all, Can we please get back to writing an encyclopedia? Pounding Jimbo, the foundation, each other or myself wont solve anything at this point. - White Cat
It'd be an interesting experiment to shut down the mailing lists for a few days, and see what happens. I'm not sure the encyclopedia would benefit so much, but the world in general probably would.
In any case, if you want to get back to writing an encyclopedia, you're free to do so. No one's forcing you to read this.
I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was published.
Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that.
When I tried to remind people of that, Mike Godwin told me I was talking nonsense... I suggest you get your stories straight...
On 12/17/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was published.
Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that.
When I tried to remind people of that, Mike Godwin told me I was talking nonsense... I suggest you get your stories straight...
You said nothing of that level of specifity. Mike Godwin told you you had omitted all the nuances of the actual case, which Jimbo has reiterated in a specific way. You cannot omit context and get away with seeming to refute specific points. You either address the specifics or do not have any right to expect anyone to engage in refuting your malformed attempts to frame the argument as something which it is not.
Speak to the specifics and do not mischaracterize what other people have said or do not speak at all. Really.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 17/12/2007, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/17/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was published.
Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that.
When I tried to remind people of that, Mike Godwin told me I was talking nonsense... I suggest you get your stories straight...
You said nothing of that level of specifity. Mike Godwin told you you had omitted all the nuances of the actual case, which Jimbo has reiterated in a specific way. You cannot omit context and get away with seeming to refute specific points. You either address the specifics or do not have any right to expect anyone to engage in refuting your malformed attempts to frame the argument as something which it is not.
Speak to the specifics and do not mischaracterize what other people have said or do not speak at all. Really.
Of what nuances do you speak? Either the WMF knew about Doran's criminal record before being approached by The Register, or they didn't, there are no nuances. Yes, they could have known about some parts but not others, but that's an irrelevant point - either they knew about the bits that make her unsuitable for the position, or they didn't.
On 12/17/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
You said nothing of that level of specifity. Mike Godwin told you you had omitted all the nuances of the actual case, which Jimbo has reiterated in a specific way. You cannot omit context and get away with seeming to refute specific points. You either address the specifics or do not have any right to expect anyone to engage in refuting your malformed attempts to frame the argument as something which it is not.
Speak to the specifics and do not mischaracterize what other people have said or do not speak at all. Really.
Of what nuances do you speak? Either the WMF knew about Doran's criminal record before being approached by The Register, or they didn't, there are no nuances. Yes, they could have known about some parts but not others, but that's an irrelevant point - either they knew about the bits that make her unsuitable for the position, or they didn't.
I think you are still missing quite a few possibilities, but I won't spell them out, because that would be counter-productive in the absolute. I will say though that there is no a priori reason why anyone should have expected that what The Register was digging for was specifically criminal in nature. They have in the past stooped to much more petty and irrelevant stuff.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
I'm sure that with hindsight, all the parties here would have acted differently, but finding that an employee is a convicted fellon is not something employers have to deal with on a regular basis. There's not a great deal to be earned from discussing this topic continually, all I would like to know is that the board have learned from this error and don't intend to make the same error (not doing a background check) in future, and perhaps, having information being passed to us by the Foundation rather than the press.
There probably does need to be an assumption that if there is anything elses hiding in the cupboard or has been swept under the carpet, it will eventually appear in El Reg or the other press and there is nothing to be gained from the Foundation not announcing news when they're aware of the issue. This silly but serious mistake made by a really rather small and probably overstretched office has been turned into something more sinister by the press and confused and troublemaking users here and elsewhere. Future incidents, of which I sincerely hope there are few, could be dealt with far more effectively if the initial announcement comes from the Foundation, the people responsible can take the blow on the chin and move on, instead of becoming embroiled with endless body blows from which it will take a considerable period for reputations and trust to recover for many.
On 16/12/2007, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
G MZ wrote:
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told
Jimbo
- what would Jimbo have done differently?
We could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, rather than the Register. I don't like having forums that have traditionally been considered irrationally critical of Wikipedia turn out to be the best place to go to find out about Wikipedia's inner workings. It boosts the credibility of those forums at the expense of our own.
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On Dec 16, 2007 2:00 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
G MZ wrote:
I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told
Jimbo
- what would Jimbo have done differently?
We could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, rather than the Register. I don't like having forums that have traditionally been considered irrationally critical of Wikipedia turn out to be the best place to go to find out about Wikipedia's inner workings. It boosts the credibility of those forums at the expense of our own.http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I'm not a lawyer, but I highly suspect there are legal reasons why Jimbo couldn't say anything, if he did have the opportunity to do so. If he responds after the Register article, then it's already public knowledge, and he can talk about it; if he responds before it, then he's potentially breaking confidentiality agreements and opening up the Foundation for a lawsuit.
On Dec 15, 2007 5:40 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
As he's already said, he simply didn't consider the possibility that this could have happened without anyone at the foundation knowing. Perhaps if the foundation were more transparent more often, he would have thought it odd that they hadn't said anything, but it's pretty normal for the foundation to know stuff without mentioning it to us.
I don't like "Ditto" posts, but I'll make an exception for this - strong ditto here. I would have done virtually the exact same thing. If I were friends or having a chat with someone from the foundation I might have brought the subject up in casual conversation ("Oh, speaking of that, is this why..."), but otherwise I wouldn't have gone and blown the whistle (so to speak), simply because considering how hushed the whole affair was, I would have figured the foundation already knew.
As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to bear for that.
Johnleemk
To be quite honest had I known in advance I would have dismissed it as incredible that such a high profile media organization could be so naive when hiring.
Giacomo
On Dec 15, 2007 11:03 PM, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 15, 2007 5:40 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe
that
the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell
the
boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
As he's already said, he simply didn't consider the possibility that this could have happened without anyone at the foundation knowing. Perhaps if the foundation were more transparent more often, he would have thought it odd that they hadn't said anything, but it's pretty normal for the foundation to know stuff without mentioning it to us.
I don't like "Ditto" posts, but I'll make an exception for this - strong ditto here. I would have done virtually the exact same thing. If I were friends or having a chat with someone from the foundation I might have brought the subject up in casual conversation ("Oh, speaking of that, is this why..."), but otherwise I wouldn't have gone and blown the whistle (so to speak), simply because considering how hushed the whole affair was, I would have figured the foundation already knew.
As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to bear for that.
Johnleemk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
John Lee wrote:
As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to bear for that.
I just have to say that I think it is utter and complete nonsense for anyone to ever accuse the Wikimedia Foundation in any serious way of being the kind of organization that tries to hush things up.
My goodness.
I have been involved in a lot of different kinds of organizations in my career, on the board of nonprofits, for-profits, worked in corporations, univerities, etc. And I have never seen any organization in the entire world, bar none, with a greater track record of absolute and nearly pathological transparency about everything.
--Jimbo
Jimbo wrote:
I have been involved in a lot of different kinds of organizations in my career, on the board of nonprofits, for-profits, worked in corporations, univerities, etc. And I have never seen any organization in the entire world, bar none, with a greater track record of absolute and nearly pathological transparency about everything.
Indeed. Only problem is, we're utterly addicted to it now, except the high is wearing off, so we crave more, More, **MORE**!! :-\
Aye, fair enough. Mostly.
I guess some of us are carrying over our "reflex", as it were, from Wikipedia, where, to paraphrase Newyorkbrad, the first place we find out stuff (such as Zscout's recent desysop by JHS and then resysop) is flaming Wikipedia Review (of all places!). Be nice if some of this "pathological transparency" was carried over to WP...but that's for another discussion.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:54:24 -0800 From: jwales@wikia.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.
John Lee wrote:
As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to bear for that.
I just have to say that I think it is utter and complete nonsense for anyone to ever accuse the Wikimedia Foundation in any serious way of being the kind of organization that tries to hush things up.
My goodness.
I have been involved in a lot of different kinds of organizations in my career, on the board of nonprofits, for-profits, worked in corporations, univerities, etc. And I have never seen any organization in the entire world, bar none, with a greater track record of absolute and nearly pathological transparency about everything.
--Jimbo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
_________________________________________________________________ Fancy some celeb spotting? https://www.celebmashup.com
By the way, isn't this more of a foundation-l matter? Wikien-l is cluttered enough without these long threads about matters that are a bit outside the subject of English Wikipedia.
On Dec 18, 2007 2:50 PM, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
By the way, isn't this more of a foundation-l matter? Wikien-l is cluttered enough without these long threads about matters that are a bit outside the subject of English Wikipedia.
Rest assured, we've had our parallel threads on foundation-l on this :p
Michael
On 15/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
Sarah
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
It is not the job of ordinary editors to inform Jimbo of these things. Suppose he had sent Jimbo a note, what would Jimbo have done, if anything? Something like this is the sort of thing you'd expect him to know anyway.
--Redrocketboy
Quoting SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com:
Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
--Jimbo
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
Sarah
I'm also perplexed not only by the failure to tell Jimbo but by the failure to tell anyone else. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up self-righteous snot but I would have first gone to Jimbo and if he had known would have demanded disclosure by the Foundation. Even if you thought that Jimbo already knew about it why not let others know as well?
I'm also perplexed not only by the failure to tell Jimbo but by the failure to tell anyone else. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up self-righteous snot but I would have first gone to Jimbo and if he had known would have demanded disclosure by the Foundation. Even if you thought that Jimbo already knew about it why not let others know as well?
That's a better question...
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Maybe it is just me, but this seems like a pretty good argument for reinstating them, or at minimum undeleting the template and letting people use them where they judge to be more or less necessary.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I know that many of the people I've talked to at my college prefer the spoiler warnings, but I'll admit that this is purely anecdotal and not statistically valid. It's hard to see how we'd acquire statistically significant data regarding Wikipedia policies among the general Wikipedia-reading public.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
- -- Martin C. Pyne Harvey Mudd College, Class of 2009 "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -- Salvor Hardin
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.
Peter
On Dec 15, 2007 8:18 PM, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.
Yes, there is. I was one of the few (perhaps the only one) advocating them at the time of the debate on spoiler warnings. For some reason it's a compromise palatable to neither side. I guess that's why they call it a compromise.
Johnleemk
Quoting John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com:
On Dec 15, 2007 8:18 PM, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.
Yes, there is. I was one of the few (perhaps the only one) advocating them at the time of the debate on spoiler warnings. For some reason it's a compromise palatable to neither side. I guess that's why they call it a compromise.
Well, I have no objection to some form of compromise (I consider the entire debate to be pretty silly itself) but why not do something like this?
On 16/12/2007, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 15, 2007 8:18 PM, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.
Yes, there is. I was one of the few (perhaps the only one) advocating them at the time of the debate on spoiler warnings. For some reason it's a compromise palatable to neither side. I guess that's why they call it a compromise.
user.css:
.wikiSpoilerStart, .wikiSpoilerEnd { display: block; }
That is about the long and short of a clean solution for those who care as far as I see it.
Peter
On Sat, 15 Dec 2007, John Lee wrote:
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.
Yes, there is. I was one of the few (perhaps the only one) advocating them at the time of the debate on spoiler warnings. For some reason it's a compromise palatable to neither side. I guess that's why they call it a compromise.
I'd support such a compromise.
I think it's mostly the opponents who rigidly opposed everything related to spoiler warnings. It could just have well been BADSITES, except that while there were a lot more spoiler warnings, they were a lot easier to search for to take out.
Quoting Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net:
On Sat, 15 Dec 2007, John Lee wrote:
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.
Yes, there is. I was one of the few (perhaps the only one) advocating them at the time of the debate on spoiler warnings. For some reason it's a compromise palatable to neither side. I guess that's why they call it a compromise.
I'd support such a compromise.
I think it's mostly the opponents who rigidly opposed everything related to spoiler warnings. It could just have well been BADSITES, except that while there were a lot more spoiler warnings, they were a lot easier to search for to take out.
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
In addition, {{spoiler}} is dead as a dead thing. We have {{currentfiction}}, which does a slightly better job of the same thing.
I suspect someone going through to put 45,000 fresh spoiler warnings, in whatever form, on articles is not going to fly.
That is: there's not a credible position to "compromise" with, despite much repetition.
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
I'm not sure how relevant the OR issue is. It is a serious point but it is arguably just a formatting decision.
In addition, {{spoiler}} is dead as a dead thing. We have {{currentfiction}}, which does a slightly better job of the same thing.
I suspect someone going through to put 45,000 fresh spoiler warnings, in whatever form, on articles is not going to fly.
Well, er not going to fly because people won't let them and had the template deleted.
That is: there's not a credible position to "compromise" with, despite much repetition.
This seems to sound almost like "We won. Why bother compromising?" Which I have to find less than compelling. I wonder how large would the public sample be before you'd agree that some sort of compromise?
I have to say I find the fact that the public seems to prefer the spoiler warnings along with Geni's points to be good arguments. Now, what data I'd really be interested in is whether people are using Wikipedia less due to the lack of spoiler warnings. Not sure how to test that at all.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
I suspect someone going through to put 45,000 fresh spoiler warnings, in whatever form, on articles is not going to fly.
Well, er not going to fly because people won't let them and had the template deleted.
Well, yeah. If there's a credible pro-spoiler position, it should probably be brought up there.
Or on the TFD for {{current fiction}}.
That is: there's not a credible position to "compromise" with, despite much repetition.
This seems to sound almost like "We won. Why bother compromising?" Which I have to find less than compelling.
I disagree that the fact that I don't find the repeated pleading for spoilers convincing is somehow evidence of bad faith on my part.
I wonder how large would the public sample be before you'd agree that some sort of compromise?
Personally? I'd need to see something of convincing methodology. A thread on the XKCD forums isn't it for me.
I have to say I find the fact that the public seems to prefer the spoiler warnings along with Geni's points to be good arguments. Now, what data I'd really be interested in is whether people are using Wikipedia less due to the lack of spoiler warnings. Not sure how to test that at all.
Well, yeah. But (as noted on said XKCD forum) people don't complain that Cliff's Notes doesn't contain spoiler warnings either. Wikipedia is far closer to Cliff's Notes in purview than IMDB.
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
I suspect someone going through to put 45,000 fresh spoiler warnings, in whatever form, on articles is not going to fly.
Well, er not going to fly because people won't let them and had the template deleted.
Well, yeah. If there's a credible pro-spoiler position, it should probably be brought up there.
Or on the TFD for {{current fiction}}.
That is: there's not a credible position to "compromise" with, despite much repetition.
This seems to sound almost like "We won. Why bother compromising?" Which I have to find less than compelling.
I disagree that the fact that I don't find the repeated pleading for spoilers convincing is somehow evidence of bad faith on my part.
I wonder how large would the public sample be before you'd agree that some sort of compromise?
Personally? I'd need to see something of convincing methodology. A thread on the XKCD forums isn't it for me.
That's understandable. I did earlier back propose a general poll advertised at the top of pages for readers. Would that satisfy you?
I have to say I find the fact that the public seems to prefer the spoiler warnings along with Geni's points to be good arguments. Now, what data I'd really be interested in is whether people are using Wikipedia less due to the lack of spoiler warnings. Not sure how to test that at all.
Well, yeah. But (as noted on said XKCD forum) people don't complain that Cliff's Notes doesn't contain spoiler warnings either. Wikipedia is far closer to Cliff's Notes in purview than IMDB.
That's a good point.
David, could you possibly explain what disadvantage you see to having spoiler tags where they are suppressed unless someone chooses otherwise?
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Personally? I'd need to see something of convincing methodology. A thread on the XKCD forums isn't it for me.
That's understandable. I did earlier back propose a general poll advertised at the top of pages for readers. Would that satisfy you?
That sort of thing would probably constitute actual data. I doubt I'd lift a finger to advocate putting a spoiler poll in the sitenotice, but if you think it can be swung ...
Well, yeah. But (as noted on said XKCD forum) people don't complain that Cliff's Notes doesn't contain spoiler warnings either. Wikipedia is far closer to Cliff's Notes in purview than IMDB.
That's a good point. David, could you possibly explain what disadvantage you see to having spoiler tags where they are suppressed unless someone chooses otherwise?
* Mainly that they're inappropriate to an encyclopedia. * Having spoiler warnings at all was warping actual article content - the issue originally raised as the reason for the original MFD for [[Template:Spoiler]]. * A plot summary warning that it contains plot elements is ridiculous.
Those are off the top of my head. The rest are in several metric tons of [[Wikipedia talk:Spoilers]].
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Personally? I'd need to see something of convincing methodology. A thread on the XKCD forums isn't it for me.
That's understandable. I did earlier back propose a general poll advertised at the top of pages for readers. Would that satisfy you?
That sort of thing would probably constitute actual data. I doubt I'd lift a finger to advocate putting a spoiler poll in the sitenotice, but if you think it can be swung ...
I'm very busy now, but I'll try to bring it up after the new year. In the meantime, I think I'm going to stop discussing this in detail until we have something resembling data (or until it becomes clear that we aren't going to get more data).
Well, yeah. But (as noted on said XKCD forum) people don't complain that Cliff's Notes doesn't contain spoiler warnings either. Wikipedia is far closer to Cliff's Notes in purview than IMDB.
That's a good point. David, could you possibly explain what disadvantage you see to having spoiler tags where they are suppressed unless someone chooses otherwise?
- Mainly that they're inappropriate to an encyclopedia.
This is an argument I find less than compelling. Are schools not encyclopedic? Is having articles on every two-bit band that meets [[WP:MUSIC]] appropriate to an encyclopedia? We all have our different intuitions about what an encyclopedia should have in it. One thing is clear: Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia.
- Having spoiler warnings at all was warping actual article content -
the issue originally raised as the reason for the original MFD for [[Template:Spoiler]].
Yes, people dividing articles into sections with and without spoiler warnings makes content harder to follow and leads to sections which are just plot regurgitation and other sections with little or no mention of plot. This is not a good thing.
- A plot summary warning that it contains plot elements is ridiculous.
Well, to me and you yes, but if the warnings are only visible as a matter of choice I don't see what we lose by letting people be a bit ridiculous.
Those are off the top of my head. The rest are in several metric tons of [[Wikipedia talk:Spoilers]].
I've never seen other than the above concerns and a few other concerns discussed in this thread (such as the OR issue) any explanation of why spoiler tags would be bad if they were as a default turned off.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
- Mainly that they're inappropriate to an encyclopedia.
This is an argument I find less than compelling. Are schools not encyclopedic? Is having articles on every two-bit band that meets [[WP:MUSIC]] appropriate to an encyclopedia? We all have our different intuitions about what an encyclopedia should have in it. One thing is clear: Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia.
What you're talking about there is range of coverage - spoiler warnings is a question of style of coverage. So whether a topic is covered at all doesn't address that.
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
- Mainly that they're inappropriate to an encyclopedia.
This is an argument I find less than compelling. Are schools not encyclopedic? Is having articles on every two-bit band that meets [[WP:MUSIC]] appropriate to an encyclopedia? We all have our different intuitions about what an encyclopedia should have in it. One thing is clear: Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia.
What you're talking about there is range of coverage - spoiler warnings is a question of style of coverage. So whether a topic is covered at all doesn't address that.
I guess I lied slightly when I said my last message was going to be my last on the topic. The point I was trying to make was the in general notions of what are appropriate to a traditional encyclopedia don't in general sit well with Wikipedia. (A traditional encyclopedia isn't editable by random people and doesn't have a history of every edit and an associated talk page etc.). And given that one thing we certainly do have is more detail about plots and such than a traditional encyclopedia. And as I see it at least, if we are going to have more content than a traditional encyclopedia all the more so we shouldn't be bound by the standard stylistic conventions and in fact we are not. For example, what standard encyclopedia has banner warnings about neutrality or {{fact}} tags. We should care about what will work best and what will help the project the most, not what EB or anyone else would do in this situation. We're beating EB by being Wikipedia. There's no need to handicap ourselves by slavishly imitating our predecessors.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
I guess I lied slightly when I said my last message was going to be my last on the topic. The point I was trying to make was the in general notions of what are appropriate to a traditional encyclopedia don't in general sit well with Wikipedia. (A traditional encyclopedia isn't editable by random people and doesn't have a history of every edit and an associated talk page etc.). And given that one thing we certainly do have is more detail about plots and such than a traditional encyclopedia. And as I see it at least, if we are going to have more content than a traditional encyclopedia all the more so we shouldn't be bound by the standard stylistic conventions and in fact we are not.
True.
For example, what standard encyclopedia has banner warnings about neutrality or {{fact}} tags.
Not a good example IMO - those are symptomatic of the fact that en.wikipedia.org is at any moment a live working draft, rather than a finished product. (Note that the Veropedia process is for an editor to go to Wikipedia and resolve all such concerns in the original Wikipedia version, i.e. fixing it, so that it's ready for their use.) Spoiler warnings aren't the same sort of thing.
We should care about what will work best and what will help the project the most, not what EB or anyone else would do in this situation. We're beating EB by being Wikipedia. There's no need to handicap ourselves by slavishly imitating our predecessors.
We do, however, aspire to be a reference work. Britannica doesn't have spoiler warnings because it's a reference work (species encyclopedia). Cliff's Notes doesn't have spoiler warnings because it's a reference work. I think that's more what I mean by saying spoiler warnings are unsuitable to an encyclopedia.
- d.
On 16/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
In addition, {{spoiler}} is dead as a dead thing. We have {{currentfiction}}, which does a slightly better job of the same thing.
Oh, and {{current fiction}} is currently up for deletion as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_Decem...
I suggest that the spoiler wars aren't going to be refought on wikien-l in any meaningful sense, no matter how often it's brought up here.
- d.
On 16/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I suspect someone going through to put 45,000 fresh spoiler warnings, in whatever form, on articles is not going to fly.
Going by the number of non content edits I see to articles I've edited It would be fairly trivial for that to happen.
On 17/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
Original research is *always* going to be in wikipedia. This is the most minor degree of original research I can imagine. Every article has generalisations based on sources, which are original research if you extend the definition to include determining which parts of a fiction related article are spoilers.
In addition, {{spoiler}} is dead as a dead thing. We have {{currentfiction}}, which does a slightly better job of the same thing.
Apparently it isn't, given the discussion so far in this thread. Its militant opponents may insist that there is no support for spoilers but results tend to speak for themselves.
I suspect someone going through to put 45,000 fresh spoiler warnings, in whatever form, on articles is not going to fly.
Deletionism is a fantastical philosophy! I suppose the owners of the articles won't respond well?
That is: there's not a credible position to "compromise" with, despite much repetition.
Compromise relies on people setting aside their personal difficulties in view of solutions. If noone is prepared to back down then things won't happen I guess. But it would be nice to have a compromise since it is pretty clear that the debate is not entirely one way everywhere.
Peter
On 16/12/2007, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
In addition, {{spoiler}} is dead as a dead thing. We have {{currentfiction}}, which does a slightly better job of the same thing.
Apparently it isn't, given the discussion so far in this thread. Its militant opponents may insist that there is no support for spoilers but results tend to speak for themselves.
Such as [[Template:Spoiler]] being deleted and [[Template:Current fiction]] looking like it's headed that way (I opined "neutral to mostly harmless" on that one - it was IMO relevant during the Harry Potter 7 release cycle, when you could reasonably expect there would be lots of fans very interested in the book who hadn't yet read it).
In addition, despite the repeated complaints about the deletion of the spoilers, shopping the issue to every possible venue in Wikipedia has consistently resulted in responses ranging from apathy to "go away." I suggest it's possible that the lack of action to save the spoilers is not so much the result of an oppressive conspiracy as that the actual community opinion is on the slightly negative side of "nobody cares." (And no, the same people bringing it up over and over on wikien-l doesn't IMO constitute the community or substantial portions of it caring.)
- d.
Quoting Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com:
On 17/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
Original research is *always* going to be in wikipedia. This is the most minor degree of original research I can imagine.
Institutionalizing OR is not a good idea at all.
Every article has generalisations based on sources, which are original research if you extend the definition to include determining which parts of a fiction related article are spoilers.
Er no. Please read [[WP:OR]]. Deciding that something is somehow a spoiler when no one else has noted is original research in a way that using sources is not. If people are making generalizations beyond sources then they are engaging in unacceptable original research.
On Sun, 16 Dec 2007, David Gerard wrote:
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous.
Look, I've rebutted this. I've rebutted it again. I've probably rebutted it about 20 times. I'm sick and tired of rebutting this.
I think anyone who comes into this and says "spoiler warnings cannot be on plot summaries because that's redundant" should search for all the previous times it's been said and pay some attention to the opposing arguments rather than acting as if they're merely stating a foregone conclusion.
On 17/12/2007, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sun, 16 Dec 2007, David Gerard wrote:
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous.
Look, I've rebutted this. I've rebutted it again. I've probably rebutted it about 20 times. I'm sick and tired of rebutting this.
No, you've claimed to have done so, in a completely unconvincing manner, and then shouting "I have proven it!"
If you had proven it, we'd still have spoiler warnings on articles.
One of the reasons I favoured keeping {{current fiction}} was in the hope it might quell the repeated complaints (in the face of widespread lack of interest) of spoiler fans that they wuz robbed - since it couldn't possibly be that they were wrong - though the evidence seems to be that nothing will.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
Ec
On Dec 17, 2007 3:24 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
That was what I said last time around. (Gosh, I really sound like a broken record.)
Johnleemk
John Lee wrote:
On Dec 17, 2007 3:24 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Instead of accusations from the pro-spoiler side it would be interesting to hear from the anti-spoiler side. David or Guy would either of you object to this sort of compromise?
I would consider spoiler warnings in plot summaries ridiculous. In addition, determining what's a spoiler is basically original research.
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
That was what I said last time around. (Gosh, I really sound like a broken record.)
My apologies. Any plagiarism was unintentional. This Hydra has so many heads that it's hard to remember which have been cut off.
Ec
On Tue, 18 Dec 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
That was what I said last time around. (Gosh, I really sound like a broken record.)
My apologies. Any plagiarism was unintentional. This Hydra has so many heads that it's hard to remember which have been cut off.
I suggest that before we add a tag saying "this article's section requires expansion", we find a reliable source which states that our article requires expansion. (Not.)
Quoting Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net:
On Tue, 18 Dec 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
That was what I said last time around. (Gosh, I really sound like a broken record.)
My apologies. Any plagiarism was unintentional. This Hydra has so many heads that it's hard to remember which have been cut off.
I suggest that before we add a tag saying "this article's section requires expansion", we find a reliable source which states that our article requires expansion. (Not.)
Expansion markers are for improvement in the article; they serve as notes for our editors and won't occur in the ideal article. That's distinct from spoiler warnings which are intended to go in the final product.
On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
I suggest that before we add a tag saying "this article's section requires expansion", we find a reliable source which states that our article requires expansion. (Not.)
Expansion markers are for improvement in the article; they serve as notes for our editors and won't occur in the ideal article. That's distinct from spoiler warnings which are intended to go in the final product.
Either version deliberately twists verifiability by interpreting it too literally. Sure, it isn't meant to apply to "notes"-type tags, but then it isn't meant to apply to tags at all.
On Dec 18, 2007 5:20 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
One could require that spoiler warnings be verifiable, i.e. they must be accompanied by a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the information one is about to read will spoil one's pleasures as much as the Monty Python secret joke would endanger one's life.
I suggest that before we add a tag saying "this article's section requires expansion", we find a reliable source which states that our article requires expansion. (Not.)
Expansion markers are for improvement in the article; they serve as notes for our editors and won't occur in the ideal article. That's distinct from spoiler warnings which are intended to go in the final product.
Either version deliberately twists verifiability by interpreting it too literally. Sure, it isn't meant to apply to "notes"-type tags, but then it isn't meant to apply to tags at all.
{{fact}}
Johnleemk
On 16/12/2007, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
The obvious problem is that we then move the debate into "should they default to on or off?", which will be no less acrimonious.
(Consider: having them default to displaying the section, leaving spoiler warnings an "opt-in" method, means that the articles are going to look the same to a passing user as they would *with no spoiler warnings at all*. Hmm. Maybe if you had a "click here to hide spoilers in the rest of the article" button in the top of the page, and did some CSS show/hide trick with that... is that workable?)
I mean, what we're arguing over is the utility to "the outside world", the general reading public, millions of them - and consider the cases for a casual reader...
----
a) Readers who are happy to read spoilers b) Readers who aren't
i) No visible spoiler warnings [either all removed, or new version defaulting to off] ii) Spoiler warnings visible iii) Spoiler warnings "active" and thus spoiler-marked text hidden
a-i is completely happy - the text is unsullied by any consideration of spoilers - whilst b-i is thoroughly unhappy - the spoilers are there unmarked.
a-ii is mildly annoyed - the text is interrupted and marked up for things they don't care about - whilst b-ii is moderately pleased - they have some spoiler warnings, albeit discreet and not always efficient ones
a-iii is thoroughly unhappy - half the article's missing and they have to faff around to get it back - whilst b-iii is delighted - no spoilers!
----
(That'd have looked better with a nice diagram)
Intriguingly, it looks like "having the old-style spoiler warnings" is interpretable as the compromise position. That can't quite be right...
On 16/12/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
The obvious problem is that we then move the debate into "should they default to on or off?", which will be no less acrimonious.
(Consider: having them default to displaying the section, leaving spoiler warnings an "opt-in" method, means that the articles are going to look the same to a passing user as they would *with no spoiler warnings at all*. Hmm. Maybe if you had a "click here to hide spoilers in the rest of the article" button in the top of the page, and did some CSS show/hide trick with that... is that workable?)
I mean, what we're arguing over is the utility to "the outside world", the general reading public, millions of them - and consider the cases for a casual reader...
a) Readers who are happy to read spoilers b) Readers who aren't
i) No visible spoiler warnings [either all removed, or new version defaulting to off] ii) Spoiler warnings visible iii) Spoiler warnings "active" and thus spoiler-marked text hidden
a-i is completely happy - the text is unsullied by any consideration of spoilers - whilst b-i is thoroughly unhappy - the spoilers are there unmarked.
a-ii is mildly annoyed - the text is interrupted and marked up for things they don't care about - whilst b-ii is moderately pleased - they have some spoiler warnings, albeit discreet and not always efficient ones
a-iii is thoroughly unhappy - half the article's missing and they have to faff around to get it back - whilst b-iii is delighted - no spoilers!
(That'd have looked better with a nice diagram)
Intriguingly, it looks like "having the old-style spoiler warnings" is interpretable as the compromise position. That can't quite be right...
I suggest default to off as a compromise moving from the current position half-way back to the other position, (although not changing the current default visual status quo). As you show, its a controversial decision, but that shouldn't default to no action instead of one in which those who care about a specific issue, spoilers, are not able in any way to have their concerns addressed.
It was a big issue on the mailing list and the wiki, and apart from the one forum link to start this thread, doesn't seem to be a big issue to casual readers.
A solution which requires a user.css action to opt-in to displaying spoilers is focused on wiki users, and leaves casual users who so far haven't said a whole lot, it seems, out of touch, although if they have an account they can utilise the system just as easily.
Peter
Quoting Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com:
It was a big issue on the mailing list and the wiki, and apart from the one forum link to start this thread, doesn't seem to be a big issue to casual readers.
A solution which requires a user.css action to opt-in to displaying spoilers is focused on wiki users, and leaves casual users who so far haven't said a whole lot, it seems, out of touch, although if they have an account they can utilise the system just as easily.
A few points. First, that thread was actually initiatated by Kizor who is an admin. Second, how would we get any feedback from people about the spoiler warnings? Where do they think they'd go to complain about it?
On a related note, can anyone think of a way to get info from the general public? The best possibility I can think of is to have after the donation drive is over a general poll linked to at the top of the pages. Something like "Wikipedia is doing a poll of its readers about spoiler tags" and then a link.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com:
It was a big issue on the mailing list and the wiki, and apart from the one forum link to start this thread, doesn't seem to be a big issue to casual readers.
A solution which requires a user.css action to opt-in to displaying spoilers is focused on wiki users, and leaves casual users who so far haven't said a whole lot, it seems, out of touch, although if they have an account they can utilise the system just as easily.
A few points. First, that thread was actually initiatated by Kizor who is an admin. Second, how would we get any feedback from people about the spoiler warnings? Where do they think they'd go to complain about it?
On a related note, can anyone think of a way to get info from the general public? The best possibility I can think of is to have after the donation drive is over a general poll linked to at the top of the pages. Something like "Wikipedia is doing a poll of its readers about spoiler tags" and then a link.
I don't think, at least at first that you need a public poll. For one, there aren't any articles to test out right now due to the purge. You could start a long-term unpublicised information gathering poll but I don't see the need to change the status quo to making the issue visible again until that reaches a critical mass in favour of spoilers, although it need not be a majority in order to give credence to a hidden opt-in solution.
You would only be getting feedback from people who already knew about the spoiler issue, or from people who went to an FAQ asking about spoilers and were directed to the long-term poll. As you point out, a wiki insider started the only off-wiki/mailing list discussion about the issue that we know about. That should pretty much establish the issue as an insider, not outsider issue.
You can only enable people to do things, you can't force them. Visibility of the "hidden" css spoilers would come as people investigate the spoiler tags which appear when they edit, but not when they view :) They will start asking questions if they want to know why. When they do, you can direct them to the extensive discussions about the issue, with a reference to the ongoing poll and a css workaround while the status quo favours invisible warnings.
Peter
Quoting Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com:
You would only be getting feedback from people who already knew about the spoiler issue, or from people who went to an FAQ asking about spoilers and were directed to the long-term poll. As you point out, a wiki insider started the only off-wiki/mailing list discussion about the issue that we know about. That should pretty much establish the issue as an insider, not outsider issue.
I think if the poll said something like "Wikipedia is conducting a poll about whether readers want spoiler tags in fiction. Click here to help out!" people otherwise not familiar with the matter would click and moreover would be able to give preferences about where they'd want spoiler tags.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com:
You would only be getting feedback from people who already knew about the spoiler issue, or from people who went to an FAQ asking about spoilers and were directed to the long-term poll. As you point out, a wiki insider started the only off-wiki/mailing list discussion about the issue that we know about. That should pretty much establish the issue as an insider, not outsider issue.
I think if the poll said something like "Wikipedia is conducting a poll about whether readers want spoiler tags in fiction. Click here to help out!" people otherwise not familiar with the matter would click and moreover would be able to give preferences about where they'd want spoiler tags.
I think thats a good start at a poll question.
I mocked up two really basic templates for spoiler start and end. But they won't work as is because of the css global/linked/local hierarchy.
The global wiki common.css needs to have the following addition for them to work as desired.
.wikiSpoiler { display: none; }
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ansell/invisiblespoiler_start
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ansell/invisiblespoiler_end
Peter
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that
one argument
made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was
favored by
the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at
all and if
anything shows the other direction.
Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or user.js function to hide those sections?
The obvious problem is that we then move the debate into "should they default to on or off?", which will be no less acrimonious.
(Consider: having them default to displaying the section, leaving spoiler warnings an "opt-in" method, means that the articles are going to look the same to a passing user as they would *with no spoiler warnings at all*. Hmm. Maybe if you had a "click here to hide spoilers in the rest of the article" button in the top of the page, and did some CSS show/hide trick with that... is that workable?)
This seems good, and if the template was well designed it could be put as a small innocuous little thing that hovered near the editing options at the top.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
If you check recent changes, it's also apparent that a large number of people are in favor of vandalism. That doesn't mean we should start allowing it.
On 16/12/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
If you check recent changes, it's also apparent that a large number of people are in favor of vandalism. That doesn't mean we should start allowing it.
How did you make the connection between spoiler warnings and vandalism? Seems like you are just putting up a straw man to knock down.
Peter
The ones who like them are, from the comments, trying to use WP as a movie guide. It isn't--its an encyclopedia. When one reads an encyclopedic entry on a work of fiction, one expects to find the plot--the whole plot. There are multiple other sources for movie reviews. If we want this section of our coverage to look respectably encyclopedic, the spoilers should stay out.
It's not a matter of pleasing people or not, but of maintaining a proper tone and proper standards.
On 12/16/07, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
If you check recent changes, it's also apparent that a large number of people are in favor of vandalism. That doesn't mean we should start allowing it.
How did you make the connection between spoiler warnings and vandalism? Seems like you are just putting up a straw man to knock down.
Peter
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 16/12/2007, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
The ones who like them are, from the comments, trying to use WP as a movie guide. It isn't--its an encyclopedia. When one reads an encyclopedic entry on a work of fiction, one expects to find the plot--the whole plot. There are multiple other sources for movie reviews. If we want this section of our coverage to look respectably encyclopedic, the spoilers should stay out.
It's not a matter of pleasing people or not, but of maintaining a proper tone and proper standards.
Unfortunately removing spoiler warnings seems to result in the people not putting in spoilers. You may not have liked them but they were an effective way of saying "people this article should include spoilers". The resulting articles are far more clearly unecyclopedic than any spoiler warning.
geni wrote:
On 16/12/2007, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
The ones who like them are, from the comments, trying to use WP as a movie guide. It isn't--its an encyclopedia. When one reads an encyclopedic entry on a work of fiction, one expects to find the plot--the whole plot. There are multiple other sources for movie reviews. If we want this section of our coverage to look respectably encyclopedic, the spoilers should stay out.
Unfortunately removing spoiler warnings seems to result in the people not putting in spoilers. You may not have liked them but they were an effective way of saying "people this article should include spoilers". The resulting articles are far more clearly unecyclopedic than any spoiler warning.
If you know enough about the movie to see that the spoiler has been omitted from the article you are in an excellent position to add it in.
Ec
On 16/12/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If you know enough about the movie to see that the spoiler has been omitted from the article you are in an excellent position to add it in.
Not remotely it's just that if that is the complete plot it would be a vary strange book/movie
for example I suspect the plot section of these films are missing something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedford_Incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_God http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_le_flambeur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Died_a_Thousand_Times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accused_of_Murder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Moon#Plot_synopsis_2
Quoting geni geniice@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If you know enough about the movie to see that the spoiler has been omitted from the article you are in an excellent position to add it in.
Not remotely it's just that if that is the complete plot it would be a vary strange book/movie
for example I suspect the plot section of these films are missing something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedford_Incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_God http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_le_flambeur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Died_a_Thousand_Times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accused_of_Murder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Moon#Plot_synopsis_2 -- geni
I'm not convinced that those were written that way due to plot spoiler concerns or that they would have been written any differently if there were easy to use spoiler tags. It could be that the writers simply only had access to sources such as reviews that didn't have all the plot details and the writers have not seen the movies recently. (you know, I'll just retract my earlier claim that I wasn't going to talk about spoilers until after the new year since I've now violated it 4 times since I made the statement).
Peter Ansell wrote:
On 16/12/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't exactly representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the public" with any degree of confidence.
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
If you check recent changes, it's also apparent that a large number of people are in favor of vandalism. That doesn't mean we should start allowing it.
How did you make the connection between spoiler warnings and vandalism? Seems like you are just putting up a straw man to knock down.
Peter
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I am not, per se, comparing spoiler warnings to vandalism. I am, however, stating (and will state more clearly here) that just because an option is popular with "the public" doesn't necessarily mean we should actually do it. Many things are popular but outside the scope, mission, and ideal of Wikipedia. That's fine, other sites can handle those. If you want spoiler-free plot summaries, rumors, and speculation, those are very popular. IMDB is a great place for you to look. If you want encyclopedic information, including a summation of the full plot, based on verifiable and sourced information only, that's what we do.
Quoting Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
I am not, per se, comparing spoiler warnings to vandalism. I am, however, stating (and will state more clearly here) that just because an option is popular with "the public" doesn't necessarily mean we should actually do it. Many things are popular but outside the scope, mission, and ideal of Wikipedia. That's fine, other sites can handle those. If you want spoiler-free plot summaries, rumors, and speculation, those are very popular. IMDB is a great place for you to look. If you want encyclopedic information, including a summation of the full plot, based on verifiable and sourced information only, that's what we do.
I don't think any of the pro-spoiler people are arguing that we should have spoiler-free plot summaries. The argument is to give a notice when we do have spoilers.
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
I don't think any of the pro-spoiler people are arguing that we should have spoiler-free plot summaries. The argument is to give a notice when we do have spoilers.
One question: Please define "spoiler".
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
I don't think any of the pro-spoiler people are arguing that we should have spoiler-free plot summaries. The argument is to give a notice when we do have spoilers.
One question: Please define "spoiler".
Yes, this is a serious problem. The most coherent definition I've heard so far is to rely on reviews in reliable sources and if they call something a spoiler or such then it is a spoiler. I haven't seen any other definition and it would be hard to make another definition that wasn't OR. Arguably OR isn't an issue since the presence of tags is more of a formatting issue than anything else. It might help if some of the pro-spoiler people would be willing to suggest general guidelines. I at least don't see any that's viable other than relying on reviewers and other reliable sources.
On Dec 16, 2007 2:53 PM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
I don't think any of the pro-spoiler people are arguing that we should have spoiler-free plot summaries. The argument is to give a notice when we do have spoilers.
One question: Please define "spoiler".
Yes, this is a serious problem. The most coherent definition I've heard so far is to rely on reviews in reliable sources and if they call something a spoiler or such then it is a spoiler. I haven't seen any other definition and it would be hard to make another definition that wasn't OR. Arguably OR isn't an issue since the presence of tags is more of a formatting issue than anything else. It might help if some of the pro-spoiler people would be willing to suggest general guidelines. I at least don't see any that's viable other than relying on reviewers and other reliable sources.
Exactly. Of course, I seem to remember the last time around people complaining that original research wasn't a valid argument, for reasons never quite elaborated on...
Johnleemk
Quoting Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
If you check recent changes, it's also apparent that a large number of people are in favor of vandalism. That doesn't mean we should start allowing it.
Is this meant to be a serious comparison? We're talking about what our readers want not what vandals want. Have we become so divorced from our readers desires that we can plausibly compare them to vandals?
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
I don't recall that argument being raised ... I removed them from any section headed "Plot summary" or equivalent as being redundant and silly. "Plot summary contains plot summary!" (Sounds like a lolcat.)
- d.
On 16/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I don't recall that argument being raised ... I removed them from any section headed "Plot summary" or equivalent as being redundant and silly. "Plot summary contains plot summary!" (Sounds like a lolcat.)
Except these days it is more likely to contain something akin to the blub on the back of the book.
On Sun, 16 Dec 2007, David Gerard wrote:
I don't recall that argument being raised ... I removed them from any section headed "Plot summary" or equivalent as being redundant and silly. "Plot summary contains plot summary!" (Sounds like a lolcat.)
You must really hate those dates on the calendar. ("It's redundant! A 6 year old could tell you that the day after Sunday is Monday! Labelling it as Monday just makes us look stupid!")
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
I don't recall that argument being raised ... I removed them from any section headed "Plot summary" or equivalent as being redundant and silly. "Plot summary contains plot summary!" (Sounds like a lolcat.)
- d.
Er, possibly. But see also Geni's remark. One result of a lack of spoiler warnings is that people don't add spoilers.
On Dec 16, 2007 12:29 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if anything shows the other direction.
I don't recall that argument being raised ... I removed them from any section headed "Plot summary" or equivalent as being redundant and silly. "Plot summary contains plot summary!" (Sounds like a lolcat.)
Luk, iz it cn I B yr fathr? LOL!
Tony makes a late entry a strong contender for wikien-l's Post of the Year contest :)
On 17/12/2007, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 16, 2007 12:29 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one
argument
made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was
favored by
the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and
if
anything shows the other direction.
I don't recall that argument being raised ... I removed them from any section headed "Plot summary" or equivalent as being redundant and silly. "Plot summary contains plot summary!" (Sounds like a lolcat.)
Luk, iz it cn I B yr fathr? LOL!
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On 12/15/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Maybe it is just me, but this seems like a pretty good argument for reinstating them, or at minimum undeleting the template and letting people use them where they judge to be more or less necessary.
You may wish to propose some sort of safeguard against the use of spoiler warnings for special-effects blockbusters such as Titanic, Speed, Speed 2, 300, Snakes on a Plane, The Passion of the Christ, etc., etc. before allowing a "massive organic reversion" to occur.
But one interesting thing seems clear; the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
Of course, if it's any consolation, if the right nitwit complains to OTRS about the lack of spoiler warnings, you'll get your wish overnight.
—C.W.
joshua.zelinsky wrote: Quoting SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com>:
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
I'm also perplexed not only by the failure to tell Jimbo but by the failure to tell anyone else. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up self-righteous snot but I would have first gone to Jimbo and if he had known would have demanded disclosure by the Foundation. Even if you thought that Jimbo already knew about it why not let others know as well?
Thomas Dalton wrote: That's a better question... -----------------
That's why I compared Moreschi's silence over this with his broadcasting of the private mailing lists and who he assumed was "lying." Yet with this thing, he feels no responsibility to tell Jimbo -- and it makes no sense to argument that he thought Jimbo knew *exactly* the same things that Moreschi says he discovered, because what possible reason would he have for assuming that? -- and, Jimbo aside, also feels no responsibility to alert the community. I hope he'll explain why he had such a different attitude to the two issues.
Sarah
On Dec 16, 2007 9:00 AM, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
joshua.zelinsky wrote:
I'm also perplexed not only by the failure to tell Jimbo but by the failure to tell anyone else. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up self-righteous snot but I would have first gone to Jimbo and if he had known would have demanded disclosure by the Foundation. Even if you thought that Jimbo already knew about it why not let others know as well?
Thomas Dalton wrote: That's a better question...
That's why I compared Moreschi's silence over this with his broadcasting of the private mailing lists and who he assumed was "lying." Yet with this thing, he feels no responsibility to tell Jimbo -- and it makes no sense to argument that he thought Jimbo knew *exactly* the same things that Moreschi says he discovered, because what possible reason would he have for assuming that? -- and, Jimbo aside, also feels no responsibility to alert the community. I hope he'll explain why he had such a different attitude to the two issues.
Sarah
As a cursory read-through of the previous posts should show, there appears to be an obvious difference between the two situations. Many of us consider it normal, and relatively OK, for the Foundation to not need to disclose details of this sort of thing unless its hand is forced; many of us considered the opposite about the various private/secret lists/co-ordination mechanisms. Pushing a parallel between the two that isn't there will only damage you, not Moreschi. Let it go. We would be better served discussing JW's concern that we don't give the WMF enough credit for transparency than allowing this issue to descend into a toxic debate on personalities as well.
RR
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:30:03 -0600 From: slimvirgin@gmail.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.
joshua.zelinsky wrote: Quoting SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com>:
Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure?
I'm also perplexed not only by the failure to tell Jimbo but by the failure to tell anyone else. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up self-righteous snot but I would have first gone to Jimbo and if he had known would have demanded disclosure by the Foundation. Even if you thought that Jimbo already knew about it why not let others know as well?
Thomas Dalton wrote: That's a better question...
That's why I compared Moreschi's silence over this with his broadcasting of the private mailing lists and who he assumed was "lying." Yet with this thing, he feels no responsibility to tell Jimbo -- and it makes no sense to argument that he thought Jimbo knew *exactly* the same things that Moreschi says he discovered, because what possible reason would he have for assuming that? -- and, Jimbo aside, also feels no responsibility to alert the community. I hope he'll explain why he had such a different attitude to the two issues.
Sarah
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On 16/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
- d.
On 16/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
on 12/16/07 9:22 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
Thank you, David. That's how we improve the civility of the culture, and make it healthier - one person at a time.
Marc
Quoting Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
On 16/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
on 12/16/07 9:22 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
Thank you, David. That's how we improve the civility of the culture, and make it healthier - one person at a time.
Marc
I'm concerned here - Moreschi was to some extent provoked. While SV's question was valid, the phrasing was unnecessary and a single isolated outburst shouldn't lead to list banning.
wrote:
Quoting Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
On 16/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
on 12/16/07 9:22 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
Thank you, David. That's how we improve the civility of the culture, and make it healthier - one person at a time.
Marc
on 12/16/07 11:22 AM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu at joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu
I'm concerned here - Moreschi was to some extent provoked.
Joshua, whatever happened to good old civility; which sometimes calls for self-discipline and self-restraint.
While SV's question was valid, the phrasing was unnecessary and a single isolated outburst shouldn't lead to list banning.
When in doubt (or in the wrong) blame the victim?
Marc
Quoting Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
I'm concerned here - Moreschi was to some extent provoked.
Joshua, whatever happened to good old civility; which sometimes calls for self-discipline and self-restraint.
I'm not saying that Moreschi's behavior was warranted. Far from it. Indeed, before I saw David email as soon as I saw Moreschi's I sent him a strongly worded email about his outburst.
While SV's question was valid, the phrasing was unnecessary and a single isolated outburst shouldn't lead to list banning.
When in doubt (or in the wrong) blame the victim?
That isn't the issue here. The point is that it is unreasonable and unproductive to not take into account the surrounding circumstances. In any event, since Moreschi has been placed on moderation rather than banning I'm ok with the result.
David Gerard schreef:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)?
I didn't need to see this message from Christiano, but his other messages weren't completely void of content (even if many people didn't like them).
Eugene
On Dec 17, 2007 1:43 AM, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)?
Filth is not a "dissenting opinion", and you insult people who really hold dissenting opinions by suggesting it is. How is it that people cannot comprehend that it's possible to disagree without descending into spiteful tirades?
On 16/12/2007, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
Filth is not a "dissenting opinion", and you insult people who really hold dissenting opinions by suggesting it is. How is it that people cannot comprehend that it's possible to disagree without descending into spiteful tirades?
Lots of people descend into spiteful tirades on this mailing list. We don't ban (read: unsubscribe) most of them. We place them on moderation and do not approve their emails to the mailing list until they calm down and start making sense. Labelling angry, but honest, opinions as 'filth' is worse, in my opinion, than the actual content of such emails.
~Mark Ryan
Quoting Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com:
On Dec 17, 2007 1:43 AM, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)?
Filth is not a "dissenting opinion", and you insult people who really hold dissenting opinions by suggesting it is. How is it that people cannot comprehend that it's possible to disagree without descending into spiteful tirades?
Well, many of Moreschi's other posts were point of fact not spiteful tirades. A single outburst should not be by itself sufficient reason for this result. Moderation makes far more sense than banning.
He was unsubscribed, not banned. He's already posted again since.
On Dec 16, 2007 11:24 AM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com:
On Dec 17, 2007 1:43 AM, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)?
Filth is not a "dissenting opinion", and you insult people who really hold dissenting opinions by suggesting it is. How is it that people cannot comprehend that it's possible to disagree without descending into spiteful tirades?
Well, many of Moreschi's other posts were point of fact not spiteful tirades. A single outburst should not be by itself sufficient reason for this result. Moderation makes far more sense than banning.
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On 16/12/2007, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)?
I unsubscribed him from the list. He could rejoin any time (we know from experience it's almost as hard to keep someone off this list if they really want on as it is to keep someone from editing if they really want to - that's why new suscribers start moderated), but I have no intention of putting up with this sort of rubbish being posted.
- d.
David Gerard schreef:
On 16/12/2007, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)?
I unsubscribed him from the list. He could rejoin any time (we know
from experience it's almost as hard to keep someone off this list if
they really want on as it is to keep someone from editing if they really want to - that's why new suscribers start moderated), but I have no intention of putting up with this sort of rubbish being posted.
Thank you for the explanation.
As I said, I don't think that he went over the line in his mails to this lists, except for the last one which I agree was unacceptable.
A permanent ban would have been too harsh; as long as it's clear that he can come back when he's cooled down, that's ok with me.
Eugene
David Gerard schreef:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
on 12/16/07 9:43 AM, Eugene van der Pijll at eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
<snip>
I didn't need to see this message from Christiano, but his other messages weren't completely void of content (even if many people didn't like them).
Speaking just for me, Eugene, I don't care what the quality is, or has been, of a person's content, that does not give them a free pass to so blatantly disrespect another Community in such a foul-mouthed manner. There are many others on this List, and in the Community, whose quality of input is equal, or better, and who do not have to resort to such language. It is time we started calling each other on this. The vast majority of the Community is better than this.
Marc
Marc Riddell wrote:
Speaking just for me, Eugene, I don't care what the quality is, or has been, of a person's content, that does not give them a free pass to so blatantly disrespect another Community in such a foul-mouthed manner. There are many others on this List, and in the Community, whose quality of input is equal, or better, and who do not have to resort to such language. It is time we started calling each other on this. The vast majority of the Community is better than this.
What have you done with the Marc Riddell who wrote http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-September/080266.html?
Eugene
on 12/16/07 3:16 PM, Eugene van der Pijll at eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
Speaking just for me, Eugene, I don't care what the quality is, or has been, of a person's content, that does not give them a free pass to so blatantly disrespect another Community in such a foul-mouthed manner. There are many others on this List, and in the Community, whose quality of input is equal, or better, and who do not have to resort to such language. It is time we started calling each other on this. The vast majority of the Community is better than this.
What have you done with the Marc Riddell who wrote http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-September/080266.html?
Eugene
He's still very much alive and well, Eugene - he was just napping this time :-). But you are right, I did overreact; and I apologize to Christiano. On closer read, he did not make a direct personal attack on anyone. However, I still hold to the belief that the quality of a culture is reflected in the quality of its language. And there are many, many ways to make a strong point without having to resort to the language of bullies and thugs. I'm for making civility the guiding word in all our interactions.
Marc
On Dec 16, 2007 3:22 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
Oh, why not say something along the lines of "This is unsuitable phrasing for this list ... infuriating as it undoubtedly is. Christiano, please don't do this again." and ask everyone to calm down?
Michel Vuijlsteke
On Dec 16, 2007 2:22 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids.
Thanks. Wading through these threads is difficult enough without the participants descending into slanging matches.
On Dec 16, 2007 3:16 PM, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because >I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to f>ollow me around chucking dung from the sidelines.
And now would probably be the time for the list admins to step in and end this. I mean, really...
On 16/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote: *snip*
So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo,
*snip*
Why would one go to Jimbo, rather than Florence?
~Mark Ryan
Mark Ryan wrote:
On 16/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote: *snip*
So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo,
*snip*
Why would one go to Jimbo, rather than Florence?
I think it would be a matter of approaching whichever Board Member or staff member one feels most comfortable with. Especially if the allegations seem outrageous it is best to approach that person in terms of quietly seeking a reality/sanity check.
When these things are made public some of our more dramatic correspondents are too quick to read "got busted with a single joint 10 years ago" as "actively dealing dope in the office."
Ec
Mark Ryan wrote:
On 16/12/2007, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote: *snip*
So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo,
*snip*
Why would one go to Jimbo, rather than Florence?
People with information like this should feel free to go to the entire board of course.
I think the reason my name was invoked here is simply that when Moreschi said he knew all this stuff before, I said something like "Why didn't you tell me?"