It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term "fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back). Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel warring.
Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean, come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not liking what we see.
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes. What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!) and arguing with others.
At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
Here ends my long and horrible rant.
--Alex, aka Linuxbeak
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an encyclopedia? How come we become more about community just because we're in the top-20 of internet sites?
I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming more venomous over the last few months to a year.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and mandate that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating *directly to articles * I don't remember any wars on the term 'fuckwit' but I remember many other wars. I also remember before then when Wikipedia stood together in the fact of things like vandalism and community upsets. Maybe that time is gone?
Ugh!
On 2/6/06, Alex Schenck linuxbeak@gmail.com wrote:
It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term "fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back). Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel warring.
Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean, come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not liking what we see.
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes. What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!) and arguing with others.
At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
Here ends my long and horrible rant.
--Alex, aka Linuxbeak _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an encyclopedia?
Still going on. Still happening. It is us who have moved away.
I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming more venomous over the last few months to a year.
Because people took it for granted.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and mandate that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating *directly to articles
However we are here and this is now. Walk away try something else. I'm looking for recruicts for my new defence in depth tactic for dealing with vandalism.
-- geni
On 2/6/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an encyclopedia? How come we become more about community just because we're in the top-20 of internet sites?
I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming more venomous over the last few months to a year.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and mandate that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating *directly to articles
I don't remember any wars on the term 'fuckwit' but I remember many other wars. I also remember before then when Wikipedia stood together in the fact of things like vandalism and community upsets. Maybe that time is gone?
Ugh!
On 2/6/06, Alex Schenck linuxbeak@gmail.com wrote:
It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term "fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back). Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel warring.
Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean, come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not liking what we see.
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes. What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!) and arguing with others.
At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
Here ends my long and horrible rant.
Userboxes freak me out too. I don't know that it's become more or less venomous (at least towards me) -- my criticisms of problems with Wikipedia seem to still generate similar responses of either praise or threats to block me and claims of trolling. The difference is that back in the day only LMS could make threats -- now there's bunches of people, like arbitrators, who really should avoid making threats unless they're officially notified. Though I know that's difficult, since what makes one a good or willing arbitrator is some degree of willingness to police the land.
There's getting to be a loooot of cruft though. I personally think that articles should not be allowed to have warnings. Not sure about the userboxes -- there do need to be ways of coordinating the community, and mechanisms of "tagging" obviously work super well (see Flickr) and are very wikilike. Perhaps a semi-official third party site would be best.
I know we're not myspace, but we shouldn't ignore the successes of other web-projects.
On 2/7/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/6/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an
encyclopedia?
How come we become more about community just because we're in the top-20
of
internet sites?
I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming
more
venomous over the last few months to a year.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and
mandate
that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating
*directly
to articles
There's nothing wrong with the occasional userbox. There's a number of them on my user and apart from copyright issues with the images involved, none of them really caused me any problems. religious and political userboxes can have their place as well. They tell you where people's expertise lies. It's boxes about someone's beliefs that probably need to go. Those are the ones that cause a division (with people who don't agree). Besides, I don't see the use in setting up a userbox for each little thing. We've got Template:Userbox which anyone can alter and subst: into their userspace. No need for all those separate templates.
Mgm
Somehow I missed hearing about wikipedia up until a couple of months ago. I think I had seen it pop up on google searches, but I didn't really explore it until after I heard Jimbo either NPR or C-Span or maybe both. I started off editing by finding a broken link on a Survivor page and have continued editing heavily on Olympics pages and reality TV. As time has gone by, I have read a bunch on the RfA, AfD, etc.
While I'm a newbie here on WP, I've been online since 1994 (ah, the days of lynx). A lot of what I see going on here is similar to what I've seen elsewhere, especially as the popularity has shot up. I'm sure there are people that can remember when there were 800 editors and now there are 800 admins.
It's interesting, especially with this most recent "wheel warring" how my views on userboxes has changed. At first, I thought they were just silly. Then, I added a few to my page. Right around this time was the issue of Kelly Martin deleting the userboxes and then came Jimbo's statement. Up until a couple of days ago, I held the opinion that someone else mentioned where user pages are like cubicle walls at work and people should be allowed to decorate them as they want, but that really isn't my opinion anymore. To me, setting up a system where some userboxes are okay and some are not is always going to create a turf war on where is the line. If user boxes are allowed, there is going to have to be a clear line that says, language user boxes are okay but these types of user boxes are not okay.
On the pedophilia issue ... I find pedophiles disgusting, but even if someone self-identifies as a pedophile, they are not breaking the law with that admission. If there is evidence that they are doing something, like trying to get in contact with children via WP, than there has to be some sort of process to take care of that. I mean, there is a fairly balanced article on NAMBLA on WP. This userbox issue over the weekend was the final thing that fully swayed my thinking on userboxes and if there isn't some sort of guideline, these sorts of things will happen again.
Sue Anne sreed1234
"Sue Anne Reed" wrote
If user boxes are allowed, there is going to have to be a clear line that says, language user boxes are okay but these types of user boxes are not okay.
That kind of assumes people won't and don't get round clear-cut rules. All I know is that they will and do. If people really want to make a mess of their user pages, so that others referring to them will get no reassurance, they will certainly do that somehow. For myself I'd take an axe to most of the templates, but treating it mostly as a fad that will pass is a better idea, for its nonsensical aspects.
Charles
That mention of Lynx certainly does date you. I liked it too when I was online with a CP/M Amstrad machine...
My thinking is that if a person presents themselves in an obnoxious way that they are being disruptive. After all Hitler, if he were alive, could edit anonymously.
If a user covers their user page with swastikas or emblems of the KGB or the information that they are a pedophile and really think its Ok, they are doing us harm both internally and externally and based on how bad it is and how much trouble they are causing we can take action.
Fred
On Feb 7, 2006, at 2:31 AM, Sue Anne Reed wrote:
On the pedophilia issue ... I find pedophiles disgusting, but even if someone self-identifies as a pedophile, they are not breaking the law with that admission. If there is evidence that they are doing something, like trying to get in contact with children via WP, than there has to be some sort of process to take care of that. I mean, there is a fairly balanced article on NAMBLA on WP. This userbox issue over the weekend was the final thing that fully swayed my thinking on userboxes and if there isn't some sort of guideline, these sorts of things will happen again.
Sue Anne sreed1234
What's wrong with the KGB? And if a user covered their user page with lots of images with the CIA (which on a worldwide scale has a far worse reputation than the KGB) would that be acceptable?
Jon
Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote: That mention of Lynx certainly does date you. I liked it too when I was online with a CP/M Amstrad machine...
My thinking is that if a person presents themselves in an obnoxious way that they are being disruptive. After all Hitler, if he were alive, could edit anonymously.
If a user covers their user page with swastikas or emblems of the KGB or the information that they are a pedophile and really think its Ok, they are doing us harm both internally and externally and based on how bad it is and how much trouble they are causing we can take action.
Fred
On Feb 7, 2006, at 2:31 AM, Sue Anne Reed wrote:
On the pedophilia issue ... I find pedophiles disgusting, but even if someone self-identifies as a pedophile, they are not breaking the law with that admission. If there is evidence that they are doing something, like trying to get in contact with children via WP, than there has to be some sort of process to take care of that. I mean, there is a fairly balanced article on NAMBLA on WP. This userbox issue over the weekend was the final thing that fully swayed my thinking on userboxes and if there isn't some sort of guideline, these sorts of things will happen again.
Sue Anne sreed1234
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fred Bauder Sent: Wednesday, 8 February 2006 00:04
My thinking is that if a person presents themselves in an obnoxious way that they are being disruptive. After all Hitler, if he were alive, could edit anonymously.
He would have to. He would be speedily kicked off if he used his real name.
But he could bring some great insights to the [[Nazism]] article.
His contributions might tend to be long and rambling and turgid and ranting and dogmatic, but we're used to that here.
His RFA, otherwise known as the Night of the Brownscreens, and subsequent career as admin would go down in wikilegend.
Peter
On 2/7/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fred Bauder Sent: Wednesday, 8 February 2006 00:04
My thinking is that if a person presents themselves in an obnoxious way that they are being disruptive. After all Hitler, if he were alive, could edit anonymously.
He would have to. He would be speedily kicked off if he used his real name.
But he could bring some great insights to the [[Nazism]] article.
His contributions might tend to be long and rambling and turgid and ranting and dogmatic, but we're used to that here.
Actually he would be yet another problem user pushing povs about his pet topic, deleting criticisms, and making OR conclusions because, well, he's making it up as he goes along. He would probably have a bery hard time editing to NPOV ("editing for your enemies")
Ian
But it removes the slippery slope argument of "Why this and not that?"
Babel is the only box I've seen that can be directly tied to encyclopedic matters
On 2/7/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/7/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/6/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an
encyclopedia?
How come we become more about community just because we're in the top-20
of
internet sites?
I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming
more
venomous over the last few months to a year.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and
mandate
that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating
*directly
to articles
There's nothing wrong with the occasional userbox. There's a number of them on my user and apart from copyright issues with the images involved, none of them really caused me any problems. religious and political userboxes can have their place as well. They tell you where people's expertise lies. It's boxes about someone's beliefs that probably need to go. Those are the ones that cause a division (with people who don't agree). Besides, I don't see the use in setting up a userbox for each little thing. We've got Template:Userbox which anyone can alter and subst: into their userspace. No need for all those separate templates.
Mgm _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
Correction: Not slippery slope...just annoying :\
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
But it removes the slippery slope argument of "Why this and not that?"
Babel is the only box I've seen that can be directly tied to encyclopedic matters
On 2/7/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/7/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/6/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an
encyclopedia?
How come we become more about community just because we're in the
top-20
of
internet sites?
I must say that the community has started trudging along and
becoming
more
venomous over the last few months to a year.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and
mandate
that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating
*directly
to articles
There's nothing wrong with the occasional userbox. There's a number of
them
on my user and apart from copyright issues with the images involved,
none of
them really caused me any problems. religious and political userboxes
can
have their place as well. They tell you where people's expertise lies. It's boxes about someone's beliefs that probably need to go. Those are
the
ones that cause a division (with people who don't agree). Besides, I don't see the use in setting up a userbox for each little
thing.
We've got Template:Userbox which anyone can alter and subst: into their userspace. No need for all those separate templates.
Mgm _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
Is there a userbox for "this user is a developer on mediawiki"? That would be handy too. Similarly, "this user has a PhD in Greek history" type things. Roll your eyes, but at the end of the day, it is helpful to know whether someone is talking completely out of the arse or not.
On the other hand, someone stating that they're Jewish doesn't offer any kind of insight into their expertise on Jewish affairs.
So I would support a delineation of project-oriented vs non-project-oriented userboxes. It may be helpful to deliberately prevent people from getting lists of all "X-like" people, where X is non-project oriented.
Steve
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
Correction: Not slippery slope...just annoying :\
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
But it removes the slippery slope argument of "Why this and not that?"
Babel is the only box I've seen that can be directly tied to encyclopedic matters
On 2/7/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/7/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/6/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
I'm afraid I must agree.
As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an
encyclopedia?
How come we become more about community just because we're in the
top-20
of
internet sites?
I must say that the community has started trudging along and
becoming
more
venomous over the last few months to a year.
If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and
mandate
that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating
*directly
to articles
There's nothing wrong with the occasional userbox. There's a number of
them
on my user and apart from copyright issues with the images involved,
none of
them really caused me any problems. religious and political userboxes
can
have their place as well. They tell you where people's expertise lies. It's boxes about someone's beliefs that probably need to go. Those are
the
ones that cause a division (with people who don't agree). Besides, I don't see the use in setting up a userbox for each little
thing.
We've got Template:Userbox which anyone can alter and subst: into their userspace. No need for all those separate templates.
Mgm _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia) http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
So I would support a delineation of project-oriented vs non-project-oriented userboxes. It may be helpful to deliberately prevent people from getting lists of all "X-like" people, where X is non-project oriented.
All the fuss over a paedophilia template. The reality is that an "I am in school" template would be far more useful for paedophiles.
Peter (Skyring)
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
But it removes the slippery slope argument of "Why this and not that?"
Babel is the only box I've seen that can be directly tied to encyclopedic matters
What about boxes that show people live in a certain country or have studied a certain subject? Those would tell someone they have local knowledge which is helpful to building an encyclopedia.
Mgm
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
But it removes the slippery slope argument of "Why this and not that?"
Babel is the only box I've seen that can be directly tied to encyclopedic matters
What about boxes that show people live in a certain country or have studied a certain subject? Those would tell someone they have local knowledge which is helpful to building an encyclopedia.
Mgm
IMO, allow those related to the encyclopedia stay in template-space. Those that aren't can go on user subpages or be hard-coded, such as my sole political userbox is.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On 2/7/06, Alex Schenck linuxbeak@gmail.com wrote:
Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense of respect for each other,
Never existed. People were just polite enough to hide their lack of respect most of the time.
when people actually understood that Jimbo's word was final,
On balance I'd say that one started to crack around the answers.com thing. The WP:TOOLS link never did happen.
that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they were talking about,
On blanance when the community outright rejected the Stevertigo descission. Then there was the various issues around kelly martin and jimbo messing with the election.
and people would respect time on the project?
If you mean raw length of time on wikipedia then it probably just became diluted currency. There are so many people who have been here 1 year plus that it is a pretty meaningless distinction.
I mean, come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not liking what we see.
It's been going on for a long time. I blocked Ambi back when she was an arbcom member (3RR). Didn't seem to cause any problems.
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes. What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES?
We seem to finaly have moved above a rate of one per day. The writeing the encyopedia community is still there. You just need to write.
Instead, we have people more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!) and arguing with others.
Because they feel that they are not being respected.
At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
Sure. If we can get people to follow policy again. After recent events it is in many ways all we have left. -- geni
Question from a newbie: has the community gotten younger? Has Wikipedia become more accessible to non-geeks? Has it become more attractive to people not interested in encyclopaedic writing?
These would be the most likely causes...
Steve
On 2/7/06, Alex Schenck linuxbeak@gmail.com wrote:
It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Question from a newbie: has the community gotten younger? Has Wikipedia become more accessible to non-geeks? Has it become more attractive to people not interested in encyclopaedic writing?
These would be the most likely causes...
Steve
Wikipedia skyrocketed on the list of most often viewed pages in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if this attracts trolls and other troublemakers. They love to target high-profile websites.
Mgm
Alex Schenck wrote:
It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term "fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back). Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel warring.
Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean, come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not liking what we see.
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes. What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!) and arguing with others.
At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
Here ends my long and horrible rant.
--Alex, aka Linuxbeak
I strongly second (or is it third?) this. UninvitedCompany has referenced the [[September That Never Ended]], which I think explains why this has happened. When I became an admin January 2004, I got about 20 votes of support -- today, any successful nomination with less than 40 supports would be an oddity. (It's also quite likely I would not pass now, what with editcountitis -- or its cousin, non-article-namespace-editcountitis -- running rampant.) Our community has expanded, and our decision-making mechanisms have not scaled along with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet). Consensus doesn't scale. With policy, this hinders change greatly, but it's unlikely to be a major problem in the near future. With wheel warring or serious edit wars, however, the fact that consensus doesn't scale is wasting a lot of our time here. It takes being hauled in front of the arbcom to get any results.
What I think should be done is (as I outlined in a recent post to the list) giving the 'crats power to desysop/block anyone at will. It's next to impossible to become a 'crat unless you're some sort of miracle worker, and abuse leads to swift retribution (i.e. Ed Poor). I've started a discussion on [[Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats]] about giving 'crats the authority to step into a dispute and stop it before it gets worse. Jimbo used to do this a fair bit (albeit after the flame war had gone on for ages without showing any sign of stopping), i.e. the [[Gdansk]] naming problem and [[autofellatio]], but he can't put our fires all the time. The English Wikipedia is just one of many projects he has to tend to. We need someone who can tell wheel/edit warriors to just stop or face punitive action immediately.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On 2/7/06, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I strongly second (or is it third?) this. UninvitedCompany has referenced the [[September That Never Ended]], which I think explains why this has happened. When I became an admin January 2004, I got about 20 votes of support -- today, any successful nomination with less than 40 supports would be an oddity. (It's also quite likely I would not pass now, what with editcountitis -- or its cousin, non-article-namespace-editcountitis -- running rampant.) Our community has expanded, and our decision-making mechanisms have not scaled along with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.
On 2/7/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/7/06, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I strongly second (or is it third?) this. UninvitedCompany has referenced the [[September That Never Ended]], which I think explains why this has happened. When I became an admin January 2004, I got about 20 votes of support -- today, any successful nomination with less than 40 supports would be an oddity. (It's also quite likely I would not pass now, what with editcountitis -- or its cousin, non-article-namespace-editcountitis -- running rampant.) Our community has expanded, and our decision-making mechanisms have not scaled along with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.
There have been a load of changes to speedy deletion (A7 & copyvios being the most obvious)
The 3RR waas del facto policy already. The only chnage was it switched to being inforced.
-- geni
On 2/7/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.
There have been a load of changes to speedy deletion (A7 & copyvios being the most obvious)
The 3RR waas del facto policy already. The only chnage was it switched to being inforced.
Apparently no one is going to mention semi-protection.
Steve
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/7/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.
There have been a load of changes to speedy deletion (A7 & copyvios being the most obvious)
The 3RR waas del facto policy already. The only chnage was it switched to being inforced.
Apparently no one is going to mention semi-protection.
Steve
I think that was more softwear rather than policy. -- geni
Alex Schenck wrote:
Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes. What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!) and arguing with others.
To keep things in perspective, if it weren't for the mailing list, I wouldn't even have heard about the wheel war. 99+% of editors and I daresay, at least 90% of admins are just working away and not getting into fights of any sort; I personally am content just exercising admin powers to revert random vandalism and whack unwanted images, and using the bit of spare time left over to add some of my own content.
While the conflicts do matter and need to be resolved, let's not get overly focussed on those. It would be interesting to see the results of a "friendliest admin" contest for instance - who has managed to do the most admin actions with the least amount of complaint, and what's their secret? Are we holding up fighters as exemplars, or diplomats? War is exciting, but peacetime is more productive.
Stan
On 2/7/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
While the conflicts do matter and need to be resolved, let's not get overly focussed on those. It would be interesting to see the results of a "friendliest admin" contest for instance - who has managed to do the most admin actions with the least amount of complaint, and what's their secret?
Probably someone like The coffee who was involved in some of the mass image deletion.
-- geni
Very well said. That's basically my method, and AFAIK, I haven't made any particular enemies (with the possible exception of people upset about the images with no source deletions).
And, just for the record - I suggest as a possible rename for the CVU: Janitors On Speed
Jesse Weinstein
On Feb 7, 2006, at 11:31 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
To keep things in perspective, if it weren't for the mailing list, I wouldn't even have heard about the wheel war. 99+% of editors and I daresay, at least 90% of admins are just working away and not getting into fights of any sort; I personally am content just exercising admin powers to revert random vandalism and whack unwanted images, and using the bit of spare time left over to add some of my own content.
While the conflicts do matter and need to be resolved, let's not get overly focussed on those. It would be interesting to see the results of a "friendliest admin" contest for instance - who has managed to do the most admin actions with the least amount of complaint, and what's their secret? Are we holding up fighters as exemplars, or diplomats? War is exciting, but peacetime is more productive.