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(a)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. >

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

From: wikien-l-bounces(a)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.

On 2/7/06, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Correction: Not slippery slope...just annoying :\ On 2/7/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- ~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(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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

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

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).

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.

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.