Anthony has engaged in an edit war on the Main Page. I blocked him for 24 hours.
Danny
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Anthony has engaged in an edit war on the Main Page. I blocked him for 24 hours.
Danny
There has been a breakdown in the wiki-process here.
As I understand it:
1) Up until today, Raul654 has been the sole judge of what goes on the featured article area of the main page. This has mainly been on the grounds of practicality.
2) Anthony disliked that so much editorial power rests with one individual and wanted to institute some system, albeit more bureaucratic than the above model, that would allow greater involvement of the community. i.e. in his view make the process more wiki. (I personally thing models where there is devolution of responsibility to trusted individuals can be compatible with the wiki way).
3) Anthony repeatedly makes this suggestion at [[Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates]] where he finds a good deal of support that the current model is not very wiki. However no changes are effected. The talk page wiki process has effectively failed him.
4) In the particular case of Martha Stewart, Anthony takes matters into his own hands, breaking long-standing rules that Anthony knows all about.
5) Anthony is banned.
6) Proposals, very much along the lines of Anthony's, are proposed at [[Template_talk:Feature]] and look like they will be accepted.
This seems WRONG! It took the action of a revert/edit war on the main page to get proposals accepted where talk pages failed.
Are we really saying that if you want to get something done you have to break the rules and accept a temporary punishment in "sacrifice"?
Pete/Pcb21
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Are we really saying that if you want to get something done you have to break the rules and accept a temporary punishment in "sacrifice"?
No, that's not right. What Anthony did was wrong and foolish, and the result was appropriate.
If Anthony had a problem with how slow the process was going, or a problem with the process itself, or a problem with the process being complete but not implement, then the solution would have been quite simple: come to the mailing list and post a constructive comment about the situation, asking for support.
Behaving like a jerk to force an issue is really not helpful.
Getting into edit wars to get your way is just poor form.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Are we really saying that if you want to get something done you have to break the rules and accept a temporary punishment in "sacrifice"?
No, that's not right. What Anthony did was wrong and foolish, and the result was appropriate.
If Anthony had a problem with how slow the process was going, or a problem with the process itself, or a problem with the process being complete but not implement, then the solution would have been quite simple: come to the mailing list and post a constructive comment about the situation, asking for support.
Behaving like a jerk to force an issue is really not helpful.
Getting into edit wars to get your way is just poor form.
--Jimbo
Yes I absolutely agree that Anthony behaved very badly and he's back to square one (or even square minus one) in gaining people's trust.
However I am really complaining that his actions, by and large, have succeeded. If he hadn't have behaved like that then [[Wikipedia:Tomorrow's featured article]] wouldn't exist right now.
I am at a bit of a loss of how to improve things though: before the fact - we should've taken more notice of the talk page. However this is a very vague and unimplementable guideline.
after the fact - doing nothing to change the policy in a sort of "we don't negotiate with vandals" style seems to be cutting off our nose to spite our face.
All in all, a tricky one. I thought the general issue was worth flagging as it may happen again - on our very busiest Wikipedia: pages it is hard to change things because there are so many interested parties.
Pete/Pcb21
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
However I am really complaining that his actions, by and large, have succeeded. If he hadn't have behaved like that then [[Wikipedia:Tomorrow's featured article]] wouldn't exist right now.
Well, is that really true? There were plenty of other paths for that to exist, including working through the normal and proper channels. It would have been easy for him to post a proper complaint about the delay in doing that (or whatever) to this mailing list, or if he felt that anyone in particular was being bad, he could have written to me personally for support, and we could have made it a priority.
after the fact - doing nothing to change the policy in a sort of "we don't negotiate with vandals" style seems to be cutting off our nose to spite our face.
That's right, it would be silly for us to say "Well, X is a good idea, but the person who proposed it was behaving badly, so we refuse to do it."
This is really a broader problem than just this type of case. We want people to work *together*, not *adversarially* to bring about positive change. We have to seek always to undercut the "red faction" type of premise that civil disobedience to the fascist powers-that-be at wikipedia (ha ha) is the only way to get things done.
--Jimbo