http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=82245476&am...
Yes, the University already saw it, and no, they're not happy.
This is not an isolated incident and I'm not trying to pick on the admin who did it. It reflects poorly on all of us that we have a culture that puts twitch-game vandalism reversion on a lofty pedestal to the point where people don't read the edits they're reinstating.
Bots are doing this too. I've contacted the bot writers and asked them to help prevent it but nothing gets done.
Yours in frustration,
The Uninvited Co., Inc. (a Delaware corporation)
On Wed, 2006-10-18 at 19:33 -0700, The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=82245476&am...
Yes, the University already saw it, and no, they're not happy.
This is not an isolated incident and I'm not trying to pick on the admin who did it. It reflects poorly on all of us that we have a culture that puts twitch-game vandalism reversion on a lofty pedestal to the point where people don't read the edits they're reinstating.
Bots are doing this too. I've contacted the bot writers and asked them to help prevent it but nothing gets done.
Yours in frustration,
The Uninvited Co., Inc. (a Delaware corporation)
Pages should not be blanked, as [[WP:BLANK]] states. If someone has a problem with an article's contents, we have numerous ways to deal with that, including Office actions if the content is libelous or otherwise legally problematic.
Blanking a page does no good anyway, since all the previous revisions are in the history. And anyway, I'd be willing to bet that upwards of 90% of all page blankings are genuine, bad-faith vandalism, so you can't really blame editors for occasionally making bad reverts.
The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=82245476&am...
Yes, the University already saw it, and no, they're not happy.
In all fairness, the user that blanked it twice gave no edit summary whatsoever and those two blankings were the only edits that user has ever done on Wikipedia. The objectionable part of the article is only obvious if you read all the way through the text, whereas the signs suggesting that the blanking is vandalism are plainly obvious.
So the other take-home message is that when blanking an article you should give some indication of _why_ you're blanking it. Saves trouble all around.
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
So the other take-home message is that when blanking an article you should give some indication of _why_ you're blanking it. Saves trouble all around.
I couldn't agree more. I can't just assume a blanking is valid if the person doing it provides no reason whatsoever.
Mgm
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:29:45 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I couldn't agree more. I can't just assume a blanking is valid if the person doing it provides no reason whatsoever.
Not least because the verifiable instances of blanking by newly registered accounts for good reasons are, to date, precisely one, whereas the documented instances of it being vandalism are too numerous to count.
Guy (JzG)
On 19/10/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:29:45 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I couldn't agree more. I can't just assume a blanking is valid if the person doing it provides no reason whatsoever.
Not least because the verifiable instances of blanking by newly registered accounts for good reasons are, to date, precisely one, whereas the documented instances of it being vandalism are too numerous to count.
[hand up]
I've seen plenty. I've never stumbled across them, but I've seen a good few where after the blankings have been helpfully reverted, I've cleaned up the mess when they emailed us.
Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia. You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you do? You delete it. Getting new users to spot and understand the edit summary box is a bit of a lucky dip anyway - a new and angry user, somewhat less likely.
"That's not the way we do things around here" isn't an automatic ticket to not check if they had a point.
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia. You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you do? You delete it.
The whole article? *All* of it? Even the bits which are not crap? No I don't.
Guy (JzG)
On 19/10/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia. You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you do? You delete it.
The whole article? *All* of it? Even the bits which are not crap? No I don't.
To be honest, neither would I. But at the risk of sounding smug, I think you and I have perhaps more clue than most minor-notability people we have articles on...
I've certainly seen it happen, done in good faith and with good intentions, enough that I try not to ignore the possibility.
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia. You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you do? You delete it.
The whole article? *All* of it? Even the bits which are not crap? No I don't.
It's not surprising. If they find a section which they believe is crap, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that everything in the article is crap. It's not logical, but people do think that way in real life more often than I like to believe.
Ec
On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
So the other take-home message is that when blanking an article you should give some indication of _why_ you're blanking it. Saves trouble all around.
I couldn't agree more. I can't just assume a blanking is valid if the person doing it provides no reason whatsoever.
Hopefully you have something around 1.2 KG of greyish white mush between your ears. This mush has the amazing ability of enabling you to read as well as make decisions and a reader who wishes to 'fix' it but is unaware of exactly how they should do so.
A lot (most?) of blanking happens as a result of accidents or bad behavior but a non-trivial amount of blanking happens because we have libelous or otherwise bad information.
The bot issue is a complex one which we will address over time. We can add heurestics to the bots to identify potential trouble articles and send them to humans for review rather than just autounblanking.
But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a human who is pretending to be a bot.
The argument that these users are breaking our rules about blanking is entirely bogus: We allow open editing by anyone, even people who have not read a single rule. If you don't like that, argue to close membership.. don't make excuses for mistakes with the argument that the mistake wouldn't have been made if only some new user was aware of one of our numerous esoteric rules.
It would appear that WP:NOT needs a new line: "Wikipedia is not a video game".
--- Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a human who is pretending to be a bot.
I, for one, am not about to start reading entire articles to check for problems every time I encounter one of them being blanked by a new user with no explanation. Sure, as a human I can grok the context better than a bot, but I'm not going to waste more than half a minute on it. Sure, there might be a tiny chance that the person had spotted a problem and was making a good faith effort to flag that -- but they'll find a way to send the message another way. Honestly, they will. It's not just editors who have the grey white mush between their ears, right?
This is a trade-off between the convenience of outsiders versus the convenience of experienced editors. My view is that in this particular type of situation, the inconvenience of experienced editors very much outweighs the inconvenience of an outsider. Most of the time, we should (and do) bend over backwards to help newcomers at our own cost, but there's a limit.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
On 10/19/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I, for one, am not about to start reading entire articles to check for problems every time I encounter one of them being blanked by a new user with no explanation. Sure, as a human I can grok the context better than a bot, but I'm not going to waste more than half a minute on it.
Then you have no business reverting blanked articles... if you are going to do a worse job than the bots, then you should leave it to them.
Sure, there might be a tiny chance that the person had spotted a problem and was making a good faith effort to flag that -- but they'll find a way to send the message another way. Honestly, they will. It's not just editors who have the grey white mush between their ears, right?
And they did, obviously, because if they hadn't the junk would have stayed up. But that doesn't fix the loss of goodwill that we suffer because of this.
This is a trade-off between the convenience of outsiders versus the convenience of experienced editors. My view is that in this particular type of situation, the inconvenience of experienced editors very much outweighs the inconvenience of an outsider. Most of the time, we should (and do) bend over backwards to help newcomers at our own cost, but there's a limit.
It would be a lot easier if the expirenced editor, in this case, did nothing at all.
Either a bot which can be trained make better decisions than a person who doesn't read, or a person who did read, would have done a better job.
--- Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I, for one, am not about to start reading entire articles to check for
problems
every time I encounter one of them being blanked by a new user with no explanation. Sure, as a human I can grok the context better than a bot, but
I'm
not going to waste more than half a minute on it.
Then you have no business reverting blanked articles... if you are going to do a worse job than the bots, then you should leave it to them.
Who said I was going to do a worse job? Given what I know as a human, I'm pretty sure that there's no reason to blank, for example, [[Alan Turing]] without explanation, so I can revert that in the time it takes to hit "rollback". And, while I can do a lot more than a bot could with 30 seconds, I'm unlikely to read through an entire article if it's of any length.
And they did, obviously, because if they hadn't the junk would have stayed up. But that doesn't fix the loss of goodwill that we suffer because of this.
I believe that the risk of reasonable people bearing us ill-will if we revert their unexplained page-blanking is negligible. If, on the other hand, they communicated a problem about an article to us in a fashion readily distinguishable from vandalism and test edits, and we did nothing, then we lose goodwill.
It would be a lot easier if the expirenced editor, in this case, did nothing at all.
I'm afraid we'll have to disagree on that.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
Hi,
I'm a little surprised by this thread. Unless I am not understanding what I am reading, there seems to be actual resistance to the idea that one should read what they are reverting back to. When one reverts, one becomes the latest author/publisher of that article; I suggest that there should be some sense of responsibility for its content.
I'd just encourage all of us not to make edits that can result in introducing, or, yes, re-introducing, defamation, nonsense or vandalism into Wikipedia articles. If you really cannot afford the time to read your edit, it probably is better to not make that edit. As Greg Maxwell is pointing out, the bots do at least leave a message on the user's talk page about what to do if they believe that they have been reverted in error.
Jkelly
jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
I'm a little surprised by this thread. Unless I am not understanding what I am reading, there seems to be actual resistance to the idea that one should read what they are reverting back to. When one reverts, one becomes the latest author/publisher of that article; I suggest that there should be some sense of responsibility for its content.
I'd just encourage all of us not to make edits that can result in introducing, or, yes, re-introducing, defamation, nonsense or vandalism into Wikipedia articles. If you really cannot afford the time to read your edit, it probably is better to not make that edit. As Greg Maxwell is pointing out, the bots do at least leave a message on the user's talk page about what to do if they believe that they have been reverted in error.
In all fairness, I believe the issue has to do with edits where no reason whatsoever is given for the blanking. Defamation and vandalism do indeed require action, but not all of it is put into an article in an obvious way. A single defamatory sentence in a long article is not always easy to spot, especially in an unfamilar subject.
Let's assume that in a long biographical article about a math professor there is the sentence: "Shortly after his divorce in 1988, he left Princeton and was made a full professor at Yale." The entire article is essentially correct, and there is no shortage of references for his mathematical theories and most other aspects of his life. The _only_ problem is that he was never divorced. He sees our comment and blanks the entire article without explanation. Is it reasonable to expect anyone who restores the article will spot the error about the divorce? How much time would it take?
Ec
On 20/10/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a human who is pretending to be a bot.
You contradict yourself. If you leave it to the bot, you are assuming it is more intelligent than you are, or, you are just ignoring a problem. Why leave something for a bot, that you could have done on sight. The edit in the first post was a short edit. Do you really really expect everyone to, 1) wait for a bot, which may or may not come, or 2) to read the entirety of every edit which can be comfortably, with a large margin, to be considered vandalism. Bots are not more consistent with their intelligence, they are just plain dumb. Consistency in your context does not mean the intelligent consistency.
Peter Ansell
Peter Ansell wrote:
On 20/10/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a human who is pretending to be a bot.
You contradict yourself.
I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack, and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original blanker is just as much in the wrong.
Can we tone down the hyperbole a bit?
On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Peter Ansell wrote:
On 20/10/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a human who is pretending to be a bot.
You contradict yourself.
I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack, and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original blanker is just as much in the wrong.
Can we tone down the hyperbole a bit?
I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page. I know I always listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative than a new user blanking a page repeatedly. I still do not see why we should be beaten down because of a mistake which was caused by their lack of communication. As was said before, their should be informative messages before blanking is allowed, so they can see the intelligent options more clearly. Possibly even link directly to the BLP noticeboard, which gets a large volume of traffic and can deal with the sort of things that were so worrying in the single case that has been demonstrated here.
Peter Ansell
Peter Ansell wrote:
I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page. I know I always listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.
Certainly, this is the best way to go about something like this. I wasn't saying that the silent page-blanking was "okay." The sort of slack I was talking about cutting was to respond "oh, I see, you're just trying to delete that bit at the end because it's libel. You weren't going about things in the best manner, though, here's how to handle a situation like this in the future to ensure we get the right idea..."
Not cutting slack would be more along the lines of "Oh, I see you're just trying to delete that bit at the end. Nevertheless, you blanked the entire article instead. BANNED!"
On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Peter Ansell wrote:
I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page. I know I always listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.
Certainly, this is the best way to go about something like this. I wasn't saying that the silent page-blanking was "okay." The sort of slack I was talking about cutting was to respond "oh, I see, you're just trying to delete that bit at the end because it's libel. You weren't going about things in the best manner, though, here's how to handle a situation like this in the future to ensure we get the right idea..."
Not cutting slack would be more along the lines of "Oh, I see you're just trying to delete that bit at the end. Nevertheless, you blanked the entire article instead. BANNED!"
Thats quite reasonable. Did that person actually get banned for their good faith action?
Peter Ansell
Peter Ansell wrote:
Thats quite reasonable. Did that person actually get banned for their good faith action?
Wow, looks like she did:
10:33, 18 October 2006 Darwinek (Talk | contribs | block) blocked "Aarcelay (contribs)" with an expiry time of 3 hours (.numerous vandalism)
Only three hours, but IMO this _does_ put a significant black mark on Darwinek now. I can understand not looking in sufficient detail to notice the problems when simply reverting a blanking, but one definitely shouldn't block someone without at least some sort of attempt at interaction with them to confirm what's going on. And two blankings doesn't really count as "numerous vandalism."
Bit of a surprise, really. I hadn't even considered checking this before giving that hypothetical example.
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page.
And it's great when that happens.
I know I always
listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.
And you do no favors when you don't even bother to initiate dialogue if you find someone who seems to have an objection to the article.
I still do not see why we
should be beaten down because of a mistake which was caused by their lack of communication.
Our lack of communication is equally to blame, and it's the responsibility of "longtime respected editors" and "vandal fighters" alike to follow our policies, assume good faith, and find out what the problem is.
Instead, what was the reaction? Blind Revert, Blind Revert, Block user - all by the same admin Darwinek - without a single talkpage message or message to the editor in question that I know of.
This is the same sort of behavior I was complaining of when I shut down using my admin account. I've stayed talking on email thus far hoping that maybe, having brought these concerns to the list and to Jimbo, something might change. Instead, I'm watching over half of the thread's participants defending what ought to be undeniable, inexcusable behavior (not the reverting or the blocking necessarily, but not bothering to check the article for problems and not bothering to make any effort to contact the user, absolutely).
As was said before, their should be informative
messages before blanking is allowed, so they can see the intelligent options more clearly.
There should be a lot of things. That still doesn't excuse the behavior by the "respected editor" who didn't do their job properly.
Possibly even link directly to the BLP
noticeboard, which gets a large volume of traffic and can deal with the sort of things that were so worrying in the single case that has been demonstrated here.
It's not the only case, or the BLP page wouldn't have a line about how oftentimes biography blankings happen because there's something problematic in the article, and I'll thank you and whatsisname to stop throwing the "well this is the only case we have on record" strawman around right now.
Parker
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack, and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original blanker is just as much in the wrong.
Can we tone down the hyperbole a bit?
Lets trade, I'll stop being offended by how lazy some of our anti-vandalism video game players are when the rest of the folks in the thread stop making excuses for them.
As to why we'd hold bots to a different standard than humans: Bots don't have brains, humans do... If you are mindlessly reverting vandalism in a manner no more effective than what a bot could, should, and would do then you are doing nothing more than needlessly pumping your edit count.
I've substantiated my position, but I've yet to see a clear argument as to why it's okay to chose not to read, beyond it "being easier".
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack, and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original blanker is just as much in the wrong.
Joe random person off the street is not going to be familiar with Wikipedia's process and procedures in any significant way. Even if they happen across an article and click on "edit" for some legitimate reason such as libel.
Any experienced editor, particularly admins, should be held to the higher standard of knowing what our policies are, and what proper notifications and efforts are.
If anything, perhaps the unregistered account editing should be made a bit more blatantly hand-holding to encourage people who are newbies to do the right thing.
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
You contradict yourself. If you leave it to the bot, you are assuming it is more intelligent than you are, or, you are just ignoring a problem.
No, I don't. It' is apparent that some people are not reading before they revert, and there are folks in this thread advocating that doing so is okay.
My position is that if you aren't going to read it, you shouldn't revert it... leave it to a bot which will (eventually) do a better job than a human who reverted blindly.
Why leave something for a bot, that you could have done on sight.
I'd rather a human make a decision, but if they aren't going to a decision and instead act like a bot... then we should allow the bot to do the work, it will do a better job and its mistakes will be both more excusable and easier to fix.
The edit in the first post was a short edit. Do you really really expect everyone to, 1) wait for a bot, which may or may not come, or 2) to read the entirety of every edit which can be comfortably, with a large margin, to be considered vandalism.
Or more accurately, I want people who are not going to read to refrain from vandalism reversion... leave it to the bots and reading humans.
Bots are not more consistent with their intelligence, they are just plain dumb. Consistency in your context does not mean the intelligent consistency.
A human who reverts a blanked page because it was blanked without reading anything is never superior to a bot. At its very worst a bot would be equal, but when a bot reverted blanking inappropriately we could add rules to avoid some cases... not true with a human who doesn't read.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=82245476&am...
Yes, the University already saw it, and no, they're not happy.
In all fairness, the user that blanked it twice gave no edit summary whatsoever and those two blankings were the only edits that user has ever done on Wikipedia. The objectionable part of the article is only obvious if you read all the way through the text, whereas the signs suggesting that the blanking is vandalism are plainly obvious.
In all fairness, the user who performed the blanking was never asked why they were blanking the article, or told that it wasn't the right thing to be doing.
So the other take-home message is that when blanking an article you should give some indication of _why_ you're blanking it. Saves trouble all around.
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the time to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone with a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very shortly thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
-- Matt
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
Matt R wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the time to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone with a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very shortly thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:
"Please do not replace Wikipedia pages with blank content. Blank pages are harmful to Wikipedia because they have a tendency to confuse readers. If it is a duplicate article, please [[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirect]] it to an appropriate existing page. If the page has been [[Wikipedia:How to spot vandalism|vandalised]], please [[Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version|revert]] it to the last legitimate version. If you feel that the content of a page is inappropriate, please [[Wikipedia:How to edit a page|edit]] the page and replace it with appropriate content. If you believe there is no hope for the page, please see the [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy|deletion policy]] for how to proceed. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia!"
Which /should/ read a lot more like {{test1a}}, which talks about using the talk page.
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the
time
to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone
with
a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very
shortly
thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:
Even better, of course, would have been for the person to have used (say) the edit summary box to give some indication of why they were blanking an encyclopedia article. I really do feel that the onus is on them to give some reason for their drastic action, which is otherwise indistinguishable from hundreds of similar acts of vandalism a day.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
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Matt R wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the
time
to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone
with
a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very
shortly
thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:
Even better, of course, would have been for the person to have used (say) the edit summary box to give some indication of why they were blanking an encyclopedia article. I really do feel that the onus is on them to give some reason for their drastic action, which is otherwise indistinguishable from hundreds of similar acts of vandalism a day.
Perhaps we need to enable one of the JavaScript "Warn if no edit summary" things (I wrote a great one which can nag you up to 3 times) for anons... something like "As an anonymous user, you are required to provide a reason for your changes. Please enter it in the text box below:"...
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we need to enable one of the JavaScript "Warn if no edit summary" things (I wrote a great one which can nag you up to 3 times) for anons... something like "As an anonymous user, you are required to provide a reason for your changes. Please enter it in the text box below:"...
Perhaps this could be combined with a coarse edit analyser of some sort. For example, if there is a large reduction in the article length, then the user gets nagged for an edit summary. If the page is blanked, then the user could be given a warning such as: "I see you're blanking the page. Would you like some advice on that?".
Wiki[[Clippy]], in other words,
Apologies, not quite sure where my reply transitioned from serious to jest; take your pick ;-)
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
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On 10/19/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Perhaps this could be combined with a coarse edit analyser of some sort. For example, if there is a large reduction in the article length, then the user gets nagged for an edit summary. If the page is blanked, then the user could be given a warning such as: "I see you're blanking the page. Would you like some advice on that?".
I think we did that when we were haveing problems with the google toolbar.
geni wrote:
On 10/19/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Perhaps this could be combined with a coarse edit analyser of some sort. For example, if there is a large reduction in the article length, then the user gets nagged for an edit summary. If the page is blanked, then the user could be given a warning such as: "I see you're blanking the page. Would you like some advice on that?".
I think we did that when we were haveing problems with the google toolbar.
AFAIK we still do. There's the "Warning: you're editing a page over 35KB" stuff, as well as a template which instructs people how to fix the problem (upgrade the Google toolbar). Can't remember the name of it but it does exist.
On 10/19/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick
and
tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which
were
all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk
page.
Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this
type of
instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new
user
blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that
it's
vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth
the
time
to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that
someone
with
a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very
shortly
thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:
Even better, of course, would have been for the person to have used (say) the edit summary box to give some indication of why they were blanking an encyclopedia article. I really do feel that the onus is on them to give some reason for their drastic action, which is otherwise indistinguishable from hundreds of similar acts of vandalism a day.
Yes, because every new user can instantly find without any trouble at all every one of our miscellaneous and contradictory policies, procedures, and history on every bit of trivial drama that's ever occurred on Wikipedia, and know exactly what they should be doing and how to go about doing it.
You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?
This is a textbook example of watching wikipedians ignore AGF and not bother to communicate with someone. I suggested all new accounts should receive the welcome message planted on the new username's talk page, rather than waiting for another editor to do it and I mean it.
For chrissakes, people, we need to give new editors the tools and information and make it EASIER for them to join in. Instead, what do we do? We have a bunch of semi-secret policies and procedures hiding everywhere, we speak in code, half the supposed "policies" are just something some boob with no life came up with in order to justify his powers anyways, our dispute resolution system is a joke, and AGF has been thrown down the shitter in favor of Admins Rule All.
You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?
And I hope you realise that I have not read your email because this line caught my eye. If you want to have a discussion about something, avoid abuse.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
___________________________________________________________ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of Vi@gr@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
Matt R wrote:
You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?
And I hope you realise that I have not read your email because this line caught my eye. If you want to have a discussion about something, avoid abuse.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
If you manage to get through the ranting, Mr. Parker makes one suggestion that probably deserves some consideration. I know it's been suggested before, but is it time for us to somehow automate the process of planting a welcome message on new users' talk page?
-Rich Holton
Matt R wrote:
You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?
And I hope you realise that I have not read your email because this line caught my eye. If you want to have a discussion about something, avoid abuse.
Here's a summary:
Be nice to newbies. Everyone was a newbie once, even you.
Assume good faith. If you were wrong, no harm done. If you assume bad faith and you were wrong, lots of harm done.
Admins are so entrenched in their elitist jargon and pet policies that they forget how to interact with anyone who doesn't know the jargon and the policies.
We need a welcome bot.
Here's a summary:
Be nice to newbies. Everyone was a newbie once, even you.
Correct!
Assume good faith. If you were wrong, no harm done. If you assume bad
faith and you were wrong, lots of harm done.
Correct!
Admins are so entrenched in their elitist jargon and pet policies that
they forget how to interact with anyone who doesn't know the jargon and the policies.
Just about. I'd only add that admins also seem to love making up new policies or personal policies on the spot, or assigning harsher punishments for behavior that's one of their pet peeves (even though punishment isn't supposed to be the goal of our blocking ability in the first place), or generally treat the newbs like dirt because they know that the newbs won't know the proper ways to respond and try to report them for it, and even if they do get reported, it'll be hushed up because the admins are "longtime respected users" who are "fighting vandals" and we are "short on admins."
We need a welcome bot.
Why a bot? The new user creation script could easily just have a segment added to make the welcome message automagically appear on the user's new talk page, and then flag the new account for "new message waiting."
Parker
I watched your nonsense long enough, I've seen plenty of similar comments sent here including multiple sent to me both publicly over this list and privately.
If you're going to stop reading because I pointed out how inane your comments were, feel free to do so. You're more than welcome to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Parker.
On 10/19/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?
And I hope you realise that I have not read your email because this line caught my eye. If you want to have a discussion about something, avoid abuse.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
All New Yahoo! Mail – Tired of Vi@gr@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--- Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
I watched your nonsense long enough, I've seen plenty of similar comments sent here including multiple sent to me both publicly over this list and privately.
If you're going to stop reading because I pointed out how inane your comments were, feel free to do so. You're more than welcome to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Parker.
*plonk*
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
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And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
That's one of the reasons I gave up on editing Wikipedia and am slowly not bothering even to check my email on here: accounts blocked for "vandalism" or other reasons with no talkpage, new accounts with no welcome message, and general evidence of admins being shitty to them and getting away with it.
On 10/19/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
That's one of the reasons I gave up on editing Wikipedia and am slowly not bothering even to check my email on here:
Is there any way you can speed up that process?
Jay.
On 10/19/06, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
That's one of the reasons I gave up on editing Wikipedia and am slowly not bothering even to check my email on here:
Is there any way you can speed up that process?
Better still, is there some way somebody else can speed up the process for him?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Mark Wagner stated for the record:
On 10/19/06, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
That's one of the reasons I gave up on editing Wikipedia and am slowly not bothering even to check my email on here:
Is there any way you can speed up that process?
Better still, is there some way somebody else can speed up the process for him?
We can only hope. Until that happy day, keeping hitting delete.
- -- Sean Barrett | In America, anyone can be President. sean@epoptic.com | That's one of the risks you take.
The idea that one should read and screen an entire article that is blanked is absurd. Tt is entirely probable that even if you rewrote the article from scratch you might not address whatever supposed problem the vandal had with the article. We should keep an eye out for problems as best we can but we aren't mindreaders and we can't assume every vandal is an angry celebrity.
On 10/19/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
The idea that one should read and screen an entire article that is blanked is absurd. Tt is entirely probable that even if you rewrote the article from scratch you might not address whatever supposed problem the vandal had with the article. We should keep an eye out for problems as best we can but we aren't mindreaders and we can't assume every vandal is an angry celebrity.
In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an abortion.
I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert without reading at all? ... unacceptable.
To me it seems that the tone of your post, "an angry celebrity", really comes off as disrespectful both to the people we write about and to the folks who are dealing with this kinda garbage... Rest assured that no one is working on this subject area because they like merely appeasing people who cry about non-issues. The overwhelming majority of cases which get acted on are serious and materially hurtful attacks and it is not reasonable for you to belittle the matter.
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert without reading at all? ... unacceptable.
I've read the article in question, and that's the kind of thing that any editor who even saw the page should have removed, not just someone reverting vandalism. There's plenty of blame to go around there.
To me it seems that the tone of your post, "an angry celebrity", really comes off as disrespectful both to the people we write about and to the folks who are dealing with this kinda garbage... Rest assured that no one is working on this subject area because they like merely appeasing people who cry about non-issues. The overwhelming majority of cases which get acted on are serious and materially hurtful attacks and it is not reasonable for you to belittle the matter.
Oh, please. Two words on a mailing list does not mean I don't take the issue seriously or that I'm not one of "the folks who are dealing with this kinda garbage". Your generalization is inaccurate, insulting, and unhelpful.
On 10/19/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
I've read the article in question, and that's the kind of thing that any editor who even saw the page should have removed, not just someone reverting vandalism.
Exactly.
There's plenty of blame to go around there.
Blame is a waste of time... we need improvements. If you're thinking about blame you're thinking about the wrong thing.
Oh, please. Two words on a mailing list does not mean I don't take the issue seriously or that I'm not one of "the folks who are dealing with this kinda garbage". Your generalization is inaccurate, insulting, and unhelpful.
As I said, it sounded like you were belittling the concern, I'm glad that you've clarified your position. In the future you could avoid causing me to draw such incorrect conclusion by avoiding characterizing our response to a terrible attack on a private person as a response to "an angry celebrity". :)
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
As I said, it sounded like you were belittling the concern, I'm glad that you've clarified your position. In the future you could avoid causing me to draw such incorrect conclusion by avoiding characterizing our response to a terrible attack on a private person as a response to "an angry celebrity". :)
The person I was thinking about when I wrote "angry celebrity" was the artist John Byrne, who repeatedly blanked his article until I locked it. He refused to say what was wrong with the article despite being repeatedly asked by myself, Jimbo, and others, including people on his own personal message board. We (well,mostly me) rewrote the article from scratch and he was still mad. You do all you can but you aren't telepathic and you are never going to satisfy complaints that you do not know anything about. That was my point but I didn't feel like going on and on about some editing experience I had so I left that part out of my original email.
For the record I obviously support the removal of that attack from the article on the person whose article started this discussion, who is someone I've briefly met in real life, by the way. I think that any reasonable person would support removing such an attack. I thought that this list was filled with mostly reasonable people who would universally share that assumption and that I did not need to qualify my message by pointing that out. Also, I support kittens, apple pie, and world peace. Anything else I need to point out to you before you assume that I'm the sort of person who is in favor of unwarranted vicious personal attacks in encyclopedia articles?
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
The idea that one should read and screen an entire article that is blanked is absurd. Tt is entirely probable that even if you rewrote the article from scratch you might not address whatever supposed problem the vandal had with the article. We should keep an eye out for problems as best we can but we aren't mindreaders and we can't assume every vandal is an angry celebrity.
In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an abortion.
I'm disappointed to have read this entire thread before getting this bit of information.
I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and
missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert without reading at all? ... unacceptable.
Absolutely. If you're going to revert a blanking, you should be damn sure that at least *some* part of the original text was in fact accurate.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote: In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an abortion.
I'm disappointed to have read this entire thread before getting this bit of information.
...
Absolutely. If you're going to revert a blanking, you should be damn sure that at least *some* part of the original text was in fact accurate.
Don't know whether the reverter was "damn sure", but some part of the original text _was_ in fact accurate. The unsourced rumor was in the second half of the article, the first half of the article was pretty much okay.
On 10/20/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/19/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote: In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an abortion.
I'm disappointed to have read this entire thread before getting this bit of information.
...
Absolutely. If you're going to revert a blanking, you should be damn sure that at least *some* part of the original text was in fact accurate.
Don't know whether the reverter was "damn sure", but some part of the original text _was_ in fact accurate. The unsourced rumor was in the second half of the article, the first half of the article was pretty much okay.
So this might not have been a case of what I referred to as "absolutely" "unacceptable", which for some reason you cut out. Here it is:
"I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert without reading at all? ... unacceptable."
Anthony