Since there was no opposition, and several strong supports for Jwrosenzweig as the new chair of the mediation committee, I boldly made it so.
Kate set up a mediation mailing list, which access should be restricted to mediators only.
Next steps are to get mediators registered to this list, and that a moderator is named for handling registrations. Also, some candidates are still waiting to be named mediators.
Our new mediator, Improv, is willing to make things move, and planning a meeting with a whole lot of things to discuss. Planning a meeting on irc is tough; so possibly, some of these things can be discussed on the new mailing list ? Thanks to him anyway :-)
Ant
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:13:02 +0100, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Our new mediator, Improv, is willing to make things move, and planning a meeting with a whole lot of things to discuss. Planning a meeting on irc is tough; so possibly, some of these things can be discussed on the new mailing list ? Thanks to him anyway :-)
That's not a bad idea, but note that some of us who've spent a lot of time thinking about some of the problems with mediation, such as sannse and I (who've both written fairly long responses on the matter), are no longer mediators, and thus wouldn't have access to the list - whereas we would probably be able to attend an IRC chat.
-- ambi
Rebecca a écrit:
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:13:02 +0100, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Our new mediator, Improv, is willing to make things move, and planning a meeting with a whole lot of things to discuss. Planning a meeting on irc is tough; so possibly, some of these things can be discussed on the new mailing list ? Thanks to him anyway :-)
That's not a bad idea, but note that some of us who've spent a lot of time thinking about some of the problems with mediation, such as sannse and I (who've both written fairly long responses on the matter), are no longer mediators, and thus wouldn't have access to the list - whereas we would probably be able to attend an IRC chat.
-- ambi
The problem is that it seems organising an irc session seems VERY difficult.
On the other hand, what I can see is that currently, mails are sent to people who resigned from the committee and perhaps do not care at all of these mails, while possibly other persons are not reached. In sending the recent mails, I also noticed an adress not valid anymore. Finally, each time you want to send a mail, you need to dig in all email adresses, which is frankly very boring to do (to the point you may end up not writing at all).
Hence, my suggestion for a redirection mail address. Finally, a mailing list was set. Fine as well.
Note Ambi, that if you are no more part of the committee, normally you should not receive any more mails. So, between not receiving mails and not be able to read archives from a mailing list, there is not much much difference :-)
In any case, I *think* that this list should not be used for mediation cases themselves, for which it is really best that privacy is seriously ensured. Any mediation case should only be discussed with personal mail adresses, NOT mailing lists.
This list should rather be for organisational discussions and the rule of thumb would be "do not say anything on it, that you would be severaly unhappy if it becomes public".
Now ambi, I'll be frank. First, Sannse and you are not the only ones who have given a lot of thoughts on the matter. I already mentionned how pissed off I was that all the comments we made after the creation of the mc have been dumped when the forum was closed. My memories of that time was basically taht dozens of hours of thinking and typing have just been put in the trash. The rest of discussions were on private mails, so are lost just as well. And when I say pissed off, consider it an understatement.
If we set a mailing list, at least, we know the information will NOT be lost entirely. We know that new members will be able to read discussions afterwards.
Private mails are lost. Forum talks are dumped. Irc logs are not always published and restrict the discussion to those available and those with irc access. Not everyone unfortunately.
I would not oppose at all if older members of mc were part of these discussions and consequently members of this new mailing list. But it really depends on what other mediators think of this.
Now, *you* decided to quit the MC. You had the choice. When you were elected to be on the AC, you resigned from the MC. I think you should consider whether it is wise to be part of the two groups at the same time. If you wish to 1) be on the mc mailing list 2) be part of irc discussions on the topic, and why not 3) going on mediating between people ?
In this case, you would still be a mediator without being one ? You would be a mediator and an arbitrator ?
I think we need to be consistent and separate both activities.
Anthere
PS : if previous mediators now arbitrators still are involved in defining what mediation is, should be and how conflicts should be approached and fixed, I would love that previous arbitrators, such as The Cunctator, still be involved in arbitration as well.
Additionaly thinking that if only organisation was discussed on the mailing lists (not cases), we could very well imagine that 1) archives are open to anyone 2) people approved by the chair or committee may join the list as posters.
Depends on what other mediators think what this list should become.
Ant
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
Some interesting comments from different posts made there today:
"Holocaust Denial has been essentially hijacked by the jews on wikipedia, along with many other topics, we really need more white people to sign up to wikipedia and help to make unbiased contributions to wikipedia.com. go to wikipedia.com now, sign up and participate."
"I am signed up, but in an environment like Wiki Holocaust Denial is the last thing we should be bothering about."
"Any activities should be well planned and organized."
"Nevertheless, guess we can have some fun at Wikipedia. Maybe we should have a mailinglist on this helping each other with arguments and advice."
"Several Administrators are abusing their power on wikipedia and deleting links to holocaust revisionists sites on wikipedia.com one such individual is named jpgordon there needs to be a mass movement of people to sign up on this forum and bring attention to arbitration that jpgordon and several other administrators are abusing their power and purposefully making the holocaust denial section unballanced and biased." (the last, no doubt, a comment by [[User:dnagod]] in relation to this edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holocaust_denial&diff=0&ol...
Jay.
--- JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
Some interesting comments from different posts made there today:
"Holocaust Denial has been essentially hijacked by the jews on wikipedia, along with many other topics, we really need more white people to sign up to wikipedia and help to make unbiased contributions to wikipedia.com. go to wikipedia.com now, sign up and participate."
"I am signed up, but in an environment like Wiki Holocaust Denial is the last thing we should be bothering about."
"Any activities should be well planned and organized."
"Nevertheless, guess we can have some fun at Wikipedia. Maybe we should have a mailinglist on this helping each other with arguments and advice."
"Several Administrators are abusing their power on wikipedia and deleting links to holocaust revisionists sites on wikipedia.com one such individual is named jpgordon there needs to be a mass movement of people to sign up on this forum and bring attention to arbitration that jpgordon and several other administrators are abusing their power and purposefully making the holocaust denial section unballanced and biased." (the last, no doubt, a comment by [[User:dnagod]] in relation to this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holocaust_denial&diff=0&ol...
Jay.
Jay,
What is the essential difference between this new declared "threat" to Wikipedia and the one from this source?
http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00172.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00104.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00112.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00044.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_the_Bruce/Vigilance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_the_Bruce/Need_Some_Help
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_the_Bruce/Reimer
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? All your favorites on one personal page � Try My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com
Build it and they will come. All of em. We have yet to find a way to deal effectively with systemic POV editing by advocacy groups.
Fred
From: AndyL andyl2004@sympatico.ca Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 11:57:51 -0500 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder (fredbaud@ctelco.net) [050207 04:17]:
From: AndyL andyl2004@sympatico.ca
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563 "And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
Build it and they will come. All of em. We have yet to find a way to deal effectively with systemic POV editing by advocacy groups.
While it would be theoretically nice from the angle of NPOV to find a neo-Nazi who could research and argue worth a damn, in practice being one seems to require being hard of thinking, and they are demonstrably unable to hold a coherent point in open debate on the Internet, hence retreating to boards like Stormfront, where they self-aggrandise to their hearts' content. A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we routinely deal with on a regular basis. I predict the very hardest part will be getting checkable references out of them and getting them to actually accept that 2+2=4 when presented with quality references from those who don't agree with them.
- d.
From: David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au While it would be theoretically nice from the angle of NPOV to find a neo-Nazi who could research and argue worth a damn, in practice being one seems to require being hard of thinking, and they are demonstrably unable to hold a coherent point in open debate on the Internet, hence retreating to boards like Stormfront, where they self-aggrandise to their hearts' content. A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we routinely deal with on a regular basis. I predict the very hardest part will be getting checkable references out of them and getting them to actually accept that 2+2=4 when presented with quality references from those who don't agree with them.
I hope you're right. The latest post to the thread is as follows:
"What we need is to send out a membership emailing and require that all 43,000 members of stormfront.org sign up for wikipedia.com and participate in its development and also to get a movement on there to oust the small minority of members, specifically jews with baby-carrot sized dicks who are preventing specific jewish topics on wikipedia.com from being fair and balanced.
If this does not achieve fair and balanced results then we should really consider starting our own open source encyclopedia, which actually come to think of it is what we should do, we certainly have the army of members to get something like that off the ground. Something we really should consider building.
none the less, I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com and work towards building it and going into arbitration to help oust the small minority of baby-carrot-dick jews on there.
go to wikipedia.com now and sign up."
I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for "baby-carrot-dick jews".
Jay.
Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members before, for making racist edits.
Charles
I hope you're right. The latest post to the thread is as follows:
"What we need is to send out a membership emailing and require that all 43,000 members of stormfront.org sign up for wikipedia.com and participate in its development and also to get a movement on there to oust the small minority of members, specifically jews with baby-carrot sized dicks who are preventing specific jewish topics on wikipedia.com from being fair and balanced.
If this does not achieve fair and balanced results then we should really consider starting our own open source encyclopedia, which actually come to think of it is what we should do, we certainly have the army of members to get something like that off the ground. Something we really should consider building.
none the less, I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com and work towards building it and going into arbitration to help oust the small minority of baby-carrot-dick jews on there.
go to wikipedia.com now and sign up."
I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for "baby-carrot-dick jews".
Jay.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1630126
02-03-2005, 08:51 PM #1 Baldrson Forum Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 121 Location:
Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a "web tree alert" of sorts. If you have a web site people frequent, please put up a prominent post to alert them to get out to vote.
There is a vote going on now to keep or ban a Wikipedia article on Jewish ethnocentrism.
To vote you must first register.
Then edit the vote discussion page by adding the following line to the end of the discussion:
*'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~
replace ... with your reason for wanting to keep Jewish ethnocentrism as a topic in Wikipedia. Leave the "~~~~" as it stands since that will affix your signature to the line. __________________ Empty the Cities
Baldrson Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come on people!
Celtic_Frost
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check your spelling, or use the form below to create a new user account. If there is no form below, account creation is temporarily disabled. In this case, please accept our apologies and try again later. cant register at the moment.
Lilith __________________ Become a Friend of Stormfront
You knock me down, take the shirt from our backs, kick me round but you will never stop me. Drag me down, take the words from my mouth, kick me round but you will never stop me. Mykind-Pitchshifter PSI
Lilith
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There was once a very good article about white nationalism but it was changed to be biased against WNm and the original was transfered to wikinfo http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=White_nationalism I've already registered and voted to keep "Jewish ethnocentrism" i hope it will not have the same fate.
Lusitan
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yes, the Wikipedia community has a very skewed take on objective.
Celtic_Frost
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to participate in voting. __________________ WhiteBamboo
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote: Originally Posted by WhiteBamboo How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to participate in voting.
I'll just re-cap on what Baldrson said.
First, register.
Next, click here.
Finally, scroll down to the very bottom of all the text in the box, and underneath all the other comments write:
*'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~
Of course, in place of ... you must give your reason as to why you voted to keep the article - needless to say you should do so in a cordial manner, those wishing to delete the article will latch onto anything they can as an excuse to be hostile towards anybody criticising Jewish culture.
Celtic_Frost
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We need about 50 people from this forum to sign up to wikipedia.com and make more than 10 contributions to wikipedia.com before voting to keep Jewish Ethnocentrism on wikipedia. This will take a good amount of effort to get this kind of help.
Oh bloody hell. Baldrson?! I remember that nut from Kuro5hin. Figures he'd be posting on stormfront.
TBSDY
AndyL wrote:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1630126
02-03-2005, 08:51 PM #1 Baldrson Forum Member
Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 121 Location:
Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
This is a "web tree alert" of sorts. If you have a web site people frequent, please put up a prominent post to alert them to get out to vote.
There is a vote going on now to keep or ban a Wikipedia article on Jewish ethnocentrism.
To vote you must first register.
Then edit the vote discussion page by adding the following line to the end of the discussion:
*'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~
replace ... with your reason for wanting to keep Jewish ethnocentrism as a topic in Wikipedia. Leave the "~~~~" as it stands since that will affix your signature to the line. __________________ Empty the Cities
Baldrson
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
Come on people!
Celtic_Frost
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
Check your spelling, or use the form below to create a new user account. If there is no form below, account creation is temporarily disabled. In this case, please accept our apologies and try again later. cant register at the moment.
Lilith __________________ Become a Friend of Stormfront
You knock me down, take the shirt from our backs, kick me round but you will never stop me. Drag me down, take the words from my mouth, kick me round but you will never stop me. Mykind-Pitchshifter PSI
Lilith
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
There was once a very good article about white nationalism but it was changed to be biased against WNm and the original was transfered to wikinfo http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=White_nationalism I've already registered and voted to keep "Jewish ethnocentrism" i hope it will not have the same fate.
Lusitan
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
Yes, the Wikipedia community has a very skewed take on objective.
Celtic_Frost
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to participate in voting. __________________
WhiteBamboo
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
Quote: Originally Posted by WhiteBamboo How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to participate in voting.
I'll just re-cap on what Baldrson said.
First, register.
Next, click here.
Finally, scroll down to the very bottom of all the text in the box, and underneath all the other comments write:
*'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~
Of course, in place of ... you must give your reason as to why you voted to keep the article - needless to say you should do so in a cordial manner, those wishing to delete the article will latch onto anything they can as an excuse to be hostile towards anybody criticising Jewish culture.
Celtic_Frost
Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
We need about 50 people from this forum to sign up to wikipedia.com and make more than 10 contributions to wikipedia.com before voting to keep Jewish Ethnocentrism on wikipedia. This will take a good amount of effort to get this kind of help.
Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members before, for making racist edits.
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
Jay.
on 2/6/05 7:16 PM, JAY JG at jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members before, for making racist edits.
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
Jay.
Perhaps we need some sort of intermediate form of ongoing protection for certain pages. Perhaps some pages should only have registered editors able to actively edit them with non-editors only able to make suggestions on talk pages? Perhaps other pages should be protected on an ongoing basis and only have admins able to edit them based on proposals on talk pages which have achieved consensus or passed a certain standard?
Andy
On Monday 07 February 2005 00:25, AndyL wrote:
Perhaps we need some sort of intermediate form of ongoing protection for certain pages. Perhaps some pages should only have registered editors able to actively edit them with non-editors only able to make suggestions on talk pages? Perhaps other pages should be protected on an ongoing basis and only have admins able to edit them based on proposals on talk pages which have achieved consensus or passed a certain standard?
Andy
Superb idea. I'm not sure that Wiki has the facility to have "registered" editors, but a nominated admin could be responsible for a page and apply changes that have been voted upon.
Actually I think we can handle this. But let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
Fred
From: "JAY JG" jayjg@hotmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 19:16:39 -0500 To: mackensen@gmail.com, wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members before, for making racist edits.
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
Jay.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
You say that, Fred, but you don't say how. Look at the amount of work and time it took to deal with what turned out to be one LaRouche activist with two sockpuppets; and even then you argued that the "POV warriors on the other side" should be dealt with too. Granted, the Stormfront-related socks who've turned up so far are easily identifiable by their stupidity, but it would take only a small number of more sophisticated ones, expressing their views in a less obvious way, to create problems - RfCs, RfDs, mediation, arbitration. You ignore how much work this can involve, and there's never a guarantee of getting a decent result, because the arbcom looks at behavior, not content.
Slim
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 17:31:36 -0700, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Actually I think we can handle this. But let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
On a more positive note, I am pleased to see that the newly invigorated ArbCom has only two outstanding cases, neither more than 11 days old. The backlog has been cleared, and new cases are being dealt with promptly. Kudos to all active members.
Jay.
On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 08:25:03PM -0500, JAY JG wrote:
On a more positive note, I am pleased to see that the newly invigorated ArbCom has only two outstanding cases, neither more than 11 days old. The backlog has been cleared, and new cases are being dealt with promptly. Kudos to all active members.
Yes, I'd like to second this. Good job! I'd considered pasting [[Image:Choco chip cookie.jpg|frame|300px|Thanks for speeding up Arbitration!]] elevent times on [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee]], but now you've broached the topic here just chiming in will do nicely.
JAY JG wrote:
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
I don't think so. Remember my constant mantra: the purpose of our community is to write a high quality neutral encyclopedia. Our openness is a means to that end, and a very excellent one we should respect highly.
But if 43 Vogels show up, I'll personally ban them all if necessary, and that's that. That's not likely to be necessary, because we're pretty good at devising community-oriented solutions to such problems.
Quality is what we're all about. Getting it right is what we're all about.
I've been speaking lately about some research that I've done about how wikipedia is actually written. It isn't the product of millions of people writing one sentence each: it is the work of a small (in the hundreds) and mostly close-knit community. This community must be (and _will be_) respected in our values of NPOV, quality, getting it right. And if some random Nazis have to be removed, then so be it.
No one within this community should ever think that I respect our principles of openness more than I respect the community itself. So I will not ride the ship of openness to the bottom of the ocean.
--Jimbo
JAY JG wrote:
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
I don't think so. Remember my constant mantra: the purpose of our community is to write a high quality neutral encyclopedia. Our openness is a means to that end, and a very excellent one we should respect highly.
But if 43 Vogels show up, I'll personally ban them all if necessary, and that's that. That's not likely to be necessary, because we're pretty good at devising community-oriented solutions to such problems.
I appreciate your determination, but banning doesn't work for some people; people with dialup accounts, for example, who are unafraid to create multiple sockpuppets. How many socks did Cantus use to carry on his recent war? How many has CheeseDreams created?
I admit I'm just projecting a doom and gloom scenario, but I think what has saved us so far is the fact that most of the troublemakers are either stupid or not organized or both. That could change; in my view, it will change.
Quality is what we're all about. Getting it right is what we're all about.
I've been speaking lately about some research that I've done about how wikipedia is actually written. It isn't the product of millions of people writing one sentence each: it is the work of a small (in the hundreds) and mostly close-knit community. This community must be (and _will be_) respected in our values of NPOV, quality, getting it right. And if some random Nazis have to be removed, then so be it.
No one within this community should ever think that I respect our principles of openness more than I respect the community itself. So I will not ride the ship of openness to the bottom of the ocean.
It's very encouraging to hear that.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
JAY JG wrote:
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent,
coherent,
and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
I don't think so. Remember my constant mantra: the purpose of our community is to write a high quality neutral encyclopedia. Our openness is a means to that end, and a very excellent one we should respect highly.
But if 43 Vogels show up, I'll personally ban them all if necessary, and that's that. That's not likely to be necessary, because we're pretty good at devising community-oriented solutions to such problems.
I appreciate your determination, but banning doesn't work for some people; people with dialup accounts, for example, who are unafraid to create multiple sockpuppets. How many socks did Cantus use to carry on his recent war? How many has CheeseDreams created?
People that will go to the trouble of picking up a sock puppet (or, at least, do so more than once) are a decided minority in most online communities. If there are 43 egregious offenders, and they all get banned, I suspect you'll see about five or six come back with sock puppets. It's much easier to deal with that smaller number in other means than to simply ignore the banning option altogether.
Of course, banning is probably best used only after other options are attempted. Smack-downs tend to make for rankled egos more than a proper education for someone that has wandered astray.
-- Chad
JAY JG (jayjg@hotmail.com) [050207 11:17]:
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
I think you're far too pessimistic. The incoherent ones will look like and be treated as vandals, the semicoherent ones will look and act like crackpots. Wikipedia does fine against both. And then there's NPOV to explode their heads with. Our soft security is a tarpit.
- d.
I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for "baby-carrot-dick jews".
Jay.
They have 43,000 memebers but only a small fraction of those will be active and even fewer are likely to answer a call to arms.
They have 43,000 memebers but only a small fraction of those will be active and even fewer are likely to answer a call to arms.
-- geni
As AndyL's e-mail points out, their first attempt was to try to stack a VfD vote, and they managed to get 15 new members to vote on it (and counting). 15 voting to "keep" on a VfD requires at least 30 (often more) voting to "delete"; most VfD votes don't even get 10 voters total. At first their votes were easy to spot, but, as you see, the Stormfront instructions got smarter, telling them to make at least 10 edits before voting so they wouldn't be dismissed out of hand. I can see that once they figure out how to game the 3RR, permanent changes to article content is next.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
I can see that once they figure out how to game the 3RR, permanent changes to article content is next.
We'll just change the rules. I'll just start blocking Nazis at whim if I have to. I'll initiate legal action if appropriate.
If they want to play games with us, fine. This is Calvinball -- we make up the rules, so we win. Easy.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales stated for the record:
If they want to play games with us, fine. This is Calvinball -- we make up the rules, so we win. Easy.
Now THAT'S an attitude I can respect!
Checklist: # GodKing on our side -- check. # Jawbone of an ass -- check.
Time for some smiting!
JAY JG (jayjg@hotmail.com) [050207 06:44]:
From: David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au
While it would be theoretically nice from the angle of NPOV to find a neo-Nazi who could research and argue worth a damn, in practice being one seems to require being hard of thinking, and they are demonstrably unable to hold a coherent point in open debate on the Internet, hence retreating to boards like Stormfront, where they self-aggrandise to their hearts' content. A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we routinely deal with on a regular basis. I predict the very hardest part will be getting checkable references out of them and getting them to actually accept that 2+2=4 when presented with quality references from those who don't agree with them.
I hope you're right. The latest post to the thread is as follows: "What we need is to send out a membership emailing and require that all 43,000 members of stormfront.org sign up for wikipedia.com and participate in its development and also to get a movement on there to oust the small minority of members, specifically jews with baby-carrot sized dicks who are preventing specific jewish topics on wikipedia.com from being fair and balanced. If this does not achieve fair and balanced results then we should really consider starting our own open source encyclopedia, which actually come to think of it is what we should do, we certainly have the army of members to get something like that off the ground. Something we really should consider building. none the less, I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com and work towards building it and going into arbitration to help oust the small minority of baby-carrot-dick jews on there. go to wikipedia.com now and sign up."
I think it's more likely they'll set up their own MediaWiki server. Can't wait for the tech support questions on wikitech-l. OPEN SOURCE FOR WHITE SUPREMACY!
43 strikes me as a more likely number to try it.
I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for "baby-carrot-dick jews".
I'll just have to use my ARYAN MIGHT for the JEWISH CONSPIRACY!
- d.
" I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com [...]"
Just redirect wikipedia.com to bnaibrith.org, they'll assume WP has been taken over completely and give up. More ambitiously, mirror the database from wikipedia.org, allow them all to create accounts and edit as usual, but update articles from wikipedia.org each night. They'll go crazy trying to figure out why only their edits are disappearing daily, including attempts to communicate with other users.
Even more evil, heh-heh, make them register with real name and address and credit card number if they come in through wikipedia.com, and charge them for editing the mirror. It's a .com, right? and we're supposed to be filthy money-grubbing Jews, right? Just think of the poetry in having very dumb neonazis funding the next round of server purchases...
:-)
Stan
David Gerard wrote:
While it would be theoretically nice from the angle of NPOV to find a neo-Nazi who could research and argue worth a damn, in practice being one seems to require being hard of thinking, and they are demonstrably unable to hold a coherent point in open debate on the Internet, hence retreating to boards like Stormfront, where they self-aggrandise to their hearts' content. A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we routinely deal with on a regular basis. I predict the very hardest part will be getting checkable references out of them and getting them to actually accept that 2+2=4 when presented with quality references from those who don't agree with them.
I don't think this is a particularly unique trait of neo-Nazis though, merely something common to many activist groups. Heck, I'm a member of several environmentalist organizations, and I'd argue that the description above applies to a large proportion of environmental activists, and I'd similarly have low hopes for a cadre of them successfully making NPOV edits to Wikipedia. The circumcision-related articles have tended to be a mess from both sides as well, including recruitment of activists from off-wikipedia mailing lists.
-Mark
Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [050207 11:26]:
I don't think this is a particularly unique trait of neo-Nazis though, merely something common to many activist groups. Heck, I'm a member of several environmentalist organizations, and I'd argue that the description above applies to a large proportion of environmental activists, and I'd similarly have low hopes for a cadre of them successfully making NPOV edits to Wikipedia. The circumcision-related articles have tended to be a mess from both sides as well, including recruitment of activists from off-wikipedia mailing lists.
NPOV is our secret sauce. IT HAS THE POWER TO EXPLODE HEADS!!
I expect the very worst we'll get from Neo-Nazis will be pseudointellectual historical revisionists with the most remarkably crap references imaginable. Assuming they don't decide in a week we're all Zionist conspirators.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I expect the very worst we'll get from Neo-Nazis will be pseudointellectual historical revisionists with the most remarkably crap references imaginable. Assuming they don't decide in a week we're all Zionist conspirators.
We can tell them I really enjoyed my trip to Israel, if that will help.
Did anyone notice I was in Jerusalem *on the very day* of the Palestinian elections? If that doesn't prove it, I don't know what would.
--Jimbo
One small thing we can do is put the likely pages on our watch lists and keep an eye on how things develop. I'm pretty new here, so I'll go lightly but there is no reason to throw up our hands in despair; there are enough NPOV Wikipedians to keep things within bounds.
-j
(Of course, as a Queer Jew, I may not qualify as unbiased!)
---------------------------- Jesse Liberty http://www.ActonEquality.org http://radio.weblogs.com/0138856/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I expect the very worst we'll get from Neo-Nazis will be pseudointellectual historical revisionists with the most remarkably crap references imaginable. Assuming they don't decide in a week we're all Zionist conspirators.
We can tell them I really enjoyed my trip to Israel, if that will help.
Did anyone notice I was in Jerusalem *on the very day* of the Palestinian elections? If that doesn't prove it, I don't know what would.
--Jimbo
OMG!!! It's a Zionist/Roman Catholic conspiracy! You are worshipping a pagan god with your wikipedia! You are the NEW BABYLON!
TBSDY
csherlock@ljh.com.au stated for the record:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Did anyone notice I was in Jerusalem *on the very day* of the Palestinian elections? If that doesn't prove it, I don't know what would.
--Jimbo
OMG!!! It's a Zionist/Roman Catholic conspiracy! You are worshipping a pagan god with your wikipedia! You are the NEW BABYLON!
Nah. The StormAssTroopers would think more highly of him if he worshipped a pagan god. Though I must congratulate you on uncovering the conspiracy that has been controlling the Marxist/Libertarian Cabal, LLP, all this time.
Now you'll have to be triply-reverted, too.
Delirium said:
The circumcision-related articles have tended to be a mess from both sides as well, including recruitment of activists from off-wikipedia mailing lists.
While the editing process on these articles may sometimes be somewhat fraught, I don't think there are a lot of problems with the product. Looking at "Medical analysis of circumcision", for instance, both before and after the systematic involvement of anti-anti-circumcision activists, the article doesn't seem to have suffered greatly. Looking at the earliest edits and the latest, much the same issues are dealt with and the lay reader gets a reasonable feel for the pros and cons, though minor detail differs. This doesn't seem to be a "brave white heroes fight off Jewish cultural pollution" thing at all.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that an activist group has decided to target Wikipedia. I'm personally aware of one group, recruited through anti-circumcision activist mailing lists, that have been systematically pushing their POV at Wiki.
Whether one agrees with their cause or not is hardly relevant. Nor is whether one is disgusted by their cause. The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These groups *oppose* NPOV.
What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not* *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit some activist agenda seems impossible to stop. A few brave souls try to maintain NPOV, but are limited by the strength of numbers and the 3RR.
I suspect that this only affects a relatively small number of particularly controversial articles. Perhaps a strategy needs to be devised for those articles. What do people think?
Jake.
On Sunday 06 February 2005 16:57, AndyL wrote:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that an activist group has decided to target Wikipedia. I'm personally aware of one group, recruited through anti-circumcision activist mailing lists, that have been systematically pushing their POV at Wiki.
Jake is correct. The anti-circumcision activists are a much smaller group, yet they managed to recruit at least 4 determined, long-time editors whose sole focus appears to be inserting their particular POV into articles of interest to them. The response from Wikipedia appears to be muted at best, though it doesn't help that one of the pro-circumcision activists (not Jake) is a particularly nasty piece of work.
Jay.
Jake Waskett wrote:
The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These groups *oppose* NPOV.
Yes!
What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not* *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.
I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles, circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD co-ordination.
I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared. But we need not overreact. The system *is* working in the main, and where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors), we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.
--Jimbo
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem?
One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page.
What do others think?
Jake.
On Monday 07 February 2005 01:48, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Jake Waskett wrote:
The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These groups *oppose* NPOV.
Yes!
What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not* *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.
I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles, circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD co-ordination.
I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared. But we need not overreact. The system *is* working in the main, and where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors), we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.
--Jimbo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
We have a NPOV policy, not a majority rules policy.
Fred
From: Jake Waskett jake@waskett.org Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 01:58:24 +0000 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem?
One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page.
What do others think?
Jake.
On Monday 07 February 2005 01:48, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Jake Waskett wrote:
The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These groups *oppose* NPOV.
Yes!
What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not* *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.
I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles, circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD co-ordination.
I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared. But we need not overreact. The system *is* working in the main, and where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors), we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.
--Jimbo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
We have a NPOV policy, not a majority rules policy.
Indeed, and I do agree that Jake's proposal is more than we actually need in order to start to deal with this.
However, I should point out that voting and NPOV are not _necessarily_ and _always_ at odds. We don't want to ever get into a situation where an article of total praise about George Bush is permanently fixed on wikipedia as long as it is getting 52% of the vote - obviously.
Wiki-editing works great in most cases to drive towards NPOV. The game theory of "mutually assured destruction" means that partisans have an incentive to try to "write for the enemy". What we are considering now is how to deal with a situation in which an *organized* group starts gaming our social rules (3RR in particular) to undermine the natural incentive structure of wiki editing.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Wiki-editing works great in most cases to drive towards NPOV. The game theory of "mutually assured destruction" means that partisans have an incentive to try to "write for the enemy". What we are considering now is how to deal with a situation in which an *organized* group starts gaming our social rules (3RR in particular) to undermine the natural incentive structure of wiki editing.
That strikes me as the real crux of the matter: this is more of a contentious testing of the administrative rules of Wikipedia than it is an actual assault on the project itself. There will always be those with an axe to grind and an agenda to propagandize.
I'm not sure that anything at all "needs to be done" to deal with the matter. In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid POV. Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a particular perspective with identified adherents. Thus, if Stormfront troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit it. Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one section, and label it as a particular perspective.
Where a Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names) activist enters some figures identifying the amount of money supposedly cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might originate. If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source of information.
I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias and a lack of point-of-view are two different and separate things. Points of view are good. Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad. Tell me if I'm wrong.
-- Chad
* = I keep thinking "Personally Owned Vehicle" when I type POV. Bah.
Chad Perrin wrote
Tell me if I'm wrong.
I think you're right, in principle, to favour approaches where points of view out of the mainstream are documented in some way, rather than excluded by some sort of decree.
That being said, WP will always want them documented in a certain low-rhetoric, crisp way with supporting cites. This is unlikely to satisfy anybody but the most level-headed, reasonable holders of said points of view.
Acrid contention is to be expected, unless and until one gets 'insidious POV-pushing': people prepared to operate on a time scale of years within the norms and with the general grain of the way WP works. We have ways of ring-fencing some of the contentious issues (not all); we don't currently have much idea about regulating the latter.
Charle
Charles Matthews wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote
Tell me if I'm wrong.
I think you're right, in principle, to favour approaches where points of view out of the mainstream are documented in some way, rather than excluded by some sort of decree.
Of course I am. Being Right is my superpower. Err, whoops. Was that my outside voice?
That being said, WP will always want them documented in a certain low-rhetoric, crisp way with supporting cites. This is unlikely to satisfy anybody but the most level-headed, reasonable holders of said points of view.
I believe it will, at minimum, cut down on the number of people reverting the article after "attacks" have been "fixed" in some way, and will reduce the number of attempts to circumvent administrative rules. For one thing, the most egregious offenders act as blunt instruments, and probably won't know what to do about information they've posted that isn't deleted, but just gets shuffled around a bit to add a more professional tone. Such a person may not even necessarily realize that his bias has been bled out, as long as his (probably specious) statistics are still presented in some manner.
Keep in mind that people who push bias and ignore attempts at objectivity think they're being objective, and the phrasing they choose tends to be a result of the inability to recognize the distinction between biased and unbiased language. Bias in academic works is typically the result of blindness to one's own bias: we all do it, though the more alert of us might do it far less than some others. Altering pejorative or prejudicial language without altering core data can often mitigate problems of disagreement simply by leaving biased parties with no options but A) leave it as is or B) becoming truly irrational, even in one's own eyes.
In any case, as Jimbo has pointed out, the soft solution is preferable if it works. Considering Wikipedia is entirely built upon the notion that collaborative peer review selects for good information and presentation, it seems to me that the softest solution (apply Wikipedia's core precepts faithfully and fully) is also likely the most effective, in cases such as this.
Acrid contention is to be expected, unless and until one gets 'insidious POV-pushing': people prepared to operate on a time scale of years within the norms and with the general grain of the way WP works. We have ways of ring-fencing some of the contentious issues (not all); we don't currently have much idea about regulating the latter.
"Insidious POV-pushing" is probably far more prevalent than you realize. In fact, I suspect that every non-stub article in Wikipedia has at least indirectly suffered at the hands of that phenomenon, though in probably no greater degree than any Other Encyclopedia. Even attempts to mitigate or eliminate bias involve some degree of POV advocacy. If real bias begins to appear in an article, I haven't much fear that it won't be corrected in due time, though.
The real problem to examine here, I think, is in such issues as ballot-stuffing and revert-wars. If the Stormfront troopers start engaging in regular revert-wars, that's fairly easily addressed by such administrivia as the 3RR and, if that proves ineffective, it just points out something that needs work.
As for ballot-stuffing (which has already happened once with Stormfront, apparently), I'm of the opinion that votes are counterproductive under most circumstances, anyway. Votes are calls for a majority opinion -- POV bias by definition -- rather than a function or extension of the economics of public content reference materials. Much like a capitalistic market tends, in a vacuum, toward an equilibrium of wealth production, so too does the semi-social machinery of Wikipedia's publicly editable content tend toward an equilibrium of data purity, at least when it mostly operates in a vacuum (without too much bureaucratic red tape).
In short, the "solution" in this case (in my opinion) is three-fold:
1. We should simply become better, and more alert, editors.
2. We should treat system abuses as an opportunity to improve administrative rules.
3. We should avoid opportunities for tangential and auxiliary functions (like polls and votes) to be sabotaged, most likely by minimizing the incidence of such functions: if it can be done without a vote, but still be accomplished in the spirit of community, it should be.
-- Chad
Everybody might want to take a look at [[Wiedergutmachung]]
RickK
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050208 04:33]:
I'm not sure that anything at all "needs to be done" to deal with the matter. In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid POV. Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a particular perspective with identified adherents. Thus, if Stormfront troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit it. Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one section, and label it as a particular perspective.
I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)
Where a Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names)
They've given up on the cool uniforms, though. Foolish move.
activist enters some figures identifying the amount of money supposedly cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might originate. If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source of information.
You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent checkable reference out of them, thoguh.
I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias and a lack of point-of-view are two different and separate things. Points of view are good. Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Mmm. Report and attribute them, don't just say them.
Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really annoying.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050208 04:33]:
I'm not sure that anything at all "needs to be done" to deal with the matter. In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid POV. Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a particular perspective with identified adherents. Thus, if Stormfront troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit it. Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one section, and label it as a particular perspective.
I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)
I think I missed a reference, there.
Where a Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names)
They've given up on the cool uniforms, though. Foolish move.
Agreed.
activist enters some figures identifying the amount of money supposedly cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might originate. If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source of information.
You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent checkable reference out of them, thoguh.
Search for it independently, then. If you don't find a reference, edit it out if need be WITH A NOTE to the effect that it is unsubstantiated at this time, and will be re-entered at such time as it can be substantiated (note probably delivered both on the talk page and in a note for the history page). Editing other people's contributions out should include justifications, anyway, and should not be done as a first resort, in my considered opinion. Don't edit what someone else has said without being positive you know the reasons for what came before your edit, even if your own edit requires attempts at independent verification.
Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.
I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias and a lack of point-of-view are two different and separate things. Points of view are good. Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Mmm. Report and attribute them, don't just say them.
Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really annoying.
I certainly don't disagree with that. Activists do tend to have that problem, and it definitely does tend to be annoying.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050208 08:25]:
David Gerard wrote:
particular perspective with identified adherents. Thus, if Stormfront troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit it. Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one section, and label it as a particular perspective.
I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)
I think I missed a reference, there.
<whisper>Look at the history of [[Sollog]] some time ...</whisper>
Search for it independently, then. If you don't find a reference, edit it out if need be WITH A NOTE to the effect that it is unsubstantiated at this time, and will be re-entered at such time as it can be substantiated (note probably delivered both on the talk page and in a note for the history page). Editing other people's contributions out should include justifications, anyway, and should not be done as a first resort, in my considered opinion. Don't edit what someone else has said without being positive you know the reasons for what came before your edit, even if your own edit requires attempts at independent verification.
I find that with a new, hotheaded but potentially sincere editor, commenting out a dubious addition (HTML comments - start "<!--" and end "-->" ), starting the comment with a request for a reference, produces better results than just deleting material. It gives them a better idea of the standard to work to.
Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.
I'd rather convert them into NPOV pushers ;-) The Arbitration Committee has recently reaffirmed that even the worst editors are to be regarded as theoretically redeemable!
Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really annoying.
I certainly don't disagree with that. Activists do tend to have that problem, and it definitely does tend to be annoying.
"WE DONOT THINK THAT YOU ZOG ACTIVIST" "So do you have a checkable reference for what your organization does believe?" "LOOK IT UP URSELF ASSWIP" "You put it in, you supply the reference. Statements with solid refs do stay in." *silence*
NPOV implies writing for the POV you don't agree with - I edit a lot on Scientology and neo-Nazi articles and try to keep my strong opinions on both topics in check and stick to the facts with references, ma'am - but there's a limit to how much of someone else's homework I can be bothered doing.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I think I missed a reference, there.
<whisper>Look at the history of [[Sollog]] some time ...</whisper>
Ahhh. It becomes clear, now. Thank you.
I find that with a new, hotheaded but potentially sincere editor, commenting out a dubious addition (HTML comments - start "<!--" and end "-->" ), starting the comment with a request for a reference, produces better results than just deleting material. It gives them a better idea of the standard to work to.
That's exactly the sort of approach I'd favor (if I were to ever find myself in the position of deleting entire edits by others).
Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.
I'd rather convert them into NPOV pushers ;-) The Arbitration Committee has recently reaffirmed that even the worst editors are to be regarded as theoretically redeemable!
In theory, there isn't any difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. (paraphrased from somewhere, source unknown)
. . . but I agree with the sentiment.
"WE DONOT THINK THAT YOU ZOG ACTIVIST" "So do you have a checkable reference for what your organization does believe?" "LOOK IT UP URSELF ASSWIP" "You put it in, you supply the reference. Statements with solid refs do stay in." *silence*
NPOV implies writing for the POV you don't agree with - I edit a lot on Scientology and neo-Nazi articles and try to keep my strong opinions on both topics in check and stick to the facts with references, ma'am - but there's a limit to how much of someone else's homework I can be bothered doing.
Great! That's the way it should . . . err, "ma'am"?
-- Chad
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 05:10:17 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent checkable reference out of them, thoguh.
Heh! For a very recent examplof this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiedergutmachung
Stacey Greenstien aka UtherSRG
Stacey Greenstein (stacey.nj@gmail.com) [050208 12:08]:
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 05:10:17 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent checkable reference out of them, thoguh.
Heh! For a very recent examplof this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiedergutmachung
Now, now! Assuming good faith tells me that's just someone coming to terms with "references are haaard" ;-)
- d.
I've only been on the mailing list a short time, but it's sure opening my eyes to the community and its concerns.
What you're talking about is a type of "moderated articlespace". That could work, and in fact, would be a great idea with a proper system. You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work. But I don't know how much work that would add for the admins. Perhaps moderators should be granted limited "admin" access to the moderated articles they are working on so they can edit the protected article according to the Talk pages.
Cheers,
DP.
Jake Waskett wrote:
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem?
One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page.
What do others think?
Jake.
On Monday 07 February 2005 01:48, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Jake Waskett wrote:
The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These groups *oppose* NPOV.
Yes!
What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not* *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.
I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles, circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD co-ordination.
I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared. But we need not overreact. The system *is* working in the main, and where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors), we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.
--Jimbo
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Here's another Stormfront article http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1631182 Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com
WhiteBamboo 02-05-2005 05:42 PM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com We need more white people to participate on wikipedia.com or it is going to become completely Jew Biased.
go to wikipedia.com
sign up
and help build wikipedia with balance and truth.
Not enough White Nationalists issues are covered on wikipedia. latebloomer 02-06-2005 12:13 AM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com D'ya mind giving a brief overview of the whole "wiki" and "wikipedia" thing? I've heard about it, but I don't think I've seen it or used it as of yet.
Thanks. xpac 02-06-2005 03:15 AM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com If you change something it'll be changed back. It's like the Jews patrol it. For instance I simply added in an article about Zionism "Since 1948, Zionism cost the US tax payer over $3 billion every year." minutes later it was taken off.
Also, you can't even edit the article on MLK!! Celtic_Frost 02-06-2005 03:18 AM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com
Quote: Originally Posted by latebloomer D'ya mind giving a brief overview of the whole "wiki" and "wikipedia" thing? I've heard about it, but I don't think I've seen it or used it as of yet.
Thanks.
It's an online encyclopaedia that anybody can edit, as in theory this leads to objective consensus. However, like Democracy, it becomes a numbers game whereby the most people on a side wins, usually regardless of an article's veracity.
See here. WhiteBamboo 02-06-2005 02:14 PM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com I'm coming to the conclusion that we may need to start thinking about building our own version of wikipedia.com as the jews on this site are preventing fair and accurate articles on jewish issues.
Does anyone know how much it would cost to develop an open source encyclopedia like wikipedia? Molloy 02-06-2005 09:37 PM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: Need more White Nationalists on Wikipedia.com I spent over six months trying to get a quote added to the "zionist" article, and eventualy won my case, and had it included. It can take time, but keep working at it.
Try and adopt one article, and keep working it over, and over, untill they give in. If your article is reverted without obvious cause, go to the wickipedia administrators argue that the revert as a Point of View.
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At 09:33 PM 2/6/2005 -0500, Deathphoenix wrote:
I've only been on the mailing list a short time, but it's sure opening my eyes to the community and its concerns.
What you're talking about is a type of "moderated articlespace". That could work, and in fact, would be a great idea with a proper system. You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work. But I don't know how much work that would add for the admins. Perhaps moderators should be granted limited "admin" access to the moderated articles they are working on so they can edit the protected article according to the Talk pages.
I've always been a fan of the approach of marking particular revisions of an article as "confirmed good", with "confirmed" being whatever system we come up with for making such decisions (editorial board, voting, whatever). Then we can have a link on each page to "view most recent confirmed version" that will jump you back to that particular version in the article's history. This way the working version of the article remains the "primary" one, and there's no risk of forks developing because the confirmed version is by definition a static historical thing, but we can say to people who question the quality of Wikipedia that now there's a way to make sure they aren't reading nonsense that was put in by vandals minutes (or months) earlier.
"Deathphoenix" wrote
I've only been on the mailing list a short time, but it's sure opening my eyes to the community and its concerns.
Remember a few things. For every problematic article on the English Wikipedia, there are around 1000 being developed in relative harmony. For every community member who brings serious concerns here, there must be at least ten very active editors who meet little difficulty beyond random vandals and a few problems with newbies or ill-informed postings. For every security and quality-assurance measure WP currently takes, there are several it could take, but doesn't deign to.
I would say that the current size of wikien means the entryists have left it far too late to try to swamp the community. This might have worked two years ago, or caused the barriers to come down. That is, enforcement is currently quite low key, but that's a sign of confidence. Edits can be reverted, pages protected, lowlifes summarily banned. I don't doubt they would be, in any serious attempt at subverting what we do. At the moment Wikipedia is open for business, 24/7, and we don't circle the wagons in the face of mere paper threats.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Edits can be reverted, pages protected, lowlifes summarily banned. I don't doubt they would be, in any serious attempt at subverting what we do. At the moment Wikipedia is open for business, 24/7, and we don't circle the wagons in the face of mere paper threats.
Very well said. We don't need to panic. But we also need not doubt that we'll do what needs doing to protect the quality of our work.
--Jimbo
Deathphoenix said:
You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness. The best safeguard of content is verifiability. The existing dispute resolution process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050207 23:54]:
Deathphoenix said:
You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness. The best safeguard of content is verifiability. The existing dispute resolution process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
But we *must* kill the wiki in order to save it. Else all the editors will leave in disgust and Britannica will not take us seriously. Possibly we should vote on it.
- d.
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:57:38 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050207 23:54]:
Deathphoenix said:
You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness. The best safeguard of content is verifiability. The existing dispute resolution process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
But we *must* kill the wiki in order to save it. Else all the editors will leave in disgust and Britannica will not take us seriously. Possibly we should vote on it.
Votes are exactly the sort of things that POV-pushing groups can understand. As we see, they can organise themselves for votes. All you gotta do is stand up and be counted, the more times the better.
Actually thinking or researching is a little more difficult. God forbid we should build an encyclopaedia on the lowest common denominator.
I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio.
Skyring said:
I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio. --
Though I'm sure I should not try to speak for David, I think he was employing that deadly antipodean weapon: sarcasm. He doesn't want a vote, either.
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050208 00:20]:
Skyring said:
I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio. --
Though I'm sure I should not try to speak for David, I think he was employing that deadly antipodean weapon: sarcasm. He doesn't want a vote, either.
How dare you - I'm British. I have paperwork that says so.
With Neo-Nazis, pro/anti-circumcision activists, etc., they tend to be cranks at best and that means their references are going to be crap. Usually really obviously crap. (In some cases, as with David Irving, less obviously crap until you look more closely.) They are also likely to be pains in the arse in such a way as to violate most of our conduct rules in relatively short order.
- d.
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:20:00 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Skyring said:
I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio. --
Though I'm sure I should not try to speak for David, I think he was employing that deadly antipodean weapon: sarcasm.
You don't say?
Actually, I was just seizing an opening to dive into what is a fascinating discussion. We seem to be reading their mail - is there any evidence they are reading ours? IIRC, there is a reference to this list somewhere in the blocking process.
Not that I feel particularly worried - it's not as if anybody is proposing a mechanism that relies on secrecy.
David Gerard wrote:
But we *must* kill the wiki in order to save it. Else all the editors will leave in disgust and Britannica will not take us seriously. Possibly we should vote on it.
Skyring wrote:
Votes are exactly the sort of things that POV-pushing groups can understand. As we see, they can organise themselves for votes. All you gotta do is stand up and be counted, the more times the better.
Yes! But just to make clear, since I know David's views pretty well and they are generally (roughly, mostly) the same as my own, he was being humorous here and agrees with you completely.
We know a few things: first, as Charles Matthews (I think) put it: for every 1 article where something awful is going on, there are 999 being developed to a very high quality in relative peace. We don't want to break the 999 trying to fix the 1.
Second, we know that in some cases (I named 3 yesterday, but I can add one more that I remembered last night: pedophilia related articles) we have organized partisans who are carefully working to maintain a biased point of view in the articles.
Third, we know as per Slim Virgin's explanation, that in the LaRouche case at least, the bias being inserted into the articles is difficult to grasp for people who haven't in some fashion made a hobby out of knowing the subject area. Pseudo-NPOV is a problem in those articles and in the pedophilia articles.
Fourth, we know that the community loves *both* openness *and* quality. The Cunctator said it this way to me the other day: Openness is the central principle of the community, but it is not the *purpose* of the community.
To me what this means is: as always, we look for the softest possible solution to these problems. No need to start talking about permanently locking articles and voting on the content yet. Yes, this would work, but there are other, softer, things that we should try first.
Let me give VfD as an example. VfD is a *means*, it is not *the end* that we seek. If NeoNazis come in and start negatively affecting VfD, we will not just throw up our hands and say "Oh well, I guess the majority wins, and if NeoNazis want to take over wikipedia, well, that's democracy and we have to accept it."
What we will do is say: Look, VfD worked for a long time because the people voting there, while not agreeing on everything, at least approached the process with a sincere but diverse view of what needs to be done. When an organized group comes in to upset the process, we remember the *purpose* of the process and *change the rules* -- a little bit at first, no need to break what's more or less working, but we do change the rules.
If they want to treat wikipedia as a game, they will lose. They will lose because we get to make up the rules.
--Jimbo
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Deathphoenix said:
You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness. The best safeguard of content is verifiability. The existing dispute resolution process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
I would think that part of being in a team of moderators would be to edit according to consensus (per the talk page) and by verifying the data. The existing dispute resolution is great for handling disputes, don't get me wrong. I've been looking at the process and have been very impressed. However, if a large scale, rapid attack *were* to become a reality, the dispute resolution process might be too slow. Now, I definitely like Jimbo's Calvinball, but if the worst were to happen, and even a small fraction of a group like the <s>Stormtroopers</s> Stormfront were able to stop dragging their knuckles long enough to organise a long enough attack, even our benevolent dictator might be overworked.
Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the talk page than to get into edit/revert war.
Just an idea for if the worst comes to pass.
Cheers,
DP
Deathphoenix said:
Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the talk page than to get into edit/revert war.
You can't have "a team of trusted moderators" *and* verifiability--well, you can, but only up to the point where the moderators are challenged on unverifiable material. At which point you have stopped trusting them and you might as well have just left things the way they were.
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:47:09 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Deathphoenix said:
Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the talk page than to get into edit/revert war.
You can't have "a team of trusted moderators" *and* verifiability--well, you can, but only up to the point where the moderators are challenged on unverifiable material. At which point you have stopped trusting them and you might as well have just left things the way they were.
I don't think challenging moderators on unverified material imples that you have stopped trusting them. I think the moderators are a layer of "protection" on deciding what to include in the article based on other people's input. The moderators wouldn't be the *only* contributors to the article, they would merely the only ones allowed to edit the article itself. The other option for a protected/moderated article is to have admins edit the article (which, AFAIK, is the current system for protected pages). I just think having moderators takes some work of editing protected pages away from the potentially overworked admins.
Cheers,
DP
Death Phoenix said:
The other option for a protected/moderated article is to have admins edit the article (which, AFAIK, is the current system for protected pages). I just think having moderators takes some work of editing protected pages away from the potentially overworked admins.
Thanks. I don't really have a reasoned objection, or at least not a categorical one, to this. On admins editing protected articles, I think the consensus is that they're not really supposed to but I'm not familiar with the details of consensus on this--just that it proved controversial when an admin altered the content of [[clitoris]] while it was protected. I do feel uneasy about the idea of having "trusted" content editors. When editors have a limited number of collaborators they will inevitably learn one another's blind spots and edit for consensus within the group. Without new editors coming along and entering new material out of the blue, the dynamics of editing would be very different. I'm not against this at all in principle, but I'd hate to see Wikipedia abandon a winning formula just because of a few racist nuts. Readers are cleverer than we think.
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:04:58 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Thanks. I don't really have a reasoned objection, or at least not a categorical one, to this. On admins editing protected articles, I think the consensus is that they're not really supposed to but I'm not familiar with the details of consensus on this--just that it proved controversial when an admin altered the content of [[clitoris]] while it was protected. I do feel uneasy about the idea of having "trusted" content editors. When editors have a limited number of collaborators they will inevitably learn one another's blind spots and edit for consensus within the group. Without new editors coming along and entering new material out of the blue, the dynamics of editing would be very different. I'm not against this at all in principle, but I'd hate to see Wikipedia abandon a winning formula just because of a few racist nuts. Readers are cleverer than we think.
You make good points about Wikipedia's winning formula. The current dispute process has, for the most part, worked very well. I'm just (as we all probably realise) speaking hypothetically about a system that might work. You also make good points about the dangers of only taking consensus among a small group. However, the discussion and call for consensus would be among the community as a whole, not just among the moderators. The moderators have the only write access to the article, but normal users can still discuss the matter. Maybe I'm assuming too much good faith among the moderators to edit for consensus among the community as a whole and not just for themselves. Maybe it's just my inexperience. :-)
Cheers, DP.
Jake Waskett (jake@waskett.org) [050207 13:05]:
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem? One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page. What do others think?
Consensus is a means to NPOV, not something that trumps it. A vote would exacerbate the recruitment problem you have described.
- d.
On Monday 07 February 2005 11:19, David Gerard wrote:
Jake Waskett (jake@waskett.org) [050207 13:05]:
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem? One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page. What do others think?
Consensus is a means to NPOV, not something that trumps it. A vote would exacerbate the recruitment problem you have described.
Yes, I see your point. Unfortunately, though, there's no way of automating a test for neutrality, so humans have to be involved.
What about unanimous vote? If every editor had the ability to veto a change, it could work. Nobody would (presumably) object to truly NPOV changes, but at least one person would surely object to any attempt to insert POV changes.
I guess I'm assuming that at least two "sides" will be represented in such a controversial article here, but the evidence suggests that is not such an unreasonable assumption. The nice thing about this is that it doesn't matter how many neo-nazis (or whatever) descend upon Wiki - it only takes one non-nazi editor to keep the article neutral.
One problem that I can see might involve some editors objecting just to be difficult, but I'm sure we could deal with such a situation.
Thoughts?
Jake.
Jake Waskett wrote:
What about unanimous vote? If every editor had the ability to veto a change, it could work. Nobody would (presumably) object to truly NPOV changes, but at least one person would surely object to any attempt to insert POV changes.
The problem is, groups like Stormfront have a whole different definition of what is NPOV.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee wrote:
The problem is, groups like Stormfront have a whole different definition of what is NPOV.
Not to get too relativistic, but to some extent, so do all cultures and subcultures. I'm not sure it's been explicitly mentioned anywhere, but IMO Wikipedia is in essence defining "NPOV" to mean "neutral according to what a sampling of reasonably objective liberal intellectuals would think", perhaps even with the caveat "liberal intellectuals in the Western rationalist tradition" (where liberal is used in the non-political sense). We believe that everything ought to be discussed (no censorship), including taboo and/or sensitive issues; that rigorous academic-style inquiry is in general the right way to discover facts; and so on.
The relationship this has to majority is an interesting one. In many countries, both Western and non-Western, it's not the majority one (I'd argue this would be true of both the United States, and of many Muslim nations, for different reasons). If we held a population-wide vote on some of our decisions, we'd end up with some significantly different ones. Of course, that does lead to a bit of a problem---perhaps we can use majority votes, but only of people who subscribe to the basic tenets to begin with. If 500 people register who think that all criticism of [(religious figure) or (national hero)] is inappropriate for an encyclopedia, then we'll simply have to discount their votes and keep it. Now who decides when that's the case is an interesting question...
-Mark
Delirium said:
If 500 people register who think that all criticism of [(religious figure) or (national hero)] is inappropriate for an encyclopedia, then we'll simply have to discount their votes and keep it. Now who decides when that's the case is an interesting question...
I think we already got the answer to that question. Sometimes it's useful to have a benign dictator who can step in and say "cut it out."
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I think we already got the answer to that question. Sometimes it's useful to have a benign dictator who can step in and say "cut it out."
The danger of course is that the benign dictator may turn out to be biased or wrong himself. So I hestitate to do this except in cases where speed is of essence, or where it's just very clearcut and easy. What I prefer is that I can act as a temporary bridge and "person to blame" while we work on community solutions.
If 300 NeoNazis show up and start doing serious damage to a bunch of articles, we don't need to have 300 separate ArbCom cases and a nightmare that drags on for weeks. I'll just do something to lock those articles down somehow, ban a bunch of people, and protect our reputation and integrity. And then we can also work in parallel to think about the best way to really take care of such problems in the long run.
But if a handful of LaRouche fans want to come in and do pseudo-NPOV on a handful of relatively obscure articles, I'm not in favor of me just cracking heads over it. We can't just ignore it and hope it goes away, either, of course. We just start thinking about it and working on it until we come up with something useful.
We're really smart, but we are also really *thoughtful* as a community. That's wonderful, and me asking too quickly as constitutional monarch is not helpful to preserving those values.
But really, we need not fear a massive NeoNazi attack, either. Because I *will* authorize a quick change of policy if needed.
--Jimbo
A number of people have expressed concern that my proposal is too extreme. Well, I can't say I agree, but here's a proposal for a "gentler" approach:
Create and use a template for controversial articles, that says, in effect: "This is a highly controversial article. Before making any changes, please familiarise yourself with the discussion page, and add a comment describing your change and the justification for it." We should also link to WP:NPOV.
If that works, great! I doubt it will, but it won't hurt to try.
If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with the controversial header.
This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
Comments? I'm running on very little sleep today, so if I'm talking rubbish, please tell me!
Jake.
On Monday 07 February 2005 12:34, John Lee wrote:
Jake Waskett wrote:
What about unanimous vote? If every editor had the ability to veto a change, it could work. Nobody would (presumably) object to truly NPOV changes, but at least one person would surely object to any attempt to insert POV changes.
The problem is, groups like Stormfront have a whole different definition of what is NPOV.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Jake Waskett (jake@waskett.org) [050208 03:28]:
Create and use a template for controversial articles, that says, in effect: "This is a highly controversial article. Before making any changes, please familiarise yourself with the discussion page, and add a comment describing your change and the justification for it." We should also link to WP:NPOV.
Such a template exists, but it's presently only applied to talk pages.
(The idea is that such messages to Wikipedia editors are only ever to be applied to an article as a temporary thing in the hope of facilitating their removal - e.g. {{protected}}, {{npov}}, even {{stub}}. Ones intended to be permanent fixtures seem not to be favoured at all by most editors.)
If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with the controversial header. This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
I don't think it'll do a damned thing to slow down POV pushers, but I do think the Summary field being compulsory would be good. It actually took me a couple of days to realise what it was for (commenting in a version control system).
- d.
On Monday 07 February 2005 16:41, David Gerard wrote:
If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with the controversial header. This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
I don't think it'll do a damned thing to slow down POV pushers, but I do think the Summary field being compulsory would be good. It actually took me a couple of days to realise what it was for (commenting in a version control system).
I don't think that the summary field is sufficient for more than describing the most minor edits (say, fixing a typo). More complex edits, particularly if they need justifying, need an entry on the discussion page. This also helps other users to explain why they agree or (more likely, unfortunately) disagree.
My experience, having tried this informally for a few days and encouraged/nagged others to do likewise, is that it does seem to reduce the amount of edit wars. It still doesn't eliminate them, but it does help. And when someone is forced to view the talk page first, there's a fair chance that he'll at least read the most recent comments. Call me an idealist and I won't argue, but I think that perhaps if people read comments explaining NPOV and the application to articles often enough, maybe it'll sink in.
A 3UER (Unjustified Edit Rule) would at least encourage collaboration. And if all else fails, it makes unreasonable editors MUCH easier to detect.
And maybe, if POV pushers lose motivation and drift away, it might be safe to remove the notice at a later date.
Jake.
Jake Waskett (jake@waskett.org) [050208 03:55]:
On Monday 07 February 2005 16:41, David Gerard wrote:
If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with the controversial header. This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
I don't think it'll do a damned thing to slow down POV pushers, but I do think the Summary field being compulsory would be good. It actually took me a couple of days to realise what it was for (commenting in a version control system).
I don't think that the summary field is sufficient for more than describing the most minor edits (say, fixing a typo). More complex edits, particularly if they need justifying, need an entry on the discussion page. This also helps other users to explain why they agree or (more likely, unfortunately) disagree.
Beware of instruction creep! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep
I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic 0.1%. The ArbCom has previously placed restrictions on individual editors to document better what they're doing, but the present AC is reluctant to do this at the article level, i.e. for *everyone* editing a given article.
(Though it's bloody tempting, e.g. on anything on the Israel-Palestine conflict.)
My experience, having tried this informally for a few days and encouraged/nagged others to do likewise, is that it does seem to reduce the amount of edit wars. It still doesn't eliminate them, but it does help. And when someone is forced to view the talk page first, there's a fair chance that he'll at least read the most recent comments. Call me an idealist and I won't argue, but I think that perhaps if people read comments explaining NPOV and the application to articles often enough, maybe it'll sink in.
It's certainly a good practice where you're unsure of how an edit is going to go down - the usual way it's done is to include "(see talk)" in your edit summary and then explain yourself in talk. I'd be very reluctant to try to make it a requirement for all edits to all articles - it'd be a PITA to casual editing.
A 3UER (Unjustified Edit Rule) would at least encourage collaboration. And if all else fails, it makes unreasonable editors MUCH easier to detect.
They have a way of making themselves apparent anyway.
- d.
On Monday 07 February 2005 17:06, David Gerard wrote:
I don't think that the summary field is sufficient for more than describing the most minor edits (say, fixing a typo). More complex edits, particularly if they need justifying, need an entry on the discussion page. This also helps other users to explain why they agree or (more likely, unfortunately) disagree.
[...] I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic 0.1%.
I'm sorry, I meant only the highly controversial (read: problematic) pages.
The ArbCom has previously placed restrictions on individual editors to document better what they're doing, but the present AC is reluctant to do this at the article level, i.e. for *everyone* editing a given article.
I'm sure that the AC are intelligent, thoughtful people who are willing to change their minds if presented with a possible approach to ongoing problems. ;-)
(Though it's bloody tempting, e.g. on anything on the Israel-Palestine conflict.)
Would be nice on the circumcision articles, too... And *if* it's tempting, then the question is: is there a good reason not to *try* it?
My experience, having tried this informally for a few days and encouraged/nagged others to do likewise, is that it does seem to reduce the amount of edit wars. It still doesn't eliminate them, but it does help. And when someone is forced to view the talk page first, there's a fair chance that he'll at least read the most recent comments. Call me an idealist and I won't argue, but I think that perhaps if people read comments explaining NPOV and the application to articles often enough, maybe it'll sink in.
It's certainly a good practice where you're unsure of how an edit is going to go down - the usual way it's done is to include "(see talk)" in your edit summary and then explain yourself in talk. I'd be very reluctant to try to make it a requirement for all edits to all articles - it'd be a PITA to casual editing.
Yes, of course. But in terms of that 0.1%, edit wars are the biggest PITA, and are almost invariably caused by *unjustified* (and POV) edits.
Jake.
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 04:58:55PM +0000, Jake Waskett wrote:
On Monday 07 February 2005 17:06, David Gerard wrote:
I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic 0.1%.
I'm sorry, I meant only the highly controversial (read: problematic) pages.
One place where a few more technical tools might be useful is in ascertaining where the problematic pages are, and bringing it to more people's attention when a page goes into edit-war.
As the volume of editing on Wikipedia increases, it's harder and harder to discern anything about current problems by looking at Recent Changes -- there are hundreds of changes every hour. I'll notice an edit war if it shows up on my watchlist or WP:RFC, but if nobody is watching and the editors involved don't post to WP:RFC (or don't know about it), the problem can persist indefinitely.
Each of us can name some pages that have experienced edit wars, NPOV controversies, and problems with advocates insisting on unverifiable inclusions. But consider an editor who wants to help resolve these problems but doesn't know where the worst of them are ... or an editor who's in the middle of one of these conflicts and doesn't realize that it's *unusual*, that the behavior they're facing is well outside of the Wikipedia norm, and that it's time to ask for help.
It should be relatively simple to automatically discern if a given edit is a revert to a previous version of the article. (Even if an abuser is using cut-and-paste reverts instead of editing older versions, the people *responding* to the abuse will probably use older versions.) Given this, the software could calculate a "revert temperature" of each article -- the number of times it's been reverted over the past 48 or 96 hours, say.
Articles with a high revert temperature get listed on a special page -- which might serve as a short list for admins protecting articles. (Automatic protection would probably be a BAD idea, since the software can't tell if a version is a blatantly vandalized one ... and it could be deliberately gamed to lock-in a maliciously edited version.)
Possibly other technical cues might kick in when an article's revert temperature gets high ... such as a warning on the edit page that the reverts were getting noticed, and recommending dispute resolution; or a requirement that the edit comment be filled in; or the like.
We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that has pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all pages that were embroiled in controversy listed.
Fred
From: "Karl A. Krueger" kkrueger@whoi.edu Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:51:15 -0500 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 04:58:55PM +0000, Jake Waskett wrote:
On Monday 07 February 2005 17:06, David Gerard wrote:
I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic 0.1%.
I'm sorry, I meant only the highly controversial (read: problematic) pages.
One place where a few more technical tools might be useful is in ascertaining where the problematic pages are, and bringing it to more people's attention when a page goes into edit-war.
As the volume of editing on Wikipedia increases, it's harder and harder to discern anything about current problems by looking at Recent Changes -- there are hundreds of changes every hour. I'll notice an edit war if it shows up on my watchlist or WP:RFC, but if nobody is watching and the editors involved don't post to WP:RFC (or don't know about it), the problem can persist indefinitely.
Each of us can name some pages that have experienced edit wars, NPOV controversies, and problems with advocates insisting on unverifiable inclusions. But consider an editor who wants to help resolve these problems but doesn't know where the worst of them are ... or an editor who's in the middle of one of these conflicts and doesn't realize that it's *unusual*, that the behavior they're facing is well outside of the Wikipedia norm, and that it's time to ask for help.
It should be relatively simple to automatically discern if a given edit is a revert to a previous version of the article. (Even if an abuser is using cut-and-paste reverts instead of editing older versions, the people *responding* to the abuse will probably use older versions.) Given this, the software could calculate a "revert temperature" of each article -- the number of times it's been reverted over the past 48 or 96 hours, say.
Articles with a high revert temperature get listed on a special page -- which might serve as a short list for admins protecting articles. (Automatic protection would probably be a BAD idea, since the software can't tell if a version is a blatantly vandalized one ... and it could be deliberately gamed to lock-in a maliciously edited version.)
Possibly other technical cues might kick in when an article's revert temperature gets high ... such as a warning on the edit page that the reverts were getting noticed, and recommending dispute resolution; or a requirement that the edit comment be filled in; or the like.
-- Karl A. Krueger kkrueger@whoi.edu Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder said:
We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that has pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all pages that were embroiled in controversy listed.
That's easy enough to do. I think there is already a page for listing controversial articles. Suppose it's called [[Wikipedia:Foo]], a link to get recent changes related to articles listed on this page would be something like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Foo
Just pop that on your user page and click it when you want to watch recent changes to controversial articles.
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 07:16:49PM -0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Fred Bauder said:
We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that has pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all pages that were embroiled in controversy listed.
That's easy enough to do. I think there is already a page for listing controversial articles. Suppose it's called [[Wikipedia:Foo]], a link to get recent changes related to articles listed on this page would be something like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Foo
Just pop that on your user page and click it when you want to watch recent changes to controversial articles.
The problem here is that it depends on someone listing the article as a controversial article on some other page. Presently, I suspect there are a lot more edit wars than ever get listed on WP:RFC or any other repository for problems. Moreover, I think we might not even know where many of those problems are, because waiting for people to report them publicly is no guarantee they ever get reported.
Telling people to figure out for themselves when a dispute has become a problem, and to go list it on some "Controversial Articles" list, is already problematic. It's instruction creep. It doesn't help the new contributor who's gotten in over his/her head and doesn't know about all the N different ways to ask for help. And it doesn't help when the two (or more) parties to a dispute don't realize that their little disagreement has crossed the line into being destructive for Wikipedia.
We've already got mediation, RfC, peer review, and so on. We definitely don't need another way for editors who -know- there's a problem, and -know- how to ask for help, to do so. (We might need fewer.) What I'm thinking of is to pick up on problems -before- the editors involved realize that they're in a bad spot. Repeated reverts are a danger sign that should be *automatically* detectable.
Heck, we've had revert wars over whether or not an article should have an {{npov}} tag on it -- a tag that basically says "we're having a disagreement, come see the talk page". That should be a sign right there that expecting people to notice on their own when their own behavior is part of a problem in need of others' attention is not a complete solution.
Karl A. Krueger said: [...]
The problem here is that it depends on someone listing the article as a controversial article on some other page. Presently, I suspect there are a lot more edit wars than ever get listed on WP:RFC or any other repository for problems. Moreover, I think we might not even know where many of those problems are, because waiting for people to report them publicly is no guarantee they ever get reported.
Yes. Well, a way around this is to identify templates that are highly likely to be associated with an edit war, and put those templates into a category, which would result in controversial articles appearing in the category. Using the same mechanism on the category would give you another view of possibly explosive articles. Wikis are designed to be open and flexible so it's unlikely that any single mechanism will ever be able to identify all controversial articles without fail. Adopting the UNIX standard of "works in most cases" is good enough, because other users will adopt other methods to identify the controversial articles. --~~~~
We have these on our watchlists now.
Fred
From: "Tony Sidaway" minorityreport@bluebottle.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:41:29 -0000 (GMT) To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
other users will adopt other methods to identify the controversial articles.
Fred Bauder said:
We have these on our watchlists now.
Yep. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&ta...
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Karl A. Krueger said: [...]
The problem here is that it depends on someone listing the article as a controversial article on some other page. Presently, I suspect there are a lot more edit wars than ever get listed on WP:RFC or any other repository for problems. Moreover, I think we might not even know where many of those problems are, because waiting for people to report them publicly is no guarantee they ever get reported.
Yes. Well, a way around this is to identify templates that are highly likely to be associated with an edit war, and put those templates into a category, which would result in controversial articles appearing in the category. Using the same mechanism on the category would give you another view of possibly explosive articles. Wikis are designed to be open and flexible so it's unlikely that any single mechanism will ever be able to identify all controversial articles without fail. Adopting the UNIX standard of "works in most cases" is good enough, because other users will adopt other methods to identify the controversial articles. --~~~~
The real problem that arises, I think, is in new articles. If someone from, say, the Stormfront crew creates a new article loaded with bias from day one, it's entirely possible it my fly in under radar (as 'twere) for quite some time without being noticed.
-- Chad
Yes, a parallel article can be created, see for example, [[Social structure of the United States]].
Fred
From: Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 13:58:55 -0500 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
The real problem that arises, I think, is in new articles. If someone from, say, the Stormfront crew creates a new article loaded with bias from day one, it's entirely possible it my fly in under radar (as 'twere) for quite some time without being noticed.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050209 06:02]:
The real problem that arises, I think, is in new articles. If someone from, say, the Stormfront crew creates a new article loaded with bias from day one, it's entirely possible it my fly in under radar (as 'twere) for quite some time without being noticed.
The Vicious Deletionist Forces watch Special:newpages reasonably closely. It's not *that* likely *no-one* will notice it.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050209 06:02]:
The real problem that arises, I think, is in new articles. If someone from, say, the Stormfront crew creates a new article loaded with bias from day one, it's entirely possible it my fly in under radar (as 'twere) for quite some time without being noticed.
The Vicious Deletionist Forces watch Special:newpages reasonably closely. It's not *that* likely *no-one* will notice it.
Good!
Hm. The VDF. That sounds Wrong, somehow.
-- Chad
David Gerard said:
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050209 06:02]:
The real problem that arises, I think, is in new articles. If someone from, say, the Stormfront crew creates a new article loaded with bias from day one, it's entirely possible it my fly in under radar (as 'twere) for quite some time without being noticed.
The Vicious Deletionist Forces watch Special:newpages reasonably closely. It's not *that* likely *no-one* will notice it.
Such articles can also be picked up when they're linked in to other parts of Wikipedia. Watch the usual neo-Nazi sources, and Usenet, for neo-nazis citing Wikipedia, and follow up all references.
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050209 22:13]:
Such articles can also be picked up when they're linked in to other parts of Wikipedia. Watch the usual neo-Nazi sources, and Usenet, for neo-nazis citing Wikipedia, and follow up all references.
One thing to remember is that our coverage of eno-Nazi topics is in fact not too bad and the area is closely watched by a lot of interested editors.
(Check out [[Category:Neo-Nazi topics]] and its subcategories. Some articles still read like investigative journalism or denunciations, but they're improving with time. And references, of course - it's hard to find a reference on the topic, against or for, without a strong POV. So the more the better.)
- d.
Just in case anyone's missed it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Conscious_evolutio n
Fred Bauder (fredbaud@ctelco.net) [050208 06:02]:
We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that has pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all pages that were embroiled in controversy listed.
Multiple watchlists would be a *really nice* feature. I could create multiple usernames for the same function, but that'd be a PITA to manage editing from only one of the usernames.
I've filed an enhancement bug as http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1492 .
- d.
Karl A. Krueger (kkrueger@whoi.edu) [050208 05:51]:
One place where a few more technical tools might be useful is in ascertaining where the problematic pages are, and bringing it to more people's attention when a page goes into edit-war. As the volume of editing on Wikipedia increases, it's harder and harder to discern anything about current problems by looking at Recent Changes -- there are hundreds of changes every hour. I'll notice an edit war if it shows up on my watchlist or WP:RFC, but if nobody is watching and the editors involved don't post to WP:RFC (or don't know about it), the problem can persist indefinitely.
Not technical tools, but [[WP:AN/3RR]] and [[WP:AN/I]] (and parent page [[WP:AN]]) are being used as alert pages at present, with some success. Think of them as a PA message to the janitors to get out there with mop, bucket and M16.
- d.
Jake Waskett said: [...]
Create and use a template for controversial articles, that says, in effect: "This is a highly controversial article. Before making any changes, please familiarise yourself with the discussion page, and add a comment describing your change and the justification for it." We should also link to WP:NPOV.
There are already one or two templates of this type kicking around--alerting editors to some specific controversy and pointing them at the talk page. Template:NPOV is the classic example of such a template.>
If that works, great! I doubt it will, but it won't hurt to try.
If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with the controversial header.
This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
It would be easy enough to put some javascript into the site CSS to enforce edit comments (the default edit comment for a section which contains the section name could be checked and refused on its own). Regular editors would thus have to get used to annotating edits. Editors who enter nonsense would become known and their edits would tend to be watched more closely. The rest is all down to policy and dispute resolution. So no need to apply this only on some articles. It could be site-wide policy.
Comments? I'm running on very little sleep today, so if I'm talking rubbish, please tell me!
If you were, I think somebody would have noticed by now. :)
Objections need to be reasonable (read rational).
Fred
From: Jake Waskett jake@waskett.org Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:12:00 +0000 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
One problem that I can see might involve some editors objecting just to be difficult, but I'm sure we could deal with such a situation.
What about unanimous vote? If every editor had the ability to veto a change, it could work. Nobody would (presumably) object to truly NPOV changes, but at least one person would surely object to any attempt to insert POV changes.
That's a recipe for article gridlock. You might as well print and bind Wikipedia and sell it door to door at that point.
Jay.
Jake Waskett said:
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem?
One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page.
What do others think?
Wikipedia doesn't work by voting, but by trusting people. In particular, you must never use a vote to decide whether something is NPOV. If some people abuse that trust, we should deal with those people, not the articles. The vast majority of our editors can be trusted to decide which articles to edit and not treat Wikipedia as if it was a collection of Usenet groups. We should try to let them get on with it. Giving some articles special treatment is probably not the way to go, in my opinion.
Jake Waskett wrote:
Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is this: what can be done about the problem?
Yes, this is the right question, and the right way to frame it.
One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages, and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the article's talk page. What do others think?
I think this is overkill; surely we can try a "softer" approach first?
--Jimbo
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:36:26 +0100, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Additionaly thinking that if only organisation was discussed on the mailing lists (not cases), we could very well imagine that
- archives are open to anyone
- people approved by the chair or committee may join the list as posters.
Depends on what other mediators think what this list should become.
I think the list should be open to former mediators at the moment, since there are a lot of changes proposed to mediation and it would be useful to have their input on this. For example, sannse's suggestions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reviewing_mediation ought to be discussed on this list.
Once the current problems with the mediation committee are resolved, the list could be closed to the current committee, but I think that the points which need to be discussed right now are not things which need to kept confidential.
Angela.