Well, he also said Larry Sanger was not a human and something else--I forgot what exactly--that sound very much like a threat. That was the final straw, as it were: Jimbo banned him, and he's been banned ever since (and for good reason!)
kq
Lee wrote:
Vandalism isn't the /only/ possible reason to ban someone. We banned Mr. "24" because he consistently refused to work with the community, undermined our goals, and made personal attacks. If Helga continues to interfere with our job of making good articles, won't participate in our process, doesn't contribute in other ways, and eats up the time and energy of others here who /do/ contribute, then maybe banning is the right thing.
Or perhaps a new feature for non-vandals like them: being restricted to editing Talk pages only?
koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com wrote:
Well, he also said Larry Sanger was not a human and something else--I forgot what exactly--that sound very much like a threat. That was the final straw, as it were: Jimbo banned him, and he's been banned ever since (and for good reason!)
Perhaps you should quote the entire argument or some context.
24 alleged the first thing Larry Sanger said to him was an attack.
The "threat" in context appeared to be rhetorical hyperbole to me. Further, it was stated in the form that people like Larry (clearly referring to his attitudes and prejudices that were being applied to "24", deserved to have bad things happen to them) It appeared to be an angry response to pretty intense steady harrassment in the stacks because some regulars did not like "24"'s material, beliefs, attitude, etc. There appeared to be some rather abrubt deletion taking place. Several times material that I was attempting to NPOV ended with abrubt deletion/erasure of the entire article or content in the middle of my editing.
This got extremely irritating to me, I am sure it probably bothered "24". When I erased the biased [software engineering] article in its entirety it seemed to provoke an astonishingly intense reaction from "64" (maveric149) and Lee Crocker. Perhaps they were involved in writing it.
Later, when I reviewed this mailing list archive, several "regulars" had started wondering out loud whether they should fear for their personal safety. Quite a leap in my opinion. It clearly escalated the controversy.
Perhaps the reason for banning appeared to good to you.
To me it looks like "24" was banned because he had interests similar to my own in participating in establishing or modifying the community standards and processes. "24" appeared interested in methods that would support large diverse participation levels. "24" was apparently interested in green issues and other political activism.
"24" was interested in establishing community processes that would be compatible or attractive to people who could help fill in gaps in those areas.
You say he was banned appropriately in effect, because he would be not nice when Mr. Wales contacted him privately because the "community" complained of his behavior and opinions and good riddance.
I say he was banned inappropriately because when he brought up issues of community governance and content completeness and attempted to add his own perceptions to the gesalt he would not quietly roll over when arbitrarily trumped by "long standing respected community members". This appeal to authority persisted along with refusal to engage in any meaningful dialogue regarding how to establish a participatory process. I do not allege that Mr Wales actions were inappropriate but that the "community" created the situation in which the controversy between "24" and others were not resolved amicably. Rather "24"s material and opinions were routinely arbitrarily deleted and dismissed out of hand by long term participants and their cronies. When "24"s provoked behavior got offensive enough, Mr. Wales was called in for totalitarian action and apparently "24" resisted his attempts to exercise a calming influence.
The reasons were poor and, in my opinion, do not bode well for the unstated goal of Wikipedia to be a high quality NPOV encyclopedia. The stated goal of 100K articles is quite achievable by a small closed "community", 35K and counting.
I wonder if, after passing the 100K mark, I will be able to find anything authoritative, comprehensive, fun, informative, wonderous, astonishing, etc. regarding the Amazon basin provided by native English speakers or translated from the Spanish Wikipedia or if I will have to proceed to the English translation of the Spanish Fork?
regards, mirwin
Michael,
You're certainly welcome to your opinion. You should take notice, however, that even though you stood up for some of 24's ideas, participated in his various meta pages, argued that he was not a troll (which prompted Larry to label *you* a troll), offered to work with him in order to shake up the Wikipedia status quo, and erased an entire article in order to start from scratch, no one even *suggested* that you should be banned. Nor is anyone suggesting it now as you reiterate your position.
I don't want to fan the flames again. I do want to say that you're welcome to participate in this project and hold any view you like. Just aim for the NPOV when writing articles. And hey, if you're worried about the Amazon articles, click the link and jump in with both hands on your keyboard. ;-)
Stephen G.
--- "Michael R. Irwin" mri_icboise@surfbest.net wrote:
koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com wrote:
Well, he also said Larry Sanger was not a human
and something else--I forgot what exactly--that sound very much like a threat. That was the final straw, as it were: Jimbo banned him, and he's been banned ever since (and for good reason!)
Perhaps you should quote the entire argument or some context.
24 alleged the first thing Larry Sanger said to him was an attack.
The "threat" in context appeared to be rhetorical hyperbole to me. Further, it was stated in the form that people like Larry (clearly referring to his attitudes and prejudices that were being applied to "24", deserved to have bad things happen to them) It appeared to be an angry response to pretty intense steady harrassment in the stacks because some regulars did not like "24"'s material, beliefs, attitude, etc. There appeared to be some rather abrubt deletion taking place. Several times material that I was attempting to NPOV ended with abrubt deletion/erasure of the entire article or content in the middle of my editing.
This got extremely irritating to me, I am sure it probably bothered "24". When I erased the biased [software engineering] article in its entirety it seemed to provoke an astonishingly intense reaction from "64" (maveric149) and Lee Crocker. Perhaps they were involved in writing it.
Later, when I reviewed this mailing list archive, several "regulars" had started wondering out loud whether they should fear for their personal safety. Quite a leap in my opinion. It clearly escalated the controversy.
Perhaps the reason for banning appeared to good to you.
To me it looks like "24" was banned because he had interests similar to my own in participating in establishing or modifying the community standards and processes. "24" appeared interested in methods that would support large diverse participation levels. "24" was apparently interested in green issues and other political activism.
"24" was interested in establishing community processes that would be compatible or attractive to people who could help fill in gaps in those areas.
You say he was banned appropriately in effect, because he would be not nice when Mr. Wales contacted him privately because the "community" complained of his behavior and opinions and good riddance.
I say he was banned inappropriately because when he brought up issues of community governance and content completeness and attempted to add his own perceptions to the gesalt he would not quietly roll over when arbitrarily trumped by "long standing respected community members". This appeal to authority persisted along with refusal to engage in any meaningful dialogue regarding how to establish a participatory process. I do not allege that Mr Wales actions were inappropriate but that the "community" created the situation in which the controversy between "24" and others were not resolved amicably. Rather "24"s material and opinions were routinely arbitrarily deleted and dismissed out of hand by long term participants and their cronies. When "24"s provoked behavior got offensive enough, Mr. Wales was called in for totalitarian action and apparently "24" resisted his attempts to exercise a calming influence.
The reasons were poor and, in my opinion, do not bode well for the unstated goal of Wikipedia to be a high quality NPOV encyclopedia. The stated goal of 100K articles is quite achievable by a small closed "community", 35K and counting.
I wonder if, after passing the 100K mark, I will be able to find anything authoritative, comprehensive, fun, informative, wonderous, astonishing, etc. regarding the Amazon basin provided by native English speakers or translated from the Spanish Wikipedia or if I will have to proceed to the English translation of the Spanish Fork?
regards, mirwin [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Just as a historical footnote -- I banned '24' for, as I recall, either 24 or 48 hours, as a warning. I intended to unban him after that. I think the archives will reflect that this is what I said about it at the time.
However, the peace and quiet which ensued was so soothing that I forgot to unban him. He never wrote to me to complain, and we never heard from him again.
To ban him at all was a difficult decision which I agonized over for several days. But it seems to have worked out fine.
And I don't agree with Michael Irwin that banning 24 in any way sets a precedent of diminishment of diversity of participation. 24 made some noise about this sort of thing being his goal, but let's speak frankly: he was WAY "out there" in terms of an ability to communicate a coherent thought.
We should strongly welcome progressives, greens, libertarians, anarchists, Christians, Muslims, etc., SO LONG AS they aren't trying to turn wikipedia into a "progressive encyclopedia" or a "libertarian encyclopedia" or a "Christian encyclopedia", etc. Of course there will be arguments and struggles to find an NPOV, including, at times, hurt feelings and incorrect assumptions that the other person is trying to push an ideology.
--Jimbo
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
Michael,
You're certainly welcome to your opinion. You should take notice, however, that even though you stood up for some of 24's ideas, participated in his various meta pages, argued that he was not a troll (which prompted Larry to label *you* a troll), offered to work with him in order to shake up the Wikipedia status quo, and erased an entire article in order to start from scratch, no one even *suggested* that you should be banned. Nor is anyone suggesting it now as you reiterate your position.
Thank you. I understand.
I don't want to fan the flames again. I do want to say that you're welcome to participate in this project and hold any view you like. Just aim for the NPOV when writing articles. And hey, if you're worried about the Amazon articles, click the link and jump in with both hands on your keyboard. ;-)
8) You apparently forget my lack of expertise on the Amazon Basin and related political activism issues, means, and methods. I was hoping to leverage of off others knowledge in this area, not even contemplating years of fun researching it personally. Merely some idle browsing occasionally and the ability to brag about the completeness of our knowledge base to potential users, editors and fellow Wikipedians alike. 8)
regards, mirwin
--- koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com wrote:
Well, he also said Larry Sanger was not a human and something else--I forgot what exactly--that sound very much like a threat. That was the final straw, as it were: Jimbo banned him, and he's been banned ever since (and for good reason!)
kq
Something to effect of it was everyone's duty to heap verbal and physical abuse on Larry and people like him.
All of 24's others actions, while frustrating, weren't worthy of a ban. Uttering threats against people is rather different.
Stephen G.
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