I have been thinking it over and decided to face reality. I have lost all my believe in the wikimediaprojects. So much even that I am now adding content to places outside of the wikimediaprojects instead of having to deal with all the 100000000000000's of procedures and rules being implemented by people who do not even know how to write an article.
The projects have been taken over by a group of people, mostly teenagers, whom apparently have lost all sight of realism and have taken other people's work hostage, without creating one bit of content themselves. Who feel that adding templates, writing rules and policing (the process) is more important than what we set out to do. Also there is a very very very strong western bias in the projects. Ideas and processes are launched which might work perfectly in a western world (like the rules for verification) but which fall flat on their face when applied to non-western items. When someone actually rises this point on the lists (me) it is ignored.
Also Jimbo's statement that en: wikipedia has covered most subjects disappoints me. This might be true for subjects on developed countries. But the projects are heavily lacking in the same sort of content with regards to the developing world. While every lake in the US probably has an article. Most Asian / African / South American countries have barely got articles describing these kind of features. And if someone does write an article about it, it gets deleted as non-encyclopedic. Also wikipedia's become very nationalistic like the nl: wikipedia where a fairly large group feels non-Dutch and non-Belgian topics should not be covered in the Dutch language edition! And they actually wrote rules to enforce this.
The amount of people who only care about their own backyard (the west) and wanna delete everything they do not understand has grown to big. Also other idiocism like on nl: wikipedia where procedure is 100x more important than the smooth running of the project, resulting in an everyone can insult everyone situation and no-one get's actually blocked is taking to much time and stress.
Jimbo invented the wheel with the wikimedia projects. Unfortunately the wheel never evolved, nor will it in the current climate. Every form of progress of the projects in something meaningfull and working gets blocked or grinded in bureaucracy by a group of people who want to be the boss.
Meanwhile on the boardlevel politicians rule who only give a shit about themselves and about political games. I have seen many of these games played out over the years. Also the projects diversify to much and to much new niches where new small groups start that take their particular niche hostage (commons being a prime example) are started. Instead of looking at how things can co-operate people start their own new kingdoms and fiefdoms (like wikitionaryz, which is GerardM's fiefdom) into things that are not our core imho. We are about creating content, not spreading it, let other people do that job.
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia projects will always exist, and the original idea was great. Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Waerth
I have to agree with a lot of what you have said.
Every Wikipedia seems to have been best when it was just around 100K articles. When Wikis go beyond that, they get overregulated, and/or go crazy in some other way.
I still use en.wp as a reference (sometimes), but I rarely edit it. My reason now isn't the same as the one I used to have (busy with other language wikis), but rather, simply that I find the climate to be too hostile and too toxic for me to make any real editing progress.
The good admins are getting discouraged and leaving one by one, and the bad admins are continuing in their horribleness.
en.wp has even gotten to the point where to be a member of certain sites critical of Wikipedia is somehow bad, and to be a *sysop* at them is even a sort of bannable offense (notably Hivemind, Wikitruth, ED).
Mark
On 25/10/06, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
I have been thinking it over and decided to face reality. I have lost all my believe in the wikimediaprojects. So much even that I am now adding content to places outside of the wikimediaprojects instead of having to deal with all the 100000000000000's of procedures and rules being implemented by people who do not even know how to write an article.
The projects have been taken over by a group of people, mostly teenagers, whom apparently have lost all sight of realism and have taken other people's work hostage, without creating one bit of content themselves. Who feel that adding templates, writing rules and policing (the process) is more important than what we set out to do. Also there is a very very very strong western bias in the projects. Ideas and processes are launched which might work perfectly in a western world (like the rules for verification) but which fall flat on their face when applied to non-western items. When someone actually rises this point on the lists (me) it is ignored.
Also Jimbo's statement that en: wikipedia has covered most subjects disappoints me. This might be true for subjects on developed countries. But the projects are heavily lacking in the same sort of content with regards to the developing world. While every lake in the US probably has an article. Most Asian / African / South American countries have barely got articles describing these kind of features. And if someone does write an article about it, it gets deleted as non-encyclopedic. Also wikipedia's become very nationalistic like the nl: wikipedia where a fairly large group feels non-Dutch and non-Belgian topics should not be covered in the Dutch language edition! And they actually wrote rules to enforce this.
The amount of people who only care about their own backyard (the west) and wanna delete everything they do not understand has grown to big. Also other idiocism like on nl: wikipedia where procedure is 100x more important than the smooth running of the project, resulting in an everyone can insult everyone situation and no-one get's actually blocked is taking to much time and stress.
Jimbo invented the wheel with the wikimedia projects. Unfortunately the wheel never evolved, nor will it in the current climate. Every form of progress of the projects in something meaningfull and working gets blocked or grinded in bureaucracy by a group of people who want to be the boss.
Meanwhile on the boardlevel politicians rule who only give a shit about themselves and about political games. I have seen many of these games played out over the years. Also the projects diversify to much and to much new niches where new small groups start that take their particular niche hostage (commons being a prime example) are started. Instead of looking at how things can co-operate people start their own new kingdoms and fiefdoms (like wikitionaryz, which is GerardM's fiefdom) into things that are not our core imho. We are about creating content, not spreading it, let other people do that job.
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia projects will always exist, and the original idea was great. Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Waerth _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 10/25/06, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I have to agree with a lot of what you have said.
I still use en.wp as a reference (sometimes), but I rarely edit it. My reason now isn't the same as the one I used to have (busy with other language wikis), but rather, simply that I find the climate to be too hostile and too toxic for me to make any real editing progress.
I find this sometimes myself, depending on the topic. It's not so much that process is bad, but for every ten bits of process there should be one bit devoted solely to being nice to others and helping them work out better ways to express themselves, rather than slapping people down or admonishing them to follow guidelines.
The good admins are getting discouraged and leaving one by one, and the bad admins are continuing in their horribleness.
I'm not sure about this; it always seems this way. But some good and subtle ones are discouraged; and many who are intolerant of criticism and certain they have the only solutions remain.
en.wp has even gotten to the point where to be a member of certain sites critical of Wikipedia is somehow bad, and to be a *sysop* at them is even a sort of bannable offense (notably Hivemind, Wikitruth, ED).
Is it a bannable offense? There should be a special award for people who are effectively critical of Wikipedia.
SJ
On 25/10/06, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
I have been thinking it over and decided to face reality. I have lost all my believe in the wikimediaprojects. So much even that I am now adding content to places outside of the wikimediaprojects instead of having to deal with all the 100000000000000's of procedures and rules being implemented by people who do not even know how to write an article.
The projects have been taken over by a group of people, mostly teenagers, whom apparently have lost all sight of realism and have taken other people's work hostage, without creating one bit of content themselves. Who feel that adding templates, writing rules and policing (the process) is more important than what we set out to do. Also there is a very very very strong western bias in the projects. Ideas and processes are launched which might work perfectly in a western world (like the rules for verification) but which fall flat on their face when applied to non-western items. When someone actually rises this point on the lists (me) it is ignored.
Also Jimbo's statement that en: wikipedia has covered most subjects disappoints me. This might be true for subjects on developed countries. But the projects are heavily lacking in the same sort of content with regards to the developing world. While every lake in the US probably has an article. Most Asian / African / South American countries have barely got articles describing these kind of features. And if someone does write an article about it, it gets deleted as non-encyclopedic. Also wikipedia's become very nationalistic like the nl: wikipedia where a fairly large group feels non-Dutch and non-Belgian topics should not be covered in the Dutch language edition! And they actually wrote rules to enforce this.
The amount of people who only care about their own backyard (the west) and wanna delete everything they do not understand has grown to big. Also other idiocism like on nl: wikipedia where procedure is 100x more important than the smooth running of the project, resulting in an everyone can insult everyone situation and no-one get's actually blocked is taking to much time and stress.
Jimbo invented the wheel with the wikimedia projects. Unfortunately the wheel never evolved, nor will it in the current climate. Every form of progress of the projects in something meaningfull and working gets blocked or grinded in bureaucracy by a group of people who want to be the boss.
Meanwhile on the boardlevel politicians rule who only give a shit about themselves and about political games. I have seen many of these games played out over the years. Also the projects diversify to much and to much new niches where new small groups start that take their particular niche hostage (commons being a prime example) are started. Instead of looking at how things can co-operate people start their own new kingdoms and fiefdoms (like wikitionaryz, which is GerardM's fiefdom) into things that are not our core imho. We are about creating content, not spreading it, let other people do that job.
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia projects will always exist, and the original idea was great. Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Waerth _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 25/10/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/25/06, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I have to agree with a lot of what you have said.
I still use en.wp as a reference (sometimes), but I rarely edit it. My reason now isn't the same as the one I used to have (busy with other language wikis), but rather, simply that I find the climate to be too hostile and too toxic for me to make any real editing progress.
I find this sometimes myself, depending on the topic. It's not so much that process is bad, but for every ten bits of process there should be one bit devoted solely to being nice to others and helping them work out better ways to express themselves, rather than slapping people down or admonishing them to follow guidelines.
Indeed.
The good admins are getting discouraged and leaving one by one, and the bad admins are continuing in their horribleness.
I'm not sure about this; it always seems this way. But some good and subtle ones are discouraged; and many who are intolerant of criticism and certain they have the only solutions remain.
Agreed.
en.wp has even gotten to the point where to be a member of certain sites critical of Wikipedia is somehow bad, and to be a *sysop* at them is even a sort of bannable offense (notably Hivemind, Wikitruth, ED).
Is it a bannable offense? There should be a special award for people who are effectively critical of Wikipedia.
Well, after ED posted an article about User:MONGO which he thoroughly disliked, he started his campaign against it. Wikitruth and other similar projects have long been viewed as not good because they were mostly started by banned users.
Mark
On 25/10/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
I find this sometimes myself, depending on the topic. It's not so much that process is bad, but for every ten bits of process there should be one bit devoted solely to being nice to others and helping them work out better ways to express themselves, rather than slapping people down or admonishing them to follow guidelines.
Absolutely true.
I'm constantly saddened by the way Wikipedians in general tend to focus on procedure above all else, often sacrificing basic civility and tact in its favour. A good example would be WP:RFAF (failed admin candidacies), in which a depressingly large number of unlikely nominations for adminship - usually from people who simply have less than a thousand or so edits - result in pile-on opposition, with only a few users offering moral support and guidance.
It is, frankly, depressing - and not just because it results in so many violations of WP:BITE. I don't believe the problem can be solved, not even by altering process, because it stems from a basic failure to empathise with other users: it happens in every online community I've ever been a part of, and I can see no reason why it would cease in the foreseeable future. It is, as far as I can tell, an ugly fact of life.
-David
On 10/25/06, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/10/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/25/06, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I have to agree with a lot of what you have said.
I still use en.wp as a reference (sometimes), but I rarely edit it. My reason now isn't the same as the one I used to have (busy with other language wikis), but rather, simply that I find the climate to be too hostile and too toxic for me to make any real editing progress.
I find this sometimes myself, depending on the topic. It's not so much that process is bad, but for every ten bits of process there should be one bit devoted solely to being nice to others and helping them work out better ways to express themselves, rather than slapping people down or admonishing them to follow guidelines.
Indeed.
The good admins are getting discouraged and leaving one by one, and the bad admins are continuing in their horribleness.
I'm not sure about this; it always seems this way. But some good and subtle ones are discouraged; and many who are intolerant of criticism and certain they have the only solutions remain.
Agreed.
en.wp has even gotten to the point where to be a member of certain sites critical of Wikipedia is somehow bad, and to be a *sysop* at them is even a sort of bannable offense (notably Hivemind, Wikitruth, ED).
Is it a bannable offense? There should be a special award for people who are effectively critical of Wikipedia.
Well, after ED posted an article about User:MONGO which he thoroughly disliked, he started his campaign against it. Wikitruth and other similar projects have long been viewed as not good because they were mostly started by banned users.
Mark _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Waerth,
I am very sorry to read this. When you make noise on the foundation list, for instance, even if it is a bit too much noise, you are not ignored. Your comments about verification are a good example... sometimes it is just hard to answer effectively.
I agree that projects should look more towards cooperation with others -- other languages and other types of projects. You are right that lack of cooperation is a problem. En:wp has a policy as of this year not to allow usernames with non-latin character sets. I have no idea where that came from, but it is a shame. But this is nothing new -- if I recall correctly, wiktionary was started thanks to division and bickering about what belongs in an encyclopedia, not solely thanks to a desire to have separate useful projects...
I hope you will eventually come to have more faith in the long-term process of rule development, and the long-term motivations of wikimedians... and that you will still shout, from the sidelines or the field.
SJ
On 10/25/06, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
I have been thinking it over and decided to face reality. I have lost all my believe in the wikimediaprojects. So much even that I am now adding content to places outside of the wikimediaprojects instead of having to deal with all the 100000000000000's of procedures and rules being implemented by people who do not even know how to write an article.
The projects have been taken over by a group of people, mostly teenagers, whom apparently have lost all sight of realism and have taken other people's work hostage, without creating one bit of content themselves. Who feel that adding templates, writing rules and policing (the process) is more important than what we set out to do. Also there is a very very very strong western bias in the projects. Ideas and processes are launched which might work perfectly in a western world (like the rules for verification) but which fall flat on their face when applied to non-western items. When someone actually rises this point on the lists (me) it is ignored.
Also Jimbo's statement that en: wikipedia has covered most subjects disappoints me. This might be true for subjects on developed countries. But the projects are heavily lacking in the same sort of content with regards to the developing world. While every lake in the US probably has an article. Most Asian / African / South American countries have barely got articles describing these kind of features. And if someone does write an article about it, it gets deleted as non-encyclopedic. Also wikipedia's become very nationalistic like the nl: wikipedia where a fairly large group feels non-Dutch and non-Belgian topics should not be covered in the Dutch language edition! And they actually wrote rules to enforce this.
The amount of people who only care about their own backyard (the west) and wanna delete everything they do not understand has grown to big. Also other idiocism like on nl: wikipedia where procedure is 100x more important than the smooth running of the project, resulting in an everyone can insult everyone situation and no-one get's actually blocked is taking to much time and stress.
Jimbo invented the wheel with the wikimedia projects. Unfortunately the wheel never evolved, nor will it in the current climate. Every form of progress of the projects in something meaningfull and working gets blocked or grinded in bureaucracy by a group of people who want to be the boss.
Meanwhile on the boardlevel politicians rule who only give a shit about themselves and about political games. I have seen many of these games played out over the years. Also the projects diversify to much and to much new niches where new small groups start that take their particular niche hostage (commons being a prime example) are started. Instead of looking at how things can co-operate people start their own new kingdoms and fiefdoms (like wikitionaryz, which is GerardM's fiefdom) into things that are not our core imho. We are about creating content, not spreading it, let other people do that job.
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia projects will always exist, and the original idea was great. Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Waerth _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Waerth, I am sorry to see you in trouble. I would like you to remind people tend to hesitate to express their reaction for several reasons. Complexity of problems, feeling as outsiders (in the view of mentioned issues) and so on. And as SJ pointed out, even if you have received not so many responces as you would have expected, your postings to foundation-l hasn't been completely ignored.
On 10/25/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
I agree that projects should look more towards cooperation with others -- other languages and other types of projects. You are right that lack of cooperation is a problem.
Sure, I would like to add it could happen even if all involved parties are on a good faith. One can be ethnocentric and still on a good faith; good faith based on unproper idea can cause disasterous end, that is a moral of history. And we won't always know what our deeds fruit.
En:wp has a policy as of this year not to allow usernames with non-latin character sets. I have no idea where that came from, but it is a shame.
It could be forseeable though, my complaint about its cultural centricism and disrespect for non Western culture that was simply rejected because they allowed us non Westerners still to edit on that project, so it was not discriminative. I think I heard similar statements once somewhere else in documents in the age of colonialism, and it is for me enough to decide to leave it.
Also, I am very shocked no one didn't alert us about that when we were going to reject vote eligiblity to the people who were blocked indefinitely from somewhere else. There were, in fact, people who shouldn't be treated as such, since their guilty of banning was only they used their usernames in their own scripts. Fortunately or unfortunately I haven't seen votes from such people as Election Official; so now I fear if we Election Officials sent a wrong sign for those people who had accepted such sanctions and didn't oppose.
On the other hand, English Wikipedians seem not to feel guilty to block trusted people of Wikimedia project only in the reason they didn't prefer their usernames. That is a surprise for me and I would like to say there are fearing SUL would bring them their current policy to apply all the project. As past Election Official, I stress the coming change should encourage "one user, one account" policy - or the next Election cannot be feasable. Even in this year, hand counting was a stressful nightmare. And the English Wikipedia policy would be an obstacle to ensure such a policy unless it will be changed.
I expect English Wikipedians change their mind and become aware Wikipedia project consists in diversity, and also I expect such kind of ethnocentrism is only a phenomenon on English Wikipedia and not on other English projects.
On 25/10/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, English Wikipedians seem not to feel guilty to block trusted people of Wikimedia project only in the reason they didn't prefer their usernames. That is a surprise for me and I would like to say there are fearing SUL would bring them their current policy to apply all the project. As past Election Official, I stress the coming change should encourage "one user, one account" policy - or the next Election cannot be feasable. Even in this year, hand counting was a stressful nightmare. And the English Wikipedia policy would be an obstacle to ensure such a policy unless it will be changed. I expect English Wikipedians change their mind and become aware Wikipedia project consists in diversity, and also I expect such kind of ethnocentrism is only a phenomenon on English Wikipedia and not on other English projects.
You keep going on about this as if it was intended as calculated offence rather than a measure to deal with a very real vandalbot problem. I appreciate you don't like it, but the orignal problem also needs solving. Please suggest a solution.
- d.
Walter van Kalken wrote:
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia projects will always exist, and the original idea was great. Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Walter,
When you say "moderating bits", do you mean your administrator status? If so, I urge you to withdraw your request. There are, I believe, many of us "old-time" admins, who stay away from the politics, use our admin powers sparingly, and perhaps contribute sparingly. While we may be in the minority, there may come a time when our presence will be important to the project again.
In the meantime, keep your admin privileges. They have not (yet) decided that the privileges can be removed due to lack of use.
-Rich Holton (Rholton on en.wikipedia)
Dear Friends:
As a quasi-outsider (and sometime commentator on WP in the press), I was glad to see the issue of civility and procedure raised here. It's important. en:wp was a very welcoming place to newbies in the beginning. It's less so now.
The question of civility is of particular relevance for me, now, as I'm trying to convince academics to participate in Wikipedia. More specifically, I'm attempting to set up a Project in which professional Russian historians (100s of them) regularly add and clean up entries, and have their students (1000s of them) do the same. Some of these historians, however, have already had bad experiences on en:wp. What am I to tell them? I could say that incivility is a cost of doing business in open projects like Wikipedia. But I fear they will respond by saying they want nothing to do with such a business. That's not a good thing.
What to do about incivility and all the pettifogging rules, I'm not sure. But I'm heartened to see the issue discussed.
Warmest Regards, Marshall Poe
On 10/25/06 8:03 AM, "Rich Holton" richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia projects will always exist, and the original idea was great. Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Walter,
When you say "moderating bits", do you mean your administrator status? If so, I urge you to withdraw your request. There are, I believe, many of us "old-time" admins, who stay away from the politics, use our admin powers sparingly, and perhaps contribute sparingly. While we may be in the minority, there may come a time when our presence will be important to the project again.
In the meantime, keep your admin privileges. They have not (yet) decided that the privileges can be removed due to lack of use.
-Rich Holton (Rholton on en.wikipedia) _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org