[WikiEN-l] Category:<Subjective-pejorative>, weak consensus, and ! NPOV
Jesse W
jessw at netwood.net
Fri Jun 23 07:05:06 UTC 2006
Cobb - what is your Wikipedia username, by the way? I'd be curious to
look over the contributions that led you to these conclusions. In any
case, getting down to brass tacks...
On Jun 22, 2006, at 2:33 PM, Cobb wrote:
> stevertigo. Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:11:12 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
>
>> I dont know what else to say. Either we have a culture
>> which respects NPOV or we do not.
>
> We don't. We have policies and guidelines... but the
> admins who close AFDs don't read them, and if they
> do they don't act on them.
Some of them do, some of them don't. Please *do* point out specific
examples where they did not, and we'll work on fixing them. Unless you
list the vast majority of AfDs, (and we agree that they were closed in
violation of our policies and guidelines), your claim is unsupported.
Sorry.
> We have a deletion process
> that is deliberately opaque and awkward to prevent
> people from using it and getting the idea that deleting
> anything from WIkipedia is a good thing.
Wait - editing an article and removing a paragraph is now "opaque and
awkward"? Hasn't seemed so to me... Oh, you were talking about
deletion in the sense of "hiding from public view all the revisions
under a given page title". Yes, in most cases this is a deliberately
awkward and deliberative process - it's generally *good* to make it
non-trivial to hide things from the public. Transparency and all that.
None of this should seriously impact fixing biased or otherwise bad
articles, as far as I can see.
> We also have large chunks of Wikipedia with hardly
> any editors applying the basic rules of Wikipedia.
I agree, although I think most of the editors on those areas: 1) Think
they are following Wikipedia polices and guidelines, but are mistaken.
2) *Do* follow some of the guidelines, but miss on others.
> These areas are controlled by organised groups
> who make Wiki-life extremely difficult for anyone
> who tries to clean it up.
Also agree. Of course, large chunks of Wikipedia are controlled by
groups of editors who *are* following policy and guidelines, and who
make Wiki-life extremely difficult for anyone who tries to mess the
articles in that area up. We have much of both. The bad ones are bad,
and are a shame and a problem. The good ones are a credit to us, and a
Good Thing. The problem is determining the difference, which is
nowhere as easy as you seem to think.
> Editors with the best intentions but without the stomach for a fight
> try their
> best and end up being driven off after being reported for vandalism or
> 3RR violations, or
> just being wiki-stalked and hassled on any article they edit.
You bet. And editors with the worst intentions (or good intentions but
unable to usefully contribute) are also regularly driven off after
being reported for vandalism or 3RR violations, or just being
wiki-stalked and hassled on any article they edit. Again, the bad ones
are a crying shame, and the good ones are a benefit and a critical
help. And, it's non-trivial to distinguish them.
> To clean up these areas, any legitimate editor
> has to have the patience of a saint and an
> encylopedic (heh) knowledge of the Wikipedia
> rules system. He's got to be able to put up with the
> most extreme provocation and obvious bad faith...
> all the while smiling sweetly and assuming good
> faith while dozens of sock-puppets play stupid
> games. He's got to have the support of a group
> of editors, or a tame admin, to help him out too.
You got it! This is exactly what it's like being one of our more
active editors on controversial topics. And you are entirely correct,
it's really hard.
> Naturally, most editors don't have this.
Luckily, Wikipedia also has vast fields of articles where hardly
anybody edits, and people who don't want such fights can happily and
productively improve our articles in those areas. Also, as I mentioned
above, we have a number of areas that are well-patrolled by
non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines, and editors
who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave the
work of defending the articles against crazies to others.
> So the way Wikipedia is set up right now, under the
> auspices of welcoming newbies, is a vandal
> paradise that treats legitimate editors
> as an endless renewable resource.
Well, considering that many vandalistic edits get fixed in minutes, and
many more disruptive users are shown the door eventually (using the
methods you so clearly stated above, along with ArbCom rulings), I
think the term "paradise" is a little exaggerated, but as for
legitimate editors being an endless renewable resource - some of the
work (like what you mentioned above) *is hard* - expecting people to do
it for a while, then take a (sometimes permanent) break is hardly
unreasonable. We appreciate their work for as long as they can do it,
wish them well when they feel they no longer can, and are ready to
welcome them back (possibly under a new name) whenever they are willing
to return.
> it uses them up and throws them away by giving them little or
> no support
Hm. Not sure exactly what you mean by "support", but good editors are
certainly able to avail themselves of a large number of tools in
editing, and defending articles against less-good editors. These
include the ones you mentioned above, and others: reversion, user_talk
pages, RfCs, the Village Pump, the Mediation group, the Arbitration
Committee, the mailing lists, and a large body of advice (i.e. the
guidelines and essays in the Wikipedia namespace).
> and instead it defends the rights of
> vandals to edit.
How does it do that? We do take as a fundamental principle that anyone
should be able to edit unless we already know they intend to damage the
project, but we also are quite quick and willing to stop obvious
mis-use of editing, and (more slowly and deliberately, i.e. through the
ArbCom) subtle mis-use of editing. Examples, please?
> It even makes the finding out of who is socking up a tedious and
> officious
> process... just for that extra kick in the teeth for legitimate
> editors who do play by the rules
> and are faced with those who don't.
Finding out who is "socking up" (nice phrase) is *a hard problem*.
It's not obvious, and it's not simple. The current process is an
attempt to balance a number of opposing factors - privacy of good users
vs sock puppeting by bad users being the main one. It's hardly a
perfect solution, and if you have some specific suggestions, please do
post them.
> In summary, the system is broken.
As I hope I pointed out above, all the evidences you gave for the
system being "broken" are also evidence for the system working
precisely as designed. Undoubtably, the wiki has seriously broken
spots - it also has seriously great spots. If you have specific
suggestions about how to improve the broken spots without damaging the
working ones, we'd love to hear them.
> But you won't get any sense on this mailing list,
You won't? In my reading of the list, we get a a post claiming the
"system is broken" about once a day on average. That doesn't sound
much like not "get[ing] any sense of this". Your message (and the one
you were responding to) are examples. Or did you mean that such
messages generally don't get a rousing round of - "absolutely right",
"good for you", "I've thought that for a long time", and the like in
response? That's not a "sense", that's "agreement"; if you meant that,
I agree - unsurprisingly, most of the people who bother to wade through
the many posts on this list do so because they believe Wikipedia to be
working, and want to help. This would be true whether Wikipedia was
really doing absolutely wonderfully or entirely terribly. Don't use
replies on the mailing list to get a gage of public opinion of
Wikipedia. If you didn't realize that already, now you know.
> because most of the people here don't actually edit Wikipedia these
> days. They just pontificate and have faith in some mystical power of
> the Wiki.
This has been responded to earlier; your facts are simply wrong. Have
a nice day.
Thanks for the message,
Jesse Weinstein
More information about the WikiEN-l
mailing list