[WikiEN-l] BJAODN: a proposal

[Gabe Johnson]

On 6/4/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/3/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/3/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> > >
> > > Guy Chapman aka JzG schreef:
> > > > On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 19:22:17 +0100, "James Farrar"
> > > > <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >> You think.  Me, I think it might have been exactly as stated: OK,
> > > > >> let's finally grab this tiger by the tail.
> > > > >
> > > > >Yes, per [[IDONTLIKEIT]].
> > > >
> > > > Or possibly per the reason stated.
> > >
> > > No, apart from [[WP:IDONTLIKEIT]], [[WP:BLP]], [[WP:NPA]], [[WP:FU]] and
> > > [[WP:NOT]], there was not a single reason for deletion of these pages,
> > > and it's a scandal that they have not been undeleted already.
> >
> > The failure to recognize that  BJAODN deliberately violates the norms of
> > the
> > rest of Wikipedia in order to make the culture healthier and the
> > encyclopedia better (similar to how people can experiment in the Sandbox,
> > but not the mainspace) is extraordinarily disappointing.
> >
> > It's called Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense for a reason.
>
>
> Yes.
> ----
> In general, in comment on all the comments about BJAODN:
>
> Any example of how a part of BJAODN violated the GFDL can be refuted with
> another part that doesn't violate the GFDL.
>
> For every non-funny joke, there was one that had me in stitches, and
> probably you too.
>
> For every dozen puerile misuses and 1/2 page cut there was -- if you looked
> hard enough -- something that would make you laugh, and you'd realize you
> were laughing because it was a joke about Wikipedia and you were a
> Wikipedian, and that is a good feeling.
>
> No argument about how it was "a massive waste of time" or "a complete
> copyright violation" or "it was great through and through" or anything
> similarly broad and undiscriminating is going to fly in the face of a group
> of pages that were nearly six years old and incredibly diverse.
>
> So: in the interests of not sitting through more copyright arguments and
> more deletion procedural arguments -- remember, every time you quote an
> acronym God kills a kitten -- let's get back to basics.
>
> I'd like to propose leaving the old BJAODN pages alone for the moment --
> recognizing that they are (hopefully) preserved in a dump and the deletion
> logs for the dedicated and foolhardy to sort through, remove the funniest
> bits for a future archive and credit if necessary. Anyone who wants to
> figure out how to make these available for non-admins to work on I'm sure
> would be welcomed, and hopefully the pages won't completely die by being
> left alone. If others want to fight to get them undeleted, or act boldly to
> undelete, my bias is that this would be a good thing, but doing so
> immediately and unilaterally will just cause further drama.
>
> In line with this, I would love to see a discussion about keeping or
> deleting the pages with the participation of many more experienced
> Wikipedians and those familiar with the GFDL; there have only been a few
> loud voices so far, and while not a "crucial" page, BJAODN is a page that
> predates most of the policies and 90% of the content on this site. Thus I
> feel sure that many people beyond the people who have spoken up so far have
> opinions and strong feelings on it.
>
> I'd also like to propose a new BJAODN page -- BJAODN for the 21st century --
> that could come into being over time, where we work out a way to keep a
> small portion of the funny stuff; perhaps equitable basic policies for
> quoting pages, removing any hint of BLPs or attacks, and only quoting
> fair-use sized chunks of deleted pages. Yes, it's not encyclopedic; but yes,
> there is always going to be an urge to share that All-Time Best Vandalism
> Evar that had you cracked up for 20 minutes with your friends. I've had that
> urge; so has everyone who's ever added to BJAODN. How do we make a place for
> this? [1]
>
> Lastly, I would love to see a discussion of whether this was appropriate
> behavior by the deleting admin -- he's gotten praised by some and abused by
> others. Does this sort of thing fall within being bold? Is this unilateral
> behavior desirable? Something to encourage or revile? Let's leave aside
> current policy about speedies, copyvios etc and think about what we *want*.
>
> Finally, three challenges. First, I'd like to challenge those who care about
> it to improve the existing BJAODN page, maybe giving a short explanation of
> this phenomena -- especially for the sake of the many, many incoming links
> -- and showcasing some of the early diffs, which are pretty funny. It would
> also be great if an admin could retrieve the page titles of the various
> BJAODN collections, and post them as a reminder of what we had.
>
> Second, I'd like to challenge everyone who is arguing about copyright on
> this mailing list to take the amount of time you've spent sending emails,
> double it, and spend that amount of time checking articles and new
> contributions for copyvios from material in the outside world. I guarantee
> you'll find a few, and this is a MUCH bigger problem than BJAODN ever was.
>
> Thirdly, for everyone who thought that the collection of jokes wasn't funny
> or encyclopedic and therefore should go: a challenge to remember that good
> faith and tolerance of a lot of random crap is what makes any of us put up
> with this website at all. While no one is more self-righteous about making
> this a serious encyclopedia than me, we're talking about 60-odd pages out of
> 7,000,000, and things like BJAODN are like amateur comedy hour, or karaoke
> -- you may not like it, and it may be painful to listen to, but that doesn't
> mean you have to go on a crusade against every karaoke bar in the city and
> get a court order to shut them all down.[2]
>
> Thoughts?
>
> phoebe
>
> [1] The last thing I added to BJAODN *still* makes me laugh when I think
> about it.
> [2] though if you do, I won't stop you; I can't stand the stuff.
>

Agreed. ~~~~

-- 
Absolute Power
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