[Wikipedia-l] Re: Fwd: Banned from editing except on en

[Mark Williamson]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:44:04 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
> > > You are banned from editing at any wikipedia site other than en.
> >
> > Personally (and with all due respect to Jimbo), I'd prefer that
> > judgement be left to individual Wikipedias to decide, per their usual
> > policy of banning users.
> 
> The problem is: he has been making annoying edits on wikipedias that
> do not have any current users.  He removed all the interlanguage links
> from one, and replaced the standard boilerplate text with his own
> message and email address.  When Angela fixed this, he reverted her.

"annoying edits" are not grounds for banning on ANY Wikipedia. Do they
violate policy? Not that I can see. Do they disrupt the workings? Hah!
There are no workings. Replacing boilerplate text in English with text
in the target language may be annoying to YOU, but to speakers of that
language it is more likely to be seen as a gesture which seeks to
invite them to participate and make them more comfortable.

As I noted before, I am not 100% sure of the things I wrote in
articles on bo: or sq: (but I didn't write hundreds of articles, and I
know they're at least not totally gibberish), but unless I note
otherwise for any other text I post, I do not have any doubt that it
is 100% correct (unless it's not grammatically, in which case I can
easily do some fact-checking before posting)

Perhaps we should show these people the edit you are talking about?
http://fj.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&oldid=1459

As you can clearly see, compared to the version that was there
previously, it is preferrable because there is actually content IN THE
TARGET LANGUAGE (if you wish to assert it is somehow incorrect, I
would respectfully request that you confirm that beforehand with a
professional translator or areal linguist unless you claim to speak
the language yourself and can offer an explanation or correction)

If you found the removal of interwiki links (which wasn't intentional
- I just removed all existing text and replaced it with Fijian
content, not intending to remove interwiki links) to be a problem, yet
rather than fixing it you complained instead, perhaps you need to
review the basic principles of Wikipedia: you can fix anything
somebody else messes up.

In fact, NOBODY tried to change anything on the page except to add the
article count, which I did not revert.

In fact, I WAS THE ONE TO ADD THE BOILERPLATE TEXT AND INTERWIKI LINKS
BACK because Jimbo was pissed.

However Angela did indeed revert a contribution on another Wikipedia,
although in that case it did not contain my e-mail address (and again,
how is the e-mail address against policy? quite a few Wikipedias,
including inactive ones, do that already). Since she simply specified
in the edit summary that it was "vandalism", I reverted her edits with
an edit summary "isibusi vandalism" - she had removed legitimate,
target-language content and replaced it with content in English.

Clearly, the Wikipedian thing to do if you're irritated over the fact
that somebody has removed the interwiki links in a page is to re-add
them, rather then revert completely, and if it occurs again *and* it
turns out to be an established user from another Wikipedia, rather
than looking to ban that user from that project you should make a note
on the talkpage.

As you can well see, now the mainpage at http://ve.wikipedia.org/ has
now had the links added AS WELL AS a bit of Tshivenda text, with an
internal link to an article in Venda (currently the only article).

If the article is deleted and the mainpage is reverted NOW, the only
possible explanation would be that people don't like Venda, and for
this reason I don't think it will happen.

> This is just one example of an ongoing pattern of difficult behavior.

An "ongoing pattern of difficult behaviour"? Let's see, other than
that what did I do?

I have been accused of:

1. Terrorising the Kashmiri Wikipedia with one sockpuppet, then using
another sockpuppet to reconcile and gain adminship, then the day after
I got in trouble, registering a gazillion more sockpuppets. Supposedly
all these users have the same IPs and passwords as me, but I still
highly doubt that.

2. Replacing almost every single article on the Toki Pona Wikipedia
with a copyvio notice. This has already been discussed extensively,
and unlike #1 on this list, I actually did do it.

3. Adding en: to a list of inactive Wikis, reverting its removal by an
anon (note, an anon) twice, and then reverting its removal by Danny
once. It may have been a "silly game", but nevertheless the reasons I
gave for its presence on the list make perfect sense. I was
subsequently banned from all projects (for 24 hours according to
Danny, however it was actually a few hours more) against policy by
Danny (when I asked him what he did wrong, he actually said "you tell
me" and refused to tell what I had done wrong OR cite policy).

4. Helping small Wikipedias with various tasks, for example small
cleanup tasks, removing vandalism and spam, etc.

5. Translating "directory" content for the mainpages of a few dead or
inactive Wikipedias.

6. Creating logos for a number of Wikipedias, in some cases on request
but in others I actually seeked out somebody from the Wikipedia and
told them the service was available.

7. Trying to raise awareness of the inactive Wikipedia projects among
their language communities via e-mail, postings in forums, and instant
messaging (so far no phonecalls or snailmail), with a very low
response rate.

I don't see how this amounts to an "ongoing pattern of difficult
behavior" unless you just plain hate me and think everything I do is
"difficult", although I'm pretty sure that isn't the case.

> He is one of the main factors forcing us to pursue a policy locking or
> closing small wikis, which is of course ironic, since he is an
> activist for small language wikis.

The two actions which you cited actually occured AFTER such actions
had reached their climax, and were in fact almost solely because of
what you were doing.
 
> He and I had a partly constructive dialogue about these issues earlier
> today in IRC, and I am hopeful that some compromise can be worked out.
> 
> I admire his energy and enthusiasm, and I find him to be very bright.
> But there have been several incidents that are just problematic to say
> the least (look up the unresolved issue of sockpuppets for example),
> and his hostility and personal attacks against people who are highly
> respected in the community don't help at all.

I have been attacked privately by more than one "highly respected"
community member. What this says to me is that they are more cowardly.
 
> I took this action at a global level rather than at an individual
> project level, because that's where the problem has arisen.

Again, I think this is more of a perceived problem than an actual one.

> If you want him to be able to edit at zh-min-nan, then that is enough
> for me.  He can do that.  If anyone wants to vouch for him anywhere
> else (in an active project), email me and it will be done.
> 

Oh, I can vouch for myself on all projects except tokipona:. :p In
addition I have recently made numerous edits to a few non-English
Wikipedias where I wrote original content or made significant changes.

I find it quite upsetting that with each language I want to edit,
somehow this amounts to a claim that I speak the language.

I claim only to speak English and Other.

Mark