> From: Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab(a)eden.rutgers.edu>
>
> Pretty good points, y'know. But single-digit years are pretty weird...
> :)
Let's number 'em like checks, or serial numbers... just
arbitrarily add 1000.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
I have been watching the last week's events with dismay. I have been trying
to compose this email for two hours, but every time I get close, something
else comes up.
I have decided to make this anonymous. I do not know how some of you would
react and I do not wish to take any chance that I would be harassed for
this.
There are two cases that bother me. Jack Lynch aka Sam Spade and Cranston
Snord aka Enviroknot. Both of these cases scare me because of the precedent
that they have set.
In the case of Jack, there was a question of a block war. Administrators
were fighting over what to do with him. This is not a good thing for
Wikipedia editors no matter who they are. It indicates that the user is less
of a concern than something between the two Administrators.
It is the case of Cranston Snord aka Enviroknot that worries me more. This
is the case that has made me take the drastic step of sending an email to
the list anonymously. I had originally been trying to type up a response to
Cranston's concerns about being blocked. I believe that SlimVirgin violated
policy by doing so. Unfortunately for me, such an email would likely now be
a day late and a dollar short.
Cranston was a disruption to the list, but much of that disruption was
caused by other people on this list treating him with incredible disrespect.
I was taken aback by his accusations against administrators but having
looked at the cases in hand I believe that he has a point.
There were emails on this list asking whether anyone was taking him
seriously. This is the height of arrogance, and it is something that
frightens me. Administrators should never be acting as if ordinary editors
do not matter.
As for his complaints about being blocked, the dismissiveness on this board
hurt me. No matter who it is making a complaint, we have a duty to
investigate it. We are listed as the last resort for users who have been
wronged. I took the time to investigate SlimVirgin's blocking of Enviroknot,
and I believe that it is not valid.
By the time I got to the discussion, it was a good series of emails long,
and despite the number of list members who had posted, none save SlimVirgin
had bothered to address Enviroknot's concerns on the block in any way.
SlimVirgin herself made a bad judgement call. An edit made in good faith
should never be considered a reversion, even if it contains some content
that is included in a later reversion.
Instead of acknowledging this fact, the list members were universally
dismissive of Enviroknot from the first email. One went so far as to demand
that the term "rogue admin" not be used, without addressing the reasons that
it had been brought up in multiple cases recently.
We have a problem with administrators exceeding their authority on
Wikipedia. We have a problem with administrators not applying policy
correctly. And we have a problem with arrogance on these lists, with
administrators believing that they are somehow better than others.
With the increased power of administrator access comes a responsibility to
use it fairly and adhere to the established procedures and policies. The
actions of an Administrator should themselves be NPOV. We have stated policy
that when a user is found to be violating policy, if they return and do not
break policy, their previous transgressions should not be held against them.
There are a number of administrators who are failing in that responsibility,
and they are present on this list. One of them, rather than addressing
Enviroknot's concerns in a calm tone and actually going over policy, chose
to kickban Enviroknot entirely.
I have never until today been ashamed to be a part of Wikipedia, but there
it is. Take it as you will.
A.Nony.Mouse, for the purpose of this conversation.
_________________________________________________________________
Create the ultimate online companion - meet the Meegos! http://meegos.msn.ie
Hello
I'm constructing a large literary resource, and would like to query
articles about authors automatically, and receive Wikipedia articles
back as RSS/XML documents to present in my website, with all the
relevant backlinks to wikipedia.
Does Wikipedia have customised syndication of its content?
Regards
Amit
quotationsbook.com
>Message: 4
>Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 15:43:14 +0800
>From: <ultrablue(a)gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <a4a707705053100431977d076(a)mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>On 5/31/05, A Nony Mouse <tempforcomments(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>> By the time I got to the discussion, it was a good series of emails
long,
>> and despite the number of list members who had posted, none save
SlimVirgin
>> had bothered to address Enviroknot's concerns on the block in any way.
>> SlimVirgin herself made a bad judgement call. An edit made in good
faith
>> should never be considered a reversion, even if it contains some
content
>> that is included in a later reversion.
>The 3RR provides an electric-fence against continuing revert wars.
>Most of the administrators who enforce the 3RR (and even the
>[[WP:AN/3RR]] page) request that as little circumstantial information
>be provided. Good faith or bad faith does not come into whether a user
>has violated the rule. Your interpretation of the meaning of
>"reversion" is not the one accepted in the Wikipedia community. There
>are simple reverts and complex reverts (where something is
>surreptitiously sneaked back into an article). Every reversion is a
>"good faith" reversion to someone in an article content dispute.
Okay, thanks for clarifying what a "reversion" is.
>Do not assume from the silence of users on the concerns of Enviroknot.
>Before I first replied to the list about this situation, I examined
>all the relevant diffs, and concluded in my own mind that there is a
>clear-cut violation of the 3RR here.
Okay, but you should've explained your reasons beforehand; those reasons
could've saved us much agita!
>The 3RR does allow administrators some discretion, such as the ability
>to unblock people where they have shown remorse for breaking the rule.
>Enviroknot has not expressed any such remorse, and has not addressed
>the allegations of sockpuppetry. Instead, he or she has spammed the
>mailing list and attacked Wikipedia Administrators as a whole. Had
>Enviroknot come up with a good explanation for sharing IPs with other
>users, expressed some sort of remorse for breaking a very basic rule
>and agreed to work collaboratively on the relevant article's talk page
>to reach consensus, I have little doubt the ban would have been
>happily lifted by a number of administrators.
>~Mark Ryan
Agreed. Here is someone who has clear, thought-out, and well-displayed
(now, anyway) reasons for blocking Enviroknot. Anyone who wants to counter
those reasons should go ahead and do so this is what debate is all about,
folks.
>Message: 1
>Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 22:58:29 -0700
>From: Matt Brown <morven(a)gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <42f90dc005053022581c5bcaf0(a)mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>It's very hard for someone like Enviroknot to gain any sympathy when
>they are obviously, blatantly lying. The odds that two unrelated
>people would get the same IP address and decide to edit the same
>Wikipedia articles one after the other are vanishingly slim. If
>Enviroknot is not the same person as KaintheScion/ElKabong - something
>I personally doubt - the two of them are very closely related. Yet
>Enviroknot denies even that.
>Someone who dives into Wikipedia and instantly goes to a contentious
>article is either a sockpuppet or someone who is responding to a call
>to arms by someone else. Someone who instantly knows all the rules
>and how to skirt them is not some innocent.
>-Matt (User:Morven)
Morven makes some pretty good points. Enviroknot is apparently up to no
good. All the same, that doesn't mean he shouldn't be given the rights to
due process of law before banning him.
Kat,
Thank you for unblocking me. It's good to know that at least one admin has a sense of fairness here. It is very frustrating as a newbie to be told to jump right in and to "be bold!" with editing, but then to be blocked for not having known the rules. I wasn't even aware beforehand that there was a "neutral point of view" rule.
When I get a chance I'll try to read through the rules in order to understand how I can be allowed to make changes to the parts which I don't think are at all "neutral" in the entry as it was (even before I tried editing it).
-advert
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kat Walsh [mailto:mindspillage@gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005, 4:41 PM
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blocked after making several edits - accused of
> "vandalism"?!
>
> On 5/30/05, Sean Barrett <sean(a)epoptic.org> wrote:
> > advert stated for the record:
> >
> > > I would like to be unblocked and be allowed to add a feminist perspective
> to the entry which I edited. I don't think the entry as it stands is
> "neutral".
> >
> > Your edits were not vandalism, but they were not acceptable. Stating as
> > a fact that "[p]ornography ... is the representation of the human body
> > or [[human sexual behaviour]] mainly from a male supremacist
> > perspective" is highly opinionated. That statement represents an
> > extreme point of view that most editors and readers will not agree with
> > and will quickly edit away.
> >
> > Something along the lines of "many feminists feel that pornography
> > represents a male supremacist perspective" would be slightly better, but
> > would require a definition of "male supremacist perspective."
> >
> > Also, we are not interested in your personal definitions of
> > "pornography" and "erotica." If those definitions were created
> > elsewhere, please provide references.
> >
> > You may want to suggest changes on the article's talk page and ask for
> > help in wording them so as to conform to the (obligatory) neutral point
> > of view.
>
> Looking at the page history and the block log, I am going to unblock
> this user. I don't think s/he was adequately warned, and we can't
> expect all newbies to know about restrictions on edit warring without
> being informed. (However, advert, you've now been informed: discuss
> big changes to contentious articles on talk, always, and more than 3
> reverts in one day will merit a 24-hour block; further advice will be
> left on user talk page.)
>
> I'm all for blocking deliberate vandals, but this appears to be
> editing made in good faith, just without knowledge of policy.
>
> -Kat
> [[User:Mindspillage]]
>
> --
> http://www.mindspillage.net *** IM: LucidWaking
> "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
> escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
<sermon>
Nobody better be picking on SlimVirgin or any one else I know. Don't
make me come back there swinging a big stick.
Sheesh, I leave you guys alone for a few weeks, and what happens?
C'mon, act like grown-ups. At least half you actually ARE grown-ups,
right?
This is serious project to create an excellent, reliable and free
encyclopedia. Try not to make fun of each other too much, and definitely
stay away from stupid stuff like mean-spirited name-calling.
I've seen it before, the teasing, the name-calling, pretty soon you've
hounding out one of the best contributors. Well, I don't want to see
that happen again.
You want the moral high road? Then act civilized.
</sermon>
Uncle Ed
>Message: 1
>Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 00:27:47 -0400
>From: Phil Sandifer <sandifer(a)sbcglobal.net>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <6E61B93E-C5B9-4FE1-8191-DC6C2BD1FE0C(a)sbcglobal.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>Oh for god's sake.
>The technical evidence against Cranston is a slam dunk. He's a troll.
>He's a vicious, sockpuppeting troll who uses sockpuppets to try to
>generate fake consensus. He's the sort of user we routinely shoot on
>sight, and it's a good thing we do, because we have too damn many of
>them, and every time one manages to generate the headache that this
>has become, good users get driven off. Kudos to every admin who
>blocked him, everyone who called for his removal from this list, and
>everybody who tried to shut this mess down.
Oh, sure. Gun down the barbarians from the windows of our railroad train
out of laziness. In cold blood, too. Is this ethical? Sure, it's the
convenient thing to do. But it's kinda lazy, and, besides, some folks like
to have vandalish fun. Let 'em. Sure, it might mean more work for those of
us who staff Wikipedia, but, let's face it, we all have a prankstering
vandal under our tough, matter-of-fact, researching, teaching exteriors.
That being said, there ARE cases in which trolls should be banned, such as
when they go on the warpath against other Wikipedians, or pull
hard-to-undo crap such as deleting pictures or stuff like that.
>As for those who want to plead for more leniency and say that people
>were dismissive of him, wake up. This project is huge. Huge projects
>attract idiocy. They attract idiocy of the page vandal sort, and
>idiocy of the far more insidious sort. People who come to the project
>for their own ego, people who come to the project to advance their
>own agendas, and people who want to cause the project harm and who
>are actually good at doing it.
So? It's mainly the folks who want to harm our project - and the folks who
are good at harming our project - who ought to be banned, obviously. Other
idiocy can be dealt with by editing, or invoking the 3RR rule (temporary
bans), or other stuff like that.
>This doesn't mean we don't welcome new users. It doesn't mean we
>treat everybody with suspicion. But it means that we learn to call a
>spade a spade, and we stop feeling bad about coming down like a ton
>of bricks on people who are disrupting the project. We do not need to
>care why. We need to be willing to make social decisions with the
>same dispassionate "What will make this situation better" eye that we
>handle our articles with. If a user is breaking articles and making
>it so people can't edit, we shoot them.
Ahem. If a user is breaking articles, give him or her a pause to catch his
or her breath. If he or she is making it so folks can't edit, THEN we
should shoot. We should be fair to both Wikipedians and Wikipedia.
>That's it. That's all that's going to work. If we do not learn to
>come down on Cranstons with fury and speed, over time, this community
>will implode. One need only look at nearly every other Internet
>community to figure that one out.
Umm, okay, especially if the "Cranstons" are here to be trolls, and not to
be constructive. Bear in mind, however, that many of us probably do like
to contribute to BJAODN now and then.
>Good job David. Good job SlimVirgin.
>-Snowspinner
If the banned user deserved to be banned, then, yeah, I agree. Did the
banned user deserve to be banned? I dunno.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 03:51:37 +0100
> From: "A Nony Mouse" <tempforcomments(a)hotmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on
> To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <BAY18-F208BD9D4BEDD1DD4C87D44B8040(a)phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
>
> I have been watching the last week's events with dismay. I have been
trying
> to compose this email for two hours, but every time I get close,
something
> else comes up.
>
> I have decided to make this anonymous. I do not know how some of you
would
> react and I do not wish to take any chance that I would be harassed for
> this.
Good idea, I think.
>
> There are two cases that bother me. Jack Lynch aka Sam Spade and
Cranston
> Snord aka Enviroknot. Both of these cases scare me because of the
precedent
> that they have set.
>
> In the case of Jack, there was a question of a block war. Administrators
> were fighting over what to do with him. This is not a good thing for
> Wikipedia editors no matter who they are. It indicates that the user is
less
> of a concern than something between the two Administrators.
>
Maybe we should refer this case to an arbitration committee or -if it gets
really bad - to Jimbo himself. However, Jimbo (being a head honcho) is
probably a busy man, so referring to someone below is probably preferable
before sending it off to Jimbo.
> It is the case of Cranston Snord aka Enviroknot that worries me more.
This
> is the case that has made me take the drastic step of sending an email
to
> the list anonymously. I had originally been trying to type up a response
to
> Cranston's concerns about being blocked. I believe that SlimVirgin
violated
> policy by doing so. Unfortunately for me, such an email would likely now
be
> a day late and a dollar short.
>
> Cranston was a disruption to the list, but much of that disruption was
> caused by other people on this list treating him with incredible
disrespect.
> I was taken aback by his accusations against administrators but having
> looked at the cases in hand I believe that he has a point.
>There were emails on this list asking whether anyone was taking him
> seriously. This is the height of arrogance, and it is something that
> frightens me. Administrators should never be acting as if ordinary
editors
> do not matter.
>
> As for his complaints about being blocked, the dismissiveness on this
board
> hurt me. No matter who it is making a complaint, we have a duty to
> investigate it. We are listed as the last resort for users who have been
> wronged. I took the time to investigate SlimVirgin's blocking of
Enviroknot,
> and I believe that it is not valid.
>
> By the time I got to the discussion, it was a good series of emails
long,
> and despite the number of list members who had posted, none save
SlimVirgin
> had bothered to address Enviroknot's concerns on the block in any way.
> SlimVirgin herself made a bad judgement call. An edit made in good faith
> should never be considered a reversion, even if it contains some content
> that is included in a later reversion.
Okay, but how do we distinguish an edit made in good faith from a
"reversion"? What if this edit contains mainly stuff from an earlier
revision that had been superseded, along with some new info? That could be
a reversion, one might argue, but it has a hint of fresh editing, too.
>
> Instead of acknowledging this fact, the list members were universally
> dismissive of Enviroknot from the first email. One went so far as to
demand
> that the term "rogue admin" not be used, without addressing the reasons
that
>it had been brought up in multiple cases recently.
>
Suppose that rogue admins DO exist. What do we do about them?
> We have a problem with administrators exceeding their authority on
> Wikipedia. We have a problem with administrators not applying policy
> correctly. And we have a problem with arrogance on these lists, with
> administrators believing that they are somehow better than others.
>
> With the increased power of administrator access comes a responsibility
to
> use it fairly and adhere to the established procedures and policies. The
> actions of an Administrator should themselves be NPOV. We have stated
policy
> that when a user is found to be violating policy, if they return and do
not
> break policy, their previous transgressions should not be held against
them.
>
> There are a number of administrators who are failing in that
responsibility,
> and they are present on this list. One of them, rather than addressing
> Enviroknot's concerns in a calm tone and actually going over policy,
chose
> to kickban Enviroknot entirely.
>
Oops. That's something called "laziness", or "impatience", or sometimes,
just plain being forgetful. In such cases, we should stop, take a breath,
rethink what we are doing for a moment, and review the cases of folks such
as Enviroknot. Dealing with admins fairly will go a LONG way towards
improving Wikipedia.
--- JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "A Nony Mouse" <tempforcomments(a)hotmail.com>
> >If the rest of you share that attitude, then
> Wikipedia is doomed.
>
> If admins shared *your* attitued Wikipedia would be
> doomed. Fortunately most
> don't.
>
> Jay.
It's highly unforutnate that Everyking is an admin.
His opinion of every other admin and every member of
the arbitration committee, and his attacks on all of
us at every opportunity are not exercises in community
building.
RickK
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