Currently Wikipedia has a policy protecting individuals who use pseudonyms
from being "outed" and having their legal names revealed. I think this is
generally a good policy and I use it myself since I edit using a pseudonym.
The problem is when use of a pseudonym allows individuals to surreptitiously
edit an article on themselves in a self-promotional or at least a
self-interested way. The guideline in WP:AUTO is that individuals are
discouraged from editing in an autobiographical manner and that if they do
so it's a "good idea" if they identify themselves. However, if they don't,
anyone who suspects someone of editing autobiographically is restrained from
voicing their suspicions, even if they have very strong evidence, by
WP:HARASSMENT's prohibition against "outing" people.
I think we should allow people to maintain their anonymity but that there
needs to be an understanding that if you want to be anonymous you can't take
advantage of that anonymity by editing an article on yourself ie your right
to anonymity ends once you transgress WP:AUTO.
What do people think about have a policy (say as part of BLP) that states
that any editor who edits a biographical article on themselves must identify
disclose that they are doing so and modifying WP:HARASS in order to create
an exception to the "no posting of private information" rule in the case
where someone is editing an autobiographical article surreptitiously? And
how should this be permitted? Should editors be permitted to ask CheckUsers
to verify that a suspected auotobiographer's location is consistent with
that of the person they're writing about? Should editors be permitted to go
to WP:ANI or WP:Request for Arbitration and voice a concern that someone is
editing autobiographically without declaring themselves?
Stephen
[This is in response to all the bitching and whining that's taken
place since December 24th, on mailing lists, bug trackers, village
pumps and sleazy little back-alley forums...I apologise for the
crossposting. As ever, please feel free to forward this to other
appropriate parties or lists, but keep responses and/or discussion on
one.]
All right, this bickering has gone far enough. The fact of the matter
is that we're under constant pressure to keep the site alive and
introduce new features and fixes on a regular basis. I can well
understand that a lot of people will object to each change, and we do
our best to make things non-intrusive.
When this feature was first introduced, some bright spark on the
English Wikipedia edited the global CSS and made the numbers bright,
garish green and red, and emboldened them - I didn't agree with that,
but whatever. However, there were a huge number of not-too-polite
complaints blaming us for doing it, and some of these failed to
subside when it was pointed out that this had nothing to do with the
development team.
We might not implement their letter, but the spirit of the ideas of
keeping civil and assuming good faith *are* applied at the development
level; we just reserve the right to be blunt. If I've been
particularly rude to anyone over this issue, I do apologise for it -
and I'm sure anyone else who may have been apologises too.
If we're to implement certain tweaks for this in user preferences,
then we need some co-operation from the user base to allow us time to
determine a clean means of doing so (we want to avoid duplication of
code when generating changes list items), and we want people to
remember that politeness goes both ways.
Just because user A dislikes a feature, it doesn't mean that user B
will, and it is not fair to scream and rant and rave over it because
we tried to implement something that was useful. I would like to note
also that the numbers, as with the "minor edit" flag, and the whole
concept of edit summaries, are advisory - what we provide is a factual
statement of who changed what, and how much they changed, and we allow
that user to present justification for their changes. If that user
chose to lie in their edit summary, or deliberately mis-labelled a
minor edit, then there is nothing any of us can do - and you (the
users) have coped with that well enough over (at least) the past four
years or so.
I will open a fresh feature request, giving an opportunity for Brion
to say "yes" or "no" definitively, and I will avail myself to Leon or
anyone else who would then wish to implement the outcome should they
want any input.
I point-blank refuse, however, to work with any user who feels that it
is acceptable to assume bad faith on the part of the development team.
That attitude could very well lose you a lot of the behind-the-scenes
supporting cast one day, without whom you wouldn't even *have* a
website.
Rob Church
"Stephen Park" wrote
> I think we should allow people to maintain their anonymity but that there
> needs to be an understanding that if you want to be anonymous you can't take
> advantage of that anonymity by editing an article on yourself ie your right
> to anonymity ends once you transgress WP:AUTO.
Slippery slope. What if the edit to a biographical page was to remove something potentially defamatory, or just negative and unsourced violating WP:BLP?
Charles
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On 29 Dec 2006 at 22:55, "James Hare" <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh God don't get me started on that Wikiasari crap I've read about in da
> n00z.
Who's sari now?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
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"Ron Ritzman" wrote
> The same could be asked about notability. Just what makes one suspect
> that a particular person/band/school/company/webcomic etc. is not
> notable?
There are fairly clearly several paths. For example, click 'Random Article' until you find something that annoys you, and then tag it. Searchinge the whole site for some less-usual word or phrase will turn up 'neglected' pages at the far end of the search. There is probably too much personal animus in PROD and CSD A7 now, in some cases.
Charles
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Article warning templates should go on the *article*, not the talk page:
http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-jul23-06.html#wikipedia
"The fact that Wikipedia encourages us to use these notices give us
confidence that Wikipedia is putting our interests over its own.
"So, why is it that you don't see such frank notices in traditional
sources such as newspapers and encyclopedias? Is it because their
articles don't ever suffer from any of these human weaknesses? Oh,
sure, newspapers issue corrections after the fact, and "This is
non-neutral opinion" is implicit on the Op-Ed page. But why isn't
there any finer grain framing of the reliability and nature of what's
presented to us in their pages? Can we come to any conclusion except
that traditional authorities are more interested in maintaining
authority than in helping us reach the truth?"
That second para is important: newspapers are not Reliable Sources.
Anyone who's been following the Wikiasari media-vaporware non-story
may be surprised to know there *is no story* - Wikiasari was the name
of an older project, search.wikia.com was a ghost site they've had to
reactivate in the wake of this story ... the whole thing came from an
idle Jimbo quote about Google and a journalist spotting
search.wikia.com, and adding 2+2 and getting 2237943297729432.
My arse newspapers are a "reliable" source. Not if accuracy is your
interest. Easily checkable is not the same thing.
- d.
On 28 Dec 2006 at 23:35, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Uncyclopaedia or the Wikipedia Review are going to love this one.
Wikipedia Review never misses an opportunity to bash Wikipedia for
any reason, or no reason, for anything anybody connected with it does
or fails to do. Consistency is not a virtue for them; they can
simultaneously attack Wikipedians for deleting stuff, for failing to
delete stuff, for taking action in a dictatorial manner without
allowing debate, for engaging in too much time-wasting debate instead
of useful action, for being too fascistic, for being too anarchistic,
for being too highbrow, too lowbrow, too middlebrow, too left-wing,
too right-wing, too pro-American, too anti-American, too academic,
too anti-academic, too pop-cultural, too anti-pop-cultural; for
airing too much dirty laundry in public, for trying to shove its
flaws under the carpet; because it's an unstoppable juggernaut,
because it's an unstable mess that's about to collapse; it's
capitalist, it's communist; Jimbo screws it up by exercising his
personal whims, Jimbo is a do-nothing figurehead who refuses to act
at all; critics get harrassed, critics get ignored; people get banned
unfairly, people don't get banned who deserve it; its mailing lists
and IRC rooms have nothing but idle, pointless, off-topic chitchat;
its mailing lists and IRC rooms are where all the important policy
decisions get made to the exclusion of people who participate on the
actual Wikipedia discussion pages.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
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