Hi,
Elaine Wang is a senior at Lamar High School in Arlington, Texas. She
recently wrote an article for the "Sun Herald" about her experiences
with vandalism in Wikipedia.
This is her edit history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=68.9…http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/living/14257422.htm
After 4 days, she removed her vandalism that was uncorrected until
then. The article reads "Not corrected within a week" or something
like that.
Hoever, it is strange to see that nobody who corrected a single error
from her seemed to have checked her other articles. -- ~~~~
Hi all,
I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at
the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on
the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application,
and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure
misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not
doing enough "project work".
It's worth a read - he has every right to be annoyed at not being
granted adminship, when he has followed the letter of the law, and was
rejected by an RfA culture which does not reflect that policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship
----paste (hope he doesn't mind...)--------
An examination of policies and guidelines for RfA
I have been somewhat taken aback and disappointed by the 4 oppose and
1 neutral votes to date, not because they are "rejections" but because
of the arbitrary imposition of personal preference over not only Wiki
guidelines, but also over Wiki policy (I expand on this below). The
only way a community project can succeed is if there are communal
rules and understandings, which are respected and fulfilled. I do not
consider the "oppositions" meet those standards. I am used to dealing
with contention in my non-Wiki life, so that doesn't worry me. What
does worry me is the undermining of objective standards. I should
point out that I am not suggesting that there is any malevolent
intent, more that standards have slipped. I hope that, whatever the
outcome of this RfA, it may at least stimulate a debate about the
process and lead to some self-examination.
I believe the first 4 oppose votes and the first neutral should be
discounted on the basis that Wiki guidelines and policy have not been
followed in making them.
In order to provide a proper context, I refer to Wikipedia:Policies
and guidelines, which states:
This page is an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has
wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all
users should follow.
Thus the nature of a policy is clearly spelt out, namely:
a standard that all users should follow.
The page then expands on this:
A policy is similar to a guideline, only more official and less
likely to have exceptions. As with guidelines, amendments should
generally be discussed on their talk pages, but are sometimes forked
out if large in scope. One should not generally edit policy without
seeking consensus first.
A guideline is defined on the same page as follows:
A guideline is something that is: (1) actionable and (2)
authorized by consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be
treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to
a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page -
although it's generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it.
And also:
In addition to the generally accepted policies listed above, a
very large number of guidelines have been proposed and adopted by
Wikipedians. These are used to provide guidance in various situations
that arise on Wikipedia. They cover everything from naming conventions
and sensitive terms that should be avoided to how to get along, and
why not to bite the newcomers.
Even guidelines, therefore, being "authorised by concensus" should
normally be followed with only "the occasional exception". I suggest
that in the RfA process the exception has become the rule. This may
necessitate the rule being changed through the proper process, but in
the meantime it is an an example of bad practice, which needs to be
redressed.
However, a policy is an even stricter requirement, and "a standard
that all users should follow" and "even less likely to have
exceptions." There must be extreme conditions for it to be ignored,
yet the current practice on granting admin rights allows voters to
blatantly ignore policy as a matter of course. Again, if this policy
needs to be changed, then it should be done so through a proper
consensual process and established as such, but meanwhile its abuse is
a deterioration of standards for Wiki. Such deterioration would not be
tolerated in articles with POV and there is no more reason that it
should be tolerated in RfA.
Wikipedia:Administrators states:
Administrators are Wikipedians who have access to a few technical
features that help with maintenance ("SysOp rights"). Wikipedia policy
is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active Wikipedia
contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of
the community. [my underlining]
I cannot stress strongly enough that this is stated as "Wikipedia
policy". According to Wiki policy, there are therefore only two points
to be considered:
* if the nominee has been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while"
* if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
If the nominee fulfills these criteria, then it is Wiki policy that
that person should be granted administrator access. In regard to these
two criteria:
* I have been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while".
Please note that this policy does not specify any requirement for
the amount of activity, only that the nominee has been "active".
However, even Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, gives a
guideline of probably at least 1,000 edits, which I have exceeded, and
Wikipedia:Miniguide to requests for adminship gives an "informal,
minimalistic guide" of "at least 3 months", which again I have
exceeded.
* I "generally a known and trusted member of the community." I am
sufficiently well known and trusted to have been awarded two barnstars
for my contributions. I cannot see that there is anything in my
history at Wiki not to show me as trustworthy. I have not been
involved in edit wars; I have not made 3 reverts in 24 hours; I have
not vandalised any pages; I have not been abusive or uncivil; my
articles have not been disputed for accuracy. On the contrary, I have
reverted vandalism and left the appropriate "test" templates; I have
notified an admin about some consistent abuse and been thanked for my
vigilance; I have intervened to help settle disputes; I have left
welcome messages on new contributors' talk pages; I have held
dialogues with other editors where necessary to consult about points I
was unsure of or to inform them as to why I was removing material that
they had contributed.
There is, according to Wiki policy no reason not to grant my request
for admin rights.
I am particularly concerned that potentially good administrators are
being either put off altogether from applying due a process that can
be perceived as a "kangaroo court", where the law is not administered
fairly—and are unwilling to submit themselves to its arbitrariness—or
are applying and being rejected because of subjective opinions, which
violate policy. It is one thing to have a request denied because it
does not meet the requirements of guidelines and policy, but a highly
different one if the nominee has studied the guidelines and policy,
fulfilled them and is still turned down. That is something that will
obviously cause bad feeling and lack of faith in the system and other
editors.
It is a poor example when voters assessing someone's fitness to uphold
Wiki's policies, guidelines and procedures, are themselves in breach
of those same rules, and seemingly unaware of their existence. This
situation needs to be addressed.
The means to do this is also stated in Wikipedia:Policies and
guidelines, namely:
You are a Wikipedia editor. Since Wikipedia has no editor-in-chief
or top-down article approval mechanism, active participants make
copyedits and corrections to the format and content problems they see.
So the participants are both writers and editors.
Individual users thus enforce most policies and guidelines by
editing pages, and discussing matters with each other. Some policies,
such as Vandalism are enforced by Administrators by blocking users. In
extreme cases the Arbitration Committee has the power to deal with
highly disruptive situations, as part of the general dispute
resolution procedure.
I trust that the obvious concern of the voters so far for the
betterment of Wiki will cause them to "self-police", in order to
redress matters at the first stage, now that this situation has been
pointed out.
Guide to requests for adminship
In respect of my own request, I address points on the page
Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, with the text from the page
in italics and my comments in normal type:
What RfA contributors look for
RfA contributors want to see a record of involvement and evidence
that you can apply Wikipedia policies calmly, maturely and
impartially. What are often looked for are:
Strong edit history with plenty of material contributions to
Wikipedia articles.
I have detailed the nature of my editing already.
Varied experience. RfAs where an editor has mainly contributed on
one subject have tended to be more controversial than those where the
user's contributions have been wider.
I concentrate on art, but have edited a much wider range of articles
to a lesser extent, including military, naval and geographical
subjects.
User interaction. Evidence of you talking to other users, on
article talk or user talk pages. These interactions need to be helpful
and polite.
I have fulfilled these criteria.
Trustworthiness General reliability as evidence that you would use
administrator rights carefully to avoid irreversible damage,
especially in the stressful situations that can arise more frequently
for Administrators.
I have already given a relevant statement on this.
Helping with chores. Evidence that you are already engaging in
administrator-like work and debates such as RC Patrol and articles for
deletion.
Again, I have already made the point that I am zealous as regarding
vandalism, which I regularly look out for.
High quality of articles – a good way to demonstrate this is
getting articles featured.
My work has been commended by Solipsist.
Observing policy A track record of working within policy, showing
an understanding of policy.
I trust the previous observations show my understanding of, and
attention to, the correct application of policy.
Edit summaries. Constructive and frequent use of edit summaries is
a quality some RfA contributors want to see. See Wikipedia:Edit
summary.
I always try to make use of edit summaries, and have 99% on major
edits. I am surprised it's as low as 49% on minor edits and don't
understand how this happened, but it will make me more vigilant in
future.
Tyrenius 11:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
----------
Steve
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 10:59:56AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> I have to say, I find some of these objections a bit spurious.
Thanks for your response. I think some of my points may have not been
as clear as I hoped, since some of your responses are responding to
things I didn't actually say. Please allow me to clarify:
> On 3/27/06, Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger(a)whoi.edu> wrote:
> > NPOV.1 -- Rating schemes are designed to reflect the opinions of those
> > who object to sexual content (and a few other categories).
> > They fail to represent the views of those who are tolerant of
> > that content, but object to different content.
>
> Well, no one's proposing censorship of religious views.
Right! That means your censorship proposal fails to represent the
views of people who _do_ want religious censorship. That means it's
non-neutral: it represents only one POV about what should be censored
(the anti-sex view) and not another (the anti-blasphemy view).
> > NPOV.2 -- Grading any particular content on a rating scale is itself a
> > matter of opinion. It involves making a judgment call on how
> > "bad" or "explicit" an image or a paragraph is.
>
> I think that's a problem that has been well and truly solved by many
> censorship bodies world wide. Whether nipples are exposed or not is
> not particular subjective.
Right! Each of those censorship bodies expresses particular views
about what is "bad" or "explicit". Those groups are not bound by an
NPOV policy; indeed, they are frequently commercial firms hired for the
purpose of enforcing particular religious and moral points of view.
However, Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral. It isn't up to us to say
that nipples are "explicit" and elbows are not.
> > Second, they are in violation of our policy against self-censorship, and
> > the underlying _reason_ we don't want self-censorship: it would produce
> > a worse encyclopedia.
>
> Our policy against self censorship is not a core policy. There's
> therefore no reason not to change it if we had the means.
Our policy against self-censorship is still a consensus policy, though.
Censorship proposals (such as [[WP:TOBY]]) have been consistently and
roundly rejected.
> > CENS.1 -- The only real proposed purpose of these rating systems is to
> > enable censorship of Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia has a policy
> > against self-censorship (see [[WP:NOT]]), adding material to
> > Wikipedia articles for the purpose of getting those articles
> > censored is against the rules.
>
> You're saying that if we could rate articles to say they have certain
> offensive material, then people would deliberately add offensive
> material to more articles to avoid people seeing them? Assume good
> faith, n'est-ce pas?
(I wasn't sure if this point was too subtle. I guess it was.)
The "material" I was referring to was censorship tags. Adding those
tags to Wikipedia articles, for the purpose of getting those articles
censored, is against the policy that Wikipedia doesn't do censorship.
> > CENS.2 -- Writers want their work to be read. Any censorship system
> > will tend to discourage people from writing on the censored
> > topics. If sex is censored, our coverage on sexual topics
> > will become relatively worse. (And I don't mean porn; I mean
> > anatomy and sexual behavior.)
>
> Writers will be discouraged from writing on topics which people don't
> want to read?
No. Writers will be discouraged from writing on topics which won't be
seen because of censorship measures.
> The coverage of [[pornography]] will be worse because now children
> won't be reading it? (or writing it???) I don't understand this
> argument.
No. The coverage of [[sex]] and [[breast cancer]] and [[testicle]] and
[[abortion]] and [[mastectomy]] and [[Playboy magazine]] and [[nude]]
will be worse because people will be less interested in writing if they
think the audience is smaller.
Or, to pick another popular censorship topic -- violence -- the coverage
of [[war]] and [[murder]] and [[AK-47]] and [[crushing by elephant]] and
[[electrocution]] and [[Quake III Arena]] and [[terrorism]] will be
worse, because people will be less interested in writing if they think
the audience is smaller.
People write to be read. The effect of censorship measures is to reduce
the size of the audience. (If a "censorship" measure does not prevent
anyone from reading the "censored" material, then it is _ineffective_.)
If the audience size is reduced, then the incentive to write is reduced.
People will also be less interested in writing if they are made to feel
_unwelcome_ by measures that label their work as suitable for censoring.
But that leads into the next objection ...
> > PERS.1 -- Giving something a high rating on a censorship system comes
> > across as saying that it is unworthy (or less worthy) of being
> > read. Usually, this means it is wicked or harmful or the
> > like. Claims that a work should be censored are almost always
> > linked to claims that the writer is immoral. If your work is
> > smut, then you are a smutmonger; if your work is blasphemy,
> > you are a blasphemer. These are personal attacks; we must not
> > make them.
>
> Ok, labelling [[penis]] "graphic images and description of sexual
> anatomy" amounts to a personal attack on the contributors of that
> article? You've totally lost me.
No. Labelling it as "unsuitable for reading" amounts to a personal
attack on the contributors. Any time you enable censorship of
particular material, you are making a claim that it is unfit to be read.
In order to be effective, a censorship measure must actually accomplish
censorship -- that is, it must stop someone from reading the material
censored.
If you were to label my work in such a way that enables censorship
measures, then you would be making an implicit value judgment that my
work _should_ be censored; that the world is better off if my work is
censored than if it is not. You would be saying that people need to be
protected from my work; that it will harm them or corrupt them; in
effect, that I have done something dangerous (or at least negligent) by
writing it in the first place ... or indeed, that I _am_ something
dangerous for _wanting_ to write about it. These statements would be
attacks upon my character, and as such in violation of [[WP:NPA]].
To put it another way: Why do we have a rule against personal attacks?
Because personal attacks make people feel less welcome and less willing
to collaborate. Calling someone's work smutty or harmful to minors will
have that very same effect.
> > PERS.2 == "Marking my work for censorship is picking a fight."
>
> How bizzarre.
Not really. How would you like it if someone went around to _your_
contributions and marked them up in ways you found insulting and
derogatory? That would be a bad thing, and nobody should do it. It
would be disrespectful of you as a contributor, and it would also be a
violation of Wikipedia policy.
Hey... let's go for the record of the most useless list footers
quoted back beneath a top-posted message!!!
On 3 Apr 2006 at 21:35, David Alexander Russell <webmaster(a)davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>>>>>>> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> >>>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >>>>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>>>>>> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> >>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >>>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>>> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> >>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> At 09:27 +0100 2/4/06, Gordon Joly wrote:
> >I have just "discovered" the "Simple English Wikipedia"
> >
> >http://simple.wikipedia.org/
> >
> >
> >On the left, under "Navigation", I find
> >
> >>> Newest changes
> >
> >I am very surprised to find this phrase here, since it is very poor English!
> >
> >Gordo
> >
> >--
>
>
> In fact, all menus have been "munged" (**) into dialect of English!
>
>
> # My talk
> # My settings
> # My watched pages
> # Pages I worked on
> # Log out
>
> # Show any page (which is really "Random Page")
>
> Gordo
>
>
> **
>
> http://foldoc.org/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=munge
>
> --
> "Think Feynman"/////////
> http://pobox.com/~gordo/
> gordon.joly(a)pobox.com///
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
New, Newer newest. What's wrong with that?
Mgm
On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> My assertion remains the menu words do not have to be words in Simple English.
>
> For example "portal" - is that meaning (of that word) in Simple English?
I'm not an expert on SE, but just to follow the logic of this
conversation, "portal" would appear to be a specialised vocabulary
word defined for the purpose of Wikipedia (as far as the SE universe
goes). There's no good reason to define "recent" the same way, when
it's only going to be used for that single page, "recent changes".
That said, either "New changes" or "Newest changes" seem quite reasonable to me.
Steve
In a message dated 4/2/2006 1:32:51 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
guettarda(a)gmail.com writes:
The essence of NPOV is to be able to "write for your enemies". It's a great
(and somewhat humbling) experience to write fairly about something you
disagree with or someone you dislike.
Sounds good, but what if the writing is not fair? How does the NPOV handle
that? What if the writing is contradictory data, and the admin says on entry
(A) that it belongs on entry (B) and on entry (B) he says it belongs on (A)?
Is that what you call Neutral
callNeutral writing?
And what about when contradictory evidence is mentioned, and the admin
simply reverts it out with the comment "That does not explain why..." And what if
he comes over from his home entry, and adds to his enemies page "This theory
has been widely discredited by most cosmologists." And then starts an
argument over the meaning of the word cosmologist...And what if when he is in a
dispute, he closes the discussion with a claim of disruption, incompetence,
silly, said that the one expert editing has "questionable credentials, " and
when his edits get reverted, he threatens to ban the one editor who has done
most of the work citing vandalism or some other Wikipolicy violation. And when
evidence of this behavoir is copied over to the discussion page, His friend
deletes it. And when I suggest that in the real world that action would
constitute obstruction of justice, I am arrested for making a legal threat and
banned from Wikipedia without a hearing.
Is that an example of your Wiki NPOV?
tm
Hello list! I'm new to the list, so perhaps a short intro is in order. My
name is Finlay and I am known to WP as Cantara. I've been a Wikipedian since
sometime in 2004, but have only become really active in the last few months.
I joined the list at the suggestion of CComMack, who thought that an idea I
had (see below) might want input from people knowledgeably about policy and
so forth.
My idea is this. We all know that Wikipedia is great and all, repository of
the world's information, &c. However, there are people who disagree, who
think that Wikipedia is inaccurate because it is written by people who are
not experts and because it lacks oversight (or whatever it is they're saying
now). When considering these two things together, I realized that there is a
kind of information that Wikipedia seriously lacks, and that is
bibliographies. If you've written a research paper lately (I'm writing two at
the moment, myself) you know that the list of books that the author has read
is just as valuable as whatever the book itself is about. However,
Wikipedians don't really make an effort to include "further reading" as part
of the entry, beyond what they list as citations.
I wanted to start a project to focus on getting that store of information
into Wikipedia, and once I get around to it I'll list it on Proposed
Projects. However, as mentioned about, a fellow editor suggested that a
project like this might have repurcussions in other areas (and I hope he
responds to explain what they were - something about the manual of style?).
Discuss, then, and if you'd like to help, I'll have information up somewhere
on my userpage fairly soon.
Yours,
Cantara
Quoting wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org:
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2006 10:52:41 -0600
> From: "Kelly Martin" <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Analysis of Request for Adminship
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <bd4c411e0604020952s623ec6fr7b607a60bbe1e77f(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 4/1/06, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?
>
> Indeed. I'm not clear when the policy that a non-admin cannot
> close
> an AfD came into play, for example. When I was first an admin, it
> was
> the case that non-admins could close AfDs, but it's my
> understanding
> now that a non-admin who attempts to close an AfD will probably get
> blocked.
>
> Kelly
>
I closed quite a few this January without being blocked. Including a few
relatively controversial articles. While I have since been informed that I
shouldn't have closed those ones, nobody said anything about them to me at the
time, much less blocked me.
-- Jonel