<<In a message dated 12/23/2008 8:57:12 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
wilhelm(a)nixeagle.org writes:
If we start to use sources that only certain people can
access, that closes off the ability of the average reader to verify
what we write.>>
-----------------------
The answer to this is "that only certain people can access ONLINE..."
Any citation should give a full bibliographic citation that could be looked
up offline as well.
We would not want to subscribe to any content that is *solely* online and
doesn't exist offline (such as stirnet.com).
So a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle, *could* be found in an
offline format, the online link is merely a convenience link for those who have
access to it. Readers without, should still be able to verify the content in
another fashion.
Will Johnson
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You all may remember [[User:JarlaxleArtemis]], who has been "editing" the
English Wikipedia since 2004, at age 15. Originally he was an apparently
good-faith editor, but was sanctioned by ArbCom in early 2005 for somewhat
immature outbursts, copyright violations, and erratic behavior; eventually
he pulled such stunts as putting his teacher's e-mail address on his
userpage encouraging people to harass the "fucking bitch," e-mail bombing
people who deleted his copyvios, and finally impersonating users and
vandalizing with what would come to be hundreds of sockpuppets, all while
claiming to be the victim. He was banned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArte
mis_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlaxl
eArtemis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlax
leArtemis&action=edit&oldid=117471376> &action=edit&oldid=117471376
He sockpuppeted and vandalized for a while after that, but apparently
disappeared in 2006. One would have hoped maybe he grew out of his teenage
phase and decided to get on with doing something productive instead.
But sadly, the story doesn't end there. In mid-2007, he reappeared with a
new "persona"... the move-vandal "Grawp." Unlike his ostensible predecessor
Willy on Wheels, who at least had a harmless light-hearted flair to him, as
"Grawp" Jarlaxle relished in specifically targeting users and sticking their
personal information (usually gleaned from Daniel Brandt's website) in his
page-move titles along with death threats and rape threats. Eventually we
discovered that Grawp was in fact JarlaxleArtemis, and he only got more
persistent and venomous (probably because as Jarlaxle, he was very open
about his real-life identity and location himself.)
About a week ago, having been one of Jarlaxle's recent targets, I decided to
take matters into my own hand, and found his mother's contact information
and wrote to her to inform her of the awful misdeeds her son's been up to.
(While Jarlaxle is 19, he lives with his mother, and performs most of his
vandalism from her Internet connection.) Instead of replying to me, however,
she complained to OTRS that I was falsely accusing her son, who she insisted
was JarlaxleArtemis but not Grawp. Jarlaxle then proceeded to prove her
wrong... by vandalizing multiple wikis as "Grawp" later that night from the
same IP address his mother sent her e-mail from. The ticket was handed to
ArbCom, who replied to her with this evidence and the assurance that her son
was in fact the one responsible... but received a response that she didn't
believe them, didn't care, and was blocking all further e-mail from
Wikimedia. (Though it's been suggested that Jarlaxle himself may have
written that mail.) And he's continued to vandalize as recently as tonight.
Personally, I'm utterly bamboozled. This kid is nineteen years old and in
college; he's an adult, and he has his entire life ahead of him. Yet he
still continues to anonymously threaten and harass people on the Internet,
even though he's clearly stepped into illegal territory, his identity is
known along with reams of evidence of his misdeeds connecting them to him,
and his parent upon whom he's still dependent has been alerted. And he still
soldiers on, using Mom's broadband to move pages on Wikipedia to titles "I
will rape and murder (insert admin here)." What could possibly be running
through his mind? And how can he be stopped?
-Fran
NPOV is not just a rule. It's what allows us to have a project at all. It is not "right" to violate NPOV because reality hurts someone's feelings. Reality frequently is painful. It's neither possible nor our job to change that.
It's our job to make a neutral, factual, verifiable reference work. Not to impose our notions of right and wrong.
Polarizing the issue into "those who agree with me are right and all others are wrongdoers" is unhelpful.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net>
Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:13 pm
Size: 509 bytes
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 toddmallen(a)gmail.com wrote:
> I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is
> more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage.
NPOV is a rule. BLP is about doing what's right.
Some people elevate rules over doing what's right. I'm not one of them.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Falcorian <alex.public.account+ENWikiMailingList(a)gmail.com>
Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:53 am
Size: 450 bytes
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Scientia Potentia est <
bibliomaniac_15(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> In the end, BLP is not one of our five pillars. The fact that we are an
> encyclopedia is.
>
> bibliomaniac15
>
That pretty much says it all.
--Falcorian
_______________________________________________
I'll put another "yes and hell yes" on that. Having reasonable BLP standards is great, but we passed "reasonable" many miles back. About time to bring it back to "Nothing unsourced or poorly sourced, no hatchet jobs, no pseudo-biographies that only cover the person'ss role in one event."
We've gotten to the point of literal censorship on BLPs, where we're withholding relevant and well-sourced information like names, not because they can't be well-sourced (they can), but because of panic over "privacy." I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage.
BLP is a necessary beast, but it's well past time to get it back on the leash, and make sure that leash stays short. If it's gotten to the point we're worried about it over neutrality, that just hammers home the need for real and immediate reform.
I hope you'll forgive me - I've joined this mailing list half-way through
this discussion. I am interested in what's being said, but am having a hard
time trying to summarize it in my head.
If I'm right, Phil is complaining that NOR contradicts NPOV because someone
won't necessarily be able to defend themselves in their article because what
they say (eg through a letter) will be OR, and therefore the article won't
have NPOV?
And then there's the discussion about whether the subject of an article can
request the permanent deletion of that article? But then of course we'll
have the scenario where only generally positive articles remain. Can't we
just have it so that they insist that Wikipedia correct factual errors about
themselves?
And what's all this about spoiler warnings? Has there been a recent policy
change? Where does one find out about these things?
Thank you for being patient! I look forward to participating in the mailing
list constructively.
In a message dated 12/30/2008 8:32:58 PM Pacific Standard Time,
wilhelm(a)nixeagle.org writes:
Sorry, I am not getting it. Please explain in more detail.>>
--------------------
First you must be familiar with the {{uc}}.
This tag tells a tagger/deleter... STOP I'm working here !
If, for each new article, we simply automatically tag it {{uc}} with today's
date, then no new article should get tagged for deletion simply because it's
new and under developed.
IF a new article is merely spam, or vandalism of course, you can delete it
even with a uc tag.
Some editors, like myself, do not develop articles all-at-once and plop them
in, rather we develop them in-project with a bit and piece here and there
and given several hours, you have a full article, or at least a useful stub.
So new article patrollers just see one sentence, and then five minutes later
two more sentences, and then 15 minutes later another paragraph.... they are
likely to want to tag it as too stubby right away. The uc tag stops that.
But new editors won't know, first day, about this tag . So making it
automatic would solve that issue.
Will Johnson
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<<In a message dated 12/28/2008 7:36:08 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com writes:
But this
response really does not sufficiently take into account the profound impact
that our coverage has on the subjects of our articles.>>
-----------------
And the counter-argument is, if someone has taken the step to become a
public person, say the mayor of Santa Cruz, no one is to *blame* for that step
except themselves. If we then turn up an article from a newspaper 20 years
earlier that states that they were arrested for three DUIs, well, again they did
it. The fact that we re-report it, and that we can collect it all together
with other tidbits, into a biography, is the mere fact of our project to create
a biography on the person.
We aren't here to meekly parrot press releases, that would be a slap in the
face of what creating an encyclopedia means.
The "profound impact" is merely that Sarah Palin doesn't want you to dig
into her past as reported in reliable sources, once she has become a bigger name
than merely the mayor of a tiny Alaskan town. However we do, they do,
that's the purpose of writing a biography. "This is your life" it's not our fault
you messed it up. It is however our duty to report it. History is not
always nice and sweet.
Will Johnson
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That's already been discussed several times. It's really not feasible with the current load on speedy. The standards to avoid speedy (make a basic assertion of importance, provide sufficient context so someone will know what you're talking about, don't attack or advertise, don't post blatant copyvios) are really pretty minimal. If an article doesn't meet even these minimums, there's no reason to keep it around for an hour or at all. We can solve biting problems by being nice when speedying, not by failing to do it when needed.
If we want to reduce the likelihood of speedies, let's restrict new article creation to those with a minimum number of mainspace edits to ensure at least some experience with content policies. This would also deter a lot of page creation vandalism and "JOHN IS A (insert expletive here)" and "We are the leading widget provider..." type garbage.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jon <scream(a)datascreamer.com>
Subj: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion
Date: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:07 pm
Size: 1K
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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I do want to thank everyone who gave input for my BLP question, and a
special nod to Angela who pointed out the archives. I should have
read those first.
Here is a second issue I would like to discuss, if the group is inclined.
Speedy deletion nominations, I would propose there be a paradigm shift
from our current thinking of "Tag immediately and template the user
talk *right after* creation to something like "don't tag untill an
hour has passed". I believe this will be less bity and more
encouraging to our users. To quote something I observed today from
one good editor in reference to our jest over speedy deletions:
"Welcome to wikipedia. You didn't create a good enough article in
your allotted 60 seconds so we deleted it. Dont forget to sign your
posts!"
Even though it was in jest, it is true.
I think perhaps it is time we consider enacting (onwiki discussion to
follow if this is well received) something of a one hour rule to
tagging and templating. We've grown so...
...automated.
Thoughts?
Best,
Jon
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