I think most of us on this list treat newbies fairly well. Now what about
the people that showed up a few months ago, never contributed much, and
spend their time biting newbies?
Let's say I register a new account right now. I go to new page patrol and
start indiscriminately deletion-tagging any article by an inexperienced
user. If they ask me about it, I reply with an impersonal but perfectly
polite note referring them to WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:OR and WP:CIV while ignoring
anything they say. For how long could I do this before I get blocked? How
many could I scare away?
A question for the admins here: When you come across an article wrongly
tagged for speedy deletinon or prod, do you check up on the user who tagged
it? What do you do if their deletion tagging is no more accurate than
picking new articles at random?
This discussion is about biting newbies in general, but I focused on
deletion for personal reasons. I know the rules well, but I have had to
fight deletions too. Asahi Kasei, one of largest chemical companies in Japan
was tagged for deletion at least twice. When I am working on an article I
often discover related subject lacking articles, so I create quick stubs for
reference and later expansion. Very often they get tagged for deletion. They
are on perfectly notable subject, so I can save the articles, but I would
rather spend my time working on the main article.
The issues we discuss in this thread go deep, but here is one change that
would help a lot:
* Articles should not be tagged for deletion two minutes after creation for
not asserting notability. Yes there is {{Hangon}} but how would a newcomer
know about that, and why should they? Of course an article created a minute
ago is being actively worked on. If it's not time critical (attack pages,
copyvios) no tagging should happen the first hour. If this is technically
difficult then NPP should be modified.
/Apoc2400
On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:32:05 -0500, Emily Monroe wrote:
> I'm going to contribute to this thread "backwards", replying first to
> this message and then replying to other peoples' reply. I hope other
> people don't mind at all.
I don't care what order you reply to messages, but I wish you
wouldn't keep "doublequoting" the messages you're replying to, once
interleaved with your replies, and again below your reply. One
quoting is enough (preferably the snipped and interleaved one).
--
== 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/
In a message dated 9/20/2009 10:02:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com writes:
> As for "Every system should be open to audit review by anyone who
> wishes to do so. " This may at first glance sound like an attractive
> slogan. But if my GP or my bank adopted such a policy I would
> immediately shift my business elsewhere.>>
---------
You are presuming that a opening a bank's books to inspection means that
every piece of data is open, and that's not so. Every bank's books are
already open to inspection at certain levels. However there are still systems
that operate in-universe which are absolutely closed to any sort of normal
inspection.
Will
The following was posted to the Group Contact noticeboard on Meta.
You can view it at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard#3_month_review
. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them on
the talk page (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard ).
Cross-posting of this email to other project lists is also encouraged.
It has been just over 3 months since the new group contact team was
announced. Since then, we've been busy working on a number of
projects; most of which are “behind the scenes”. It is important to
keep a certain level of transparency to show that we are actually
accomplishing things.
The role of the group contacts is to liaise with freenode's staff to
ensure a good relationship with those that provide out IRC services,
to help with the smooth running of IRC by encouraging good practices
on the part of channel operators, to deal with channels left without
operators, and to assign cloaks. They try to avoid getting involved in
the running of individual channels.
We are available on IRC in the channel #wikimedia-ops and via e-mail:
irc-contacts(a)lists.wikimedia.org for most issues,
irc-contacts-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org for matters in which you would
prefer channel contacts not to see your posting, as this goes to only
the GCs.
Our nicks are dungodung, kibble, Rjd0060 and seanw.
Our commitments
* Regular setting of cloaks
* Increased level of activity
* Communicate regularly with channel contacts
What we've done
* Created an internal mailing list to facilitate discussion
amongst the group and channel contacts
* Surveyed all channels in our namespaces and recorded basic information
* Personally contacted all owners of primary channels in order to
open a line of communication
* Manually set cloaks (since the end of July) while we wait for a
new cloak request system to be developed
* Established requirements for and began setting mediawiki cloaks
* Held a meeting to gain community feedback (see log / minutes)
* Appointed a channel contact for the central Wikimedia channel
operator channel (#wikimedia-ops)
* Lots of housekeeping with access lists (see log of public actions)
What you can do
* Please tell us if you find users abusing the Wikimedia name by
causing trouble in other channels while wearing our cloaks. We are
willing and able to deal with these users but can't hope to watch
every channel on freenode.
* Come to our IRC meetings and bring up issues so we are aware and
have more minds working on problems.
* Check the noticeboard for happenings.
* If you help manage IRC, join #wikimedia-ops and contribute to
discussions there.
* Do not hesitate to get in touch with us by e-mail or IRC if you
ever have feedback, suggestions or concerns. We will, at the very
least least, point you to the correct person.
Moving forward
* We plan to continue our higher level of activity.
* Cloaks will also continue to be set on a regular basis and in a
timely fashion.
* A new cloak request system is in the process of being developed.
* We plan to hold IRC community meetings on a regular basis, with
the next one scheduled for sometime in November (watch IRC/Group
Contacts/Meetings for further updates).
* We will continue to communicate with and rely on the channel
contacts to inform us if there are any issues within their channels.
* We're here for support if needed at any time.
--
For the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts,
Ryan (User:Rjd0060)
Re "Not everyone wants to be a janitor policeman." Unlike on say
commons there is no minimum requirement for admin activity level on
the English Wikipedia. Also it isn't unheard of for someone to submit
an RFA wanting the tools for a very specialist reason.
As for "Every system should be open to audit review by anyone who
wishes to do so. " This may at first glance sound like an attractive
slogan. But if my GP or my bank adopted such a policy I would
immediately shift my business elsewhere. I rather hope that anyone who
can access my NHS records or my PIN number has been through some sort
of vetting. I don't consider that access to deleted contributions
should be as tightly controlled as either of those scenarios. But I do
believe that there should be some sort of vetting of users before they
can access deleted contributions. If deleted merely meant blanked then
kids creating attack pages on wikipedia would still be able to cyber
bully their victims and circulate diffs of the attack pages that
they'd posted.
There is a difference of views at RFA between those who want to hand
out mops to as many trustworthy experienced editors as possible and
those who use such arguments as "no need for the tools". I'm
definitely in the latter group and wouldn't see not wanting to be a
"janitor policeman" as necessarily grounds for an oppose.
WereSpielChequers
> Message: 5
> Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:13:38 EDT
> From: WJhonson(a)aol.com
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting
> To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <cfb.620246c8.37e68762(a)aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> In a message dated 9/19/2009 12:05:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com writes:
>
>
>> The best practical way to audit admin actions is to become an admin
>> oneself. Admins have just as many conflicts among them as any other
>> active people here. There are people I watch, and people who watch me.>>
>
> Not everyone wants to be a janitor policeman. Every system should be open
> to audit review by anyone who wishes to do so. Systems which are closed
> except to insiders are not part of my vision of a free society.
>
>
> Will Johnson
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> This isn't a new issue by any means, but here's a nice post by someone
> who's been contributing occasionally since 2004, about how daunting
> "wikibullying" can be for newbies and other editors who aren't
> well-versed in the procedures and processes.
>
>
> http://travel-industry.uptake.com/blog/2009/09/04/bullypedia-a-wikipedian-w…
>
> Unfriendliness is built into the system, even when admins and others
> who enforce the rules are perfectly civil and try to be friendly at an
> individual level.
>
This is really something everyone here should read.
I think the problem is that on Wikipedia, anyone can be a cop. When we see
ex-wikipedians complaining about abusive admins, they often didn't meet
actual administrators, but self-appointed gate keepers. Just like open
editing attracts a mix of good editors and vandals, open policing attracts a
mix of good administrators and people with a thirst for power. While we have
always been very good at dealing with the obvious negative consequence of
"anyone can edit", vandalism, we have been completely unable to reign in on
the flip side of "anyone can be a cop": bullies and people with a need talk
down on others.
An overzelous rule-enforcer is still seen as a basically productive member
of the community. If a newbie somehow figures out how to complain about
being bitten, we assume he or she is a vandal until proven otherwise.
In the beginning there was so much vandalism that we had to welcome anyone
willing to deal with it, whether their motivations were pure or not. Over
the past years the number of vandals and other simple troublemakers has
dropped and our technical means of dealing with them have improved. We still
have the army of hobby-cops and they aren't going to sit around idle. So we
get the situation that writer above faces.
/Apoc2400
In a message dated 9/19/2009 12:05:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com writes:
> The best practical way to audit admin actions is to become an admin
> oneself. Admins have just as many conflicts among them as any other
> active people here. There are people I watch, and people who watch me.>>
Not everyone wants to be a janitor policeman. Every system should be open
to audit review by anyone who wishes to do so. Systems which are closed
except to insiders are not part of my vision of a free society.
Will Johnson
>
>
> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:47:57 -0500
> From: Emily Monroe
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> > Editors/admins who are regularly rude to others are not only
> > tolerated by most of the community, they often have a group of
> > supporters around them always ready to praise everything they do,
> > manipulating RfCs and other voting (sorry, !voting) situations.
>
> Do you think that civility blocks and bans pre-arbcom will help the
> situation at all?
>
> > If we want to make WP more friendly, we have to make sure admins and
> > high-profile editors are actually trying to BE friendly. If they
> > can't handle that, they shouldn't be working in a collaborative
> > environment.
>
> Exactly the reason why I support civility blocks.
>
> Emily
>
> I do agree that they need to be applied, but I also think that civility
expectations need to be higher for admins, followed by long-term editors.
These people 1) should know better, and 2) are often newbies' first
experience with WP. Otherwise, I can see Civility being gamed by groups of
editors in content disputes. My own experience was that a number of editors
accused me of making personal attacks for calling out a boldfaced lie made
by an admin(!) attempting to undermine my credibility in a dispute. I think
a first step would be for arbcom to start desysopping admins who are uncivil
on a regular basis. This would help remove some of the leniency problems,
IMO.
> Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:50:58 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> > This is not unlike schoolyard bullies who are usually accompanied by a
> > swarm of sycophants.
> >
> It is certainly true that our systems are at their worst when confronted
> with cynicism within the community. Not surprising, since the essential
> and founding assumptions of Wikipedia were that people are not like
> that. And most really aren't. But this remains an unsolved problem. To
> connect it directly with newbie-biting is a stretch, if not an
> impossible one: there is something in the idea that people on the site
> are assertive beyond the needs of the job because a confident manner is
> self-preservation.
>
> Charles
>
I would disagree that the connection is a stretch, as my experience is that
it was directly related. The editors watched certain articles and would
attack incoming editors who even suggested a change they didn't like.
Attempting to address the attack on any noticeboards would bring choruses of
"it's not an attack," "it was justified," or further attacks on the editor
using misleading diffs. One of the group was eventually desysopped for
abusing the tools, but the time and level of drama involved was way
disproportionate to the clear-cut nature of the case. In most cases the few
censures the group of editors received were ignored among the attaboys from
the usual crowd.
Sxeptomaniac
I'm quite active at speedy deletion and often decline overenthusiastic
tags, but I would disagree with making it compulsory to improve a good
faith article one tags for deletion (though I'd be happy with
something that encourages this).
Bad faith I take as attack pages, vandalism and hoaxes
But other stuff that merits speedy deletion ranges from
autobiographies to biographies of pet guinea pigs. I count myself as
quite inclusionist but I really don't see the point of trying to
improve everything before its deleted. And even though there is a
proposal on the strategy wiki to allow autobiographies
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:People_should_be_allowed_to_cre…
, I think most people would accept that very few household pets are
important or significant outside their own kennel, fishtank or stick
insect vivarium.
Where I do think we can improve things is in giving guidance to over
enthusiastic new page patrollers, and in insisting that authors be
informed. I agree it would be overkill to template someone 12 times in
an hour to tell them that not one member of their pub's football team
merited an article. But it does concern me at CSD when I spot that the
author of a good faith article has a redlinked talkpage.
I also think that many of our speedy tags and templates should be
rewritten to be less bitey and more welcoming.
WereSpielChequers
>
> Maybe we can make up a rule that says "Unless the page was obvisouly
> written in bad faith, you have to improve upon it before tagging it
> for speedy or prod deletion. Otherwise, your nomination will be
> rejected."
>
> Emily