On 6/16/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: Hmm. Well, pointing to specific policies usually helps. Everyone is clueless in one domain or another. It's only willful cluelessness in the face of specific guidance that is unforgiveable. Steve

Geni, We've gotten to the stage where processes that *don't exist* are cited by wonks. Now, process wonks who insist we follow process regardless of the sanity of doing so are irritating, but they obviously have the best interests of Wikipedia at heart, and, provided they receive the proper therapy, can even become quite likeable people eventually. There's no excuse for saying silly things like "nobody may remove the speedy tag; use {{hangon}} instead". The problem is not that old users (admins or no) aren't keeping up. The problem is that new users aren't bothering to get acculturated. I already *know* how Wikipedia works. I help keep it running practically every day. So do most of the people on the list. And I don't appreciate some newbie who *doesn't* coming along and saying "you must do it this way, and I should know, because I'm not a newbie like you". -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

On 6/16/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Purely descriptive policy is pointless. Purely prescriptive policy with no basis in common practice is hard to make effective. Policy on Wikipedia should be somewhere in the middle - prescribing behaviour that most people agree with, and that many people already follow. Alternatively put: Descriptive policy describes what people do do. Prescriptive policy describes what people should do. Good community policy describes what most people think people should do. Steve

G'day Tony, We like to discourage people from removing the speedy tag from their own articles, since (for instance) 13-year-olds writing about their homosexual friends tend not to be particularly objective when appraising their own profanity-strewn contributions. However, this meant that perfectly good articles got speedied because of the following sequence (f'r instance): a) User A creates article that could stand to be improved. b) User B tags it for speedy. c) User A removes the tag. d) User B reverts, says "you cannot remove the tag from your own article" e) User A goes to the talkpage and complains. f) Admin C doesn't even read the article, let alone the talkpage, just deletes. "It's not my job to tell users they can't speedy if they want to." So {{hangon}} serves the dual purpose of preventing authors from removing appropriate speedies, but allowing them to contest in an obvious way inappropriate speedies even when the admin isn't doing his job properly (not that I'd mention any names). These days, however, {{hangon}} seems largely to encourage people to beat clueful editors over the head for no apparent reason. But, like geni says, that's the world of tomorrow. I haven't forgotten how to suck eggs, it's just that the egg-sucking procedures have changed and I never bothered to stay informed. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

I still consider myself new to Wikipedia.

On 6/16/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort(a)gmail.com> wrote: The END of 2004, my friend, the end. ;-)

On 6/16/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort(a)gmail.com> wrote: Heh wait to you run into people who remeber the usermod days and CamelCase. Then you have the slightly newer ones who remeber quickpolls and no subpages on AFD and haveing to use {{msg:stub}}. -- geni

On 6/16/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort(a)gmail.com> wrote: When you start complaing about newbie culture. Personaly I reqard anyone who was editing regualerly before 22nd of December 2004 as definetly not a newcomer Year of adminship is a measure that often seems to work well.9 -- geni

On 6/16/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: What happens is they end up giving that same bad advice to other people...as probably happened in this case. Steve

On 6/22/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep(a)gmail.com> wrote: Bit over 2. I can't be certian but my generation was the one that had the issue of people not knowing each other any more. The one that followed seemed to belive that admins were more powerful than I remeber. Then there was the CVU and the countervandalism specialists. Now there is the current generation. Things change. At best we can sing as we go. -- geni

On 6/16/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: By the way, I think that admins block users way too fast and should use warning templates a lot more than they already do. I would say that at least half of the time I use them, the user stops vandalizing before a block is required. Ryan

On 6/16/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: This phenomenon is remarkable to me really. Very few experienced users take vandalism personally or get upset about it. Some of us actually find it funny from time to time. But someone acting with good faith being a little misguided is threatening and we get angry and fight them and spend hours on the mailing list writing posts about it instead of writing articles and some of us end up leaving the project over these battles. Puzzling. Ryan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 mboverload stated for the record: Are you having trouble understanding the difference between an inappropriate edit and murder? - -- Sean Barrett | radiant cool, crazy nightmare, sean(a)epoptic.com | zen, new jersey, nowhere! | how now, brown bureaucrats?

G'day mboverload, [top-posting fixed] It sounds like you have very violent cops where you are. Your analogy still doesn't work. It costs me less to revert vandalism (assuming it's a case where rollback would be appropriate) than it costs the other fellow to make his edit in the first place. Someone shooting out windows is causing potentially very expensive property damage, and he knows it; someone fiddling with a bunch of pixels which represent text in a file on the other side of the world may not even realise what he's doing is *wrong*. I will block only after I'm sure the vandal knows (or has been told clearly): a) He's damaging other people's work, however briefly, and b) He's being dealt with by real people, not bots whose limits are fun to test, and c) He is on his last warning Sometimes this can be done with one warning. Sometimes it requires four. Often someone who meets the above three conditions *also* decides to stop vandalising, and doesn't require a block. If so, bonza. We don't just block people out of the blue, if they don't understand the consequences of their actions. There *are* times I'll block without warning: i) The editor knows he's not welcome, and edits not because he genuinely wants to improve Wikipedia, but because he thinks it makes us mockable (such as a certain stalker who, I understand, even Wikipedia Review now refuse to accept), or ii) The vandal clearly knows what he's doing and is using the account/IP as part of an orchestrated campaign (Willy on Wheels, for instance, or other sock attack vandals), or iii) Open proxies As one might expect, these three occur very rarely. Warnings Are Important, and it's quality, not quantity, that counts. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

On 6/17/06, Arwel Parry <arwel(a)cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote: It would be good if we could put users on probation. Occasionally I've taken the effort to track a vandal, watching and reverting their edits. But it would be nice to be able to say "this user's next edit is 90% likely to be vandalism, hence, let's screen it *before* it goes live". All the edits of probationary users could appear on one screen, and people watching that list could pick out the occasional good ones to let through, much like moderating a mailing list. Steve

On 6/17/06, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gawab.com> wrote: In such a case I suggest sending the conflicting (probationary) edit back to the original editor (as a talk page message), and letting them deal with it. Remember, people in this state have already done something annoying...the onus is now on them to do something about their reputation. Steve

On 6/17/06, Arwel Parry <arwel(a)cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote: You should check to see whether the {{test4}} templates were left by an admin or a user. A lot of the time, a user will leave a final warning and then fail to report the vandal to [[WP:AIV]] for blocking. Or they will report the user too early and the entry will get removed because they haven't vandalized since last warning. Alternatively, some IPs are shared and/or repeat sources of vandalism, so the warning templates might have been applied to a different user. Ryan

On 6/19/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, on a few occasions when I patrol [[WP:AIV]], a lot of the vandals simply stopped vandalising after getting the test3 or test4 and do not need to be blocked.

On 6/19/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: I actually suspect that for some, a good telling off makes them respect the project a bit more. The difference between "anyone can write anything so it must all be rubbish" and "anyone can write anything, but people actually check that it's not all rubbish". It's pretty understandable. Deal with borderline misanthropes long enough and anyone becomes jaded. We just need fresh vandalism fighters. Disclaimer: I hate vandal fighting. I help in other ways. :) Steve