[Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27

Wed Sep 29 23:48:44 UTC 2010

I'm going to reply to a few different replies all at once, to make this a
bit easier to ignore.

Risker wrote:
> Nobody was asking Erik or Danese to determine consensus. They were asked to
> give their word that our consensus would be respected after the polling of
> the community following a second trial. Consensus doesn't mean majority
> rule, as has always been very clear on this project.
> 
> It's now on record that any further trials are moot, and that the tool is
> going to be left in place with absolutely no intention of disabling it
> regardless of the wishes of the project.

Yes. I view the FlaggedRevs deployment a bit like childbirth. Imagine
FlaggedRevs is an elephant baby. It takes years and years to finally get
out, and now that's out and has been walking around for a few months,
there's no chance in hell it's going back in.

FlaggedRevs won't be disabled on the English Wikipedia because it would
signal a failure on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation, and everyone is
already sick of this mongrel of a project, even though its underlying goal
(protecting living people) is so vital. Wikimedia has finally pushed out a
"solution"; anyone who thought that they were going to pull back on this
afterward (and then be forced to re-evaluate how to prevent any crackpot
from libeling anyone with a biography) was delusional.

David Gerard wrote:
> There'll be new hearts and minds along in eighteen months.

This came off as _really_ shitty. I imagine it was just an off-the-cuff
remark, so I won't dwell on it. I will echo Michael Snow's sentiments that
this view is absolutely unacceptable, though. Wikimedia _is_ its community.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> You've seen the BLP resolution?
> 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people
> 
> This has inspired lots of cross-language work on BLP policies, and is
> referenced in many of them. It specifically asks for "investigating
> new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly when they
> affect living people, and to better enable readers to report
> problems".

You've seen the proposed global BLP policy?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Biographies_of_living_people

It's completely stalled, as far as I'm aware. If you have examples of
cross-language work on BLP policies, I think most of this list would be
interested in them. Please share. :-)

Keegan Peterzell wrote:
> <cough>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People/Drafting_pages/Liv
> ing_People_Policy

An obscure page on a dead project. Useful.

Keegan Peterzell (also) wrote:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People/Drafting_pages/Rec
> ommendations_to_the_Board_of_Trustees/Draft
> 
> <http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People/Drafting_pages/Re
> commendations_to_the_Board_of_Trustees/Draft>Point
> 4.

Instead of link-spamming, could you share with the list the status update of
these recommendations? The draft you linked was last edited in May.

MZMcBride