[WikiEN-l] Category:<Subjective-pejorative>, weak consensus, and ! NPOV

Fri Jun 23 07:05:06 UTC 2006

Cobb - what is your Wikipedia username, by the way?  I'd be curious to 
look over the contributions that led you to these conclusions.  In any 
case, getting down to brass tacks...

On Jun 22, 2006, at 2:33 PM, Cobb wrote:
> stevertigo. Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:11:12 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
>
>> I dont know what else to say. Either we have a culture
>> which respects NPOV or we do not.
>
> We don't. We have policies and guidelines... but the
> admins who close AFDs don't read them, and if they
> do they don't act on them.
Some of them do, some of them don't.  Please *do* point out specific 
examples where they did not, and we'll work on fixing them.  Unless you 
list the vast majority of AfDs, (and we agree that they were closed in 
violation of our policies and guidelines), your claim is unsupported.  
Sorry.

>  We have a deletion process
> that is deliberately opaque and awkward to prevent
> people from using it and getting the idea that deleting
> anything from WIkipedia is a good thing.
Wait - editing an article and removing a paragraph is now "opaque and 
awkward"?  Hasn't seemed so to me... Oh, you were talking about 
deletion in the sense of "hiding from public view all the revisions 
under a given page title".  Yes, in most cases this is a deliberately 
awkward and deliberative process - it's generally *good* to make it 
non-trivial to hide things from the public.  Transparency and all that. 
  None of this should seriously impact fixing biased or otherwise bad 
articles, as far as I can see.

> We also have large chunks of Wikipedia with hardly
> any editors applying the basic rules of Wikipedia.
I agree, although I think most of the editors on those areas: 1) Think 
they are following Wikipedia polices and guidelines, but are mistaken. 
2) *Do* follow some of the guidelines, but miss on others.
> These areas are controlled by organised groups
> who make Wiki-life extremely difficult for anyone
> who tries to clean it up.
Also agree.  Of course, large chunks of Wikipedia are controlled by 
groups of editors who *are* following policy and guidelines, and who 
make Wiki-life extremely difficult for anyone who tries to mess the 
articles in that area up.  We have much of both.  The bad ones are bad, 
and are a shame and a problem.  The good ones are a credit to us, and a 
Good Thing.  The problem is determining the difference, which is 
nowhere as easy as you seem to think.
>  Editors with the best intentions but without the stomach for a fight 
> try their
> best and end up being driven off after being reported for vandalism or 
> 3RR violations, or
> just being wiki-stalked and hassled on any article they edit.
You bet.  And editors with the worst intentions (or good intentions but 
unable to usefully contribute) are also regularly driven off after 
being reported for vandalism or 3RR violations, or just being 
wiki-stalked and hassled on any article they edit.  Again, the bad ones 
are a crying shame, and the good ones are a benefit and a critical 
help.  And, it's non-trivial to distinguish them.
> To clean up these areas, any legitimate editor
> has to have the patience of a saint and an
> encylopedic (heh) knowledge of the Wikipedia
> rules system. He's got to be able to put up with the
> most extreme provocation and obvious bad faith...
> all the while smiling sweetly and assuming good
> faith while dozens of sock-puppets play stupid
> games. He's got to have the support of a group
> of editors, or a tame admin, to help him out too.
You got it!  This is exactly what it's like being one of our more 
active editors on controversial topics.  And you are entirely correct, 
it's really hard.
> Naturally, most editors don't have this.
Luckily, Wikipedia also has vast fields of articles where hardly 
anybody edits, and people who don't want such fights can happily and 
productively improve our articles in those areas.  Also, as I mentioned 
above, we have a number of areas that are well-patrolled by 
non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines, and editors 
who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave the 
work of defending the articles against crazies to others.

>  So the way Wikipedia is set up right now, under the
> auspices of welcoming newbies, is a vandal
> paradise that treats legitimate editors
> as an endless renewable resource.
Well, considering that many vandalistic edits get fixed in minutes, and 
many more disruptive users are shown the door eventually (using the 
methods you so clearly stated above, along with ArbCom rulings), I 
think the term "paradise" is a little exaggerated, but as for 
legitimate editors being an endless renewable resource - some of the 
work (like what you mentioned above) *is hard* - expecting people to do 
it for a while, then take a (sometimes permanent) break is hardly 
unreasonable.  We appreciate their work for as long as they can do it, 
wish them well when they feel they no longer can, and are ready to 
welcome them back (possibly under a new name) whenever they are willing 
to return.

>  it uses them up and throws them away by giving them little or
> no support
Hm.  Not sure exactly what you mean by "support", but good editors are 
certainly able to avail themselves of a large number of tools in 
editing, and defending articles against less-good editors.  These 
include the ones you mentioned above, and others:  reversion, user_talk 
pages, RfCs, the Village Pump, the Mediation group, the Arbitration 
Committee, the mailing lists, and a large body of advice (i.e. the 
guidelines and essays in the Wikipedia namespace).
>  and instead it defends the rights of
> vandals to edit.
How does it do that?  We do take as a fundamental principle that anyone 
should be able to edit unless we already know they intend to damage the 
project, but we also are quite quick and willing to stop obvious 
mis-use of editing, and (more slowly and deliberately, i.e. through the 
ArbCom) subtle mis-use of editing.  Examples, please?
>  It even makes the finding out of who is socking up a tedious and 
> officious
> process... just for that extra kick in the teeth for legitimate 
> editors who do play by the rules
> and are faced with those who don't.
Finding out who is "socking up" (nice phrase) is *a hard problem*.  
It's not obvious, and it's not simple.  The current process is an 
attempt to balance a number of opposing factors - privacy of good users 
vs sock puppeting by bad users being the main one.  It's hardly a 
perfect solution, and if you have some specific suggestions, please do 
post them.

> In summary, the system is broken.
As I hope I pointed out above, all the evidences you gave for the 
system being "broken" are also evidence for the system working 
precisely as designed.  Undoubtably, the wiki has seriously broken 
spots - it also has seriously great spots.  If you have specific 
suggestions about how to improve the broken spots without damaging the 
working ones, we'd love to hear them.

>  But you won't get any sense on this mailing list,
You won't?  In my reading of the list, we get a a post claiming the 
"system is broken" about once a day on average.  That doesn't sound 
much like not "get[ing] any sense of this".  Your message (and the one 
you were responding to) are examples.  Or did you mean that such 
messages generally don't get a rousing round of - "absolutely right", 
"good for you", "I've thought that for a long time", and the like in 
response?  That's not a "sense", that's "agreement"; if you meant that, 
I agree - unsurprisingly, most of the people who bother to wade through 
the many posts on this list do so because they believe Wikipedia to be 
working, and want to help.  This would be true whether Wikipedia was 
really doing absolutely wonderfully or entirely terribly.  Don't use 
replies on the mailing list to get a gage of public opinion of 
Wikipedia.  If you didn't realize that already, now you know.
>  because most of the people here don't actually edit Wikipedia these 
> days. They just pontificate and have faith in some mystical power of 
> the Wiki.
This has been responded to earlier; your facts are simply wrong.  Have 
a nice day.

Thanks for the message,
	Jesse Weinstein