[Wikinews-l] Re: Discussion

Thu Jul 7 20:04:37 UTC 2005

Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jimmy Wales:
>
>> 5. This one is perhaps the hardest to write in an NPOV manner: Erik is
>> not the dictator of Wikinews, and furthermore, everyone can acknowledge
>> that he has said so himself, repeatedly.  We can all further
>> acknowledge, even Erik, that he acts boldly and with conviction at times
>> and that this has at times irritated people who felt (fairly or
>> unfairly) that he was trying to be a dictator.
>
>
> You are speaking in the plural. I see no evidence that anyone besides
> Amgine has a problem with my general behavior on the site. If anyone
> does, please do post, publicly or privately. I have hardly edited at
> all in recent months. The heated conflicts of the last few days
> involved several people. I was *not* involved. I have never been in an
> edit war on Wikinews - except for one with Amgine over an NPOV tag. I
> am generally very careful to avoid the impression that I am somehow
> trying to push anything through. Please, do review my edit history:
> http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Eloquence
>
>
> Erik
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>
>

The issue Erik refers to is when, without consulting the community, he
decided to post unedited copy from VOA news, which in my opinion had
bias. He repeatedly removed the {{NPOV}} tag without initially
addressing the concerns on the talk page. He also published at least one
of the articles while it was disputed.

See:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals/Archive/June_2005#Voice_of_America_news
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Ethiopians_vote_amid_opposition_charges_of_fraud
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Afghan_president_calls_protesters_enemies_of_progress
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Afghan_president_calls_protesters_enemies_of_progress
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Palestinians_mark_Israel%27s_creation_with_protests

The discussion was heated, and is mostly logged at
http://pleonasm.saewyc.net/index.php/IRC_log_-_Xirzon

With the more-recent dispute, Erik is correct that he was not involved
in the discussion regarding the implementation of the DynamicPageList in
the Developing stories template on the main page. However, after a
compromise was reached until the DPL could be updated, he chose break
the compromise by reverting it.

Had he spoken on the Water Cooler he would have created a greater than
60% consensus to implement the proposal, but he did not do so.

He then created a technical tool to require the use of templates in new
articles and implemented it on the main page - again without consulting
the community. It is likely that this tool would have been embraced by
the community, just as NGerda's upgrades to the article tags were, but
he did not bring it to the community for their input.

Erik and I have had these two conflicts, both fundamentally over
consulting the community, and I do not feel I can work in a circumstance
where a person who is rarely directly involved in the site feels they
can repeatedly act outside the standards of that community.

Amgine