Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
Nathan wrote: Obviously it would be an impossible task to study all potential sources and make a proactive determination of reliability. We hope to some extent that folks citing academic sources have vetted them in some way as to their credibility, but with mainstream news sources even that expectation is set aside. So instead, perhaps we could have a reactive policy of reassessing the assumption of reliability for specific sources based on a history of errors. When Fox News articles are shown to be riddled with errors of basic fact, indicating that no effort was made to verify claims, we should stop granting it the same deference we extend to other institutions with more integrity. There are various WP articles that are in parts more explicit than WP:RS. And have the advantage of talking about broadly accepted approaches to reliability, rather than representing the status quo on an endlessly-edited wiki page. [[Historical method]] may be the most interesting; [[source criticism]] and [[source evaluation]] also have something to say. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Though he remains the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, ... 'He had the highest level of control, he was our leader,' a source told FoxNews.com. When asked who was in charge now, the source said, 'No one. It’s chaos.' I'm not sure what the issue with this news article is. It is essentially accurate. It sounds funny, but the fact is that Jimbo had the ability and the authority to make unilateral decisions before, and now he's given some of that up. Sure the news has a slant, is sensationalized, and bears the inaccuracy of being written by a non-community member for non-community members, but it remains as accurate as could be expected. The purpose of requiring reliable sources is so that people can't make things up and put them in the articles. Using this as a source will show more or less the truth. Unfortunately it is a limitation of general news media that it always distorts whatever it reports and there is no good reason to consider any news reports as reliable, especially when it comes to details. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
Shmuel Weidberg wrote: On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Though he remains the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, ... 'He had the highest level of control, he was our leader,' a source told FoxNews.com. When asked who was in charge now, the source said, 'No one. It’s chaos.' I'm not sure what the issue with this news article is. It is essentially accurate. It sounds funny, but the fact is that Jimbo had the ability and the authority to make unilateral decisions before, and now he's given some of that up. We all have the authority to make unilateral decisions on a wiki we edit. That's not the point, never has been the point. Fundamentally wiki editing is about who has permission to do what (which could be described as to do with access, not authority). If Jimbo edits and gets reverted, this is a normal wiki situation. The trouble with in charge is that it postulates a notional power structure which has never actually existed. In fact under the heading of office actions there would be more of that around than before. Trying to analyse enWP in particular, which is not the same as the other 700-odd WMF wikis and has been anomalous for at least five years, in terms of its power structure, usually leads into garden-variety troll talk. If you like, it is an elementary blame game, and is the normal first move of some critics. The insight that it's the community, stupid is quite lacking in that analysis. Sure the news has a slant, is sensationalized, and bears the inaccuracy of being written by a non-community member for non-community members, but it remains as accurate as could be expected. It would be more accurate if it didn't rely on selective quotation to put forward, tendentiously, a bizarrely wrong version of what is true on the ground. It is not true that anyone can now run a bot on enWP, for example, which really would be chaos. It is not true that no one is now baby-sitting key policy pages. I don't suppose that admins are blocking people using very different criteria, this week. On these measures of control, which apply to reality on the site, what has changed? Look, the command and control idea of how to run a wiki encyclopedia is so bad a model of enWP as to constitute a classic straw man. So the argument put forward is a fairly basic fallacy. The purpose of requiring reliable sources is so that people can't make things up and put them in the articles. Using this as a source will show more or less the truth. Unfortunately it is a limitation of general news media that it always distorts whatever it reports and there is no good reason to consider any news reports as reliable, especially when it comes to details. Well, I agree with that, to the extent that the Fox report could be taken as professional at the level of not verbally mangling the quotes. Beyond that it doesn't constitute good, objective journalism. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 5:19 AM, Shmuel Weidberg ezra...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Though he remains the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, ... 'He had the highest level of control, he was our leader,' a source told FoxNews.com. When asked who was in charge now, the source said, 'No one. It’s chaos.' I'm not sure what the issue with this news article is. It is essentially accurate. It sounds funny, but the fact is that Jimbo had the ability and the authority to make unilateral decisions before, and now he's given some of that up. Sure the news has a slant, is sensationalized, and bears the inaccuracy of being written by a non-community member for non-community members, but it remains as accurate as could be expected. The purpose of requiring reliable sources is so that people can't make things up and put them in the articles. Using this as a source will show more or less the truth. Unfortunately it is a limitation of general news media that it always distorts whatever it reports and there is no good reason to consider any news reports as reliable, especially when it comes to details. Jimmy isn't the president of the Wikimedia foundation. He's one of ten board members as has been the case for years (well, the number of board members has changed). Michael Snow is the chair of the board. Jimmy is the president of _wikia_, an unrelated commercial wiki host, as noted on his WP bio page, which I guess is the origin of this clam which has since been regurgitated by several other journalists. Continuing the pattern, A majority of the non-trivial statement of fact in the article are incorrect. has relinquished his top-level control over the encyclopedia's content... Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content He's still an administrator on the english Wikipedia, able to delete page and, like everyone else, edit content, though he'd has already long since voluntarily declined to perform blocking there due to the resulting drama. Even substituting commons, he's never been a visible participant in the commons community, certainly not a leader there for which there is now a vacuum. He still has the same ability to edit there— but not the authority of a low level administrator, he now has the same technical abilities there as the general public. This also greatly misunderstands the structural model involved. Charles Matthews explained it better than I could. their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com, Fox was only reporting on the letter by sanger which had been widely circulated its author, and was covered by the register. Not exactly an exclusive. he'd ordered that thousands more be purged, that isn't correct. He performed a some deletions himself and indicated strong support for other persons who would delete things. This isn't an order. They could have factually claimed that he ordered people not to undelete things, but that is not the same. It's also continuing the implication that Jimmy has the authority to order such things, but he didn't. Wales had personally deleted many of the images this is correct, though perhaps a bit misleading: Jimmy personally deleted 70 images, which might count as 'many', but it's out of 450 or so total deleted images, or out of a few thousands of fairly explicit images most of which weren't deleted. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages. Holy crap, a non trivial factual statement which isn't wrong or misleading. Hundreds of listserve discussions among Wikimedia board members... okay, well, hundreds of _messages_. This is basically accurate too, but not all that informative. which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws No one competent would say it did after an analysis of the facts, but anyone can say may— so this isn't helpful or informative. If they gave a name with a reputation to uphold and they made a statement stronger than a completely empty may it might be interesting. The author of the Fox news article _may_ be a Ewok from the planet Endor. The debate heated up when FoxNews.com began contacting high profile corporations This isn't accurate, it implies a chain of causality that doesn't exist. To the best of my knowledge, Jimmys first actions on commons happened before anyone at Wikimedia was aware of Fox's activities. Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the thousands of images I know for a fact that some simply called to warn that Fox was trying to stir up trouble, though I suppose some could have inquired about images on the site. I don't see how fox would have any factual way of knowing about the content of any calls placed by donors. There also are graphic photo images of(...) The word also implies that the child pornography they mentioned people asking about in the prior sentence was also hosted on the
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On 17 May 2010 14:57, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: You could make an argument that the article might give an uninvolved party a reasonable feel for the situation, but there still would be effectively no way to incorporate the _facts_ from this article into Wikipedia in a manner which would not reduce the accuracy of the encyclopaedia. We use citations to source the factual details of our articles, and this work generally gets the details wrong. The article is basically not even wrong. And that's because they really don't care, and literally just made up some shit: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/jimmy-wales-fox-news-is-wrong-no-shakeup/ Sources of this type, even if owned by a large media company, need to be taken with an extra grain of salt. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
David Gerard wrote: The article is basically not even wrong. And that's because they really don't care, and literally just made up some shit: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/jimmy-wales-fox-news-is-wrong-no-shakeup/ Sources of this type, even if owned by a large media company, need to be taken with an extra grain of salt. I would say the point of the Fox article is the subtext: no one rules the WMF, ergo they would have no way to comply with legal requirements such as a take-down order. NB the subtle solecism free reign (for free rein) that turns the wiki ideal on its head, and the wholely misleading suggestion that Jimbo could ever assign projects as man-management (other than to employees), rather than operate as a low-level administrator does, by building small teams. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On 17 May 2010 16:32, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: I would say the point of the Fox article is the subtext: no one rules the WMF, ergo they would have no way to comply with legal requirements such as a take-down order. NB the subtle solecism free reign (for free rein) that turns the wiki ideal on its head, and the wholely misleading suggestion that Jimbo could ever assign projects as man-management (other than to employees), rather than operate as a low-level administrator does, by building small teams. I wouldn't go so far as to say it has that much point; it constructs a plausible fictional description that would be accepted by people who don't know how Wikipedia works. On his SharedKnowing list, Dr Sanger notes he's just joined Wikipedia Review and heartily recommends it to all. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
David Gerard wrote: On his SharedKnowing list, Dr Sanger notes he's just joined Wikipedia Review and heartily recommends it to all. Yes, an ideal place to complain about getting blocked from enWP for editing [[Talk:History of Wikipedia]] on the assumption that Wikimedia Commons is part of the 'pedia. Still, it's after his time as editor, and they'll make him welcome on WR. Plenty of room in the [[Cave of Adullam]]. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
On 17 May 2010 16:38, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On his SharedKnowing list, Dr Sanger notes he's just joined Wikipedia Review and heartily recommends it to all. I can almost hear the screeching of his axe. AGK ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Sun, 16 May 2010, Nathan wrote: Obviously it would be an impossible task to study all potential sources and make a proactive determination of reliability. We hope to some extent that folks citing academic sources have vetted them in some way as to their credibility, but with mainstream news sources even that expectation is set aside. So instead, perhaps we could have a reactive policy of reassessing the assumption of reliability for specific sources based on a history of errors. When Fox News articles are shown to be riddled with errors of basic fact, indicating that no effort was made to verify claims, we should stop granting it the same deference we extend to other institutions with more integrity. If riddled with errors means has more (frequent) errors than other sources, then this makes some sense. If riddled with errors means has errors that we have recently had our attention called to or has errors that happen to be about some subject we are personally pissed off about, then it's a very bad idea. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: If riddled with errors means has more (frequent) errors than other sources, then this makes some sense. If riddled with errors means has errors that we have recently had our attention called to or has errors that happen to be about some subject we are personally pissed off about, then it's a very bad idea. I agree, and that's why I suggested any decision to delist a source as presumptively reliable be based on an analysis of a selection of published content. Shmuel wrote that the purpose of identifying reliable sources is to keep editors from making stuff up -- but we exclude all sorts of sources that aren't editors making stuff up, based on a potentially faulty assumption about their editorial review. So rather than aiming to prohibit hoaxes, rules about RS are an attempt to weed out chronically unreliable sources. If we find that a traditionally reliable source of facts has become chronically unreliable, then it should face the same scrutiny as blogs or personal websites prior to being cited. Nathan ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy? This is more an indication that we need to start using blogs as sources rather than that we have a problem with how we use major media. I recently had to leave a one-sided paragraph in [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]: For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction. We have the fan's side of this. It puts a very different spin on things, but it's in a Usenet post in the thread at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/2649a35b264175b8/b91ef5c1e50f3439?#b91ef5c1e50f3439 and it's completely unusuable under Wikipedia sourcing policies (even as a self-published source, since it makes claims about other people). ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: The article is basically not even wrong. And that's because they really don't care, and literally just made up some shit: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/jimmy-wales- fox-news-is-wrong-no-shakeup/ Sources of this type, even if owned by a large media company, need to be taken with an extra grain of salt. And then there is this idea that Jimbo has relinquished actual authority by giving up some functional capacities, when he plainly said in about as many words this was a symbolic gesture to diffuse and refocus criticism. The naive reader might think it means shakedown, we who've been around for a while know that functional flags can be turned off an on, and Jimbo doesn't edit Wikipedia anyway. -SC ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
On 17 May 2010 20:45, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: when he plainly said in about as many words this was a symbolic gesture to diffuse and refocus criticism Mhrm, that's arguable. The flags that Jimbo relinquished meant that he could no longer do such things as delete Commons images. That's far from symbolic; in fact, it essentially is him resigning rights that the community had began to angrily demand be taken away from him. AGK ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
AGK wrote: On 17 May 2010 20:45, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: when he plainly said in about as many words this was a symbolic gesture to diffuse and refocus criticism Mhrm, that's arguable. The flags that Jimbo relinquished meant that he could no longer do such things as delete Commons images. That's far from symbolic; in fact, it essentially is him resigning rights that the community had began to angrily demand be taken away from him. I think the symbolic part of Jimbo's place in the overall constitution (definitely scare quotes) is rather significant, though. There are three ways in which Jimbo interacts with the community: 1. direct editing or admin action; 2. exhortation and pulling strings, i.e. getting others to do the things under 1; 3. the business he not inaccurately compares with being a constitutional monarch. Of those (1) has been of minimal use in recent years, simply because it attracts so much attention. The current furore is perhaps the point at which it hits the buffers. Method (2) is how one expects a Board member to act. The point about (3) is that it is far from a dead letter on enWP, but its traction is much more tenuous elsewhere. It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that we are talking about Commons, which is not disjoint from enWP in the way that other wikis are. Coming from a country without a written constitution, with a constitutional monarch, and where the monarch's role has been thoroughly debated over recent days, I may find this rather more intuitively accessible than those who assume constitutions are well-defined and leaders have to act. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Jimmy isn't the president of the Wikimedia foundation. True, and that's the one really egregious error. Continuing the pattern, A majority of the non-trivial statement of fact in the article are incorrect. has relinquished his top-level control over the encyclopedia's content... Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content He's still an administrator on the english Wikipedia, able to delete page and, like everyone else, edit content, though he'd has already long since voluntarily declined to perform blocking there due to the resulting drama. Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He used to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things that other people can't view on every project. their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com, Fox was only reporting on the letter by sanger which had been widely circulated its author, and was covered by the register. Not exactly an exclusive. Eh, I guess. The whole revealed exclusively by X has about as much meaning in practice as 100% natural. he'd ordered that thousands more be purged, that isn't correct. He performed a some deletions himself and indicated strong support for other persons who would delete things. This isn't an order. I'd say that's a minor wording nitpick. Yeah, it's sensationalized, but it's certainly substantially correct. Wales had personally deleted many of the images this is correct, Yep. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages. Holy crap, a non trivial factual statement which isn't wrong or misleading. Yep. Hundreds of listserve discussions among Wikimedia board members... okay, well, hundreds of _messages_. This is basically accurate too, Yep. which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws No one competent would say it did after an analysis of the facts, but anyone can say may— so this isn't helpful or informative. So another correct statement. Yep. The debate heated up when FoxNews.com began contacting high profile corporations This isn't accurate, it implies a chain of causality that doesn't exist. To the best of my knowledge, Jimmys first actions on commons happened before anyone at Wikimedia was aware of Fox's activities. Do you have some sort of insider knowledge on that? The deletions were performed on the same day the news story broke. Obviously the contacts were made before that. I find it hard to believe none of the donors would have tipped off anyone at Wikimedia. If you do have some sort of insider knowledge, let's hear it. When exactly is the first instance of a donor contacting anyone at Wikimedia that you are aware of? Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the thousands of images I know for a fact that some simply called to warn that Fox was trying to stir up trouble, though I suppose some could have inquired about images on the site. I don't see how fox would have any factual way of knowing about the content of any calls placed by donors. You don't? It's certainly possible *they told them*. Maybe this is factually correct, and maybe it isn't. There also are graphic photo images of(...) The word also implies that the child pornography they mentioned people asking about in the prior sentence was also hosted on the site— but they are very careful to avoid making that bogus allegation directly. No doubt they've been amply lawyer-slapped after their prior slanderous statements. That point is misleading, but the rest of the classes of images do exist and are accessible as they say. I really can't figure out what you're talking about here. Quoting the entire paragraph: Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the thousands of images on Wikimedia’s servers that could be considered child pornography. There also are graphic photo images of male and female genitalia, men and women or groups of people involved in sexual acts, images of masturbation and other pornographic material — all of which can be viewed by children at most public schools, where students are encouraged to use Wikipedia as a source encyclopedia. Okay, so we don't know whether or not there were actually several donors that contacted the foundation about the images. The rest of it seems perfectly accurate. As a matter of rule commons does not host things which are illegal in the US, although it often doesn't stop much short of the limit of the law! Just because there is a rule against hosting things which are illegal in the US doesn't mean that rule is being followed. When the donors started calling, Wales immediately as mentioned, not
[WikiEN-l] Pedantry on privileges
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He used to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things that other people can't view on every project. [snip] This is absolutely no different than any of the several other incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people. (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves, but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them) Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects. So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them, especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white after the fact. Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent thing: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete indifference) of the involved community. Activity requirements were imposed on stewardship, and Jimmy only used the technical permissions on enwp (due to traditional practices on this project) thus failing to meet the requirements. But his traditional role on enwp justified keeping some elevated privileges, so rather than cope with an exception to the steward rules a special role was created. Tada. But the change in naming of the permissions from the conventional role to the special one didn't actually confer an increase in authority— and when the extent of the actual authority to push privileged changes outside of enwp was tested the unequivocal answer[1] was that it didn't exist... and there really is no real reason to say that it ever existed. Some people want to spin this into a narrative about Jimmy's role on english Wikipedia, but thats bogus— This wasn't an english wikipedia thing, and rather than supporting the suggestion that this signals a loss of authority on English Wikipedia the actual expedience suggests the opposite: Look at relative concentrations of enwp users in the poll. ISTM that Enwp users are quite comfortable with Jimmy playing an important role as he has traditionally, and that almost everyone else is either indifferent or surprised by the notion— unsurprising because they haven't had the pleasure of working with him. (And, while it's been a long time since I've worked with Jimmy on anything, and while I disagreed with his involvement here, it's still the case that I completely understand where the traditional role on enwp comes from: He _is_ a great community member to work with... but the other project communities aren't filled with people that have that experience) [1] Or as unequivocal as anything involving 350 people can ever be: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_Jimbo ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Pedantry on privileges
On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:10 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: snip ISTM that Enwp users are quite comfortable with Jimmy playing an important role as he has traditionally The changes over time in the role Jimmy plays on en-wikipedia is an interesting question. There is far more material and actions and actual rulings by ArbCom to support journalists or authors writing about that if they took the time to do the research properly (though some aspects are almost certainly only accessible to insiders and to an official biographer if Jimmy ever goes that route). The one thing that flags up Jimmy's role on en-wiki more than anything else is the amount of traffic his talk page gets, and the number of people watching his talk page. There is also his work relating to off-wiki structures such as the WMF and the en-wiki ArbCom, but it becomes difficult to talk authoritatively about that without breaching confidences. The page WP:JIMBO does cover some of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Role_of_Jimmy_Wales Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Pedantry on privileges
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He used to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things that other people can't view on every project. [snip] This is absolutely no different than any of the several other incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people. (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves, but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them) Well, it's different in that it's the founder of the organization, the technical ability was the highest given to anyone, that it was used several times in the past (even more boldly) with impunity, etc. Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects. So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them, especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white after the fact. What was the line that was crossed? It wasn't unilateral deletion. Wales has done that and more in the past, blocking and deadminning people who deemed to question his asserted authority, and he's gotten away with it. But this time, it was different. In any case, I'd say it's newsworthy, in a way that no other deadminship ever came close to being. Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent thing: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete indifference) of the involved community. I'll have to check the records, but I believe Jimbo used his powers unilaterally, beyond that of a normal steward, before granting himself the founder flag. In fact, I seem to remember the founder flag being invented in response to some questions over whether or not he had the authority to do certain things. But I'll have to check the records, unless you can remember what it is I'm thinking of. 19:10, 14 September 2008 Jimbo Waleshttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales (Talk http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales | contribshttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales ) blocked Moulton http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Moulton (Talkhttp://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moultonaction=editredlink=1| contribs http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Moulton)with an expiry time of infinite (account creation disabled, e-mail blocked) (Incivility) That predates the founder flag, right? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
