Re: [WikiEN-l] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On 17 November 2012 01:34, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: Well, no, because the Foundation has made it abundantly clear that they assume no responsibility whatsoever for content, or for questions like whether we have flagged revisions or not. All of that is fully delegated to the community. In a couple of misleading senses you could argue this. The legal buck stops with the WMF. (You clearly want to look further than the legal position, but in the context of PR editing it has been argued that the law is the standard, not ethics). What software is in operation is handled by the developers employed by the WMF. It has indeed been contentious whether the WMF should impose its view on the software, so it has backed off at present. It does seem you want to target a blame game at the community, whatever bad actors do who are certainly not within the community by any reasonable standard of compliance with norms. snip examples of things that can go wrong But the community generally is not aware of that responsibility, or denies it, and certainly lacks any efficient organ to exercise it. The first is basically untrue. The second, I think, only represents fairly the attitude of a few free speech extremists on enWP (I'm not familiar enough with other Wikipedias to comment on their communities). I think they are fewer than they used to be. The third is about on-site politics, which I don't think is in a very satisfactory state, but about which I have adopted a less is more line in my own comments for a few years (for reasons that are obvious, at least to me). It is not closely connected in any case with dealing properly with complaints, which is the problem-solving approach to things going wrong on WP, as opposed to looking round for someone to blame. So can we discuss points arising in some other thread, please? All of the above may be worth talking about, but conventionally off-topic matters get a new subject line. Such as If only the enWP community got its act together we would never have to worry about PR editing because it would be a Brave New World, perhaps. 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] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 17 November 2012 01:34, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: Well, no, because the Foundation has made it abundantly clear that they assume no responsibility whatsoever for content, or for questions like whether we have flagged revisions or not. All of that is fully delegated to the community. In a couple of misleading senses you could argue this. The legal buck stops with the WMF. No it does not, except in very limited circumstances: if the Foundation receives a DMCA takedown notice and don't respond to it, they become liable, as in the recent Loriot case. And if they are advised of child pornography and fail to remove it from servers, they become liable. But beyond such limited cases, they do not have legal responsibility for the content of Wikipedia articles, the Wikipedia main page, or Commons categories or Wikiversity courses. That editorial responsitility is fully delegated to the community. If you believe otherwise, you are wrong. (You clearly want to look further than the legal position, but in the context of PR editing it has been argued that the law is the standard, not ethics). What software is in operation is handled by the developers employed by the WMF. It has indeed been contentious whether the WMF should impose its view on the software, so it has backed off at present. In cases of software features that affect fundamental editorial policy, like pending changes/flagged revisions or the image filter, we have seen very clearly that the decision to implement or not rests with the community. And as a mere host for the projects, the Foundation is not legally liable for the consequences of editorial community decisions. It does seem you want to target a blame game at the community, whatever bad actors do who are certainly not within the community by any reasonable standard of compliance with norms. I am not talking about blame, but about recognising that the community has a responsibility, and that there is no point in waiting for the Foundation to come up with ways to deal with what you correctly call bad actors. snip The third is about on-site politics, which I don't think is in a very satisfactory state, but about which I have adopted a less is more line in my own comments for a few years (for reasons that are obvious, at least to me). It is not closely connected in any case with dealing properly with complaints, which is the problem-solving approach to things going wrong on WP, as opposed to looking round for someone to blame. I am talking about problem prevention rather than problem solving. That does not require apportioning blame, but assuming responsibility. The community needs to think further than saying those bad actors are not part of us. It needs to think about ways to minimise the impact bad actors can have on the project's content and on subjects' reputations. So can we discuss points arising in some other thread, please? All of the above may be worth talking about, but conventionally off-topic matters get a new subject line. Such as If only the enWP community got its act together we would never have to worry about PR editing because it would be a Brave New World, perhaps. Look, Charles, this thread is called, in part, ...apparently it's all our fault. Can't we have a good-faith investigation of what things the community might indeed do better to prevent justified complaints? The Foundation will not manage what you called bad actors: how to do that is the community's job to figure out. Right now, as SmartSE demonstrated, one guy and another guy who hates him can spend months reverting each other without anyone else taking an interest, even if the wronged party asks for help repeatedly. Flagged revisions would prevent this sort of slow edit war, with improperly sourced reputation-damaging material being deleted and inserted again and again. In my opinion, the following are all things the community could do better: 1. We don't put enough obstacles in the way of bad actors. 2. We tell aggrieved organisations and their representatives to complain on talk pages, but when they do post to talk pages, they often don't get a reply. 3. We tell aggrieved organisations and their representatives to email OTRS, but when they do, it sometimes takes weeks before they even get an answer. 4. We could build bots that recognise and flag slow edit wars between subjects and their detractors, as SmartSE suggested. There is one thing the Foundation could do: provide better software support to OTRS. As far as I can tell, OTRS volunteers have unanimously complained about the software for years, and to no effect. Andreas ___ 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] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On 17 November 2012 16:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 17 November 2012 01:34, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: Well, no, because the Foundation has made it abundantly clear that they assume no responsibility whatsoever for content, or for questions like whether we have flagged revisions or not. All of that is fully delegated to the community. In a couple of misleading senses you could argue this. The legal buck stops with the WMF. No it does not, except in very limited circumstances: if the Foundation receives a DMCA takedown notice and don't respond to it, they become liable, as in the recent Loriot case. And if they are advised of child pornography and fail to remove it from servers, they become liable. But beyond such limited cases, they do not have legal responsibility for the content of Wikipedia articles, the Wikipedia main page, or Commons categories or Wikiversity courses. That editorial responsitility is fully delegated to the community. If you believe otherwise, you are wrong. What you have written doesn't contradict what I wrote. (You clearly want to look further than the legal position, but in the context of PR editing it has been argued that the law is the standard, not ethics). What software is in operation is handled by the developers employed by the WMF. It has indeed been contentious whether the WMF should impose its view on the software, so it has backed off at present. In cases of software features that affect fundamental editorial policy, like pending changes/flagged revisions or the image filter, we have seen very clearly that the decision to implement or not rests with the community. And as a mere host for the projects, the Foundation is not legally liable for the consequences of editorial community decisions. We could discuss the image filter, but let's not. I was of course alluding to it. It does seem you want to target a blame game at the community, whatever bad actors do who are certainly not within the community by any reasonable standard of compliance with norms. I am not talking about blame, but about recognising that the community has a responsibility, and that there is no point in waiting for the Foundation to come up with ways to deal with what you correctly call bad actors. We're all in this. The bad actors who happen to be paid PR folks are not to be excused just because they are not the only bad actors. That would be the point of this thread. snip The third is about on-site politics, which I don't think is in a very satisfactory state, but about which I have adopted a less is more line in my own comments for a few years (for reasons that are obvious, at least to me). It is not closely connected in any case with dealing properly with complaints, which is the problem-solving approach to things going wrong on WP, as opposed to looking round for someone to blame. I am talking about problem prevention rather than problem solving. That does not require apportioning blame, but assuming responsibility. The community needs to think further than saying those bad actors are not part of us. It needs to think about ways to minimise the impact bad actors can have on the project's content and on subjects' reputations. As far as I know, huge numbers of words have been typed into Wikipedia on these very subjects. So can we discuss points arising in some other thread, please? All of the above may be worth talking about, but conventionally off-topic matters get a new subject line. Such as If only the enWP community got its act together we would never have to worry about PR editing because it would be a Brave New World, perhaps. Look, Charles, this thread is called, in part, ...apparently it's all our fault. Can't we have a good-faith investigation of what things the community might indeed do better to prevent justified complaints? The Foundation will not manage what you called bad actors: how to do that is the community's job to figure out. Right now, as SmartSE demonstrated, one guy and another guy who hates him can spend months reverting each other without anyone else taking an interest, even if the wronged party asks for help repeatedly. Flagged revisions would prevent this sort of slow edit war, with improperly sourced reputation-damaging material being deleted and inserted again and again. We do have dispute resolution on the site, you know. I happen to support some sort of revision control, but simply expanding your definition of bad actor to include parties who should be in low-level dispute resolution doesn't forward your point, as far as I can see. (Dispute Resolution 101 says people are going to imply the other party is a vandal, which gets us nowhere.) In my opinion, the following are all things the community could do better: 1. We don't put enough obstacles in the
