Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: The Cunctator wrote: Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit, and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page? I mean, what's the point? Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with someone who is not in your time zone. Thanks, Charles. I did add the stuff I found, but clearly more is possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Corellaction=historysubmitdiff=340496552oldid=340442133 One problem with people rushing around adding sources to BLPs that may be deleted is that other stuff gets missed. Compare this: http://sustsci.aaas.org/content.html?contentid=471 With the initial version of the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Corelloldid=76775195 Our article started on 20 September 2006. The aaas sustsci forum doesn't give a date for their article (which is unhelpful). So it is not clear which came first, but portions of each are identical. Prior to joining the NSF in 1987, he was a Professor and academic administrator at; Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training, having received. The facts are not copyrighted, and it is sometimes difficult to avoid standard biographical phrasings, but the wording is too close there. I haven't changed it yet, because I'm not sure which text came first. Taking an unreferenced block of text and working out if any portions of it are straight copy-paste copyvios is a nightmare to do. Many people don't bother, or just stick in a reference. The point here is that the sequence: i) Unreferenced text by anonymous or drive-by contributor ii) Wikified and tidied up by Wikpedians and left unreferenced for several years iii) References hurriedly added to save from deletion Will lead to a lot of situations like this. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek). You're right that these are all very bad problems. Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many other similar snafus. You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that. While PWD is simple and effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind passionate bulk actions). I wonder if there is some way to get the best of both hard and soft solutions. PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles are sometimes speedied because they are blank. SJ. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
At 11:06 AM 1/28/2010, Samuel Klein wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek). You're right that these are all very bad problems. Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many other similar snafus. You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.a While PWD is simple and effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind passionate bulk actions). I wonder if there is some way to get the best of both hard and soft solutions. Thanks. As far as I can see, blanking the article content, particularly with appropriate tags, would satisfy both approaches. It isn't something strange and new, it is how Wikipedia already deals with unsourced information in articles of all kinds, including biographies, it is simply deleted or possibly moved to Talk (by any editor). This is simply applying it the same principle to an article as a whole. Satisfying for frustrated editors? Sure. But deletion must be done by an administrator, and the dubious pleasure of deletion (take that, fancruft!) is not quite respectable for admins, and ordinary editors (or bad-hand accounts for frustrated administrators) tend to get themselves banned for indulging too much or too openly in this pleasure I'd think that blanking would be reasonably satisfying, while doing much less damage in terms of eventual growth of the project. If a deletionist wants to indulge his or her frustration at cruft and unsourced BLPs by blanking the articles, I'm not offended. It's actually much better and much simpler and much less disruptive than speedy tags and AfDs and all that. In fact, that was part of the point of WP:PWD, to eliminate the often silly contention over notability at AfD, and instead convert deletion into an ordinary editorial decision that can, if conflict arises, go through the gradual escalation of WP:DR, which can, in theory, resolve disputes less disruptively than holding a community discussion right at the outset. For sure, with BLPs with no reliable sources, the content should go, immediately, as long as it goes in a way that makes it easy to recover. And a bot can do it, very quickly and efficiently. The community is almost certainly not going to allow bots to delete articles! I'm a radical inclusionist, actually, but would have no trouble accepting mass blanking under decent conditions. Particularly conditions where the article, as-is, would not withstand AfD! PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles are sometimes speedied because they are blank. That problem would not get worse with PWD as an approach. As unsourced BLPs, they are already totally vulnerable to speedy deletion. First of all, blanking would create an intermediate option that addresses the BLP issues as well as notability issues. I'd really encourage looking at how PWD could be made effective for all the legitimate purposes behind the various factions in the present flap. The article might not be blanked, it could be redirected to a page on the kind of blanking that was done, giving instructions for how to bring the article back. If problems developed with articles returning without sourcing, the page could be semiprotected and that could even be bot-assisted. Placing speedy tags should not be done by bot, at least not merely for lack of sourcing, and I see no harm in a blanked article remaining indefinitely; deletion would be requested by a blanked article reviewer who finds that the blanked material was actually of no use whatever, a hoax, or so radically incorrect that it will waste the time of someone who wants to recreate the article. In that case, deletion is exactly appropriate so that a new article starts fresh. But an article where it is easy to verify that the topic exists and some information can be found that is independent, though not necessarily of high quality? The only difference, really, between PWD and standard deletion is the reservation of the ability to read the history of the article to administrators only, which, in fact, increases the load on administrators without a corresponding benefit. Bots should only do things that are relatively harmless and that can be easily reversed. Deletion cannot be so easily reversed, and overwhelming the speedy deletion system with piles of speedy tags isn't a great idea. Blanking (or blanking with redirection as I'm
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the last week or so of deletion nomination has done. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: At 11:06 AM 1/28/2010, Samuel Klein wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek). You're right that these are all very bad problems. Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many other similar snafus. You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.a While PWD is simple and effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind passionate bulk actions). I wonder if there is some way to get the best of both hard and soft solutions. Thanks. As far as I can see, blanking the article content, particularly with appropriate tags, would satisfy both approaches. It isn't something strange and new, it is how Wikipedia already deals with unsourced information in articles of all kinds, including biographies, it is simply deleted or possibly moved to Talk (by any editor). This is simply applying it the same principle to an article as a whole. Satisfying for frustrated editors? Sure. But deletion must be done by an administrator, and the dubious pleasure of deletion (take that, fancruft!) is not quite respectable for admins, and ordinary editors (or bad-hand accounts for frustrated administrators) tend to get themselves banned for indulging too much or too openly in this pleasure I'd think that blanking would be reasonably satisfying, while doing much less damage in terms of eventual growth of the project. If a deletionist wants to indulge his or her frustration at cruft and unsourced BLPs by blanking the articles, I'm not offended. It's actually much better and much simpler and much less disruptive than speedy tags and AfDs and all that. In fact, that was part of the point of WP:PWD, to eliminate the often silly contention over notability at AfD, and instead convert deletion into an ordinary editorial decision that can, if conflict arises, go through the gradual escalation of WP:DR, which can, in theory, resolve disputes less disruptively than holding a community discussion right at the outset. For sure, with BLPs with no reliable sources, the content should go, immediately, as long as it goes in a way that makes it easy to recover. And a bot can do it, very quickly and efficiently. The community is almost certainly not going to allow bots to delete articles! I'm a radical inclusionist, actually, but would have no trouble accepting mass blanking under decent conditions. Particularly conditions where the article, as-is, would not withstand AfD! PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles are sometimes speedied because they are blank. That problem would not get worse with PWD as an approach. As unsourced BLPs, they are already totally vulnerable to speedy deletion. First of all, blanking would create an intermediate option that addresses the BLP issues as well as notability issues. I'd really encourage looking at how PWD could be made effective for all the legitimate purposes behind the various factions in the present flap. The article might not be blanked, it could be redirected to a page on the kind of blanking that was done, giving instructions for how to bring the article back. If problems developed with articles returning without sourcing, the page could be semiprotected and that could even be bot-assisted. Placing speedy tags should not be done by bot, at least not merely for lack of sourcing, and I see no harm in a blanked article remaining indefinitely; deletion would be requested by a blanked article reviewer who finds that the blanked material was actually of no use whatever, a hoax, or so radically incorrect that it will waste the time of someone who wants to recreate the article. In that case, deletion is exactly appropriate so that a new article starts fresh. But an article where it is easy to verify that the topic exists and some information can be found that is independent, though not necessarily of high quality? The only difference, really, between PWD and standard deletion is the reservation of the ability to read the history of the article to administrators only, which, in fact,
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 4:43 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the last week or so of deletion nomination has done. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG I've read this five or six times and I can't figure out what you're trying to say. Could you rephrase please? - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Sarah Ewart wrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell As of 28 September 2009 when an IP number tagged it for AfD, it was unreferenced and CV-like. It was untagged but no further work was done, despite it being an unreferenced BLP. The subsequent history doesn't show up an actual deletion? Am I supposed to be able to see that it has been deleted? 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Sarah Ewart wrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell As of 28 September 2009 when an IP number tagged it for AfD, it was unreferenced and CV-like. It was untagged but no further work was done, despite it being an unreferenced BLP. The subsequent history doesn't show up an actual deletion? Am I supposed to be able to see that it has been deleted? Yes, it does, check the page log. It was deleted for about five days. * 14:07, 27 January 2010 The Cunctatorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator (talk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:The_Cunctator | contribshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/The_Cunctator | block http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Block/The_Cunctator) restored Robert W. Corell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell (19 revisions restored: Adding references * 03:56, 22 January 2010 Scott MacDonaldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Scott_MacDonald (talk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Scott_MacDonald | contribshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Scott_MacDonald | block http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Block/Scott_MacDonald) deleted Robert W. Corell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell ( biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLP unreferenced for nearly 3 years) 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 ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Gwern Branwen wrote: It is easier to attack than defend. If you want to justify high standards and removal, there are easy arguments: 'what if this could be another Seigenthaler?' 'what if this is fancruft Wikipedia will be criticized for including?' If you want to defend, you have... what? Even the mockery of _The New Yorker_ didn't convince several editors that [[Neil Gaiman]] should cover Scientology. There is no beacon example of deletionism's grievous errors. Deletions can be wrong, negative, thoughtless, whatever you want to call them. The whole inclusionism-deletionism row boils down, though, to the idea that _sometimes_ there is a tension between quality and quantity. Book authors know this. Non-paper hypertext authors probably have to learn it. You can attribute bad editing to bad faith, or to a bad wikiphilosophy, all you like. The discussion becomes sensible round about the point where the abstract ideas start to relate to the concrete realities of our production process. The more we understand that, the more intelligent a discussion we can have about it. The process does exhibit an asymmetry. The many, many thousands of cases where articles are wrongly deleted and then restored, or big cuts made and then reverted, are less damaging to Wikipedia's reputation than the specular examples where something was included wrongly? You bet. Ask [[Taner Akçam]]. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell And no-one has yet created a redirect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell He also received the [[Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit]] (I got that from what links here, and then went looking for a source to confirm that). http://www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/11199.html And from here (IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, November 1968): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04043245 You can get his birth year (1934) and day (4 November) and other details. But that is a lucky find. Most sources don't say when he was born, and that is generally an indication that comprehensive biographical material is scarce, which in turn implies that no-one else has yet really written a comprehensive biography. Which comes back to the point of whether Wikipedia should be the first to do so (we can produce something similar to the mini-biographies already out there, such as the four that The Cunctator found, which are either institutional bios, or conference bios, but we can't go beyond that until other sources do, which is generally towards the end of someone's career, or at the point when obituaries are written). It also looks like it was rescued in a rush, six errors in grammar or composition: is prominent climate scientist and he formerly as a to ManyOne Networks, the and Chair funding global change research The sustainable development header has stray formatting and international partnership I wonder how many years it would have been before someone copyedited it to fix those problems? I guess we will never know now. But this feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles? My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced, and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press release) is found and used as a reference. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: And no-one has yet created a redirect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell PS. I forgot. Bob Corell gets a lot of hits as well, and should be a redirect also. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Carcharoth wrote: But this feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles? My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced, and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press release) is found and used as a reference. But I don't think the issue will be resolved by more guidelines. This is an interesting example where the web material is largely of the kind of self-validating, not really third-party stuff that can be problematic. (I don't think having the biography is problematic, but the critical approach is quite helpful here, in indicating what it should contain.) There is a great deal of point in being selective: much of academia has to be taken on similar terms, and I don't think we should slide too far into rejecting departmental home pages as references. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Carcharoth wrote: But this feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles? My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced, and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press release) is found and used as a reference. But I don't think the issue will be resolved by more guidelines. This is an interesting example where the web material is largely of the kind of self-validating, not really third-party stuff that can be problematic. (I don't think having the biography is problematic, but the critical approach is quite helpful here, in indicating what it should contain.) There is a great deal of point in being selective: much of academia has to be taken on similar terms, and I don't think we should slide too far into rejecting departmental home pages as references. The interesting thing is noting at what point someone reaches some critical mass of *real* notability (i.e. not Wikipedia's definition of it) and they start to gain widespread recognition from their peers, and then start receiving awards and whatnot, and also how competent those writing biographies and obituaries are, and whether someone makes the cut for being included in Who's Who and things like the Dictionary of National Biography, or specialised biographies. There are many people we have biographies for who will never reach that standard, and for which there will not be comprehensive biographical material unless some researcher goes and writes a biography (which does happen more often than you might think). It would easily be possible in some cases for Wikipedians to scrape together material, but there needs to be some verdict from history, from a reliable authority in the field, for such articles to be anything more than biographical newspaper clippings. The final verdict on whether an article on someone is sustainable is sometimes not clear until several decades after they have died - or even longer - there are people publishing biographical material about World War I generals today (there were over 1000 of them in the British Army alone), but consider someone in 2050 considering who to write about from our time - unless material gets deposited in an archive and there are enough reasons for someone to study that person's life in detail, many of those we have articles on will have nothing more written about them. Ever. Most people get nothing written about them. Some only get a bit written about them, and an obituary. Only a very few get their lives pored over in great detail with multiple biographies published about them. We should draw the line somewhere, and in a way that is easy to assess. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Carcharoth wrote: The interesting thing is noting at what point someone reaches some critical mass of *real* notability (i.e. not Wikipedia's definition of it) and they start to gain widespread recognition from their peers, and then start receiving awards and whatnot, and also how competent those writing biographies and obituaries are, and whether someone makes the cut for being included in Who's Who and things like the Dictionary of National Biography, or specialised biographies. As you say, not our definition, and more like an old-fashioned attempt to distill out distinction in a field. There are many people we have biographies for who will never reach that standard, and for which there will not be comprehensive biographical material unless some researcher goes and writes a biography (which does happen more often than you might think). It would easily be possible in some cases for Wikipedians to scrape together material, but there needs to be some verdict from history, from a reliable authority in the field, for such articles to be anything more than biographical newspaper clippings. The current situation, applying to say businesspeople, is that they may well be interviewed but are unlikely to be the subject of serious, archival research in real time - while they are in business. (Example of interest to me - I realised a few days ago I have may have met Sergey Brin of Google, when he was six years old, since I certainly met his father shortly after he left the USSR. I probably can't know whether the rest of the family was around at that date in 1979, until a biographer goes over the whole ground.) The final verdict on whether an article on someone is sustainable is sometimes not clear until several decades after they have died - or even longer - there are people publishing biographical material about World War I generals today (there were over 1000 of them in the British Army alone), but consider someone in 2050 considering who to write about from our time - unless material gets deposited in an archive and there are enough reasons for someone to study that person's life in detail, many of those we have articles on will have nothing more written about them. Ever. Most people get nothing written about them. Some only get a bit written about them, and an obituary. Only a very few get their lives pored over in great detail with multiple biographies published about them. We should draw the line somewhere, and in a way that is easy to assess. Well, your last sentence combined with the first one certainly sums up the problem: we operate with WP-notability, not (say) ODNB-distinction, and in our tradition notability is supposed, like everything else, to be defined in simple abstract terms. No matter how often one points out that the notability concept we have is actually broken, and always has been, the thing won't lie down and die. Because there is nothing slick to replace it with. And people want slick. The actual editorial process is not slick, and/or things go wrong on the site all the time. I don't find it helpful that WP:V is used as a sufficient as well as a necessary condition for inclusion, given WP:NOT, and I do sometimes wonder if the people I'm arguing with have even got that far. WP is supposed not to be an indiscriminate collection of information, but the line-drawing involved in being discriminating is not easy. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
JustFixIt. On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:18 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: And no-one has yet created a redirect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell PS. I forgot. Bob Corell gets a lot of hits as well, and should be a redirect also. 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit, and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page? I mean, what's the point? On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell And no-one has yet created a redirect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell He also received the [[Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit]] (I got that from what links here, and then went looking for a source to confirm that). http://www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/11199.html And from here (IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, November 1968): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04043245 You can get his birth year (1934) and day (4 November) and other details. But that is a lucky find. Most sources don't say when he was born, and that is generally an indication that comprehensive biographical material is scarce, which in turn implies that no-one else has yet really written a comprehensive biography. Which comes back to the point of whether Wikipedia should be the first to do so (we can produce something similar to the mini-biographies already out there, such as the four that The Cunctator found, which are either institutional bios, or conference bios, but we can't go beyond that until other sources do, which is generally towards the end of someone's career, or at the point when obituaries are written). It also looks like it was rescued in a rush, six errors in grammar or composition: is prominent climate scientist and he formerly as a to ManyOne Networks, the and Chair funding global change research The sustainable development header has stray formatting and international partnership I wonder how many years it would have been before someone copyedited it to fix those problems? I guess we will never know now. But this feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles? My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced, and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press release) is found and used as a reference. 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Oh, I will, just not right now. Wrong computer. On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 1:09 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit, and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page? I mean, what's the point? On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell And no-one has yet created a redirect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell He also received the [[Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit]] (I got that from what links here, and then went looking for a source to confirm that). http://www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/11199.html And from here (IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, November 1968): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04043245 You can get his birth year (1934) and day (4 November) and other details. But that is a lucky find. Most sources don't say when he was born, and that is generally an indication that comprehensive biographical material is scarce, which in turn implies that no-one else has yet really written a comprehensive biography. Which comes back to the point of whether Wikipedia should be the first to do so (we can produce something similar to the mini-biographies already out there, such as the four that The Cunctator found, which are either institutional bios, or conference bios, but we can't go beyond that until other sources do, which is generally towards the end of someone's career, or at the point when obituaries are written). It also looks like it was rescued in a rush, six errors in grammar or composition: is prominent climate scientist and he formerly as a to ManyOne Networks, the and Chair funding global change research The sustainable development header has stray formatting and international partnership I wonder how many years it would have been before someone copyedited it to fix those problems? I guess we will never know now. But this feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles? My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced, and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press release) is found and used as a reference. 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 mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
The Cunctator wrote: Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit, and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page? I mean, what's the point? Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with someone who is not in your time zone. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
I re-copy edited it. It was rescued in a rush, and improved in a rush. The next step is to collate with the original article., and then to look for good additional material. Some of the above discussions imply much too high a standard, both for what should be in Wikipedia and for what the quality of the content in Wikipedia should be. We are not producing a definitive scholarly resource, nor are our basic methods adapted to doing so--scholarship requires critical evaluation and editorial control, two things we are unable to provide. What we can provide is a rough-and-ready general reference work, and our strength is the potential for of a large group of amateurs to be extremely comprehensive , and include a wider range of material than any conventional method of work has ever provided. It can neither make true judgments of importance, nor will it be guaranteed accurate--those who want to read such have the full range of conventional sources at their disposal, and another goal of the free scholarship movement --different from ours-- is to make these more widely available. Those who want to write a this level need to write in the more conventional way, a way that requires qualified researchers with access to the full range of relevant sources, and trained editors with professional standards. The goal for BLPs --or any other topic--cannot be the complete avoidance of error, for not even the most professional of resources have the ability to do that. Not even the most carefully edited publications have succeeded in being free from hoaxes and libel. The goal is to be as reasonably correct as possible, to remove obvious error when pointed out to us, and have working policies that will exclude the worst blunders and discourage the use for libel, propaganda, and promotion. The only way to avoid these entirely is to include nothing at all about anything involving anyone living or any living writer-- some of our worst BLP problems involve our comments on living authors. The easiest thing is to write nothing. The second easiest to is eliminate material without thinking. The third easiest, is a little different, for it is to write without thinking. We can not exclude the thoughtless from working here, either to make foolish positive contributions or foolish negative edits, and only the most reckless of all or the most obviously biased can actually be rejected. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: The Cunctator wrote: Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit, and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page? I mean, what's the point? Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with someone who is not in your time zone. 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 ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:59 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: I re-copy edited it. It was rescued in a rush, and improved in a rush. The next step is to collate with the original article., and then to look for good additional material. Thanks. Some of the above discussions imply much too high a standard, both for what should be in Wikipedia and for what the quality of the content in Wikipedia should be. We are not producing a definitive scholarly resource, nor are our basic methods adapted to doing so--scholarship requires critical evaluation and editorial control, two things we are unable to provide. Good points. There should still be a quality control endpoint, though. Clearly not featured article in cases where the information is minimal or incomplete, but still some definite minimum standard (I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum standard). What we can provide is a rough-and-ready general reference work, and our strength is the potential for of a large group of amateurs to be extremely comprehensive , and include a wider range of material than any conventional method of work has ever provided. Indeed. But the question is whether the *process* of producing that will end up with a distorted view of someone's life and career. Kind of like WP:UNDUE. When these mini-bios are produced for websites or conferences, they deliberately don't try and cover everything, but Wikipedians, when aggregating disparate sources, can go too far. Judgment in editing is still needed. It can neither make true judgments of importance, nor will it be guaranteed accurate--those who want to read such have the full range of conventional sources at their disposal, and another goal of the free scholarship movement --different from ours-- is to make these more widely available. Those who want to write a this level need to write in the more conventional way, a way that requires qualified researchers with access to the full range of relevant sources, and trained editors with professional standards. WP articles will only ever be a starting point, never an endpoint, that's the way I describe it to myself. In some ways, Wikipedia articles try and be the best online resource there is for a topic, but that is all it is, at the end of the day: a *resource*, a starting point to go on and read more about the topic. Many FAs I've looked at are nowhere near comprehensive. It is easy to find stuff that has been left out, either through ignorance, or something being considered trivial. I used to worry about that, but now I tell myself that the WP article is only a starting point, a usually rather comprehensive overview, but in no way the final word on anything. The goal for BLPs --or any other topic--cannot be the complete avoidance of error, for not even the most professional of resources have the ability to do that. Not even the most carefully edited publications have succeeded in being free from hoaxes and libel. The goal is to be as reasonably correct as possible, to remove obvious error when pointed out to us, and have working policies that will exclude the worst blunders and discourage the use for libel, propaganda, and promotion. The only way to avoid these entirely is to include nothing at all about anything involving anyone living or any living writer-- some of our worst BLP problems involve our comments on living authors. But do you think that something like as approved article status for BLPs might help? The easiest thing is to write nothing. The second easiest to is eliminate material without thinking. The third easiest, is a little different, for it is to write without thinking. We can not exclude the thoughtless from working here, either to make foolish positive contributions or foolish negative edits, and only the most reckless of all or the most obviously biased can actually be rejected. But about the timescale? What should be done with *any* backlog when it builds up beyond the resources of the volunteer workforce to deal with or to maintain existing articles? 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: snip I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum standard). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/B-Class * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors. * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. Should all BLPs meet that standard? 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Carcharoth wrote: On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: snip I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum standard). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/B-Class * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors. * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. Should all BLPs meet that standard? Simpler: they should be good stubs, not bad stubs. B5 is out-of-focus, anyway. B2 is almost impossible to assess (a case of a BDP, but I actually created two articles about the same person once, who had been a professor on both sides of the Channel, as was pointed out by someone looking over my shoulder from frWP). 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip Those B-class criteria would need modifying for BLPs. a case of a BDP Ah! Biography of a Dead Person? :-) but I actually created two articles about the same person once, who had been a professor on both sides of the Channel, as was pointed out by someone looking over my shoulder from frWP). Fascinating. Didn't they have the same name and birth and death year? You aren't going to make us guess which person this was, are you? I'm guessing 16th century and Huguenot. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Carcharoth wrote: Fascinating. Didn't they have the same name and birth and death year? You aren't going to make us guess which person this was, are you? I'm guessing 16th century and Huguenot. Not far off. [[Ralph Baines]] and [[Rudolphus Baynus]]. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/27 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors. * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. Should all BLPs meet that standard? I think it's an excellent goal. A B-rated article should, in theory, be something we are happy to print and to leave untouched because, well, it's enough. It could be better, but it's not incomplete, we don't have to think of it as a work in progress, and it's not wrong! Interestingly, one field where milhist anecdotally finds problems with getting articles to B-class is biographies, albeit usually of dead people rather than living ones. It's point B2 - no obvious omissions - and it ties in to some comments upthread. Unless someone's actually gone and written a conventional biography, we don't tend to know much about most military figures - we can construct a robust chronology of their career from public sources, and fill in the major points where they intersected with history, but at the cost of an almost complete gap covering their personal life. It's often very hard to find things like marriage or children, and god help you if you want to write about what they did after retiring to civilian life, or include any of the colour we like in biographical articles. In other words, we can write a pretty good example of what you call biographical newspaper clippings. There's some synthesis, sure, some editorial commentary we can draw on about one aspect of their life - but in some ways it just highlights the gaping void of stuff we don't even manage to address with primary sources. (You have a similar problem with a lot of sporting articles, I believe - Y competed in the 1924 Olympics, he got a silver in the pole-vaulting, which we can tell you all about... and then he presumably went back to Poland, end of article.) As such, it's quite easy to fall down on obvious omissions - if you can look at the article and say, we stop talking about him at 45, he died at 70, what happened?, then it's clearly got omissions; it's a cruder test than the reasonably comprehensive rule we use for GA ratings, but it's a pretty effective one. I suppose an interesting hardline position would be to say that, for someone where we can't actually fulfill this sort of comprehensiveness, we should be asking if they should have an article. If someone is public in such a limited way that writing about them makes it clear how little we know - and that isn't itself a point of interest because it's obscured - then it's an interesting flag. I'm not sure I support this idea at all, but it's one way to help distinguish that old question of how we determine public figures! Still, that's beyond the scope of this discussion... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't think they came up with any at all. Are there any? (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world might not be the best place to make the very first one?) Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I want to carry that reasoning forward. I think there are two compelling reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it. (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates intractable problems like this one. Because of the terrific success we've had with making all /other/ kinds of content edits subject to the Wiki model (and our almost religious faith in the dispute resolution process), I think the burden ought to be on everyone else to explain why pure wiki deletion /wouldn't/ work. It doesn't introduce any new problems that we don't already have extensive experience and process in place to solve, since deletion would be treated as any other kind of edit (and so edit wars over deletion could be treated like any other edit war) -- it increases transparency and makes it easier to restore content in cases like this one, so that we ALSO wouldn't feel so bad about temporarily deleting marginal BLPs until they can be improved (and by anyone, not just admins) -- and it massively simplifies deletion process in the case of 99% of deletions which are absolutely uncontroversial. The only software changes we would need would be that blanked pages should show up as redlinks and should not be indexed by search engines or show up when someone hits Random Page. That's pretty much it. The software changes are easy and minimal, but the cultural change would be massive. I appreciate everyone's trepidation over this, really-- big changes are scary. But I really wonder how many of these catastrophic snafu's we'll have to go through before people get fed up with the problems that inevitably result from this deletion system and look for some kind of major overhaul. That's not pie in the sky -- it's in order. We ought to get started now. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Ryan Delaney wrote: On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't think they came up with any at all. Are there any? (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world might not be the best place to make the very first one?) Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I want to carry that reasoning forward. Choose your allies with care, though. I think there are two compelling reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it. (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates intractable problems like this one. I was thinking that the meme that spreads like wildfire through a crowd of one person deserved a name, and of course it has one as Dickens knew: [[wikt: King Charles' head]] (no relation). There is certainly another perspective entirely on the current furore, which is that the absence of enough deletion has created the situation where people (David Goodman being an obviously honorable exception) volunteer the time of others by voting to keep articles, on the same rather anxious principle, that anything temporarily lost from Wikipedia is permanently lost from the world. Which is clearly absurd, stated in that way. The reason this matters, and maybe why this has come to a head now, is that we realise more clearly as time goes by that we have finite human resources to work with. The goose and the golden eggs has always been a good fable to quote against those (outsiders usually) who say Wikipedia would be great if only... and then suggest something that obviously isn't going to work. Perhaps cleaning up after the goose also deserves a mention. In other words the vibrant business of article creation cannot be decreed to be an unmixed blessing. That has to be proved in practice. If too many of our good people are trying to source obscure biographies, then they are not doing something else which might suit them and the encyclopedia better. Anyway I voted for the Jehochman RfC proposal, which has the mild sophistication of stealing one aspect of you want (I think). 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Adam Koenigsberg wrote: I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see RFC/Kelly Martin It reminds me of spoiler warnings. It's amazing just how much spoiler warnings turned out to be a template for all sorts of... suboptimal... activities. Once you delete tens of thousands of things, you've won, regardless of whether you've followed the rules or not. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Can anybody explain what PWD is? Thanks, Emily On Jan 26, 2010, at 1:24 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote: On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't think they came up with any at all. Are there any? (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world might not be the best place to make the very first one?) Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I want to carry that reasoning forward. I think there are two compelling reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it. (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates intractable problems like this one. Because of the terrific success we've had with making all /other/ kinds of content edits subject to the Wiki model (and our almost religious faith in the dispute resolution process), I think the burden ought to be on everyone else to explain why pure wiki deletion /wouldn't/ work. It doesn't introduce any new problems that we don't already have extensive experience and process in place to solve, since deletion would be treated as any other kind of edit (and so edit wars over deletion could be treated like any other edit war) -- it increases transparency and makes it easier to restore content in cases like this one, so that we ALSO wouldn't feel so bad about temporarily deleting marginal BLPs until they can be improved (and by anyone, not just admins) -- and it massively simplifies deletion process in the case of 99% of deletions which are absolutely uncontroversial. The only software changes we would need would be that blanked pages should show up as redlinks and should not be indexed by search engines or show up when someone hits Random Page. That's pretty much it. The software changes are easy and minimal, but the cultural change would be massive. I appreciate everyone's trepidation over this, really-- big changes are scary. But I really wonder how many of these catastrophic snafu's we'll have to go through before people get fed up with the problems that inevitably result from this deletion system and look for some kind of major overhaul. That's not pie in the sky -- it's in order. We ought to get started now. - causa sui ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com wrote: Can anybody explain what PWD is? Pure Wiki Deletion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pure_wiki_deletion_system 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Emily Monroe wrote: Can anybody explain what PWD is? Surely. But in another thread, I hope. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
I appreciate being listed as an honorable exception, but I'm not an except. I see a lot of other people doing just the same as as I--about 3/4 of the articles I see on prod and put aside to be worked on later in the day, are in fact sourced by the timer I get there. sometimes, rather superficially, sometimes better than I could do. I think many of the people trying to deal with the deletions are doing as much as we can--but it is obviously 10 or 100 times faster to tag on the basis of impressions than to actually look for sources. What we need to see is other people first trying to source, and tagging for deletion afterwards if needed. this gives both better articles to keep, and more secure deletions. The latest unhelpful variant of people not even looking is people looking only in Google, not google news or Books or Scholar. If we are to remove the worthless or the unverifiable, and there is quite a lot of both of them, the best way is for people listing for deletion to do as full and honest a job of trying to source as is reasonable , and say where they have looked, and let others who think it might be worthwhile carry ti further. The change that would make the biggest difference is that each person who looks at an article for any reason , such as fixing typos or adding categories or disam links, actually try to spot any serious problems, not just do the routine task they came for. There are too many BLPs that have been looked at twenty times, but none of them carefully. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Emily Monroe wrote: Can anybody explain what PWD is? Surely. But in another thread, I hope. 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 ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Adam Koenigsberg wrote: I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see RFC/Kelly Martin It reminds me of spoiler warnings. It's amazing just how much spoiler warnings turned out to be a template for all sorts of... suboptimal... activities. Once you delete tens of thousands of things, you've won, regardless of whether you've followed the rules or not. It is easier to attack than defend. If you want to justify high standards and removal, there are easy arguments: 'what if this could be another Seigenthaler?' 'what if this is fancruft Wikipedia will be criticized for including?' If you want to defend, you have... what? Even the mockery of _The New Yorker_ didn't convince several editors that [[Neil Gaiman]] should cover Scientology. There is no beacon example of deletionism's grievous errors. -- gwern ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: snip Agreed with David G. on this point. The general sentiment to keep up with BLPs is ok, I think; but most of the time sources can be found for most bios. (And yes, I do make an occasional hobby of sourcing random BLPs I do this sometimes as well, but not random ones. I pick ones I know will have a plethora of sources. I guess that is cheating, but I don't have the time or motivation to scrabble around for sources for some random stubs, when I know in my heart of hearts that some articles just aren't really suitable for Wikipedia (the question is whether to allow others a chance, and for how long). it's hard work and takes at least a good hour or two per bio to do properly, and that's with access to a full university library). To be fair, it only takes time if you allow yourself to get distracted, and aim for relatively high standards (which you should do for BLPs as a matter of course). I took half an hour to do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ronald_Urwick_Cookeaction=historysubmitdiff=340263275oldid=306734087 Clearly, there is still more work both possible and needed. But I could have just thrown in the won the Gold Medal of the RGS statement and the accompanying reference, both to this article and to two others I spotted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drewry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Holdgate Indeed, I will now go and do just that for the other two (actually, I will likely get distracted again - one source will lead to another, and I will keep going until I've done the best I think I can do in a half hour or so for each one - clearly, this amount of time is reduced if you find yourself unable to find any suitable sources). But the question is whether it is better to pass through all the unsourced BLPs quickly (a rough and ready approach), or to take the time to do each one to a higher standard, at the cost of taking longer. Ideally, someone would both set deadlines, say how much effort to spend per BLP, work out how long it will take to clear the current backlog, and cut off the incoming flow (or delegate a separate task force to do rough-and-ready sourcing of newly created BLPs). But that requires both leadership, organisation and a dedicated and committed workforce. Does Wikipedia have that? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the workflow and the nature of the work. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Sheesh. I was on a press conference call today with one of the deleted people as a speaker. *Robert Corell* is the Director of the Global Change Program at The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment and is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Societyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Meteorological_Society, and he recently completed an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfer_Center_for_Science_and_International_Affairsof the Kennedy School of Governmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_School_of_Governmentat Harvard University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University which began in January 2000. He is currently actively engaged in research concerned with both the science of global change and the interface between science and public policy. He is particularly interested in global and regional climate change http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change and related environmental issues, and in the science to facilitate understanding of vulnerability and sustainable developmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development . Dr. Corell is the co-chairman of an international strategic planning group that is developing the strategy for and the programs and activities that are designed to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable development. This planning effort is sponsored by the International Council for Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_for_Science(ICSU), the Third World Academy of Scienceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World_Academy_of_Sciences(TWAS), and a major international initiative, supported in part from a grant from the Packard Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Foundationentitled “An International Initiative for Science Technology, and Innovation for Sustainability (ISTS).” He is the leader of an international partnership intended to better understand and plan for a transition to hydrogenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogenfor several nations, entitled the “Global Hydrogen Partnership,” currently focused on Iceland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland, Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India, and the eight Arctic nations seeking to address this important new energyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energystrategy and economic policy. Dr. Corell is leading a research project to explore methods, models, and conceptual frameworks for vulnerability research, analysis, and assessment. The current focus of which is on vulnerabilities of indigenous communities in the Arctic. Further, he currently serves as the Chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Climate_Impact_Assessment; an international assessment of the impacts of climate variability, change, and UV increases in the Arctic Region, and the Chair of an international planning RD effort for the Arctic region and with a time scale of a decade or two ahead. He is also the Senior Science Advisor to ManyOne Networkshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManyOne_Networks, a Silicon Valley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley team designing the next generation of Internet Web Browser, the initial focus on planet earth and Chair of the Board of the Digital Universe Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Universe_Foundation . Prior to January 2000, Dr. Corell was Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation(NSF) where he had oversight for the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences and the global change programs of the NSF. While at the NSF, Dr. Corell also served as the Chair of the National Science and Technology Councilhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_and_Technology_Council’s committee that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research Programhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Global_Change_Research_Programand was Chair of the international committee of government agencies funding global change research. Further, he served as Chair and principal U.S. delegate to many international bodies with interests in and responsibilities for climate and global change research programs. Prior to joining the NSF, Dr. Corell was a Professor and academic administrator at the University of New Hampshirehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_Hampshire. Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training, having received the Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at the Case Western Reserve University and MIT and has held appointments at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woods_Hole_Oceanographic_Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanographyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripps_Institution_of_Oceanography, the University of Washingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Washington, and Case Western Reserve
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... -george On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 7:07 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Sheesh. I was on a press conference call today with one of the deleted people as a speaker. *Robert Corell* is the Director of the Global Change Program at The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment and is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Societyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Meteorological_Society, and he recently completed an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfer_Center_for_Science_and_International_Affairsof the Kennedy School of Governmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_School_of_Governmentat Harvard University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University which began in January 2000. He is currently actively engaged in research concerned with both the science of global change and the interface between science and public policy. He is particularly interested in global and regional climate change http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change and related environmental issues, and in the science to facilitate understanding of vulnerability and sustainable developmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development . Dr. Corell is the co-chairman of an international strategic planning group that is developing the strategy for and the programs and activities that are designed to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable development. This planning effort is sponsored by the International Council for Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_for_Science(ICSU), the Third World Academy of Scienceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World_Academy_of_Sciences(TWAS), and a major international initiative, supported in part from a grant from the Packard Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Foundationentitled “An International Initiative for Science Technology, and Innovation for Sustainability (ISTS).” He is the leader of an international partnership intended to better understand and plan for a transition to hydrogenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogenfor several nations, entitled the “Global Hydrogen Partnership,” currently focused on Iceland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland, Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India, and the eight Arctic nations seeking to address this important new energyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energystrategy and economic policy. Dr. Corell is leading a research project to explore methods, models, and conceptual frameworks for vulnerability research, analysis, and assessment. The current focus of which is on vulnerabilities of indigenous communities in the Arctic. Further, he currently serves as the Chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Climate_Impact_Assessment; an international assessment of the impacts of climate variability, change, and UV increases in the Arctic Region, and the Chair of an international planning RD effort for the Arctic region and with a time scale of a decade or two ahead. He is also the Senior Science Advisor to ManyOne Networkshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManyOne_Networks, a Silicon Valley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley team designing the next generation of Internet Web Browser, the initial focus on planet earth and Chair of the Board of the Digital Universe Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Universe_Foundation . Prior to January 2000, Dr. Corell was Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation(NSF) where he had oversight for the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences and the global change programs of the NSF. While at the NSF, Dr. Corell also served as the Chair of the National Science and Technology Councilhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_and_Technology_Council’s committee that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research Programhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Global_Change_Research_Programand was Chair of the international committee of government agencies funding global change research. Further, he served as Chair and principal U.S. delegate to many international bodies with interests in and responsibilities for climate and global change research programs. Prior to joining the NSF, Dr. Corell was a Professor and academic administrator at the University of New Hampshirehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_Hampshire. Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training, having received the Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at the Case Western Reserve University and MIT and has held appointments at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: Where was Robert Corell's article previously? Perhaps my search was inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
As I understand it, a bunch of adminstrators deleted a bunch of
articles that they felt violated BLP aganist community consensus.
If the community was in consensus, there would be a specific deletion
criteria at Speedy Deletions.
I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to
say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of
process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This
reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see
RFC/Kelly Martin
-CastAStone
P.S. hi.
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com wrote:
As I understand it, a bunch of adminstrators deleted a bunch of
articles that they felt violated BLP aganist community consensus.
On one hand, it is quite important that we don't say something that
isn't true, controversial or not. We ARE used as a source, like it or
not, and of course, anything false that is stated on Wikipedia can
damage reputations, both of Wikipedia and other people.
On the other hand, BLP is supposed to apply to only *controversial*
information, and deletion is supposed to be a last resort.
Emily
On Jan 21, 2010, at 10:59 AM, The Cunctator wrote:
Just restored a former prime minister.
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Carcharoth
carcharot...@googlemail.com
wrote:
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:03 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com
wrote:
2010/1/21 Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com:
snip
silent mass deletions are now an acceptable admin tactic.
That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first.
Perhaps a
{{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
I'm not going to say much in this thread (I'm in the group that's
been
asked to arbitrate this dispute), but I would urge a list be made of
where discussion is taking place on-wiki about process related to
this, and for people to help form a workable consensus there.
I would add that one part of the problem is bagging and tagging these
BLPs when they are created. If someone can demonstrate that BLPs
currently being created are getting enough attention, that would
ensure that things are reasonably under control from that end (the
BLPs that have been unsourced for years are technically a backlog -
the ones being created now should also be dealt with, otherwise the
problem grows again). The lessons from the past are that if you turn
away for even a few months from situations like this, the creation of
new articles returns you to square one.
Overall, a discussion on whether Wikipedia has the volunteer
resources
to maintain articles of a certain type to a minimum standard, is
needed. Plus whether technical measures (flagged revisions) will help
that or not. Another part of the problem is that some of these
discussions have been had before, and some people are assuming
everyone knows the stats and figures involved. Pointers to summaries
are helpful. There is one here:
http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080415/the-biographies-of-living-people-problem/
We also have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_essays_on_BLP
Carcharoth
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Adam Russell Koenigsberg
MBA Candidate 2010
The Ohio State University
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2) Delete all unreferenced BLPs - or BLPs referenced only to own website or IMDB etc What's the rationale behind this? And why only BLPs? ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
At 06:05 PM 1/23/2010, David Gerard wrote: On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't think they came up with any at all. Uh, Wikipedia? For information in articles, and using redirects for articles. Also, in effect, Wikipedia was this way with articles too, at the beginning, but then, if I've heard the history correctly, certain privileges became restricted to administrators. WP:PWD was perhaps not well-expressed because it implied a software change was necessary. That change is optional, it was a proposal that blanked pages would show up as redlinks when linked. It might be better if a particular category were dedicated to that. (I.e., if an article has the category, it would be redlinked just as if it did not exist.) In this way, the page might not be totally blanked, but might contain bot-generated text on why the article was blanked, and a link to a page that covers, for the uninitiated, how to see the blanked article, how to restore it, etc. The redlink would then encourage actual article improvement through making the deficiency noticeable again. (This is an improvement over the present situation, where the existence of the article suppresses the redlink, even if the article is really inadequate even as a stub.) But that's optional, simply a further improvement, not a necessity. Are there any? (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world might not be the best place to make the very first one?) M. The biggest wiki probably needs to figure some things out for the first time, because only the biggest has the severe problems of scale that are the difficulty here, but PWD is actually, in essence, the way it was at the beginning, roughly. If everyone is an administrator and can read deleted articles, isn't PWD and non-oversight deletion the same thing? Both require an extra step to read the allegedly inadequate text. Both are easy to fix, for administrators. PWD, however, makes fixing a problem blanking available to every editor, and, most importantly, every editor can, by looking at the history, read what was deleted and may then be more easily able to find references. (Or to complain about illegal text, which might then call for revision deletion, requiring an administrator.) If the proposal involved some new risk or hazard, sure, caution would be entirely in order. But blanking and replacement with a neutral and informative page that invites improvement? This is very close, only one step further, than stubbing, which is done all the time, and which can also be done by anyone. Doing this by bot would be simple, and would quickly resolve the BLP problem with all those unreferenced articles, while doing no harm. If it turned out to be a problem, each of those articles would have a category on it that would make identification and bot-reversion easy. Any editor -- or any registered editor if semiprotected -- could, in a flash, restore the article the way it was. But then this editor would be responsible for restoring BLP information without sourcing. And the editor, as well, would now, by default, be a watcher of the article. What, exactly, is not to like? Perhaps administrators would rather fight over this? ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.com wrote: 2) Delete all unreferenced BLPs - or BLPs referenced only to own website or IMDB etc What's the rationale behind this? ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
The new arbitration case is an utterly predictable outgrowth of the BLP mass deletions and their endorsement by the arbitration committee. The committee didn't see it coming, apparently, which means the candidate field in the last election was far worse than we thought. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Nathan wrote: The new arbitration case is an utterly predictable outgrowth of the BLP mass deletions and their endorsement by the arbitration committee. snip What price reduction of arbitrators' terms, so that a January ArbCom might have even less collective memory and experience? Actually nothing much about all this is utterly predictable, except the volatility. As the title of the thread shows, some people do not assume good faith any more. As the events themselves show, be bold is not dead. As the proposal to request arbitation shows, there has grown up a culture of disregarding the RfC route, to get action rather than a structured discussion. (As for any reliance on AN for admin discussion, that is an unchartered institution.) What our history books show is that the ArbCom has to pick up the pieces after a wheel war, and that forcing the issue is the basic crime. Forcing the issue does not equate to be bold at all (you need to add a stubborn, self-righteous approach). 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
He was not in this group, having been dealt with years ago. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 4:18 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/22 David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com: Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done harm by being there. [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a good example member of this group. - 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 ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Sorry -- what I was replying to did not get included; I was relying to a suggest by David Gerard that [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a counter- example. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:35 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: He was not in this group, having been dealt with years ago. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 4:18 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/22 David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com: Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done harm by being there. [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a good example member of this group. - 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 ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't think they came up with any at all. Are there any? (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world might not be the best place to make the very first one?) - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
David Gerard wrote: On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't think they came up with any at all. Are there any? (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world might not be the best place to make the very first one?) OpenStreetMap (the map database itself, not the support wiki). ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Some people won't be satisfied until Wikipedia has no BLPs. 2010/1/21 K. Peachey p858sn...@yahoo.com.au On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communic...@gmail.com wrote: Remember also that The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff Cool Hand Luke Which people don't have the chance to when people randomly delete them compared to going though either speedy and prod and they have time to work on it, and discuss the matter at hand. -Peachey ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/22 James Farrar james.far...@gmail.com: Some people won't be satisfied until Wikipedia has no BLPs. No true Strawman will be satisfied until authority reassures him Wikipedia has no BLPs. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. You can correct subtle mistakes, misunderstandings, and sometimes errors of fact in the process of sourcing (I sourced a bio the other day where the husband of the person involved had died in between when the bio was created and when I worked on it; someone has to change is married to.. eventually and that's not the kind of thing you want to guess at). Not to mention all the implications for readers, the larger project, etc. etc. But personally I pick and choose, and only work on people whose lives I find interesting -- I give the footballers, the olympians, and the pop stars a miss. Those seem to be the bulk of BLPs, though, and it seems like there are ought to be a good way to source those en masse, maybe through the relevant wikiprojects. -- phoebe I don't think Gwern was saying that sourcing is irrelevant, only that unreferenced BLP is a blunt measurement that doesn't return much real information about the status of any given article. In a two paragraph stub, sourcing the date of marriage or birth to a particular year (and referencing nothing else) exempts the entire article from the category. It does not exempt the article from the same sorts of severe problems one might find in a completely unreferenced article: the distinction between one reference and no references is often insignificant. A better way to determine whether an unreferenced article should be deleted might be to read it, but the administrators who decided to mass delete these articles have been indiscriminate (c.f. Cunctator's comment about restoring an article on a former prime minister). I'm sure there are all sorts of other long backlogs of article problems, even on BLPs. Should all articles tagged with a POV template, a fact tag, or other 'problem templates' be deleted after a certain period of time? Clearly there would be too many of them for anyone to actually fix all of them in a reasonable period of time, say a week? 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Nathan wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. snip -- phoebe I don't think Gwern was saying that sourcing is irrelevant, only thatunreferenced BLP is a blunt measurement that doesn't return much real information about the status of any given article. It's a blunt metric, to be sure, but Gwern's argument that some referencing looks like make-work (true) means that adding references to biographies is pointless (false) is pretty much flawed. Consider how one tests an article to see whether it is a hoax: one tries to verify this and that, and in the end nothing checks out, which is the now I'm suspicious moment. A proper reference in a BLP shows it isn't a hoax, and that is one criterion our articles should satisfy. I'm sure there are all sorts of other long backlogs of article problems, even on BLPs. This is also true. The people who worry about copyright are, well, worried. This is the most interesting comparison. Do we or do we not regard lack of sourcing in a BLP to be as serious as copyright violation? No consensus on that yet, clearly. One step is being taken in that direction, would be one way to explain what is currently going on. Even that much is not perhaps going to be accepted. But the two issues stand out from other things such as POV and writing problems because they have a legal dimension, or in other words could be threats to the whole project. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
At 07:34 PM 1/21/2010, Ryan Delaney wrote: Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Pure Wiki Deletion. - causa sui Pure Wiki Deletion. Well, I'd add a note to the article. PWD deals with the problem without destroying the work that was done on the article, it is there for anyone to recover. The note would provide a link to clear instructions on how to replace the article, with a request not to restore it without adding sources. Done by bot, this would immediately deal with the BLP problem, en masse, without the harmful effects of deletion. Adding a cat to the article, maybe Blanked BLP, would make all such articles easy to find, for people who want to restore them with sources. The instructions for restoration would ask the restorer to remove the category. If some such article is repeatedly restored without sources by IP, it could be semi-pro'd. But, otherwise, this action requires no admin privileges. Pure Wiki Deletion. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Roger Davies has posted an excellent comment on the civil disobedience aspect of these events here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Casediff=prevoldid=339367826 I've seen much talk today of doing the right things the right way and doing the right things the wrong way. I suppose the lesson of history is that determining which is which is usually possible only with the advantage of considerable hindsight. Think of some examples: the barons at Runnymede, the Roundheads, George Washington et al, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the sailors on the Potemkin; the suffragettes, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela The core of civil disobedience is the principle that people should do the right things the wrong way when trying to do them the right way failed or is not possible. And that's pretty close to the underlying principle of WP:IAR. *Roger Davies* *talk* 16:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC) This was only the beginning; it was precipitated by the pressure of repeated failed attempts to reach elusive consensus on the matter. This is not anarchy, but a brief transition point. The RFC shows the way forward. MZMcBride's summary deletion proposal does not have consensus and will not reign. The processes proposed by Jehochman and David Gerard, on the other hand, are doing very well. Under these proposals, there will be a review period for unsourced BLPs, but any tagged biography that does not become sourced must be scrapped. Cool Hand Luke ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
At the same time, *Always leave something undone. **Give the author a chance.* *Build the web.* *Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.* and *If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion.* On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communic...@gmail.com wrote: Roger Davies has posted an excellent comment on the civil disobedience aspect of these events here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Casediff=prevoldid=339367826 I've seen much talk today of doing the right things the right way and doing the right things the wrong way. I suppose the lesson of history is that determining which is which is usually possible only with the advantage of considerable hindsight. Think of some examples: the barons at Runnymede, the Roundheads, George Washington et al, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the sailors on the Potemkin; the suffragettes, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela The core of civil disobedience is the principle that people should do the right things the wrong way when trying to do them the right way failed or is not possible. And that's pretty close to the underlying principle of WP:IAR. *Roger Davies* *talk* 16:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC) This was only the beginning; it was precipitated by the pressure of repeated failed attempts to reach elusive consensus on the matter. This is not anarchy, but a brief transition point. The RFC shows the way forward. MZMcBride's summary deletion proposal does not have consensus and will not reign. The processes proposed by Jehochman and David Gerard, on the other hand, are doing very well. Under these proposals, there will be a review period for unsourced BLPs, but any tagged biography that does not become sourced must be scrapped. Cool Hand Luke ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communic...@gmail.com wrote: period for unsourced BLPs, but any tagged biography that does not become sourced must be scrapped. pendantry biography != BLP BLP = biography of living person Those people who have been safely dead for a while, it tends to be easier to establish notability and find sources (they are also less litigious). Let not mix up the term BLP with the broader term biography. /pedantry 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communic...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: At the same time, *Always leave something undone. **Give the author a chance.* *Build the web.* *Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.* and *If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion.* These maxims were very good in the formative stages of our project. You and other early editors were right (maybe even prophetic) to adopt them. The fledgling project needed hands, eyeballs, and content. By zealously keeping and expanding content--even shoddy content--we grew dramatically. But this debate has come to a boil because we've been too slow in realizing that the balance must change because conditions have changed. We are no longer a small project, but one that places in the top three google search results for almost any topic in our encyclopedia. We have succeeded because of our formative policies, and with our success comes responsibility. In an era when any living subject can have their life harmed by a poorly vetted biography, we should strike a new balance. We should not bite off more than we can chew. In this area, we ought to weed out BLPs that we can no longer maintain at appropriately high standatds. As a happy consequence of this process, many notable biographies will be improved. I hope that this improvement and re-examination process is continual. In this way, we will effectively shoulder the responsibility we have for maintaining one of the top ten sites on the internet. Cool Hand Luke When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. eh? You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website. Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project, so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by their heroic daily efforts. -- gwern ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:35 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Those people who have been safely dead for a while, it tends to be easier to establish notability and find sources (they are also less litigious). There's an idea. Some people assert that Elvis is still alive. Why don't we put a whole section in his article saying he was a paedophile. If he doesn't sue we can assume he's properly dead and put an end to the debate. I feel this would be an excellent use of charitable funds. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. eh? You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website. This is a radical misunderstanding of what I said. This isn't an old editor vs. new editor issue. David Gerard is hardly an arrogant upstart, and Jimbo Wales (one of the original Wikipedians) surely is not. Both are firmly on the side of change with regards to retaining shoddy BLPs. It's a question of what policies would be best for the project right now. Policies that were good in 2001 no longer strike the right balance in 2010. Originally, our goal was generating content, but we now have tons of content--so much that readers are more concerned about reliability. BLP subjects are most especially concerned that we get their entries right, and our project's credibility suffers most when they are harmed. At this point in time, retaining shoddy BLPs is bad for subjects and frankly bad for Wikipedia. Cool Hand Luke ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website. Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project, so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by their heroic daily efforts. -- gwern This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone. I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On 22/01/2010, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone. I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email. Tone is one thing, but I'm more concerned about the complete lack of process here. Am I correct in thinking that a lone admin can technically delete *any* BLP article at all by: a) 'challenging' and removing any references b) instantly deleting the article for being unreferenced While that's a somewhat contrived scenario; I've seen admins do things a bit like that before, and they could probably argue that a) was what they truly believed (even if everyone else considers the references to have been good). So is it right that there's a rule, but no process for these kinds of deletions? - causa sui -- -Ian Woollard ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: On 22/01/2010, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone. I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email. Tone is one thing, but I'm more concerned about the complete lack of process here. Thanks for getting this back on track. Am I correct in thinking that a lone admin can technically delete *any* BLP article at all by: a) 'challenging' and removing any references b) instantly deleting the article for being unreferenced In theory, an administrator could do this. Technically. While that's a somewhat contrived scenario; I've seen admins do things a bit like that before, and they could probably argue that a) was what they truly believed (even if everyone else considers the references to have been good). The solution to that is to follow dispute resolution and clean up the mess. We don't add rules to cover every possible eventuality. We have common sense for that. So is it right that there's a rule, but no process for these kinds of deletions? Pretty much. What you're describing, if it is happening, does sound like a problem deserving of attention. But I wouldn't jump to creating a new bureaucracy to handle this problem any more than I would another. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done harm by being there. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that out of the 500, 1 or 2 of them was a potential problem;. Based on my running work with this, for about half of them there was both the ability to source enough to lose the unsourcedBLP status very easily, and the potential to become a acceptable articles after reasonable work. The project thus has been wrong several hundred times more than it has been right. A yield rate of less than 1% and a damage rate of 50% is unacceptable quality. I would feel quite differently if either 90% of the articles were truly unsourceable or unsuitable, or if even 5% of them had been actual problems. BLP violations are serious, and I agree that we ought to risk making a few errors to remove them--a 5% error rate is as low as any Wikipedia process can reasonably attain-- but this was a process 99% of which was either wrong or unnecessarily hasty. If this does not meet the standard for disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, I do not know what would. True, they made the point. There were so many ways to have done it better. They would have made the point just as well with 50, not 500 deletions. They would have made the point just as well and contributed something to the process if they actually checked for even the most obvious and easily sourceable notability. They would have been less foolish if they had not deleted the 5 or 10% of articles that did have sources, though not in the usual places. In the month or so that this plan probably took shape, each of the 50 people involved or strongly defending them could have checked properly 10 articles a day while still doing their usual work. That would have cleared 10,000 articles. In the years that people have been complaining about the situation, if they had worked instead of talked, the whole problem of the old articles could have been dealt with--even by themselves alone. And then we would be able to concentrate on the much bigger problem of all the sourced articles in Wikipedia that nonetheless contain major errors. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website. Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project, so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by their heroic daily efforts. -- gwern This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone. I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email. - causa sui ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Jimbo has never been an active editor. The BLPs aren't being deleted for being shoddy, they're being deleted for not having references. On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communic...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. eh? You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website. This is a radical misunderstanding of what I said. This isn't an old editor vs. new editor issue. David Gerard is hardly an arrogant upstart, and Jimbo Wales (one of the original Wikipedians) surely is not. Both are firmly on the side of change with regards to retaining shoddy BLPs. It's a question of what policies would be best for the project right now. Policies that were good in 2001 no longer strike the right balance in 2010. Originally, our goal was generating content, but we now have tons of content--so much that readers are more concerned about reliability. BLP subjects are most especially concerned that we get their entries right, and our project's credibility suffers most when they are harmed. At this point in time, retaining shoddy BLPs is bad for subjects and frankly bad for Wikipedia. Cool Hand Luke ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of the general type of BLP deleted? I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed. Here you go, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_wub/Lazarus It only includes deletions by one admin so far, but I plan to add more tomorrow. Also useful things like google cached versions for non-admins. Pete / the wub ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/22 David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com: Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done harm by being there. [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a good example member of this group. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/22 David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com: If this does not meet the standard for disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, I do not know what would. Evidently. WP:POINT is about doing something you *don't* want to have happen to make a point, not about doing things spectacularly in general. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:59 AM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done harm by being there. You probably won't be getting that evidence, since the way the policy is in place, the burden of proof isn't on the person removing the content-- it's on the person adding it. That's not just how BLP works, but the verifiability policy as well, and that's a Good Thing(tm). If people want to add content to Wikipedia, they ought to be providing sources for it. We're somewhat lax about enforcing that when it's inanimate objects, but we aren't lax about it when we're talking about real people. That seems to me to be the right balance. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/22 Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com: You probably won't be getting that evidence, since the way the policy is in place, the burden of proof isn't on the person removing the content-- it's on the person adding it. That's not just how BLP works, but the verifiability policy as well, and that's a Good Thing(tm). If people want to add content to Wikipedia, they ought to be providing sources for it. We're somewhat lax about enforcing that when it's inanimate objects, but we aren't lax about it when we're talking about real people. That seems to me to be the right balance. It does really suck that this is trashing what are mostly likely perfectly okay pieces that people put work into. This needs to be acknowledged and we need to work to alleviate the suck from it. the_wub's list will help recover stuff, and hopefully things will proceed in a less axe-crazy manner henceforth. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: a) 'challenging' and removing any references b) instantly deleting the article for being unreferenced In theory, an administrator could do this. Technically. This did happen at least once in the leadup to all this. And, at least one case of a referenced article, which was in the category anyways apparently by accident (not maliciously) getting removed in the removal sprees. The removals were sloppy. That helped kick off the protests at the beginning. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com:
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Apoc 2400 apoc2...@gmail.com wrote:
Is there anyone here who can do something about this before it becomes an
even bigger wheel-war?
Yes, the Arbcom has done something about it. Specifically, it has
patted them on the head and said, 'good job, guys! Just be quieter in
the future'.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Motions
Excellent and proper, per BLP. This isn't actually an IAR case, IMO -
it's clear by BLP.
The Committee hereby proclaims an amnesty for all editors who may
have overstepped the bounds of policy in this matter. Everyone is
Good one.
our project. The Committee recommends, in particular, that a request
for comments be opened to centralize discussion on the most efficient
way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy on
biographies of living people.
Yep.
Policy formation and change on English Wikipedia has been
fundamentally *broken* for about four or five years. Finally, enough
prions have accumulated to demonstrate actual symptoms of severely
advanced Mad Cow Disease.
Fortunately, we have enough sensible stuff encrusted in with the
prions that when the ArbCom have a mind to sensible action, they have
the tools they need.
Translation: BLP now means anything whatsoever unsourced is evil to
be burned with fire; anything is justified in pursuit of previous;
I believe that's what BLP meant in 2006, but I was just writing the
policy draft, so don't mind me.
IAR
now means flagrant admin abuses are justified if you can cite
imaginary bits of a policy, and other admins have to sit there and
take it;
admin abuses of users or of policies that BLP overrides? 'Cos it is,
and was always intended to be, a trump card.
silent mass deletions are now an acceptable admin tactic.
That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first. Perhaps a
{{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
I particularly enjoy the 'innocuous statements' point. It's
reminiscent of the best Cold War paranoia: your friend, your
co-worker, or even your dog could secretly be a Commie agent! No one
is safe! Not even *you*. I have a list of 55 unsourced
innocuous-seeming statements in the [[State Department]]...
I think you're getting a bit silly there.
- d.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first. Perhaps a
{{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
Added to the newly-opened RFC page:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people
- d.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Why don't we just delete Wikipedia? Then we won't have any of these
problems.
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 11:20 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first. Perhaps a
{{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
Added to the newly-opened RFC page:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people
- d.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: Why don't we just delete Wikipedia? Then we won't have any of these problems. * Only if we can delete Citizendium too. - * And Britannica. - * Can we delete Fox News? - ** You cannot kill that which does not live. - * The devs are rolling out a new MediaWiki function to delete the actual subject when the article is deleted, all this may be moot - * I liek mudkipz - - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The Cunctator wrote: Just restored a former prime minister. Hi! I just want to ask a question about this, and since I don't know the article of which you speak, I can't judge its specific merits. This is my personal opinion, and does not reflect that of any organization of which I may be employed. Judging by your contributions, you've been restoring articles and providing sources. Reading your email, I think, The result of deleting this biography was that it get restored and provide sources, that's a good thing, right? The quality of the project goes up one more notch. I don't have an issue with the article of a former prime minister disappearing for a few hours. I want to get a full perspective, however. If you see fault with my interpretation, please help me understand. Cary [[User:Bastique]] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAktYkjAACgkQyQg4JSymDYmQRQCgjyWkQi6++vdf4nIktkSikcIE tS4An2vggN0ZqC5/2DCyCxkNfddT3b3+ =79vS -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com: As I understand it, a bunch of adminstrators deleted a bunch of articles that they felt violated BLP aganist community consensus. Community consensus isn't a valid reason to violate BLP. en:wp is a top-5 website of massive impact, not a personal playground enjoying something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
We're historically prone to having people (especially at CSD) assume that an earlier deletion is itself a strong black mark - if an article was deleted earlier, there must have been a good reason for it, they figure. If, on NPP, I find that an article has been recreated, it's usually either a newbie or a troll (usually an incredibly persistent newbie) copy and pasting *the exact same article* and hitting publish. It's usually a speedily-deleted article. Just a possible explanation for that assumption. Emily On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:51 AM, Andrew Gray wrote: 2010/1/21 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: Just restored a former prime minister. I am carefully staying out of this on all sides (hey, I've got a weekend off, I'm looking forward to some peace), but this flags up one issue I'd really like to see brought up in these discussions: * an emphasis that these are procedural deletions, and not in any way reflective of the merits of the topic of the article. A high proportion of these unsourced-BLPs are going to be on the sorts of topics that no-one will particularly cry to see deleted; drive-by puff pieces and contentless stubs. However, a lot more will simply be bad articles on good topics; significant figures, whose notability even the most exclusionist would agree on, but who we have not yet managed to write a halfway decent article on. (I could name a few, easily!) We're historically prone to having people (especially at CSD) assume that an earlier deletion is itself a strong black mark - if an article was deleted earlier, there must have been a good reason for it, they figure. Whatever comes out of this, it would be good to see something firmly stating that these articles were deleted because they were textually bad, not conceptually bad, and people are encouraged to recreate them as better versions. (and now, back to planning my trip) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Ah, crap. I may need some advice soon. I created an article some years back on a living person. Not that long after he contacted me and asked if he could use the article as his official IMDB biog. I asked the community (since I was worried about licensing issues - IMDB controls content placed on its site), and was assured that it would be fine. However, it's hardly referenced at all (thinks were different back then). It *could* be, since everything on there I found online... I just can't be bothered right now. It has very recently been tagged as 'unreferenced'. Now, presumably if I use the IMDB biog as a reference I bet I will be done for copyvio, even though our article came *first*. So... what to do? Deletion looms. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Arb Com at this point seems very willing to encourage arbitrary action by administrators, when we really need to be be moving in the opposite direction, of requiring greater admin responsibility and care. In this case, care in deleting, to make sure that the material is not sourceable. The mass deletions were some of them done without the least attention to the actual contents of the article and the likeliness of easy sourcing, and arb com is currently saying that this does not matter. and that our prior rule that this sort of deletion only applied to deleterious material has been superseded, on the basis that there might be something hidden--a proposition for which there is not a single example. What we do need is a sensible way of dealing with the problem in a way that encourages the preservation of what content can be preserved, and this is being discussed at the current RfC for BLP. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com wrote: Community consensus isn't a valid reason to violate BLP. en:wp is a top-5 website of massive impact, not a personal playground enjoying something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so. True. Emily On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:50 AM, David Gerard wrote: 2010/1/21 Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com: As I understand it, a bunch of adminstrators deleted a bunch of articles that they felt violated BLP aganist community consensus. Community consensus isn't a valid reason to violate BLP. en:wp is a top-5 website of massive impact, not a personal playground enjoying something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so. - 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 ___ 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 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com: Now, presumably if I use the IMDB biog as a reference I bet I will be done for copyvio, even though our article came *first*. So... what to do? Deletion looms. Explain the situation on the talk page. Basically, you wrote the text on IMDB as well. There is nothing wrong with this. As a reference, it's now basically a first-party reference - it's a bio approved by the subject. Not enough for third-party, but good for e.g. resolving innocuous, etc. If it ends up deleted, hey. See if you can recreate from third-party sources with the approved bio as is usable. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 6:05 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Explain the situation on the talk page. Basically, you wrote the text on IMDB as well. There is nothing wrong with this. As a reference, it's now basically a first-party reference - it's a bio approved by the subject. Not enough for third-party, but good for e.g. resolving innocuous, etc. If it ends up deleted, hey. See if you can recreate from third-party sources with the approved bio as is usable. I've added a comment to the top of the article text (y'know, one of those that doesn't display until you click 'edit') and also a brief explanation in the 'references' section. I'll put something on the talk page. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
It would be rather good if a list of the deletions arising out of this cull were listed somewhere so we can see the extent and details of the damage/change/improvement. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com: We're historically prone to having people (especially at CSD) assume that an earlier deletion is itself a strong black mark - if an article was deleted earlier, there must have been a good reason for it, they figure. If, on NPP, I find that an article has been recreated, it's usually either a newbie or a troll (usually an incredibly persistent newbie) copy and pasting *the exact same article* and hitting publish. It's usually a speedily-deleted article. Just a possible explanation for that assumption. I'm not saying it's not often warranted - I've done delete-then-delete-then-delete-again a few times myself - but I have had conversations like this in the past: * Hi, you deleted X decent article, why? * It was a recreation of a previously deleted article * ...but that article shouldn't have been CSDed in the first place * yes, but it was a recreation, and ... [lather, rinse, repeat] Getting rid of bad, problematic articles is, on balance, probably a limited good. Making it less daunting to replace them with improved articles - making the end result an *unarguable* good - is something we should be actively looking out for. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Community consensus isn't a valid reason to violate BLP. en:wp is a top-5 website of massive impact, Misuse of our BLP policy or any other is not a valid reasons for admins to make a power grab. not a personal playground enjoying something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so. Your argument that anyone on wikipedia enjoys something akin to parliamentary privilege should be interesting. -- geni ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Okay, I'm slightly inconvenienced, or relieved, due to being currently blocked, so I'll make this suggestion here. Pass it on if you dare be accused of proxying for a blocked editor. Caveat emptor. See WP:PWD. This is a general solution for unreferenced articles, not just BLP, but it would be extremely useful, and even helpful in this case, and shouldn't raise deletionist hackles as much as keeping the articles, and it shouldn't offend the inclusionists nearly as much as deletions, which damage the process by which new and referenced articles evolve. Indeed, this could stimulate the process. Don't delete the articles. PWD suggests not deleting *any* articles that aren't positively identified as being illegal, but never mind that for now, just think about BLP, where policy does suggest removing such articles from the visible encyclopedia. Replace the article text with a notice that an article on the topic existed but was blanked because of policy on Biographies of Living Persons and it was unreferenced. Place a cat tag on the article that allows quick finding of all such articles. Additional information in the new article text would vary with the exact details of what was done and why. Anyone who wants to see the old article can retrieve it from history, particularly if a link is provided. If it is desired to salt these articles, to require a request to an admin to unprotect, then the blanked version is protected. If registered editors are to be allowed to delete, it's semiprotected. Both protections require admin attention to undo, of course. This edit will trigger watchlists, if there is anyone watching the article. It will allow the article to be easily restored whenever someone pays sufficient attention to reference it. If there is semi-salting, it would allow any registered editor to undo it, which would decrease burden on administrators. More sophisticated, if protection is used: a note is place on a Talk page for the article, and the addition of a certain category to the Talk page can bring the situation to the attention of a BLP wikiproject or a bot. How about Articles referenced for review to unsalt. Make it quick, make it easy. All depends on how much effort the project wants to require to undo it. Any illegal text should not just be blanked, it should be removed from history through revision deletion, so that's a separate process (and there should be a flag or category for that). What's described here is to be done by bot, and is legally equivalent for most purposes. Illegal text exists in many BLPs, and is routinely simply taken out, not revision-deleted. As an RCPer, I certainly didn't request revision deletion for all the crap I saw! In fact, for none. So it remains available in history routinely. ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
David Goodman wrote: Arb Com at this point seems very willing to encourage arbitrary action by administrators, when we really need to be be moving in the opposite direction, of requiring greater admin responsibility and care. As far as I know, the principle remains that admins are personally responsible for their use of the tools, and (in effect) put their adminship on the line every time they make discretionary use of those buttons. The traditional principle is to give admins wide discretion, and hold those who make bad use of that discretion to account. Now this is a case where mistakes can be made; those mistakes can also be rectified easily enough by another admin. We'll have to see how it all works out. If my braglist started turning red, and I could see that a particular admin was acting unreasonably, I would discuss the matter (this is also traditional). So I don't really agree here: arbitrary can be the pejorative of discretionary, but we'll have to see to what extent this is for the worse. (I'm babysitting two troublesome BLPs myself, and have failed to get deletions, one via AfD and one via PROD, quite recently. Both have serious problems with reliable sources, and real world enmities. It had not occurrred to me to delete them out of hand. The post I'm replying to is a bit WP:BEANS, therefore.) 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: not a personal playground enjoying something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so. Your argument that anyone on wikipedia enjoys something akin to parliamentary privilege should be interesting. Your reading comprehension appears defective, as I was saying the opposite. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2010/1/21 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: not a personal playground enjoying something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so. Your argument that anyone on wikipedia enjoys something akin to parliamentary privilege should be interesting. Your reading comprehension appears defective, as I was saying the opposite. Well in that case there was no need to try and take action to change things was there? -- geni ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of the general type of BLP deleted? I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed. - 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of the general type of BLP deleted? I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed. It's the usual. Politicians from various countries countries (and the EU). Olympic athletes. Singers who ceased to be significant some time before 1990 or didn't catch on anywhere that spoke english. Oh and a british civil servant although since they were in a fairly senior role in 1906 I doubt they are actually living. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rdm2376/Unwatched http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monie_Captan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Anefal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Vian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Plumb,_Baron_Plumb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoushka -- geni ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
2010/1/21 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of the general type of BLP deleted? I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed. I don't get the entire controversy: is it not the case that only *statements* can be sourced, and not entire articles? Does that not mean that if [[John Seigenthaler]] contained at least one ref at the time, it wouldn't have been affected by this? So why not go the whole hog and delete all BLPs where not every statement is sourced? Michel ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
I agree that either before or now -- indeed, any possible rule, an admin is more likely to succeed with an unchecked deletion if the articles actually turn out to be unsourceable, than if they turn out to be notable and sourceable. But it is reckless to delete without checking first unless immediate harm is apparent, and arb com actually used commend to describe the act of doing just that sort of single-handed thoughtless deletion. I mention an earlier proposal that single handed deletion is only possible for G10 G11 and truly routine administration. At least then there will be a second admin involved. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: David Goodman wrote: Arb Com at this point seems very willing to encourage arbitrary action by administrators, when we really need to be be moving in the opposite direction, of requiring greater admin responsibility and care. As far as I know, the principle remains that admins are personally responsible for their use of the tools, and (in effect) put their adminship on the line every time they make discretionary use of those buttons. The traditional principle is to give admins wide discretion, and hold those who make bad use of that discretion to account. Now this is a case where mistakes can be made; those mistakes can also be rectified easily enough by another admin. We'll have to see how it all works out. If my braglist started turning red, and I could see that a particular admin was acting unreasonably, I would discuss the matter (this is also traditional). So I don't really agree here: arbitrary can be the pejorative of discretionary, but we'll have to see to what extent this is for the worse. (I'm babysitting two troublesome BLPs myself, and have failed to get deletions, one via AfD and one via PROD, quite recently. Both have serious problems with reliable sources, and real world enmities. It had not occurrred to me to delete them out of hand. The post I'm replying to is a bit WP:BEANS, therefore.) 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 ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:21 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: I agree that either before or now -- indeed, any possible rule, an admin is more likely to succeed with an unchecked deletion if the articles actually turn out to be unsourceable, than if they turn out to be notable and sourceable. But it is reckless to delete without checking first unless immediate harm is apparent, and arb com actually used commend to describe the act of doing just that sort of single-handed thoughtless deletion. I mention an earlier proposal that single handed deletion is only possible for G10 G11 and truly routine administration. At least then there will be a second admin involved. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, but there's some value in seeing this from the perspective of your opponent. I would label myself as an inclusionist if I would label myself as anything, but I think the inclusionist defense against deleting bad articles (You should be improving it, not deleting it!) is really not where we want to go, because this is a charge that could be made in either direction. For instance, in this case, some of these unsourced BLPs have been sitting there unsourced for months! (or longer). So then, maybe one way for you to put a stop to this is to go into the unsourced BLPs and find some sources for them? If you can't do that, or won't because the sources are too hard to find, then that's a nagging source of doubt that the sources will never be forthcoming and therefore that the articles really should be deleted. But this is an argument that inclusionists always make to anyone who tries to delete an article that is missing something crucial -- they put the burden on other people, rather than themselves. So as an admin who is looking out on a sea of unsourced BLPs, most of them harmless but some of them maybe very, very harmful -- it might not be very persuasive to hear from someone that, You can't delete these articles, you can only improve them painstakingly one at a time-- it's YOUR responsibility to fix them, not the person who originally uploaded the content. But I won't help you of course, though I will accuse you of deletionism if you try to fix this. Surely, there's a way we can cooperate about this-- and that has to be adding the sources ourselves. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Ryan Delaney wrote: snip But this is an argument that inclusionists always make to anyone who tries to delete an article that is missing something crucial -- they put the burden on other people, rather than themselves. snip Yes, there's something to this line of argument. Why are PRODs not being used to clean up very neglected BLPs? Presumably because (i) the PROD would fail, but (ii) the failure, either as a take-down of the tagging or an admin rejection, would not result in a clean-up of the article. So, while we are discussing processes and mechanisms, how to put the onus on someone who untags a BLP that has been prodded to make an improvement in sourcing (when the concern is poor referencing)? I think no one has yet mentioned that a bot is reminding some of us (no way to know how far this has got) that we have in the past created BLPs that have remained unreferenced. If this bot has now done a full pass, it would explain to some extent why these deletions are happening. (Could be a complete coincidence, but I doubt it.) It might be technically possible to have a BLP-PROD (one of the ideas being kicked around) such that the untaggers were logged, and prompted later in the case that there were still no references. In any case we do need to get off the OMG track to thinking about tweaking current methods. 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The Cunctator wrote: Just restored a former prime minister. Hi! I just want to ask a question about this, and since I don't know the article of which you speak, I can't judge its specific merits. This is my personal opinion, and does not reflect that of any organization of which I may be employed. Judging by your contributions, you've been restoring articles and providing sources. Reading your email, I think, The result of deleting this biography was that it get restored and provide sources, that's a good thing, right? The quality of the project goes up one more notch. I don't have an issue with the article of a former prime minister disappearing for a few hours. I want to get a full perspective, however. If you see fault with my interpretation, please help me understand. Cary That argument sounds like a broken window fallacy. Cunctator has been irked and annoyed, and driven that much closer to leaving the project forever. And he can only experience that joy because he's an admin. A regular contributor will have different reactions. When he hasn't been driven away already. And what benefit was there *really*? I see a lot of mindless fetishism of sourcing here, but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in 1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? Is it better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be relieved? Speaking from personal experience on the _Evangelion_ articles: I have on multiple occasions spent hours or weeks tracking down some fact widely accepted amongst Eva fans academic commentators to its original source and found it. And then felt a sick hollow feeling as I realize that all I have done is waste my life satisfying RS standards, when the fans and professors knew it all along because they trust each other and their forebears and can see for themselves the consilience of all those commonly accepted facts. Sourcing is orthogonal to quality. I would trade a thousand useless citations for a single good administrator, or heck, even editor. -- gwern ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Gwern Branwen wrote: I see a lot of mindless fetishism of sourcing here, Oh, and mindless fetishsim about content, too. Let's remember that there is a definite mission, which is to write a reference work. It is not a new idea that encyclopedic works should cite their sources. but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in 1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? It is different. It is certainly not worse. The information about where to find the information has been added. There is a certain 'presentism' about the argument, even though you've chosen a date before most Wikipedians were born. It is (a) not obvious that information about marriages is undisputed (one of my problem BLPs had just this issue about whether someone was a wife or not, and (b) not obvious that you can always find a published source for births, deaths and marriages. Is it better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be relieved? Speaking from personal experience on the _Evangelion_ articles: I have on multiple occasions spent hours or weeks tracking down some fact widely accepted amongst Eva fans academic commentators to its original source and found it. And then felt a sick hollow feeling as I realize that all I have done is waste my life satisfying RS standards, when the fans and professors knew it all along because they trust each other and their forebears and can see for themselves the consilience of all those commonly accepted facts. So you have made available to 300 million-odd readers of Wikipedia facts that were available to the cognoscenti, now in a way that does not involve trust. I would probably not spend time in such quantities fact-checking mathematics, where I have an idea of reputations in the first place; but I seem to be doing plenty of fact-checking right now in an area of history where I have little background and don't know whether the scholarship of what I'm working on is cast-iron. I believe scholars traditionally got these blues (as well as piles, perhaps not unconnected). 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:03 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
2010/1/21 Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com:
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Apoc 2400 apoc2...@gmail.com wrote:
silent mass deletions are now an acceptable admin tactic.
That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first. Perhaps a
{{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
- d.
Agreed with David G. on this point. The general sentiment to keep up
with BLPs is ok, I think; but most of the time sources can be found
for most bios. (And yes, I do make an occasional hobby of sourcing
random BLPs -- it's hard work and takes at least a good hour or two
per bio to do properly, and that's with access to a full university
library). Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).
But unless you dive into the categories, it's a little hard to get a
sense of the scale involved here. There's 51,000+ articles in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs, dating to
2006; at my hour-a-bio estimate for decent research, that's 2125 days
or 5.8 continuous years of labor by one very tired librarian. Even if
100 people are working on it, that's still two months of 8-hour days
for each person. Since even that seems pretty undoable, I can
understand the impulse to do something with immediate and visible
consequences.
And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. You can correct subtle
mistakes, misunderstandings, and sometimes errors of fact in the
process of sourcing (I sourced a bio the other day where the husband
of the person involved had died in between when the bio was created
and when I worked on it; someone has to change is married to..
eventually and that's not the kind of thing you want to guess at). Not
to mention all the implications for readers, the larger project, etc.
etc. But personally I pick and choose, and only work on people whose
lives I find interesting -- I give the footballers, the olympians, and
the pop stars a miss. Those seem to be the bulk of BLPs, though, and
it seems like there are ought to be a good way to source those en
masse, maybe through the relevant wikiprojects.
-- phoebe
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: snip And what benefit was there *really*? I see a lot of mindless fetishism of sourcing here, but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in 1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? Is it better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be relieved? snip This sounds a bit like the other stuff exists argument. That is, we might argue that there are BLPs out there that have one inconsequential citation whereas the rest of the biography (that may contain lions, tigers, and bears) is uncited. That's true, but in this case we are picking low-hanging fruit first. This is not an argument that we shouldn't delete totally unsourced BLPs. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Agreed with David G. on this point. The general sentiment to keep up with BLPs is ok, I think; but most of the time sources can be found for most bios. (And yes, I do make an occasional hobby of sourcing random BLPs -- it's hard work and takes at least a good hour or two per bio to do properly, and that's with access to a full university library). Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek). You're right that these are all very bad problems. Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many other similar snafus. Just sayin'. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 3:54 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@yahoo.com.au wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communic...@gmail.com wrote: Remember also that The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff Cool Hand Luke Which people don't have the chance to when people randomly delete them compared to going though either speedy and prod and they have time to work on it, and discuss the matter at hand. -Peachey Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Pure Wiki Deletion. - causa sui ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
It is not that 80% of the problem was the totally unsourced articles, and we are objecting because the entire problem was not dealt with. More likely, it's that only 10 or 20% of the problem was dealt with, or less. Wikipedia articles, including but not limited to BLPs, are full of unsourced or marginally sourced statements that are truly dubious, or pure opinion. Some will be harmful to the subject of the article, but many more to those who want good information. on the subject, which is actually just as bad. What we have seen is an attempt at solving problems in the manner of the proverbial drunk looking for his lost wallet under the lamp-post because there's better light there. The discussion above is full of examples that any reasonable person would want to at least do one quick check on before deleting. Given that we accept Olympic athletes as notable, any plausible article claiming someone to be such is worth the check. I resent the charge above that those of us who object to the proceedings are not willing to do the work ourselves. Speaking not just for myself but for almost all of the other people who are concerning themselves, we certainly do source as much as we can. What we object to is other people not helping, because a few of us cannot do it alone. I know I have gone into that backlog of unsourced BLPs looking for a few articles to work on that seem worth the trouble. It's not effective for one person to throw out whatever he can and another to rescue--it is much better for the same person to do both, because the same search will do -- and to facilitate the removals is one of the two reasons I asked for adminship. While half the admins at Wikipedia have been discussing this in various places, the backlog at speedy is building up to a level rarely seen on a weekday. Some of those really do need to be removed, much more than the old BLPs. (Yes, I've been trying to be there also). I am now facing the decision of what work I will need to not do in order to go back and rescue the worst among the bad deletions already done. I've a suggestion here: the people who wished to make a point about the problem have certainly made a point. Now let them--they themselves--prove the sincerity of their efforts by retracing their steps and seeing what they can rescue. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ 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] Administrator coup / mass deletions
Apparently there is some kind of coup on English Wikipedia where a large group of administrators have decided that since the community disagrees with them, they will use their admin powers to override consensus and policy. At least that is what they seem to claim it is. The community is incapable of such a conversation and decision. --MZMcBride Hence my actions. Kevin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Rdm2376_starting_mass_deletions Specifically it is about mass-deleting articles about living people for the sole reason of lacking sources. Is there anyone here who can do something about this before it becomes an even bigger wheel-war? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
