User talk:Dronkle/Archives/2023/July

It.wiki 2

dear Dronkle, i'm here to address a situation that for too long went on. i was often involved in hot topics in talk pages (project discussions, deletion procedures) in a way that some admins considered to be inappropriate [1] and often discouraged me to reply to comments, stating that i "reply too much" (you can find all evidence on my talk page on itwiki) even tho no rules estabilish a limit on how much can you reply, the only limit is personal attacks. i never personally attacked anybody nor had aggressive behaviour, all i did was citing sources and guidelines in discussions, even in some "bold" ways, that somebody apparently didn't like. (you can find all in my contribution) The syop Borgil decided to ban me for 2 days, which i did not contest, even if i didn't agree with that. however, after that i had a discussion with another user, Windino, the admin Actormusicus decided to ban me for 3 months for abitudine di rintuzzare tutti ripresa immediatamente e in toni supponenti, recidiva inaccettabile (en:habit of brushing everyone off resumed immediately and in opinionated tones, reoffending unacceptable) triggered by this comment [2] as he stated here [3] my tones were, according to him, inappropriate. i find the ban too harsh and i ask for a more exhaustive explainatiom for it, and that's why i'm posting this here since on itwiki there's not much you can do after a ban. they're saying that i have bad tones when they say something like this [4] If you want to compromise yourself in matters much bigger: than the little toys on the cancellation of the generals or fascist songs, and with serious consequences, you are free, I don't care at all, but personally I don't recommend it. To protect you, your users and your serene contribution to the project. i don't think i violated the Ucoc, https://wikimediafoundation.org/advocacy/#3.1_%E2%80%93_Harassment , but as you noticed the admins on itwiki are doing it constantly by harassing editors in order to discourage them from editing in a way that doesn't follow the organization (as instance two victims are Super Nabla and Potenza2021, and there's plenty of example of problematic admins). at some point there was a page https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Amministratori_problematici where you could report admin abuses but it got closed. they created a system where they can do all they want without ever facing consequences. feel free to post my comment on Wikimedia or wikipediocracy, or to the stewards. thank you in advance, i hope you have a good day Luix710 (talk) 00:36, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Luix,

It does sound as if the problems with it.wiki run quite deep. As I said in my comment above, it requires people who understand Italian to organise yourselves. And also it would require people to be able to see beyond whatever content disputes they have and work together. I know that Danieleb and Gitz have different view from you about what should be in the Orsini article. They've both posted on Wikipediocracy. Would you be able to ally yourself with them when it came to looking at how to change how it.wiki is run?--Dronkle (talk) 08:50, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

One of the many shortcomings of it.wiki is that they lack a procedure for appealing blocks. If you are blocked, you can only privately (via email) ask for riconsideration to the blocking admin or for review to another admin of your choice (the latter option is always doomed to failure). On other comparable projects (like es.wiki, fr.wiki and +40 wikipedias), blocked users can appeal the block by including a template on their own user talk page; that initiates a review process that is settled by an uninvolved admin. As consequence, even if the blocked user doesn't agree with the outcome, which is often the case, they can at least accept it as a legitimate decision that was taken by someone who is accountable. Nothing like this happens on it.wiki. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 11:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

A lot of it is also about visibility. There are plenty of admins here who are not very good at being sensitive to other users. And even when a process is open, you still have things end up with situations like Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong case where a user is apparently quitting because he has been demoted from being an administrator and is elsewhere threatening to be disruptive. The whole set-up at Wikipedia is much more about punishing users who are seen to be out of line than rewarding the best. But at least here people are much freer to disagree than it seems is the case on it.wiki. Dronkle (talk) 11:29, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

it.wiki

Hi Dronkle, sorry for reading so late your message. I do not have an account on Wikipediocracy and I am not really aware of how many people actually read it. I might create one if you think it's worth it. But wouldn't an open discussion on meta be a more appropriate approach? I think the Italian community would have plenty of examples of admin abuses in the it.wiki project, although it is such a well trained system and it works with such small and distributed steps that it is difficult to understand without taking the time to read many pages. But I'll give you another example which has to do with BLP, since this was one of the points in the Orsini case.

Silvana De Mari is an Italian writer with a page on it.wiki since 2006 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvana_De_Mari and on en.wiki since 2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvana_De_Mari

She took controversial positions over the years on different subjects and these were recorded in her pages. But no one would question that she is mainly known as a writer (otherwise, her opinions would have never been even heard). During the covid pandemic she opposed vaccinations and so in Sep 2021 it was time for admin Ignisdelavega to change the first paragraph and make clear that she is mainly known as a conspiracy theorist: https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silvana_De_Mari&diff=prev&oldid=123019663 Of course at some point that was also exported to en.wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silvana_De_Mari&diff=next&oldid=1142177074 by some mysterious Aspidistrastillflying, check his contributions.

In this case nobody tried to fix it, but believe me, it is known to any expert it.wiki user that it would be a waste of time and a probable source of problems. Among it.wiki admins, Ignisdelavega is in charge of making sure that wikipedia complies with the "official truths".

Take this other example, cloud seeding. It is known in any place in and out the web, and in essentially all pages in wikipedia, as a weather control or weather modification technique. Ignisdelavega of course does not want this, it might sound as chemtrail or something like that. So, after the topic of cloud seeding became hot in Italy a few weeks ago because someone in mainstream media questioned the technique in relation to a flood (see the number of page visualizations https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/pageviews/?project=it.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2020-04-09&end=2023-07-08&pages=Inseminazione_delle_nuvole), some "mysterious" IP removed this definition (it was "climate modification") from the page https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inseminazione_delle_nuvole&diff=prev&oldid=133844741 Another IP reverts this edit https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inseminazione_delle_nuvole&diff=next&oldid=133844741 which, based on the it.wiki policies, would imply a discussion is required before attempting the edit again. But here comes Ignisdelavega ready to enforce it https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inseminazione_delle_nuvole&diff=next&oldid=133845264 A discussion starts, with the second IP asking in the worst case to use "weather modification" if "climate" is not correct https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Inseminazione_delle_nuvole but of course Ignisdelavega will never accept it, he can go on forever asking proofs and evidence and then neglecting them. When it becomes clear that Ignisdelavega does not even (literally) know ho to spell what he is talking about https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussione:Inseminazione_delle_nuvole&diff=prev&oldid=133862710 another admin Shivanarayana comes in to help https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussione:Inseminazione_delle_nuvole&diff=prev&oldid=133862731 reverting the comment (in a talk page!!) and blocking the IP so that the guy cannot answer anymore. The guy does not even give up, writes the comment more politely and asks for help https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussioni_utente:Shivanarayana&diff=prev&oldid=133907978 but of course never receives any. The page will remain like that, as Ignisdelavega wants it to be.

Different admins have different roles, but they always help each other when needed. Ignisdelavega has to preserve the official truth, Vito is like (or actually might very well really be) sort of spectre agent with his own eternal database of IP addresses of users (see CU abuses), Gianfranco usually comes to clear when there is some crime scene, see the end of LuxetUmbra after CU abuses were made public, or see for example how much work he had to do with the Orsini case (including making sure that it becomes as difficult as possible for readers to figure out that Argeste, the admin who added some of the worst parts of the Orsini page, is actually the same user also named nicolabel and member of the board of the Italian wikimedia branch). As I said, there are hundreds of such examples. The it.wiki is literally owned by a gang of admins who have over the years created a stronghold which is impossible for other users to break. Only WMF could eventually do something about this, but I have the impression that they know this very well and that there might be very strong reasons why they will not do anything (I mean, have you got an idea of how much a government can know about citizens if there is control on who tries to write what in Wikipedia??)

Please feel free to move this and my previous comments on some page on meta if you think this is possible, or to cite this in any discussion on Wikipediocracy. If you want to discuss more please let me know in this page, I can monitor it once in a while. 167.179.50.167 (talk) 22:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi and Thanks for your reply.

What you say about the problems with Italian Wikipedia fits with what I understand from Gitz. Looking at my global account, I've only made a handful of edits to projects where English is not the primary language and those only using languages I studied at school. Italian is not one of those languages. I depend on Google Translate to make what sense I can of things on it.wiki. The ability of such tools to pick up nuances of language is somewhat limited which means that I can only ever have a rough impression of what is being said there. If it.wiki is ever to be sorted out, it requires people who are more familiar with Italian than me to organise themselves.

As for how you would do that, I don't actually know how much the broader Wikimedia movement can force a delinquent or rogue project to change. It's clear from the commentary on the Signpost article that there is an element of the administrator body there that would portray anything coming from people who are mainly en.wiki users as members of a larger wiki thinking that they have the right to bully smaller wikis.

En.wiki has its own history of problems. That is why a long time ago some critics formed the now defunct Wikipedia Review. When disputes arose between some members and the administrator of that site, Wikipediocracy was formed as a second criticism site. It has become semi-respectable with en.wiki users and has a number of current and former arbitrators active there and did have a steward too. Some ultras among Wikipedia critics do not like this and they have formed the much smaller Wikipedia Sucks site.

Critics of it.wiki really need to get organised themselves. I'm not one of the administrators of Wikipediocracy, but I suspect that they would be happy to host more discussion of it.wiki's problems but these discussions would probably have to be in English. In the end you would need somewhere where critics of it.wiki could organise themselves in Italian. I'm aware that Luca Poma has appeared on a television programme about Wikipedia and has written a couple of pages about Wikipedia on his website. However, he has also been globally banned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Although he is an expert at gaining publicity, critics would have to think carefully about how closely to work with him.

I wish you luck--Dronkle (talk) 08:40, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if change could come from above (the WMF) or below (the Italian community of editors), but I agree that it could never come from en.wiki as such. In any case, a website like Wikipediocracy in Italian would be a precious resource for any prospect of change. On it.wiki, it is simply impossible to have a honest debate about policy. It is telling that community discussions at the local Village pump (the "Bar") have almost entirely ceased: in 2010-2013, there were on average between 30 to 40 discussions per months, in 2022-2023 they are between 10 to 12, that is, -66%. This is a catastrophic performance, the sign of a real problem, so having an external space for meaningful discussions would be important. In the past they had "WikiPerle", which was not bad, I think, but it was not a forum but rather a blog, and it ended its activities in 2017.

P.S.

I couldn't link to WikiPerle/Perle complottiste because the site is registered on Wikimedia's global blacklist... wow. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 11:02, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Is it appropriate that the following page be removed immediately by WikiBayer?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:It.wiki.watch

What is the right procedure to start a discussion on meta? Anyone interested please send a message to it^DOT^wiki^DOT^watchATprotonmail.com It.wiki.watch (talk) 20:48, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

July music

July songs

my story today

Nice to see activity on this talk again! - I began a photo diary, and am up to 28 June - click on songs if you want to explore. I also write my daily "story". - My story today is very personal: the DYK appeared on Wikipedia's 15th birthday, and describes a concert I sang. I was requested to translate the bio into German for a memorial concert ... - see background, and we talked about life and death. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:02, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I fondly remember that you helped me with the Rheingau Musik Festival article, - I heard 6 of so far 47 concerts, and all were interesting. - fireworks on the Rhine pictured on 1 July, but the real stars were sun and moon. I love today's story. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:03, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

On today's Main page, you can find a cantata that Bach first performed 300 years ago, and an iconic saxophonist from East Germany. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:03, 18 July 2023 (UTC)