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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Your removal of talk page comments on Drmies' talkpage

Hello. I noticed that you, perhaps without meaning to do so, removed comments made by other users on Drmies' talk page, without explaining why in the edit summary, so I reverted your edit. Please use edit summaries in the future, and explain why you do things, especially when you do things that are normally not done, such as removing content from the talk pages of other users. Thank you. Thomas.W talk 12:23, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just looking at that revert. No, I didn't mean to remove anything. I wonder how I managed to do that. My comment wasn't even very important. Sorry! ,Wil (talk) 12:27, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
@Thomas.W: I might be misreading that edit, but I don't see how I could have removed those selected comments and changed the text in one comment accidentally. I must be missing something here. Do you see what I might have done based on the diff? I don't want to do this again. ,Wil (talk) 13:03, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
To be honest I have no idea what happened. Probably a bug somewhere in the Wiki software. Yngvadottir restored your comments on Drmies' talk page, BTW, before I had time to do it. Thomas.W talk 13:12, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, there is a bug that might explain this, although it usually happens on highly trafficked noticeboards - instead of getting an edit conflict notice, someone finds they've simply removed intervening changes without realizing. They do say User talk:Drmies is AN/I version 2.0 :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 13:17, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Current high levels of activity there appear related to some football competition that's going on. I wonder what effect it will have on the number of page watchers :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:30, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

@Thomas.W: Do you mind if I remove these comments about User talk:Drmies? My page is quickly entering TL;DR territory, and I'd like to take the out-of-date stuff off. Thanks. ,Wil (talk) 03:12, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

You may remove threads from your own talkpage if you wish, but an alternative is to archive the completed threads. There are also bots that do that automatically if you wish. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:25, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
Welcome, NYB, and thanks for the tip! I have to look over the specific behavior of the bots. Do you have any good links that would point me in the right direction? The last thing I want to do is cut off an interesting conversation, but I can see that removing older conversations like this is not going to be a workable solution. Also, it goes against my programmer instincts to have an archive and a change log at the same time. :) Any advice/help on this would be greatly appreciated. ,Wil (talk) 03:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
See WP:ARCHIVE. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I suggest you skip the bots and go for OneClickArchiver instead. It lets you archive threads when you want to archive them, even out of order, and not when a bot decides to do so. Just remember to read the documentation carefully when you install and configure it. Thomas.W talk 15:49, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Hello! Thanks for being available. Excuse my bluntness in intruding but you are an influential public figure who seems not to be getting too much attention right now, and I felt like I could approach you.

While your attention is still relatively easy to be had, I would like to express my view that Wikipedia is many things to many people.

My attention is always relatively easy to be had! You might have to wait a few days- or a few months in your case :) - before I answer, tho. I'm coming back to your comments with a bit more context; I may be able to understand your perspective a bit better now. ,Wil (talk) 06:12, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Since I edit health content on Wikipedia, I feel that the Wikimedia Foundation is a health organization. Since Wikipedia is a highly consulted source of health information, and probably the most consulted single source of health information, I feel that the Wikimedia Foundation is one of the world's most significant health organizations with influence and potential equal to any other.

Of course I worry about the quality of Wikipedia's health information, but to do outreach and education, there are two important factors - the content and delivery. Lots of other organizations have better content than Wikipedia, but no one else delivers it like Wikipedia. I wish that there could be a reconciliation between the organizations with content and organizations like Wikipedia which can deliver it, because I feel that it would cost much fewer resources to raise the quality of Wikipedia than it would to make unpopular high-quality content more popular.

@Blueraspberry: Do you have any ideas on how we might do this?

What I say for health applies to anything, however, health is urgent to me and this is also a resource-rich sector which invests huge amounts in delivery of information and consistently comes up short.

@Blueraspberry: Well, few subjects on Wikipedia have the potential to impact the wellbeing of a reader as much as our health articles. I think this is one area were misinformation is most likely to be dangerous. Your concerns seem to be about how we can best help those in suffering and avoid prolonging it or worse. Wikipedia is one of the top results in a Google search for any disorder or disease, so I agree that this area may warrant more attention than others. Let's face it, misinformation on a health-oriented article has the potential to influence a life-or-death decision, and I believe we need to craft these articles with this sobering thought in mind. ,Wil (talk) 06:12, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

To the extent that you can be persuaded, I would like to convince you that the Wikimedia Foundation can be a leading voice in global health, and that health should be a part of any WMF plans for development.

Pleased to meet you and thanks for your attention. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

  • I don't know about influential, but you can always approach me no matter how much other people happen to be paying attention. :) I've seen some traffic on the wikimedia-l list about accuracy and quality of medical information on Wikipedia. I'm a rather new member of the community, and I'm still learning about the size and nature of the quality issues behind your concerns and others'. Do you have any examples of health content where Wikipedia could be improved, perhaps by working closer with established medical/health organizations? FWIW, I don't have any special sway over Lila or WMF on this or any other Wikimedia matter, but it's possible that others may eventually start paying attention to me. ;) , 14:41, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
  • As it turns out, others have started to pay attention to me and this page, so I'd like to hear more about your concerns and what you think might be done to address them. If this isn't the best place to express these concerns for you, just tell me where to go and I will follow. I want to hear what you have to say. ,Wil (talk) 06:12, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
  • FWIW, I've started working on the article for ADHD, as it greatly affects my life. I have noticed that there is a more conservative approach to changes there as opposed to other articles I've edited, which seems appropriate. I'm proposing a section on the benefits of ADHD on the talk page. What do you think about an amateur like me with an arguable COI editing such articles? I'm curious; although I can only imagine positive outcomes from such a section, I'm not entirely sure that I should be the person driving it. ,Wil (talk) 06:12, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I am not sure. Works of the US Federal government are PD-licensed and the NIH has the NIH Public Access Policy, so this is being explored in the US government. I feel like the UK government is at least as progressive in intent even if the licensing is not in place now. Still, there are barriers like actually establishing a measure of how many people access health information online and where they are currently going. Some sources do say that Wikipedia is most popular. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
@Trevj: Is there any digital format of these data stores that might be used? More importantly, as both of you illustrate here, is all data appropriate for all regions, or is it necessary to import data from each region and present it separately? Not surprisingly, the example that I'm most familiar with is psychological diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V, which is most commonly used in the USA, as opposed to ICD-10, which is most commonly used in Europe. To be honest, I don't know what is used in other parts of the world. For the disorder that I'm most familiar with, ADHD, the diagnostic criteria differ significantly between these to medical texts, theoretically leading to a significant difference in rates of diagnosis. How would we write a single ADHD article that describes the vital symptoms of ADHD for both Americans and Europeans in this case? ,Wil (talk) 06:25, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi. It's not an area with which I'm familiar. My editing instinct suggests that it should be explained (if this isn't already the case) that criteria differ, followed by (sourced) prose on such common criteria. The regional criteria could then be covered within a separate section. I'm sure that informed members of WP:MED and WP:NEURO would happily discuss this at Talk:Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. -- Trevj (talk · contribs) 15:02, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
Good to see you again, Trevj! I'm already pretty active on that talk page trying to put together an "advantages of ADHD" (yes, gotta work on the name) section. User:Risker suggested I go up a level or two to the med project. It sounds like a lot of people think that's the way to go, so I'll try that. With a brief glance at the article, it looks like there is far more coverage of DSM than ICD in the diagnosis section. I wonder if I can find a diagnosed ADHDer and/or a psychiatrist from Europe to help with this. The viewpoints on this disorder are surprisingly different on either side of the Atlantic. In any case, thanks for the tip! Stay in touch. ,Wil (talk) 05:55, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
All health content on Wikipedia needs a lot of work from multiple unrelated health organizations, who in turn should encourage their members to consider Wikipedia. The precedent which I am seeking is for any one health organization to say, "We used to keep all of our content proprietary and non-free. We put it on Wikipedia, and from that point, we reached a new and greater audience, the quality of our message was not compromised, and the costs of our doing this were manageable. Using Wikipedia as a communication channel helped us achieve our nonprofit mission to do health education outreach." Because of lack of social and technological infrastructure, it currently is not possible to explain to individuals or organizations the circumstances under which their resource investment in Wikipedia will be likely to reach a significant audience while avoiding having their message corrupted. I myself as a Wikipedian look at Wikipedia page views and am persuaded, and I feel that good content well-managed on Wikipedia tends to persist, but no external authority has yet established this. I would like to meet others who would plan whatever research or confirmation is necessary for everyone to be able to say, "Wikipedia ranks here in terms of traffic as compared to the rest, and here in terms of quality as compared to other options." If that were to happen, then organizations with an education strategy less efficient than developing Wikipedia could be more easily persuaded to develop Wikipedia. More than anything else I want medical schools to be comfortable with this.
I am telling you this because of the areas in which the Wikimedia Foundation might have growth potential, health education is among the larger and less explored sectors. You say you are not influential, but from my perspective, you have a relationship with a person who might have more influence on the accessibility of health information in some countries than that country's own head of state. I have nothing particular to ask of you except to say if you ever feel fanciful to talk about health content, please let the group at WikiProject Medicine entertain your thoughts or provide whatever feedback you might like. Again, it is nice to meet you, and thanks for hearing me out. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Sandcastles

Morning Wllm. While reverting vandalism on Wikipedia the other day, I noticed User:Hobit#There is a beach with children building sandcastles. My assumption is that it is there as a metaphor for how behaviour, structure and emphasis on Wikipedia have changed over the years. My assumption could be wrong. It is interesting in its ambiguity as to whether this is (entirely) a good thing or not.

I thought it might provide an interesting complement to more precise descriptions of what or who is wrong and must be changed. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:29, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks. It reads a lot like a poem to me. What analogies do you see between this metaphor and the Wikipedia community? ,Wil 05:25, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
    • I also like that poem, Demiurge. Wikipedia has followed this course, or at least the largest projects have: starting with an open sandbox where anyone can come and create something that they find interesting or fun; it could be different from what others have done, it could be half-finished. It is play, and the results are charming and carefree and beautiful and range from the run down to the casual to the highly complex and amazing. Then over time more people come to see the amazing works, and the lesser or more casual works are allowed to fade, or actively torn down. Newcomers who want an open sandbox to play and create are asked to do so 'somewhere else' (in WP's case: in a Draft namespace, in one's own User namespace, &c) so as not to detract from the Art and Sculpture that others are creating. Fewer children come by, and more serious artists. The result is less full of chaotic life and more full of elaborate productions, and there is much more time spent on criticism and evaluation and refinement, and on adherence to [Quality] standards. – SJ + 00:17, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
      • Hobit is, like me, somewhat inclusionistic in outlook. I've likened editors who nominate for deletion without producing content to kids kicking over sandcastles. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:27, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
      • SJ, What do you think about the declining number of contributors? Is this a metric that the WMF should be focussed on? Also, Cas Liber, I don't know who hobit is. ,Wil (talk) 23:56, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
        • Absolutely. Having not only a thriving community of contribution, but one that is regularly renewed with new waves and communities of practice, is key to sustaining our current model of collaboration (considering how poor our collaborative tools are. We chose to build community and knowledgebase rather than detailed technical tools, and have only recently started rethinking this.) – SJ + 23:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
        • Hobit (talk · contribs) is who wrote the sandcastles segment at the beginning of this thread (whose talk page was linked to, that is) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
        • As an addendum, the concerns are there are not enough "serious artists" coming on board, and many are driven away by antagonistic behaviour. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Just a note that I'm pleased others like and understand that. I'm no poet (engineer by trade) so writing something like that is a stretch for me. Thanks all, it makes me really happy! Hobit (talk) 00:50, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

And more on-topic, yeah, that's a large part of why we are losing editors. The bar to edit and create articles is just too high. We are trading quantity for quality. It's not an unreasonable trade-off, just not one that I think we realized we were making... Hobit (talk) 01:19, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Apparently, your writing talents also extend to prose. :) That's the best summary of the current situation as I understand it that I've seen so far. ,Wil (talk) 05:17, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
And thanks for creating a global account, looks much better now. --Nemo 17:58, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks so much for the kind words. I'm doing my best to get up to speed quickly here. Right now I'm focussing on Commons; next, I'll be turning my attention towards a BLP. I'm thinking David Lynch might be a good start. He's one of my favorite directors. ,Wil (talk) 19:44, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
+1 for David Lynch :) – SJ +
Finished with a once over on David Lynch. Now on to you, Jesse James. ,Wil (talk) 19:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Good luck!

Hi, I've just read a few threads and thought I had to say something positive... I wish you (and Lila) good luck. I really appreciate your optimistic perspective! I wish you both all the best, Claudi/Capsot (talk) 19:46, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Please throw in your own perspective here whenever you'd like. No matter what it is, it will always be welcome. ,Wil (talk) 00:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Contributing to the project

Hello, I suspect that you're not interested in starting with WikiGnome-like simple maintenance tasks and you want something more "exciting". That's fine, you can still do that on our wikis while actually contributing to the project (and not being an attention whore).

--Nemo 07:51, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Nemo's advice is good as usual. – SJ +
Your edit to Jimbo's talk page

per this and this I suggest you read Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Edits by and on behalf of blocked editors.©Geni (talk) 13:33, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. But it's not relevant to that post. I didn't edit anything at the direction of another person, and I never will. ,Wil (talk) 14:15, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Doesn't really matter whether you did or not, it's all just an excuse to have you blocked sooner or later. Eric Corbett 14:26, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Thinly-veiled threats like the one above are standard defensive behavior from the game players in reaction to someone challenging their narrative. — Scott • talk 22:27, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
It's not usually quite so blatant, so not exactly "standard". Wil could probably get a best selling e-book giving a recount of this, especially if Geni and pals will keep providing good material. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 22:43, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Also, the policy actually says "...unless they can show that the changes are either verifiable or productive and they have independent reasons for making such edits." (I think it used to just say something like "unless they take responsibility for the edit" but someone changed it out of sour grapes). How you fulfill the first part of the requirement is up to you. Your reason for the second - independence - qualification is always just "to improve the encyclopedia". So actually, it's perfectly fine to make edits on behalf of banned/blocked users as long as you're not doing so in an obnoxious manner.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:17, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes. In particular, if someone is blocked for a long-standing edit war, or persistent personal attacks, or persistent insertion of original research or unverifiable claims into a controversial article, or for trying to own an article and reverting all mentions of other points of view: you shouldn't continue the same pattern of editing on their behalf just because they asked you to. (This is clearly not what you were doing.) – SJ + 00:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
"Thinly veiled"? That's blatant bullying. Pure and simple. (And sucking up to the boss, of course.) I've never seen a single edit by that user that hasn't been toxic. Mind you, I haven't stalked him. Geni is the editor who removed respect for basic human dignity from our BLP policy, under the guise of making it more concise. (See also here and here). Site-banning him would noticeably improve the ethos here. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:49, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
That's interesting. Someone accused me of making a "thinly veiled threat" on the wikimedia-l mailing list. Is it possible to make a threat without realizing it? ,Wil (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, actually. My second block was because I used the word "libel" in a discussion where someone libeled me. Apparently that's a thinly veiled legal threat. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:42, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Some people use the otherwise quite sensible policy about legal threats as an inappropriate bludgeon because even mentioning the law disrupts the narrative - that Wikipedia is some kind of untouchable autonomous zone (where, by extension, the game players have power). — Scott • talk 09:02, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Oh, and welcome to Wikipedia. I see you've already been welcomed by one of the Party-approved greeters with a standard warning about the dangers of deviating from State-approved orthodoxy. Just wait until you meet your first passive-aggressive edit warrior. Intothatdarkness 13:44, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
That mailing-list comment seemed to misread what you meant. But it is certainly possible to threaten someone without intending to! Hopefully one gets the chance to clarify one's intent. – SJ + 23:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
The toxic atmosphere around Wikimedia

The levers of Wikimedia have been grabbed by a bunch of isolated, obsessive, time-rich social misfits. People with nothing else in their lives have created exactly the kind of ethos here that you'd expect them to. Inevitable, really, I suppose. It's this toxicity that keeps most normal people away. Sad. I'm unsure how to change this. If the project had genuine leaders who set a good example, that would help. But I don't know if that would be enough. The structure is mob rule and the misanthropes have an inordinate influence. Carrite is right about the silent majority. But in policy discussions, it's not the silent majority who turns up. It's the weirdos. So we have a structure where, for example, the idea that we should have respect for the basic dignity of our subjects is deleted unilaterally by one toxic user, and then prevented from being restored by bunch of them. See: here.

I don't know about that. Honestly. I haven't met these people in person, and I've hardly met them online yet. FWIW, I happen to have ADHD. I'm very proud of that; people who have had experience with a well diagnosed and well treated ADHDer know about the perks. For example, I'm highly extroverted. People with what used to be called Asperger Syndrome can concentrate more than others, solving complex problems that seem almost beyond human reason. There are a lot of good things that come along with Neurodiversity, for both individuals and society. There's a very high incidence of both in Silicon Valley, BTW. I believe we should all accommodate each other and keep in mind that we're all just looking at the world from one perspective, when there are something like 6 billion beautifully different perspectives out there. Millions more if we count the dolphins. :) ,Wil (talk) 03:16, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
When it comes to problems involving humans, the answer always involves more empathy. ,Wil (talk) 03:16, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
I second that view on empathy. Anthonyhcole, what is the most recent discussion about calling out human dignity in the BLP policy? That seems like something that's obviously intended both by en:wp BLP language and by similar policies elsewhere, but perhaps it could be made more explicit. I presume that your diff from 2009 is not the latest point of departure. – SJ + 00:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
SJ: the latest effort to improve BLP language and policy. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:07, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry. I'm angry. And frustrated. No respect for the basic human dignity of our BLP subjects. It's official. Official policy of en.Wikipedia. No disclaimer on our medical articles. If one person made these decisions, I'd call them a psychopath. Can a group be psychopathic? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:42, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

There's no reason to apologize. You're angry because you care. The challenge is turning that anger in to the change you'd like to see. One of the theses of The Corporation is that, if we consider corporations as individuals- which is often the case in American law- they would be diagnosed as psychopaths based on their behavior toward the rest of society. ,Wil (talk) 03:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
There are often deeper layers to issues though, and many supposed ideological disputes have their origins in very personal ones. Take time to check out the personal backgrounds behind some of the ideological disputes for some enlightenment. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:12, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Are you referring to my motives there, Cas? I ask because immediately above your comment I've mentioned two ideological disputes I'm involved in. My motive for wanting a prominent disclaimer on our medical articles has no trace of the personal in it - other than personal concern for the welfare of our readers. As for respecting the human dignity of our subjects, my sole motivation is that we be humane toward them - I'm not playing some interpersonal game there. (If that's not what you're referring to, perhaps you could point Wil to an example of what you're referring to. On what you've given him so far he'll never find anything.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:07, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Nope - sorry that was an unintended alignment - I was mainly referring to lots of other folks, some here, some over there. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:14, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. FWIW, most ideological disputes I've been in appear to involve people with sincere convictions. You've seen a lot more trouble than me, though. (Cas was on the Arbitration Committee for years.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:21, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Anthonyhcole....you'd be surprised at some of the personal stuff embedded deep within. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:02, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
(Cas is also a psychiatrist.) So what we may think is driven by rational ideology is often more ... instinctive? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:05, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Quite so. One shouldn't participate here unless one has read the last 12 years of ANI/AN BLPN, ArbComm rulings and the collected wisdom of Jimmy. Dzhugashvili John lilburne (talk) 08:41, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm, and remembering sophisticated psychological phenomena such as, "revenge is a dish best served cold" and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".... ;) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:17, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
I've encountered some of the latter. But the vast majority of my opponents appear to be sincere and consistent in their convictions. Wil, the best people I know are very neurodivergent - but with insight. Without deep insight into their condition and the nature of healthy human relations, such people shouldn't be designing social systems for others or managing others' behaviour.
I agree with you about empathy - but some people are unaffected by the suffering of others, and some notice the suffering of others and enjoy it. When you have a tenacious bunch of those herding a crowd of socially impaired obsessives you get what you saw on Wikimedia-l, and the kind of decisions I've mentioned above. It is a serious problem and, in my opinion, at the root of all of Wikipedia's structural and ethical problems including child protection, unfiltered porn and unregulated admins. Though it seems obvious and inevitable to me, I and User:Hans Adler are the only ones I've seen bring it up and when we do, we inevitably get threatened or sanctioned for it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:24, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
My biggest concern right now is that people don't always seem to be free to communicate on Wikipedia. For example, in my brief experience with wikimedia-l, it became apparent to me that it wasn't enough for some users to just ignore what I was saying if they didn't want to participate in the discussion but that they didn't want me to say it at all. That is a very serious systemic issue, because we can't even begin to empathize with one another if we don't let each other speak in the first place. ,Wil (talk) 16:05, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't think it's a question of "seem." People aren't free to communicate on Wikipedia. One of the suppression tactics used is the blocking of a user's access to her own talk page or restrictions placed on commenting in particular areas or on specific subjects. "Your talk page isn't yours" and "there is no free speech on Wikipedia" are two common mantras tossed out to justify these actions, along with the "disruptive user" tag. Undoubtedly some are, but in other cases it's simply a way to silence those who have contrary opinions or control the flow of discussion and maintain the status quo. Intothatdarkness 16:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Hold the phone. I thought Wikimedia projects were all about free speech. That has been the reasoning presented to me for some of the controversial images on commons. The Wikimedia Foundation has talked it up for years. You're telling me that people are silencing others on Wikipedia specifically because it is not about free speech? ,Wil (talk) 17:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Clearly. I've been forbidden by ArbCom sanction to take part in any discussion concerning RfA for instance, or even to make any critical commentary on the subject. Free speech my arse! Eric Corbett 17:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict with Eric, who's a good example of this) Yep. The idea comes up most frequently with user talk pages. It's more of an internal politics thing, especially when it comes to what might be called "enemies of the state" (blocked users initially, although some are restricted without being blocked). There are a number of examples, ranging from editors being barred from editing their own talk pages (usually when they're blocked from editing other pages) at the extreme to limits on participation in certain areas of Wikipedia. Again, sometimes such restrictions might be justified (for a short term, anyhow)...but in other cases they're used to silence dissent. Intothatdarkness 17:15, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
(I'll just squeeze this in here as it's more of the same.) The people arguing WP:NOTCENSORED so they can adorn our Muhammad article with artists' impressions of the prophet use every tactic they can think of to ban or exclude those arguing against them. The regulars on Wikimedia-l talk about whatever they want there; but because you were raising uncomfortable truths, they shut you down. Sorry. You'll run into that all over this place. WP:ANI is the snake pit you go to when you need admin help about an ongoing problem. If you complain about an admin there, or someone who's friends with an admin, random admins and their mates will close the discussion and call you disruptive. I, and Eric, and sooo many others here could just go on and on and on with example after example of the oppression of genuine free discourse here. Of course control has to be exercised over genuine disruption, but it is too often and easily used to shut up, alienate or drive off "opponents". --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:30, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm. If this is the case, let's take a moment to be the change we'd like to see in the community. Would anyone who disagrees with the assertions above like to chime in? ,Wil (talk) 17:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Just remember some editors like to act as self-appointed consciences of the community and are continually going on about their pet hobby-horses. --NeilN talk to me 17:45, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the insight. Do you think the community needs a conscience? If so, what mechanism keeps or would keep the community just if it wasn't tolerance of dissenting opinions? And aren't all champions of just (or unjust, for that matter) causes throughout history self-appointed? Even politicians need to take self-initiative to get their views heard before they get elected. I don't mean to ask leading questions; I sincerely can't figure out a way to ensure justice without tolerance. ,Wil (talk) 18:24, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
The community's conscience is codified into its policies and guidelines. For example, WP:BLP states that, "Biographies of living persons ("BLP"s) must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives; the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment." The policy was written by various editors and accepted by the community. It's true that individual editors lead the charge for changes but when these changes are challenged or rejected then words like "abusive", "unethical", "autistic" and "psychopath" tend to get tossed around. --NeilN talk to me 18:38, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
There is also a group that is deeply vested in existing policy that likes to disparage comments with terms like "pet hobby-horses" when the existing way of doing things is questioned in any way. And, as always, there are a number of groups and individuals who fall somewhere between the extremes, and yet another faction that tries to ignore it all and get on with writing articles. Intothatdarkness 18:42, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
I find it very interesting that each of your perspectives doesn't seem to be in conflict with the other's. In fact, I see a lot of overlap that, with a dash of compromise and tolerance, could make you two partners in implementing change. But both of you quickly turn to the language as a point of incompatibility. Is it possible that the way we treat each other is as important as the issues themselves when it comes to change? Why do we turn to extreme, dismissive, and insulting language, when it obviously isn't effective? ,Wil (talk) 21:58, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Because it's the easiest way to short out difficult or challenging discussions. You should look through some of the many pages dealing with proposed Admin reforms if you want examples of that. Intothatdarkness 22:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
What do you think would happen if you just ignored the language and continued to deal with the issue at hand? Do you think the tone of the conversation would de-escalate so everyone can get back on topic? ,Wil (talk) 22:08, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
My experience (based on observation here) is that once an editor is "branded" their input is either ignored or labeled as disruptive. The project appears to be split between those who thrive on policy and politics and those who work more on content (with some obvious overlap, of course). Those who "own" the policy/politics side tend to gather quickly to label and/or marginalize those who don't agree with their take on policy (which is also a shifting thing here and doesn't always reflect reality or even good practice). And once that happens it is very hard to return to neutral. Some of the Visual Editor discussions may be informative here, although there are other examples (such as the aggressive policing of Mr. Wales' talk page). Moderate viewpoints aren't often welcome in larger policy discussions, in my experience anyhow. Intothatdarkness 22:13, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Words are readily and easily used as weapons. Insults are flung even in edit summaries. Those among us who are easily wounded or sensitive to drama / trauma will back down with out the risk of ending up on some Noticeboard where the escalation of menacing language and threats can cut like a knife. Only the aggressive survive to edit another day or become sanctioned...and it is fairly well 'either / or'. It is about all I can muster in emotional energy to even read my notifications to see which of my edits has been reverted and why. Fylbecatulous talk 23:02, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Fylbecatulous, nice to see you! I wonder if folks here realize how much words can hurt. I've noticed that people often forget that there is a real user behind the username. And these users are people with feelings, just like they themselves have feelings. Empathy- or a tragic lack thereof- may be a big part of the problem you've experienced. What do you think? ,Wil (talk) 00:48, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Wil, I agree. However, realistically there is no peace serum we can administer to cause Wikipedia to become the Amity faction in Divergent. Nor would we want to. Hence, no cure for lack of empathy will be forthcoming on Wikipedia. We can wish and hope and talk, but I agree with Anthonyhcole above that some are just not going to consider or care about the feelings of others. We have discussed the context of civility in the past (2012): Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement and if you follow the trail through the pages of questionnaires and analyses, you will see it just fizzled out to nothing. Nothing. Sound familiar? ツ Fylbecatulous talk 02:14, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
  • There is a cure for lack of empathy. We should all take it upon ourselves to empathize, whether we get it in return or not. In fact, I practice it every day. Sometimes I have to work my way up from someone who made an offhand unjust comment about me online to a person who has seriously affected me and my family in real life. I haven't mastered it; there are people in my life that I'm not strong enough yet to forgive. But I'm still working at it. Like training for a triathlon, it isn't easy, but it gets easier and more rewarding the more you do it. My trick is to find a crack in the armor of offense. What does this person like that I also like? What does this person do that I also do? And one of the most effective ever: what frustrates this person that also frustrates me? Then I build on that. The next time I interact with that person, I remember that they are complex with their own challenges, epic wins, and epic fails just like me. If they don't empathize with me, it's A-OK, because I've built up enough empathy for both of us. And I mean that literally; I got enough to deal with what I might perceive as uncool with plenty left over for a friendly conversation. If I can't pull it off, I try harder next time. Apologies for the uncalled-for brain dump. :D This is one of my favorite subjects. ,Wil (talk) 06:07, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Actually, some people are incurable. They just don't have the necessary biology. And for some, the cure requires a massive rearrangement of personal social circumstances that we can't provide here. I do agree, though, that if we can normalise empathy here we'll drag a lot of the merely socially inept with us. It'll come down to numbers and tenacity - and calling out and then shunning those who until now have shamelessly and repeatedly proclaimed callousness is a basic tenet here, with impunity, often to loud approving choruses and applause from the like-minded. Really, they do, and there are lots of them and a lot of them are admins and above. It's a much bigger task than you probably imagine. But a worthy one. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:34, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
I do know where you're coming from, Fylbecatulous [1], and I hope my bluntness hasn't distressed you. I try to be gentle on the gentle. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:21, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I am overwhelmed, Anthonyhcole, and I know it will only sound trite if I say thank you for sharing. But I do, anyway; thank you. First let me assure you that you have not caused me distress: only when I am the target will arrows strike my heart. Here's the thing. [[2]]. I have only in the most murky way ever revealed on Wikipedia that I suffer and in what regard. Even then, the information was somewhat misused in the context of a talk page discussion by others along the lines of "please do your best not to worry if Fylbecatulous is upset, because you need to understand she is quite unwell". I got labeled that easily. I feel optimistic about sharing it here, though. This is a blessing of a talk page. Fylbecatulous talk 02:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
And I just realised as I walked away for a moment, that I have just accidentally revealed my gender. ツ Lord love a duckI I am not taking it back. All is well. Fylbecatulous talk 03:08, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome. There's no tolerance for the suffering among the well. Generally, they'd rather we didn't mention it. They kind of resent it when we do. David Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature (I think) Adam Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments (I always confuse the two on moral sentiments) explains it well.[1] I got some very nasty emails about my fitness to contribute while that was up, as well as a few thank yous. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:40, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Are you saying that people dismissed what you were saying because of your personal challenges? I have a hard time even imagining that, because everything I've seen you write is solid and well thought-out. ,Wil (talk) 03:46, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Not my writing for articles or edits. I was dismissed because I had expressed unhappiness with an editor who was intrusive and prying on my talk page and others (about my gender, actually). The fact that I expressed my dislike of the episode was dismissed out of hand as "just me being too prone to get upset" without any acknowledgment that I had a valid concern. Fylbecatulous talk 04:03, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Did you just say you didn't want to disclose your gender? It seems to me that this is the personal right of everyone, and that this assertion should end the matter once and for all. Anyways, I don't want to draw you back in to conflict about something that shouldn't have been an issue in the first place. FWIW, I don't happen to be uncomfortable mentioning mine. I'm a male, which isn't necessary obvious when I'm described as the "partner" of the ED. ;) ,Wil (talk) 23:14, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
That was corrrect. My gender will remain I prefer not to say in my user settings. However, I am quite okay with it being identified on this talk page. (As I said above in this wall of text, I accidentally outed myself in an edit above.) ツ As you can probably discern, according to Wikipedia demographics, this gives me several spots in the minority status. (Female, neurologically challenged and way outside the typical age groups for editors). A user was attempting to pin me down, since I was undisclosed to all at that time. Fylbecatulous talk 00:30, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
I think it's interesting to note that it doesn't seem to bother you when you feel like you're in a comfortable environment. Apparently, so comfortable you initially did it accidentally. ;) It's a shame when people don't feel like they can be loud and proud about what and who they are. I feel absolutely honored and humbled that you feel comfortable enough to do that here. ,Wil (talk) 01:13, 10 June 2014 (UTC)


"Because it's the easiest way to short out difficult or challenging discussions." Yes, agree 100%. Plus, it's a natural human tendency to label opposing viewpoints as "stupid". Most conflict arises because we are dealing with opinions, not facts. How should WP:NOTCENSORED be applied? What will be the effect of tweaking longstanding policy text? Then there's the question if we should move forward at all. Editor A proposes a guideline change. Editor B asks what problem the change is designed to solve. Editor A points out a situation. Editor C says guidelines should not be changed just to address specific situations... --NeilN talk to me 00:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)


There's one thing that concerns me greatly in the immediate-term. About half of the contributors who have reached out to me about unpleasant experiences with Wikipolitics are women. That's funny, because according to Wikipedia:Wikipedians only 13% of contributors are female. Before I go on, we should let that just sink in. . . 13%. . .! What is remarkable about these women is that they tend to be the most prolific of all the contributors I've talked to. What is absolutely tragic is that most of them have told me they have already all but left- or that they plan to leave- Wikipedia for greener pastures. :-( The most cited reason is the power politics that surrounds all major (and many minor) decisions. To be sure, it doesn't seem to bother all women. And, from the feedback I'm getting, it bothers a lot of men. But if we want to retain some of the most valuable contributors to our project, we have to recognize that the kind of head-butting that is prominent on wikimedia-l is not the way many women prefer to solve their differences; in fact, it's extremely off-putting for them. It seems like many people believe that we'd serve the project best by ignoring the fact that Wikipolitics has become a man eats man world; after all, it might scare off new female contributors. I don't subscribe to that. First off, I think it's pretty obvious whether we choose to recognize it or not. More importantly, we'll never solve any problems that we don't admit we have in the first place. IMO, we not only need to ensure decision-making is done in an environment that everyone can feel comfortable in, but we would all benefit by sitting back and learning a thing or two about working through issues from these women- and gentlemen- that I've had the privilege to speak to in the last month. ,Wil (talk) 05:32, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this: headbutting and a lack of empathy drive away certain contributors, and more often women than men. But there is irony here: did you notice the way that your own participation on wikimedia-l was making participants, and some women in particular, uncomfortable?
Finally, a footnote: the cleanest estimate I've seen for female editors is 16% (Hill & Shaw, 2013) for en:wp. – SJ + 21:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the correction; I corrected my numbers above. Of course I noticed that two women were uncomfortable. I believe one of them said it in exactly those words. But I don't understand why my participation on wikimedia-l would make anyone uncomfortable. Have you noticed that I am always polite and considerate of others? These are some of my core values; in fact, I've practiced them so much that they are solid even under the most personal attacks and attempts at discrediting me. We were discussing the wikimedia-l threads on Wikipediocracy, and no one understood what I might have said to make anyone feel uncomfortable or that the environment was somehow less safe. Do you know? ,Wil (talk) 21:41, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
An afterthought: Do you think that the questions themselves might have been making people uncomfortable? ,Wil (talk) 21:44, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
I think I know. You clearly desire to be considerate, and you don't use insulting language, but you can still hurt others. In this case, you ensured heightened visibility of the thread, in a forum dominated by people who do use insulting language, and regularly make efforts to shame or bully or otherwise make mailinglist-posters uncomfortable. [Partial symmetry: both groups feel bullied by members of the other. But the forum sometimes follows mailing-list threads and uses them as triggers to lash out, whereas the wiki and mailing list generally do not follow the forum.]
OK, I'm losing you here. Are you suggesting that I'm hurting others by bringing attention, which I honestly don't want but somehow can't help, to their own bad behavior? Are you saying that I'm responsible for the way others behave? I'm sorry, but that's more than I can take on. :) ,Wil (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
You asked what you had said that made others feel uncomfortable: I'm explaining why I think they felt uncomfortable. Perhaps to be more precise, since cause/effect is not inherently about responsibility: I should have written "others can still feel hurt as a result of your words".  :) – SJ +
Once you had set up the thread to be a source of entertainment and high drama for the forum, people posting to the thread felt more likely to be singled out for abuse on WO. It's like the difference between chatting with someone in a public cafe, and chatting with them while sitting next to a reporter who has been commissioned to write a 'tell-all expose' of their life, and is looking for quotes that fit a pre-set narrative, even if those quotes have to be taken out of context.
Again, I'm lost. Are you saying that I intentionally set up the thread to be "a source of entertainment and high drama"? Don't you think there might be other reasons to get everyone on record about the state of these policies as the new ED takes over, especially given the stakes if there were a tragic incident? And are you suggesting that I should protect people from consequences of what they themselves say? Finally, are you saying that I'm responsible for what is said on Wikipediocracy? ,Wil (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
I suggest nothing about your intent, or your state of mind. I have a hard enough time sussing out my own intent most days. I'm describing how some saw your writing, and why that made anyone feel uncomfortable or less safe commenting. I didn't read your comments this way, but others did (This is my translation of what was said in the thread; not private communication. People tried to explain this to you, but in more words & with many tangential distracting comments thrown in).
Yes, there are excellent reasons to understand the state of important policies, given the strategic planning starting this year and the ED transition. It is also important to have a balanced overview of issues at play. That's why I'm helping organize the state of dozens of topics this summer; all are welcome to contribute. It's easier to understand an initiative to engage in all important issues, than an initiative that starts and ends with the most contentious ones.
As to protecting people from consequences of what they say: please reread your question above :) You asked about what might make others feel less safe commenting. That is literally asking what external circumstances might make people feel that the consequences of what they say might be increasingly negative (for a given set of things they might otherwise say). If you make people feel it is more likely there will be negative consequences from speaking, they become less likely to speak. That's not a comment on what you should or should not do.
You mention responsibility again: I didn't. I'm describing things you wrote that caused others evident discomfort, and why as I see it they were uncomfortable. I know I'm the Nth person to try to explain this; I hope it's helpful, but I only offered these comments because you asked. – SJ +
The questions themselves only contributed to this in that they were presented and discussed in a way that would evoke this sort of drama, tension, and attention. A safer space for conversation would: a) provide context, acknowledging the current reality and past discussions; b) recognize nuance, with a set of related questions to be discussed together. not forcing all comments to be black or white. c) provide for discussion and revision over time, not rushing to judge each commenter as soon as they say anything. Wikis are good for this sort of iterative discussion.
See also my comment on harassment below. – SJ + 00:50, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
I wanted to get a clear record of the current state of the policies, not discuss how they might be improved. I'm not even clear on why the thread blew up like that. It was a request for information stated publicly. Do you think there might have been a lot of assuming going on there, too? ,Wil (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that was a fine request. There was a great deal of assumption going on there all around, which is not healthy. We should welcome and encourage all newcomers, whatever their mode of engaging and wherever they're coming from. Especially because the new ways of thinking that newcomers bring is a necessary spur for good ideas, reflection, inspiration.
And the thing that I understand least: "rushing to judge each commenter as soon as they say anything". Are you suggesting that I was rushing to judgement of the people there? If so, why would you think that? You'll see elsewhere on this page that I'm very deliberate in my judgement of other people. Sj, I'm starting to think you might not understand me very well. And I don't understand you well; that's why I'm asking all these questions. And why should we understand each other? We've never interacted anywhere besides this page, AFAIK. I'm looking forward to the first in-person opportunity that we get to understand each other better. ,Wil (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
No, not judgement by you! A thread being scrutinized by irritated critics is judged by those critics, in their own way (taken out of context in a news article or in blog posts, generally judged and discussed in a forum where the original participant is not present). In general, when a flame-war is connected to an otherwise normal and important topic (say, bringing up abortion in a general discussion about public health), some people will stop participating in that discussion. So if you want a solid discussion about how to make the projects more welcoming to women, better to have that in its own flame-free thread. Warmly agreed re: meeting in person. That makes a great deal of difference. Regards, – SJ + 08:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Devil's advocacy

"Would anyone who disagrees with the assertions above like to chime in?"

I'll bite, since I disagree with many of them but understand where the posters are coming from. – SJ +

  • If this is devil's advocacy, you're not doing a very good job. Your points are far too sound, moderate, and tolerant. ;D ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • "No respect for the basic human dignity of our BLP subjects. It's official. Official policy of en.Wikipedia."
    It seems to me that most contributors want to respect basic human dignity, but it's hard to define what that means. Saying "we will never publish anything that touches on someone's dignity" is too strong, since we want to impartially indicate what's known about major problems in the world, including crimes and international scandals. I haven't seen the latest effort to improve language and policy here, but generally agree that BLP protection could be stronger, particularly for marginally notable people. However I see few serious proposals for change.
    If there are a few dozen editors who agree on such a change, it would likely happen. Part of the lack of progress here is that there isn't such broad agreement.
    It seems like many editors here feel disenfranchised individually. Y'all also seem to have an understanding of why collaboration hasn't worked well in the past. Maybe you can work together with a bit of compromise and get some traction on this stuff. ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • "No disclaimer on our medical articles"
    Again, deciding where to have disclaimers about what (medicine? law? engineering?) is a serious cross-cutting topic. We have a global disclaimer; how do we improve upon it? Can we make it more prominent? Do we want a double disclaimer for specific articles? Have we considered how other sites such as WikiHow that expressly capture "how-to" information handle this? This is an area that a lot of people care about, as indicated in the RFC. But finding a good solution is hard.
    No successful solution has been proposed, and we clearly need better ways to resolve broad content issues like this one (including better ways to test out design hacks). Even if no change is developed in the end, those with concerns should be able to make progress in refining a specific solution that they are advocating for. One of the problems in this discussion is that the many people up in arms about Disclaimers disagreed quite strongly with one another about what to do. But calling everyone about an unkind name isn't the most effective way to make progress.
    Isn't it interesting that many of the most controversial issues on Wikipedia involve empathy for others? Child protection, harassment, BLP's, medical disclaimers. . . they are all about caring for others' wellbeing. Does it strike anyone else as ironic that we don't seem to care as much about each others' wellbeing in discussing them? ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • "people don't always seem to be free to communicate on Wikipedia... some users [on wikimedia-l] didn't want me to say it at all... we can't even begin to empathize with one another if we don't let each other speak in the first place."
    Timing and quantity of communication have a significant impact on how they are perceived. Mailing lists are push channels. As such, they are easy to dominate, and more sensitive than wikis or other channels to quantity-effects. Once you started posting to a mailing list at 5x-10x the average rate of other participants, it was not surprising that many people asked you to slow down, whether or not they agreed with some of your points. Similarly, users are generally free to post what they like on Wikipedia, but when they start spamming the talk pages of other users (a 'push' channel that usually triggers email alerts and navbar alerts for those users, and really cannot be ignored), they are more likely to trigger a block to keep them from driving those users away by making their editing experience unpleasant.
    This is a great point. And I apologize for flooding the list. I believe strongly that everyone deserves to be heard, and I try to acknowledge them so that they know it. In retrospect, many of those acknowledgements could have been sent privately. :) To be fair (to me) a lot of the criticism had more to do with what I was saying than how often I was saying it. I think that it's important, however, for everyone to recognize how demoralizing and frustrating a block- or call to stop speaking- can be. It will almost always make the blockee feel like they are being told to shut up. IMO, blocks and bans should be used as absolute last measures and with extreme reluctance; instead, we should practice listening to what we care about and ignoring what we don't. YMMV ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
    Yes, topic and tone were half of it. Coming to a new community and asking them to rehash lengthy discussions for your benefit, without offering a position of your own or demonstrating that you've spent time on the issue yourself, is often seen as an imposition. It's not unusual to be asked to review those debates on your own. If you have a specific or nuanced question that shows you've done some work yourself on the matter, you will normally find lots of willing support. This is just as true on WP as it is in free software communities.  :)
    On wm-l, my perception was that you intentionally started threads on only a few controversial topics, which were well covered in the list archives; you didn't give the impression of doing your own leg work; and occasionally you made remarks like "now I will sit back and [let you all inform me of things]" which came across as smug. All of these things are about what you said, the fact that you said almost nothing else, and the tone with which you said it. This discouraged people from engaging with those threads. – SJ + 22:38, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
    I asked for nothing more and nothing less that the existing Child Protection and Harassment Policies for Wikimedia projects. As you might have noticed the answer was very convoluted and required several responses from several contributors, as there was little consistency across the projects. Many of the policies seemed to be transitioning through a vaguely defined "proposed" state. The whole idea of asking these questions in this forum was to get an accurate and public record of their state on 6/1/2014 for reasons that I can explain if they aren't apparent. I believe the discussion was rather productive until someone brought up my participating on Wikipediocracy. Once someone mentioned it (I honestly can't remember why), I offered to address it if anyone was interested. Then someone asked on a new thread. Sj, I did send too many mails after everyone started responding to each of mine. It's an exponential problem, and I should have recognized that earlier. :) That was my bad, and I apologize. But I think your perception of my intentions is a product of your own imagination. If you haven't noticed already, I'm not exactly sitting on the middle of the bell curve personality- or cognition-wise. I recognize that you're a complex, intelligent person whom I haven't met- much less gotten to know yet- so I don't speculate about your motives. What would make you think you'd be accurate enough in speculating about mine to throw out words like "smug"? And- for as much as anyone can determine tone through text alone- I believe I was very polite and direct throughout. But I could be wrong. Examples of the mails you found unproductive might help me grok what you're getting at here. ,Wil (talk) 05:45, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
    More generally: people are free to communicate and edit as long as they don't keep others from communicating and editing. But this gets tricky when people are aggressive with one another, either in personal correspondence or in reverting one another's work. At that point it is often the case that one or the other group has to be limited; or will leave of their own accord. Brilliant contributors who are asked not to contribute in certain ways (such as Eric C) often have histories of offending or failing to empathize with others. The community [and not just our community] hasn't yet found effective ways to raise the level of discourse above flame wars without ever limiting speech.
    Maybe this is where Wikipedians can practice the arts of the apology and forgiveness. It seems like these are two of the hardest skills for humans to master. I wonder if there are barnstars for them. If not, there should be. ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • "I thought Wikimedia projects were all about free speech. That has been the reasoning presented to me for some of the controversial images on commons."
    See above. Sharing freely-available knowledge without limiting it by topic, is not the same as allowing contributors to post anything at all to one another, without limiting personal attacks and other writing that is intended to drive fellow contributors away.
    I'm still trying to understand this issue. But it seems like some of the editors here are saying that they are getting driven away by the "Wikipedia is not about free speech" argument itself. ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • "One of the suppression tactics used is the blocking of a user's access to her own talk page"
    This happens rarely. In almost all cases, unless they are constantly lodging personal attacks at other users, blocked users are able to post to their talk pagse: precisely so that they have a forum where they can share their thoughts even when they have gotten carried away with an edit war or crusade or otherwise been temporarily restricted from editing articles.
  • "once an editor is "branded" their input is either ignored or labeled as disruptive."
    There is no Borg or cabal branding people. I think Intothedarkness and NeilN's views are compatible.
    Some editors are skilled at facilitating discussions about policy, changes, and conflict. They don't get blocked or ignored, regardless of their views. Other editors take discussions personally, and identify people whose opinions differ from theirs as "crazy people" rather than as sane people who may be wrong in places. They get very upset about decisions they disagree with, and may take to insulting "the other side", making policy discussions emotional and dramatic and painful to participate in (as Fylbecatulous notes). When contributors who "make it personal" are in the majority, they feel vindicated in their efforts, and continue. When they are in the minority, they feel singled out, and believe they've been blacklisted, even though in most cases there is no such conscious effort. They may stop contributing collaboratively about policy (believing that to be futile), contributing to a spiral of silence.
    You've brought up a very interesting phenomenon that I've often thought about. Sometimes groups seem to act as if there is intent that isn't there- or at least communicated and agreed on. Maybe it's a hold-over from when we were living in tribes on the African Savanna (not that long ago, evolution-wise). Tribes needed to act as one to threats with no time to talk things through first, so we often see humans fall in line with each other once critical mass seems to have been reached. Then again, I watch too many National Geographic specials; I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. :D ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • A related problem: prickly contributors may alternate constructive comments with personal attacks, leading others to discount or overlook their constructive input.
    This is something that I saw a lot of on Wikipediocracy. I told them that many of them were marginalizing themselves even though they had really good points. And many of them recognized this and told me they were fine with that. At least one person implied that s/he intentionally marginalized her/himself. I find it somewhat tragic, but different strokes for different folks. A lot of people have told me that I marginalize myself, and I'm cool with what I'm doing, too. ,Wil (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Other points: I agree with Casliber above.
– SJ + 00:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Notes from the gentleman up north

I've done a lot of lurking and reading of opinions, both here and on Wikipediocracy. Wil, as you may recall I reached out and had a phone conversation with you a few weeks ago.

Are you the gentleman from up north? If so, it was great talking to you; you were one of the first Wikipedians to reach out to me by voice. It doesn't have anything on talking in person, but it seems to speed up the process of getting to know people. BTW, I can make time to talk to anyone over Skype, etc. ,Wil (talk) 06:09, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that is me, and likewise on the conversation. I'll be AWOL even further north for most of June starting tomorrow, so you probably won't hear more from me for a while.
Drop me a note when you get back. I'd love to pick up the conversation again over the phone, too. Maybe I'll actually have some on-wiki experience next time we talk. ;) ,Wil (talk) 09:10, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Mostly I haven't commented because what I wanted to say has already been said better (and Sj got most of it here), but I'm also reluctant to comment because, as has been noted, there is a serious 'us versus them' dynamic, and I'd rather not get caught in the middle of it. I'd really rather not be on the shortlist of who to gossip about over at Wikipediocracy, as the regulars over there seem to have a practically unlimited amount of time on their hands to gossip. But I'm certainly not going to say the other side is blameless when it comes to blacklists and long grudges. I agree with many of the comments expressed at the wikimedia-l mailing list that you should have dived into the broader Wikipedia community prior to trying to mediate between the two groups; I think you've heard that over and over and that's probably why you started editing, but I think you should really do more of that before jumping back into the meta-world and starting petitions on behalf of Wikipediocracy.

  • OK, I'm gonna stop you right there. You are making some great points here, and I am taking them to heart. But we all need to get to know each other better, and there's one fundamental thing that everyone who wants to grok me must understand: I do not and will not do anything on the behalf of others. If you follow my posts on WO, you will notice that I spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure out if there was a good reason Greg Kohs should be excluded from WikiConference USA, because I am really not a fan of exclusion under almost any circumstances (compromising the safety of others being an exception, of course). I couldn't find one; in fact, I thought it was a lost opportunity to understand one of Wikipedia's foremost critics better. When I started that petition, it was as big a surprise to Greg and the rest of the WO folks as it was to everybody else. And when I posted it on Jimmy's page, you'll notice that a lot of them said I shouldn't have done it. But I did it because I felt that it was the right thing to do. I've said it many times before, and it's worth saying again. . . In the battle between "us" and "them," I will forever be loyal to one side: "me." Please consider what I say here, because independent thinking and action is one cornerstone of my personality. To be honest, I can't think of anything else I could have done this past month to make that more obvious. ;) ,Wil (talk) 05:54, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Well, you may want to rethink how you phrase that, as the phrasing around "me" sounds rather selfish. ;) So far you've weathered criticism admirably, so I'm gonna hit you with another that might cut deep to help you put yourselves in other people's shoes: you didn't arrive here the way most of us did. Many of us sought out Wikipedia from a natural interest in free and open knowledge. You popped in by association with someone else. Now, some of the volunteers, who have poured enormous effort and hours into this project over years, decided to exclude someone that they have known for much longer than you. You responded by trying to push back and override their decision. I hope you can see how that might be perceived as rather presumptuous and heavy-handed. II | (t - c) 07:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I see what you're saying, but it sounds selfish because it is selfish. In fact, you'll notice that I assert my (intentional space) self in everything I say and do. I guess it could be summed up in another, very different way: I will compromise on ideas, but I will never compromise on ideals. As far as arriving here, I created my account in 2007, too. I edited some articles, and I even created a few. I'm ashamed to say that these were things that would be considered blatant COI's now. But if I stopped here, I'd be dismissing the substance of your point with superficial details, because you're saying I haven't put in the time like everyone else has. This is true. Some people listen to me because I am so close to the new ED personally, whereas other have had to work their asses off to get some attention- much less credibility- around here. This is also true. Some things you say here are not true, however. I did not try to push back or override anyone's decision. I simply said that I don't want to participate in conferences that exclude others, as long as they don't present a threat. I looked in to whether Greg was a threat, and IMO he clearly isn't. I thought others might feel the same way, so I started a petition for them to express their lack of interest in conferences that are exclusive.
It's a bit like free speech. If someone is saying something I don't like, I can ignore it. But I won't ask them to shut up. If someone puts on an event that excludes some, I can decide not to go. But I won't ask them to shut it down or force them to change their policies. If the petition happens to change their mind, it was because lots of people spoke up; I doubt they would care that much if I went or not. Back to your main point- these are ideals, not ideas, and I've been working on them for decades. I have a lot to learn from you guys, but you'll never convince me that the way to handle a critic is to exclude him or her. And maybe that is selfish, because it's what makes me feel like I'm being true to myself. ,Wil (talk) 08:16, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Some work suggestions:

  • Read sources and edit to summarize them. This is solitary and too boring for many people.
  • If you need interaction, check out one of the various noticeboards, learn about an issue, and provide a neutral third-party opinion. But try to read the applicable policy too; for example, if you're at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard (i.e. WP:RS/N), the check out identifying reliable sources guideline and verifiability policy as noted at the top of the noticeboard.
  • !Vote on an article up for deletion.
  • Click on Special:RecentChanges and review some of the edits people are making.
  • If you want a taste of drama, check out WP:AN and WP:ANI. Many of the Wikipediocracy regulars either were or are regular customers over there.
    These are all good suggestions, and I will try each one of them to understand Wikipedia better. I already have my first big personal project lined up tho- I randomly chose Jesse James and the people and places in his life to focus on, because I know practically nothing about him. After reflecting on it, I realized it might not have been such a random choice, after all. :) I don't know how much time I can put in to the above, but I certainly can and should devote enough time to understand a little more about how Wikipedia ticks.,Wil (talk) 06:03, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Clearly there is a lot to improve upon, and the work is limitless, but I don't really have much respect for people who spend all their time discussing and complaining rather than working. My view is that if all you're doing is complaining or stirring up drama, then the influence might be a net negative. Ironically, it seems that some posters on Wikipediocracy seem to espouse the same position. On the topic of Wikipediocracy members, where they are coming from, and accepting constructive suggestions, a couple major points:

  • Civility is a "policy", but a highly controversial one. Sj already covered this eloquently and you responded by pointing to forgiveness. In my experience, Wikipedia is inclined to forgive and forget (on that note, see a sincere apology from Jimbo! to Kohs). It seems like most people around here have had blowups in the past. But if the person is unrepentant and just keeps going, eventually the patience ends. Some people are just not temperamentally suited for collaborative projects. A fair number of disaffected Wikipedians fall into this camp, and as you've noted the forum isn't exactly friendly most of the time. Greg Kohs, after being forgiven, admitted to sending an email in which he called someone "a morally bankrupt cog in the big Wiki machine of unaccountable treachery", which led to the current block.
  • Wikipedia attracts people who are passionate about particular issues probably as much or more than it attracts general knowledge-lovers. Sometimes this passion spills into advocacy for a particular issue (called civil "POV" pushing or WP:CPUSH). Examples include race and intelligence, cold fusion, some alternative medicine topics, conspiracy theories, etc. So some of them find their way over to Wikipediocracy with a grudge. Some of the names over there are quite familiar because I've debated them myself on topics like these years ago.
  • I'm not exactly sure what motivates someone like User:Kelly Martin, who was never banned but if my research is correct, stopped editing in 2008 and has just been a passionate critic ever since (including perhaps helping to organize the site). But I don't really have the time to psychoanalyze such a strange phenomena: if someone isn't willing to get their hands dirty, they can't blame me for not taking them seriously.
  • It seems that you did have the time to judge this user, however. And that's not surprising, because judgement takes a lot less time than understanding. Don't get me wrong- judgement is inevitable; we use judgement all the time because the decisions we have to make in every aspect of our lives can't wait for us to fully research all aspects of the situation. I try to be very careful when judging other people, however. In part because I think I can treat them with more justice and respect if I understand them first. But there's something in it for me, too. Humans are the most unpredictable things I've ever run in to. They are about as predictable as earthquakes. The less you understand them, the more they can surprise you. And if they happen to be angry with you, these surprises can be extremely unpleasant. So, my assertion that we should all listen to Greg Kohs more is less for his individual benefit and more for everyone's, including Greg's. ;) ,Wil (talk) 06:31, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
    • You sound as if you're trying to spin 'judgment' as if it were a bad thing, but anyone who has ever been in a supervisory position knows that judgment is usually necessary for people to reach their full potential, and any real business is impossible without judgment. I've been keeping tabs and notes on Wikipedia, and the players and critics, for several years. I voice my judgments far more rarely, and I daresay more carefully, than most people on Wikipedia, and certainly more than certain other forums. In any mass democracy, all members are supervisors. I hope you vote in real-life politics, but voting and judging happens much more on Wikipedia - so get used to judging and being judged if you plan to be more than a stick in the mud. II | (t - c) 07:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Actually, I was very consciously trying to avoid framing judgement as a bad thing, which is why I went in to "Judgement is inevitable." I personally choose to be very slow and deliberate in judging people, however. YMMV. As you have probably already guessed, I'm quite used to being judged myself. One thing that helps me is to remember that sometimes judgement hurts because people are wrong about me. In that case, they are judging somebody who isn't really me at all, so it doesn't bug me that much. Sometimes, however, it hurts because they are right about me. And, in that case, they have given me one of the most precious gifts anyone could give anyone else: insight. Maybe that's why I like to surround myself with people who disagree with me. I think I might just fit right in here. :D ,Wil (talk) 09:10, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Look, pretty much everyone on Wikipedia is frustrated in some way, and it has pretty much been that way since I started in 2007. We would all like to see things improve and run more smoothly. The site certainly contains fair and valid criticism, most of which also gets passed around on wiki itself! There's also some really unworkable suggestions, such as everyone revealing their identities and admins being subject to annual reconfirmations. Some of the members of Wikipediocracy are important volunteers on wiki as well, as the User:28bytes incident revealed. But the fact that you jumped straight to outcasts from Wikipedia and publicly rallied to their cause without spending some time in the trenches is really a bit insulting, both to relatively neutral people like me as well as those more directly affected, and I say this as someone who has been the whistleblower and the lone dissenting voice in a few situations before. Anyway, I'm biased because I don't really care as much for drama and in my experience Wikipediocracy is a drama-driver, but I also recognize that drama is what feeds a lot of people's interest, probably because it is emotionally exhilarating. TL;DR there's some decent stuff over there but the signal-to-noise ratio seems fairly low so let's try to stay focused on the mission. II | (t - c) 04:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I really appreciate your feedback here and over the phone. Most of it is solid. The stuff that is somewhat less than solid is based on assumptions that aren't solid themselves. You're focusing a lot on my involvement with Wikipediocracy. In particular, you think that the timing was a "bit insulting." That's reasonable judgement if you don't know exactly why I engaged with the Wikipediocracy people early on and relatively closely. If you go through some of the discussions there, you'll see that some of the people on WO helped me protect what is nearest and dearest to my heart. It was something that some people in the "mainstream" movement should have helped me with, but didn't- even when I directly asked about it. I am not one of "them." For that matter, I am not one of "us." But have gotten to know some of the good folks on WO under circumstances that were not of my choosing, and I have gotten to trust many of them. This is one area where I'd say you have jumped the gun judgement-wise.
Tell you what: I'll slow down and work in WP trenches a bit more, if you slow down and try to understand other people's perspectives before judging. What say you? ,Wil (talk) 06:49, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Deal. I'm not really an insider either, but I'm trying to emphasize - and perhaps scare you a little although I don't think you should be afraid of blocking - into understanding that perception matters. If you're really interested in having influence and affecting community decisions, you need to pick your battles a bit more carefully. For example, if the members of Wikipediocracy want to return to Wikipedia or get involved, then you should probably let them carry the torch and make amends and sign on as a supporter rather than leading the charge for them. I'm not in a position to judge, but I suspect that Greg Kohs probably could perhaps end up unblocked if he made a major effort and approached it a bit differently (mechanically, he needs to send a request to the Ban Appeals Subcommittee). I doubt he's interested at this point. In the meantime, I really doubt you'll find answers to reforming the toxic dialogue culture from Wikipediocracy. II | (t - c) 08:28, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
K. Spit shake. :P As you get to know me better, you'll find that I'm not a politician or a diplomat at heart. I'm an activist through and through. Try thinking of me outside of the context of Wikipediocracy; I do other stuff, too. :) FWIW, I'm not even participating there for a week. Someone suggested that they might be able to manipulate me (which has also been suggested here), and I abruptly said I was going to take a week off from WO. It's basically a huge middle finger to the idea that I'll let anyone manipulate me, and if I think you're trying I'm not afraid to get random on your ass. :) We'll see if I'm still welcome back there next week; I figure I probably will be, but maybe they'll get random on me. ,Wil (talk) 09:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Addendum with regard to Greg: as I noted above, most of us were naturally drawn here by an interest in free and open knowledge ('the mission' which is so often sccrnfully snickered at on Wikipediocracy). It appears that Greg may have been a bit different due to profit motivations. Add crankiness and a bulldog attitude and it's no surprise he had a real tough time fitting in. Based on what I've read, if it had been up to me, sure, I'd have let him attend the conference - but I didn't even attend the conference much less organize it, so I'm not going to try to micromanage and tell people they need to deal with someone I'm not forced to deal with. The working community of Wikipedia is a fickle bunch and their morale needs to be taken into consideration. II | (t - c) 07:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't like to speculate on people's motives; their actual actions and words are enough for me. I believe Greg has an overall abrasive, in-your-face, and, unfortunately, occasionally offensive online persona. Around the time I talked to you on the phone, I also talked to Greg. Now I won't be forming my opinion of you, Greg, or anyone else after one phone call, but I can tell you that he seemed to be a really nice guy, as did you, when I could hear his voice and get his straight off the dome thoughts on things. He could have been playing me- he certainly is intelligent enough to do so if he cared to- but if he has been sincere then it really isn't as hard to empathize with him as one might think. In fact, if he were sincere, then he would hardly be the first person I found incredibly abrasive online who turned out to be a nice guy or gal when I met them in person; half the Zend Framework community was like that! It gives me hope that you would have let him attend the conference if it was your decision, because maybe next time- if he is invited- you'll think about going up to him and saying Hi. If you do have the chance I suggest talking about something other than Wikipedia for a few minutes to remind yourself he's a person who has a life outside of criticizing Wikipedia- just like you have a life outside of working on Wikipedia- before you get in to why you disagree with him over Wikipedia itself. ,Wil (talk) 09:10, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Addendum to my reply to your addendum: We should also keep in mind that Greg is not allowed to chime in on this discussion because it is on en.Wiki. Take a moment to imagine how frustrating that would feel if you were in his place. I want to get his take, and I will unfortunately have to seek it off-wiki. This is as good a place as any to start building a little empathy. ,Wil (talk) 09:10, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Sj: regarding "I disagree with many of them but understand where the posters are coming from" - you don't. Wikipedia has no functional child protection structure. Admin behaviour is almost completely unregulated. Our quality control structure is worse than mediocre - effectively nonexistent, worse than 2 years ago. The world's encyclopedia is unreliable. The environment is toxic. Active editorship is still in decline. I could go on. And you're all "Hey man, chill. It's cool dude. Be nice. Don't say mean things about this stuff - it hurts people's feelings." Your phlegmy is charming but not exactly what is needed right now. You, and the rest of the governance (lol) here, are the problem.
I know: "Hey, it's a wiki, dude. Like, you know, the invisible hand and stuff. We trustees say cool stuff about freedom and the wisdom of the dysfunctional mob and, like magic, everything will be groovy. Man. So, we treat our BLP subjects with contempt. So we have weirdos chatting up kids. So our medical stuff can't be trusted. Hey, WP:EVENTUALISM dude." You don't get it. Really.
The top Google result for nearly every query is unreliable and you don't care enough. That's where I come from. I don't mean to hurt your feelings here. That's an unwanted side effect of saying what needs to be said. Sorry. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:33, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Hello Anthonyhcole, you won't hurt my feelings. Hospitality is mainly relevant in that hospitality affects who engages with you and whether people take time to read what you have to say.
You may be right that I don't know where other commenters on this page are coming from (though I'm not yet convinced), but you certainly don't know where I am coming from - since I don't advocate most of the ideas you're ascribed to me above. (is your wiki apologist a 70s-era Californian?) I'd be happy to have a discussion about eventualism at some point. I've left a more detailed reply on your talk page. – SJ +
Do any of us really understand where any of the rest of us are truly coming from? This isn't just being nit-picky about diction; it's a good time to ask a good question. I bet both of you come from very different backgrounds with different motivations and different things to add to the discussion. Ask yourselves how much you're assuming about the person on the other end of the line. Tell us in another thread, if you feel comfortable doing that, and we'll see how hilariously wrong everyone is about each other. ;) The fact is, the time we spend speculating about each other motivations is time that we're not adding ideas that each of us uniquely has to add to the discussion. And the most tragic irony is that, by focussing on other people and their motivations instead of ideas, we end up suppressing our own voices!
I believe that we should learn more about each other and empathize at all opportunities, but wouldn't that best be done by listening to each others' ideas and responding with your own viewpoint or- oftentimes even better- questions? Please, I invite both of you to bring this discussion back here, focus on the ideas exclusively, and show us all how it's done. But no matter where you to take this, best! ,Wil (talk) 23:38, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
FYI, I pointed you to that discussion about human dignity when it began here but you ignored it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:42, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Regarding "It seems to me that most contributors want to respect basic human dignity ... I see few serious proposals for change." I think SlimVirgin's proposal in the above-linked discussion is a serious proposal. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:06, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Regarding your comment on disclaimers above (#here), the "global disclaimer" you're referring to is one tiny little word at the bottom of the article. Effectively useless. It's an ass-cover. If you ever get around to asking our readers (that much-neglected stakeholder) any serious questions, you might ask how many of them have read our global disclaimer. I've described our failure to put a prominent disclaimer at the top of our medical content as both immoral and psychopathic. "Immoral" isn't just a casual epithet to fling at people I'm annoyed by. It is an apt description of that callous neglect. Callous disregard for the welfare of others pretty much defines psychopathy. Your characterisation of my analysis as name-calling is a measure of the strength your grasp of the moral dimension at play here. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:06, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
So then what about this?

So OK. Reading through your statements re including critical voices ("I believe everyone deserves to be heard. And I will seek out opinions wherever they are voiced..." "I seek the voices that are having a harder time getting heard to make them louder... Get used to it, because that’s not about to change." "I think every voice deserves to be heard. And I will go wherever people feel comfortable speaking freely to hear them." "I'm much more interested in the question that who asked it" and so forth) brings me to ask this about some of the other critical voices out there.

So then over at Stormfront, we have a number of fairly harsh critics. Not sure of all the issues they are raising, but one general theme is that the Wikipedia is controlled by, or at any rate overly influenced by, Jews, and this is bad thing and harmful to our ability to be comprehensive and accurate. For instance [http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t928214/ here] we have, under the title "Wikipedia = Jewpedia", the assertion that "Recently, several pro-Israeli groups were discovered to be engaging in ongoing joint efforts to change and/or remove material from Wikipedia which did not meet the interests of the Jews and Israel", and that CAMERA is involved in long-term efforts to skew Wikipedia's presentation of Palestinian history ("Crude propaganda passed of as fact, and infiltration of the administrative structure of Wikipedia to ensure that these changes remain unnoticed and unchallenged") for which they are being sued by the Palestinian website Electronic Intifada, according to the post.

Now, it's obviously not a physical impossibility that the Wikipedia is indeed overly influenced, at least regarding some subjects, by Israeli elements and/or people with a pro-Israeli POV, a large number of whom may be reasonably presumed to be Jewish, or that there is offline coordination to this end. And indeed the Israeli PR and lobbying effort in the United States is generally acknowledged to be extensive and effective, which certainly lends initial credibility to Stormfront's criticism. Stormfront may have their own agenda, but it's precisely that agenda that's likely to make them indefatigable in uncovering problems in this particular area if indeed there are any.

Well this is a fairly serious criticism, and if true it'd be fairly serious problem; and there's more along the same lines, which I'm sure if you reach out to the editors and leaders of Stormfront they'll provide details and possibly supporting documentation if they have it. So my question is, will you? Can we expect your good offices to effect a rapprochement with Stormfront, such that we can expect editors and leaders of Stormfront to be invited to speak to their concerns at our meetings and so forth?

Now there's a number of ways you could respond to this query. Which ones you chose will be instructive I think. Herostratus (talk) 23:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Loathsome logic-free, false-equivalency game-playing right there "Herostratus." Implying all the people involved with Wikipediocracy, some of them named (unlike cowards like you) are part of a hate group.Dan Murphy (talk) 23:55, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Dan Murphy, I think it's a fair question. In fact, I think any question is a fair question. And it's an inconvenient question- my favorite kind! So, first off, I will listen carefully to Herostratus himself. He references quotes that I've said publicly. I can see this will be a challenge from the get-go; he's going to hold me to my words. I'm pumped. Next, he mentions a site and organization I've never heard of. I'm have studied the rise of the Nazi in interwar Germany, and the name itself indicates its a neo-Nazi group. I look at Stormfront_(website) on-wiki. It is described as a racial hate site in the first sentence with several secondary sources. He provides a link, and I follow it. While I don't share the Hate, I'm not afraid of it. I have to see it for myself to honestly answer the question. It's in cyrillic characters, so I'm guessing it's Russian or a related language. In any case, it's a language I don't speak, not too helpful. I reply that the link didn't work, and if there's another link that Herostratus thinks is important he should send it to me or somehow translate this one. I look around a bit, and it's pretty apparent that racial Hate is promoted and discussed there- not surprisingly, primarily focussing on Jewish people, which is just one of the completely ridiculous aspects of Nazi racial ideology. So, I'm convinced that this is a Hate Group that has an agenda based on racism. Now I'm curious (for real). Does Wikipedia allow Hate Speech as defined in its own article? I search around for any policies regarding Hate Groups or Speech on Wikipedia. I don't find anything, and the Terms_of_Use don't seem to directly address it. So now I'll (for real) find the right forum and ask if anyone knows about policies pertaining to Hate Groups and Hate Speech. As for the other, on-wiki links, I put them on my queue of articles to read and get back to you (for real).

Whew. K. Let's assume I've already done all of that. This is a very serious matter, after all. Let's get to some answers. I will look at material you provided, because you don't seem to be motivated by racial hatred and I have a basic level of trust established with you. I will not reach out to the editors and leaders of Stormfront for information or speaking opportunities, because I personally wouldn't find any information that's racially biased useful. I wouldn't reach out to this organization as a group under any circumstances, in fact. I believe that the hate promoted by such groups channels hate that manifests in different way and for different reasons in each individual member. I believe the hate is a reaction to suffering, so I'd be most interested in getting to what is making them suffer. Again, I wouldn't reach out to the group, but, if I thought I could help someone who is suffering, I would reach out to individuals who are willing to talk about their most troubling memories and motives. There simply isn't a way to get at the source of the hate itself by addressing the organization. In fact, I think people who have more experience in working with former members of these groups say the members more often than not use these organizations precisely for that reason: to hide their own suffering.

If I were the organizer of an event, I would ask the community well in advance who we'd like to speak and who we wouldn't and follow that list of priorities, hopefully having a sound and fully transparent way for the community to stay involved. They are the audience, and it would be my responsibility to give them what they want. But, using Greg Kohs' case as an example, if the organizers have the final word on who presents- regardless of how opaque it is- and they say no, then that's that. It might not be fair, but the right to free speech will be defined or limited for different forums. It's worth noting that I've never said that the issue with WikiConference USA was with free speech (at least, I think I haven't), but an openness issue because they banned someone from attending after claiming it was an open conference. Ultimately, the attendees did not get what was promised in the promotional materials for the conference. I believe that the conferences that allow everyone in the Wikipedia community to truly allow everyone to attend. If individuals who have been active on Stormfront would like to attend, then they would be allowed under certain circumstances that apply to everyone. And here's the really important bit: I would never apply different rules to each attendee. No one has been forthcoming with the decision process in Greg's case, but I would not make up policy as I went along. The policies themselves should make sure that this individual can not disrupt the conference with spewing Hate Speech or in any other way. Here are some examples that could be applied to everyone and just take a bit of forethought and some communication with the community to establish:

  • Nobody will present a real threat to anyone in attendance (This should be a policy for all conferences, IMO, although we'd have to think through ways to protect attendees from abuse of this rule)
  • Everyone follow the dress code. If I were an organizer, I would establish some basic rules. Everybody wears clothes, for example. Likewise, if the community agrees on it, there might be a clause saying that no clothing may promote Hate Groups or practice Hate Speech.
  • Everyone follow other rules like no standing in the lobby screaming your views at everyone who passes by.

. . .

I'm sure there are already policies that protect Wikipedia conferences attendees and keep the conference on track. And it's worth saying twice: I would apply these policies equally to everyone.

Finally, I personally would approach that person where they feel comfortable talking. I would hear what that person has to say, and I would ask questions. I would try to get them to focus on their own well-being, because behind that hate there will be suffering. And I really don't like to see people suffer.

Wow. That was the hardest question I've answered in a *long* time. I think that just took me like 3 hours to pull out of my head/heart and put it on the screen. Thank you *so* much for a toughie like this one. If this answer does cover everything for you, then please, follow up. Everyone else, please, keep me on my toes and try to top this one. :) ,Wil (talk) 03:52, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Interesting response, and while I think the idea of "I would not make up policy as I went along" is a good goal, it also suggests that there is no room for discretion. Even highly codified systems, such as our justice system, which encode a much more detailed set of laws governing behavior, are full of opportunities for discretion - from the cop, to the prosecutor, to the judge. That's a safety valve built in, because not all bad behavior can be codified, and not all equivalent behavior merits equivalent sanctions. Now, sometimes such discretion is abused, but sometimes it also leads to laws not being enforced and prosecutions not being pursued, with good reason. If we can't create a justice system without discretion, how can you have a conference attendance policy without discretion for the organizers? Take an extreme example - suppose 500 members of StormFront signed up for the conference and told the organizers they were all going to show up and be really nice and give talks on how to expand coverage of white nationalist issues - and in spite of all of the careful writing of safe-space policy, no-one had thought to write a policy preventing a single racist organization from sending 500 die-hards to a conference where they would totally dominate the conversation - so a new rule has to be made up on the spot - StormFront can attend, but no more than 10 ppl since we don't want them to drown out other voices. This is the very essence of discretion and a game-time call, and I don't think anyone would fault them for making such a decision. I think it's not appropriate to link StormFront to wikipediocracy or Greg Kohs as there is no linkage between the two, but I'm just using that as an example to demonstrate that not making up policy on the fly isn't always possible nor desirable.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:15, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes! You are one insightful SOB and/or DOB. Of course, policy can not solve all problems. I cheated, and it didn't even occur to me that I was missing something! You summed up the problem well. The straight line is an illusion. Most of us aren't good at thinking of all possible scenarios. So, we draw a line. Then we we're presented with a situation where we have to make an exception. And then an exception to that exception. And so on. When you consider this geometrically, it's a classic fractal. And the thing about fractals is that they are infinitely detailed! So policy can't be the only solution. The most important line to draw is actually to what level of detail policy will be followed before an arbitrator steps in. Of course, ensuring that the arbitrator always works in good faith and is just is the trick. So, we're getting in to checks and balances. Do you think the check and balances are appropriate at Wikipedia? If not, do you have any ideas on how to change them to be more effective? And I'm talking about the whole system. Judicial, executive, legislative, for as much as they exist as separate bodies in Wikipedia. Someone used the word "adhocracy" on my blog today. First time I saw it. Funny as hell. ,Wil (talk) 05:23, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't know - I mean, ultimately, this is an internet community. When I look at much more complex structures - e.g. let's say the US government - that has been around for 200 years, has hundreds of thousands of people working for it, a massive budget, etc, and yet, it is packed full of flaws, of corruption, of miscarriages of justice that make wikipedia/wikipediocracy "issues" look so trivial in comparison. But I digress - as to checks and balances, I think the issue is what sort of control can the Foundation legally exert while still not going afoul of safe harbor rules. IANAL but I believe there are reasons the WMF is loathe to engage in content discussions. So it's really a unique problem - how do you have a community-led website and manage content, esp in incredibly contentious areas? Hire a top-notch editorial board? Who would pay for them? I see tons of critiques of ARBCOM, and while I don't think they're a bunch of legal eagles, we're also getting them for free. Would the community be willing to pay for legally trained supreme wiki-court judges that would be appointed by someone? Ultimately I think it all comes down to $, you have scarce resources, you can't solve all problems, and the "community" has it's own momentum that isn't always easily harnessed by the WMF. I've done a little work in trying edit some policies, and it's a real bear - but it's quite different from how policy is made in the real world. Should we go to a democratic model? Have representatives appointed, that would !vote on new policy or content issues?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:07, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I love it! The hardest questions almost inevitably lead to the intellectual veins of gold. So, there are a lot of great points here that I'd like to respond to individually. But first, it's all begging a huge question: Does Wikipedia have anything like a constitution? It may or may not be called that, but does it have something that fills the fundamental purpose of a constitution in a democracy: to define checks and balances? ,Wil (talk) 23:48, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Re constitution- no not really, it has the 5 pillars which is the closest we have. Also one of the cherished rules of Wikipedia is WP:IAR - and that separates it from most other communities, in that literally ignoring all rules is a rule broadly supported by the community. That was created because not every situation can be legislated. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:06, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Worth noting that the pillar about ignoring all rules is probably one of the most-ignored pillars. The Wikipdia community has become very rules-oriented; perhaps it attracts rules-oriented people. As has been mentioned elsewhere on this page, there is also a tendency to use Wikipedia "essays" differently to how their role is supposed to be. They are all too often cited as if they are rules, sometimes destructively. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:44, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about not responding sooner. Stuff. Also, regarding material written in other languages, I recommend a translator such as Google Translate which is free and easy to use. It's here.

Well yes it was a difficult question, and you threaded the needle reasonably well. "I will not reach out to the editors and leaders of Stormfront for information or speaking opportunities, because I personally wouldn't find any information that's racially biased useful" is a reasonable response. I would have have answered differently. A couple ways I might have answered are:

  1. "We're not gonna reach out to Don Black (Black is the publisher and leader of Stormfront) or welcome Don Black into the Wikimedia community because he's evil." ("Evil" may be described for our purposes here more or less as "Characterized by a desire to cause hurt or harm, or produce pain or distress, or impair the happiness of natural beings, without just cause"). [N.B.: I'm not describing Don Black as evil, just saying what you might have said; but you'd have to dig up refs of notable sources describing him as evil or equivalent (e.g. as a "racist hatemonger" which devolves to "seeking to impair the happiness of natural beings without just cause" which devolves to "evil" and so on) which I'm sure is possible.}
  2. "We're not gonna reach out to Don Black or welcome Don Black into the Wikimedia community because it'd be inherently disruptive."

(By the way Don Black favors dark business suits and is, I'm sure, capable of checking his firearms (if he even carries any) and refraining from screaming in the lobby or defecating on the podium, so your points about dress code, safety, and decorum have little bearing on the question of inviting or not inviting Don Black to engage with the Wikipedia community.)

Anyway, your response was more or less "We're not gonna reach out to Don Black or welcome Don Black into the Wikimedia community because he's not gonna provide useful info or insights because they're gonna be based on racist concepts which are false" is probably also true but a secondary point and kind of weak tea.

Anyway we can leave the first point (Black being evil, if you wanted to say that) aside, since there's no equivalency at all between Black and Greg Kohs on that score, as a couple of editors pointed out correctly.

It's the second point I'm interested in. Being addressed by Don Black would, I assume, cause a mass exodus for the door at any meeting of decent people. This doesn't make for a successful meeting. Even if you believed that this was unjustified, that Black had interesting and useful things to say and that the people streaming for the exits were wrongheaded, you still have a disrupted meeting.

Even if people don't stream for the door but just stand in place but be pissed off, you still have a couple problems. First off, as a general rule, it's not a good idea to make people unhappy unless you have a pretty good reason. Making people happy rather than unhappy is a desirable thing just for it's own sake; but secondly, even if you don't believe that or don't care, you still have that "unhappy and pissed off" is not the mood you want your attendees to be in as a purely practical matter of meeting management. This is why the snack table at most meetings offers donuts and coffee rather than vinegar and dead squirrels and so forth.

Anyway, it'd be inherently disruptive to be addressed by a speaker whose theme is along the lines of "Well, the problem with Wikipedia is that Larry Sanger is a Jew, and Jimmy Wales is the tool of Jewish interests, and so forth, and this is all part of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy to control information" It's also painful to hear stuff like this. It's enraging and emotionally painful. And this is why people head for the exits or want to. So really the two problem are intertwined. Because you can only get people to put up with a certain level of inflammatory nonsense and once you exceed that level you have a practical problem.

On that level there's equivalency, yes, since Greg Kohs is also an inflammatory and disruptive element. There's no "Wikipedia community" that speaks with one voice and AFAIK (this means "As Far As I Know") there's no community-wide majority vote on invitations to attend meetings, participate, or address Wikipedia or Wikimedia gatherings, but obviously there are large elements of the community who don't want anything to do with Greg Kohs, for various reasons. I think a lot of those reasons are good and you don't but that's beside the point. Of Wikipedians who much know who Kosh is, "want nothing to do with him" is probably the opinion of many if not most. That matters. That's The Community. You've been told this and you don't care ("Get used to it, because that’s not about to change"), which fine, but then you probably shouldn't go all "Well the Community decides" regarding Don Black. You shouldn't do that because it's hypocritical. This is not helpful to effective communication.

You have to make choices in life, man. Yeah you do. You can advocate for Greg Kohs being part of the Wikipedia community or you can advocate for me being part of the Wikipedia community. Not just me but other editors as well.

So choose. Or I guess you already have. Herostratus (talk) 02:04, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

There is something that needs to be made perfectly clear to anyone reading this response: there is absolutely NO ideological connection between Greg Kohs and Don Black. For that matter, Wikipediocracy was established to provide a forum for criticism of Wikipedia, NOT bigotry. The issues of anti-semitism and harsh criticism of Wikipedia of the people that espouse each are most certainly NOT intertwined. I've answered your question. If you have any additional questions, I'd be happy to expound on what I've said above. But I question whether you're using the examples of Stormfront and Don Black in good faith. Do you understand how this might affect someone's reputation based on something that they don't believe and have no involvement in? It sounds like what you'd prefer to discuss is Greg Kohs' banning from WikiConference USA, so let's stick to that and discuss racial hatred and the evils of anti-semitism in a different thread. Thanks. ,Wil (talk) 02:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Coping with harassment

You seemed confused last week when people commented that prolonged discussion of harassment, or publishing links to it, can itself cause harm. That's worth a detailed comment, since you seem to want to reduce harassment, yet at times make others feel less safe.

  • Revisiting past harassment can be harmful, even when done 'politely'. If someone insults you, you can remove or ignore it. If someone else asks you to describe it, or to prove that it happened, you have to think about it + find it + reproduce it; more pain & mental energy than the initial insult. Similarly, spending days talking to third-parties about an episode of harassment has negative effects on the target and the community. Forcing others to undelete and repost harassment in order to discuss it is one of the canonical "things to avoid". It gives the originator attention, which subconsciously or consciously is positive feedback; it repeats in part the initial attack, and shares it with more people; and it commits more collective time to dwelling on this type of negative drama, rather than whatever productive thing they had been doing in the first place. A small amount of attention is needed to process attacks when they happen; we appoint people trusted to do so discreetly precisely to limit the impact.
  • Similarly, WO is among other things a source of regular attacks on community members; AIUI mainly focused on a few dozen highly active en:WP editors, Commons editors and WMF staff. Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem: they are caricatured, framed to be offensive and disruptive. When you promote the forum as a place to have conversation, the targets of this abuse see this as endorsing such attacks. (e.g., You would not participate in a community that allowed bigotry or hate speech, but you want others to participate there, so you must think their choice of language and tactics are fine.)
This can be particularly difficult for staff. They receive some of the harshest treatment; groundless but hurtful attacks. (Central organizations bear the brunt of most conspiracy theories & related rage.) They will be particularly sensitive to the fact that you are the ED's partner.
In these ways, without attacking anyone yourself, you can cause others to start spending mental energy reading and worrying about attacks.
  • A parallel: Wikimedia projects also have a hard time maintaining civility. While most wikis have solid civility policies, it is possible to game such things, and our model is not great: we are less civil than many online communities (WikiHow in particular springs to mind). So you can absolutely find here on en:WP similar unkind and counterproductive attacks, if you seek that out. However here it is explicitly against the spirit of the site, however hard that is to enforce; and the angry exceptions are diluted by the tens of thousands of contributors working peacefully together, focused on a shared positive purpose.

These are global problems. If you'd like to discuss this further, we could do so on Meta, where ~all parties are free to edit. – SJ + 00:50, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Sj, I know this is coming from a good place. You seem to be a guy that sincerely cares about others, and that counts for a lot in my book. But aren't you laying the responsibility for these alleged acts of harassment at my feet simply because the ED is part of my private life? I'd just like to see a more tolerant and truly open Wikipedia. Allow me to be perfectly open about the beliefs behind my behavior: unless the larger Wikipedia community- and I'm talking about large enough to include Wikipediocracy- does some serious soul searching, the project will continue to lose the lifeblood that makes it such a wonderful gift to the world. I'm talking about that silent majority for whom Wikipedia is a labor of love and a way of giving back to others. These people don't deserve hostile mailing lists and ever more politics. These people deserve to be heard, wherever they feel comfortable speaking up. ,Wil (talk) 03:19, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi Wllm, I hope you had a fine weekend. I greatly appreciate your contributions and views, and the views of our project's contributors wherever they appear. I also think that hostility and particularity are major contributors to problems here, both on this wiki and in the larger community of everyone drawn to the project's vision.
I did not assign responsibility above. I wanted to explain how innocent comments can affect others - specifically how people who deal with issues of harassment every day have, over time, decided to minimize the amount of discussion that each incident gets. (This was not the case early on, when there were many fewer of them, and we had not yet attracted scores of people who were so persistent and drawn to that negative feedback loop. The largest communities online tend to draw the most of this, and WP is particularly porous to it.)
I also don't think that talking about harassment is itself harassment; nevertheless it can makes the subjects of it feel bad for a second time. The friendliest communities I know moderate it away entirely, so this doesn't happen. The most transparent and argumentative ones debate each instance of harassment to death, and keep the entire discussion. We currently trade off between those two extremes.
As to your personal relationship / position affecting how your words are taken by others: that happens whether we like it or not. No judgement here; an observation. Even when you try to draw a sharp distinction between self and a public or private position, most readers will ignore that distinction. Regards, – SJ + 06:38, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi Sj, I had a great weekend, thanks. And I really appreciate the encouragement. As far as my personal relationships go, I ask you kindly not to get in to my private life in the future. Thanks. ,Wil (talk) 08:19, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm someone who has never felt the need to participate in the mailing lists, nor the off-site hate forums. I do often see content from both, and I do sometimes reply on-wiki when that would be useful. I would guess that most real content contributors would be in the same position of not being involved in either of those off-wiki forums. It has never been clear to me why the mailing lists have any special status, much like I don't see that IRC has any special status. Maybe people that are afraid of "free speech" happening on IRC or mailing lists are the people most concerned? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Demiurge1000. Sorry, but you lost me on that last question. Most concerned with what? Thanks for any clarification. ,Wil (talk) 02:17, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Most concerned by it, not with it.
I see I've missed another question you asked me above, too. This page is quite busy! :) I'll try to get around to that. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:43, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that one up for me. That might be the case, but I avoid speculating about others' motivations. Motivations are just too complex, and I don't know these people very well. I think that ultimately everyone should be able to speak freely (you were right to put those quotes around free speech ;) ) anywhere they'd like. It's telling (a tragedy, IMO) that many of them go off-wiki now to do that. ,Wil (talk) 19:55, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
When you know these people better, please mention it here. I, for one, will be interested to get your insights. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:16, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
For sure. ,Wil (talk) 21:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

An Observation on your use of this Talk Page

Wllm, this may be apparent to you already, and I'm no doubt simply adding to the pile of unsolicited advice you have already received, but I thought it would be worth noting that you are using your talk page in a rather unorthodox manner. Most Wikipedia talk pages are places for conversation initiated by other users, to which the user whose talk page it is then replies (or not as he or she wishes). You, however, are constantly curating this space (pointing to "firsts" and the like) and using it as a place to initiate conversation yourself. Normally, this would be the function of the user page. Now, as I say, you may be well aware of the ways in which you are deviating from custom, and you may prefer to keep your user page itself in its current, fairly pristine and minimal, state. I have been following some of the ways in which your arrival in the community (and its ancillary sites) has been taking the place somewhat by storm. But perhaps if you adopted some of the minor conventions of this place, such as this common distinction between user page and talk page, it would help to advance communication and understanding. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

  • Actually I didn't know that was the norm. Thanks for the heads up! But I'm going to keep my talk page like this anyways. I like how there's so much conversation going on here, and I'd like to be a part of it. And sometimes I'd like advice and/or info from the community, and this seems to be a great place to ask. For example, I would love to get your take on your Wikipedia experience above. Best! ,Wil (talk) 06:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
    • It may be that I am simply used to it, but I think there are advantages to the customary use of talk pages. One additional point is that they make for easy archiving, whereas your (emergent) practice seems simply to delete conversations or issues as they become dated. You might want to take a look through the archives of heavily-watched talk pages (and there's a tool somewhere that can tell you which pages have most watchers; this in fact may be it). User_talk:Jimbo_Wales is one, of course (3072 watchers), but you might also look at User_talk:SandyGeorgia or even (dare I say it) User_talk:Giano. These are pages with lively communities and associated discussions. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 07:21, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Well, if you're used to it, then that would be because you've seen it a lot. :) I'm kinda unconventional, as you've already noticed. Good point on the archives. I'm glad you mentioned it, cause I was going to ask your advice about what to do with all these great threads. I've tried to delete only the stuff that is now irrelevant or n00b advice about how to get around, but now I have to consider what to do with some great conversations. My options seem to be: fold them (nested, if possible) so it's easy to scroll to what you want, archive them, or just rely on the logs by carefully deleting entire discussions with a relevant comment. I'm a coder, so the last two options almost strike me as the same thing.
  • Wow. How bout this for a coincidence? You are precisely the kind of Wikipedian I'm interested in talking to. I'm looking at your edits on that WMF labs tool. You did an amazing number of edits in the summer of 2007 and almost all of 2008. In fact, you were a rock star of an editor with a peak of almost 3000 edits in one month! But since 2008, you have relatively rarely crossed the 100-edit threshold that identifies a "very active editor". Why did you stop editing? I would really like to know about your experience at the top of the page and would be much obliged. Or, if you're willing to tell me but want to keep it private, you can mail me at wllm@wllm.com. Or none of the above. Whatever's clever. Best! :) ,Wil (talk) 06:34, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Well, I'm a fairly unusual editor in that (as you will see from my user page) my heaviest engagement is when I'm teaching courses that involve Wikipedia. When I'm not doing that, I mainly check in on pages that my students have edited, plus a few others that are of interest to me for one reason or another. I would like to be more engaged personally, but find it more effective to engage via the courses I teach.
    • But this takes me to a point that may be worth bringing to your attention, in your self-assigned role of... well, whatever your self-assigned role may be ;). It is worth looking at the relationship between (mostly higher) education and Wikipedia, and particularly at the so-called Education Program, responsibility for which is now split between the WMF and a relatively new organization called the Wiki Education Foundation. There is much that could be said about this relationship, and about the history of the Education Program, and it would take a while to say it. But I have reason to believe that neither Jimmy Wales nor Sue Gardner have ever been very interested in or even aware of either a) the possible synergies and resonances between academia and Wikipedia or b) the specific activities of the Education Program. This is a pity, it seems to me, though perhaps understandable in part in that Wikipedia from the outset cast itself in opposition to official institutions, and perhaps to higher education above all: hence its tendency to disparage "credentials" and expertise, both for good and ill. Yet Wikipedia in many ways mimics traditional academic virtues (and vices). And some of the challenges that Wikipedia faces are very similar to those faced by academia, too. All this, by the way, was the gist of what I had to offer to the Wiki Conference USA, in which you have taken such interest when it comes to Greg Kohs. I agree that it was a mistake to have banned Kohs (and that it is even more of a mistake to refuse to give a rationale for that ban), but let us not get distracted from rather more important issues. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 07:21, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Honestly, I think we'd agree that I can self-assign myself to any role I want if it's cool with the community. :) We'll see that verdict soon enough. Let's get to the gold in your comment. First, I've been hearing from a lot of people in all levels of education. The overall impressing that I'm getting is that the relationship between Wikipedia and academia is ill-defined, so it's difficult for educators to know how to engage their students using it; they've tried using it in the classroom with mixed results. And I've been sensing an overall sense of great tragedy that educators have so much to offer- especially around matters like article quality in their various fields of study- but their efforts simply don't seem as welcome as the educators- and many people who would like to see more of them on WP- would hope for. Let me know if you disagree with any of that. And let me come back to you after I've taken a closer look at the Education Program (to satisfy my own curiosity, of course ;) ), because I'm sure I'll have more questions.
      • As far as the matter with Greg Kohs goes, I'm not sure that our priorities differ as much as they may seem to. I'm not bringing awareness to this issue for Greg's sake. I care about openness for all in everything Wikipedia does, provided no one presents a real threat. But, to get the attention needed to settle this issue, we can't talk about it preemptively in the abstract. It take a real story- ideally not a public controversy, but I argue that the organizers were really responsible for ensuring that in this case- that can generate enough interest in the community to get everyone's point of view. Otherwise, it seems matters like this are decided by a small group of people who are, at best, on a public mailing list. Believe it or not, people who take part in such conversations are telling me that a lot of things are decided in private email threads. Now, I must say that I'm not part of those threads, so I can't really say anything other than this is what I've been told; no one should assume that it is true just because I said it here. I do believe, however, that a large community can only address issues like collaboration with education well and to everyone's relative satisfaction if the system is open and transparent. I want to make sure that the decision makers in this community know that there are others who agree with me. In any case, I'm looking forward to talking more, especially about opportunities with academia once I'm more ramped up on that issue. You probably already know them, but I might be able to introduce you to some like-minded people. Do me a favor and please consider putting a small note above so that at least I- if no one else- can know and remember your perspective on WP. ,Wil (talk) 08:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
        Protip: jbmurray is in fact a rock star. Which is one reason why he was able to dream up and run

the greatest class on/around Wikipedia of all time. (JB, I still imagine you'll be running your own educational institution one day :) – SJ + 07:19, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

WP:ELNO

You should remove that link to your petition, it's not appropriate for talk pages.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 00:21, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi alf laylah wa laylah, you're talking about #4, right? Is that a mandatory rule? I might be persuaded on this; after all, it is a matter that has obviously been discussed before. But right now I think this issue is extremely important to prevent exclusion in the future, and I'd like to bring it to people's attention. And it already seems to be as important to many others that we remain a truly open community. So, for now I'm going to leave it up. Please feel free to convince me otherwise. :) Best! ,Wil (talk) 01:02, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
WP:ELNO only applies to articles, not talk or user talk. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:41, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I think Nikki is right. However, I'd also suggest that one link, in a relevant part of a conversation, would be fine. Spamming your petition to dozens of talk pages, nyet.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
OK, sorry I said that! People I respect disagree with me, and I'm willing to accept their opinions since they almost certainly know more about this kind of thing than I do.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 05:45, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
No worries. That petition has been getting a lot of attention, and I think I've posted it in four places already: NYB's talk page, Jimmy's talk page, here, and probably somewhere on the talk page of the List of Wikipedia Controversies. Everyone's right. It's probably done it's thing by now. I'll start removing them as the discussion dies down. BTW, I disagree with people I respect all the time. That's one of the things that makes me respect them more. :D Don't ever hesitate to put anything on my page, alf laylah wa laylah ,Wil (talk) 09:01, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

From doomsdayer520

Hello, you left me a message yesterday about my history of Wikipedia edits. You mentioned that you are contacting people who formerly edited a lot but then dropped off... I'd like to know the purpose of that endeavor. Is it out of personal curiosity or are you seeking info on behalf of WP administrators?

Anyway, I had a very high edit count in 2009-2010 for a couple of reasons. First, I was unemployed during that period and had the time; and second, I was heavily involved in improving and assessing articles for the Albums Project. By late 2010 I had also become heavily involved in article deletion discussions and became disillusioned with the lack of civility in some of the discussions, and my free time also decreased dramatically due to new employment. So I downsized my WP editing significantly but my love of WP is still intact. I still read WP articles regularly but since 2011 I typically edit minor problems as I find them, rather than actively improving or creating complete articles as I did for a while back in the day. --DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 17:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Welcome! It is totally out of personal curiosity combined with a desire to make stories like yours known, and I hope you don't feel imposed upon in any way. The deal is this; people listen to me, and for all the wrong reasons. I have sworn not to say why anymore, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the mess up above if you're personally curious about it. So, finding myself with a lot of unwanted, but very constructive, AFAICT, attention, I figured I do something good with it. I believe that people like you are (or were, sadly) the lifeblood of the project. I want to know what made you become less active, and I want other people to know, too. You're probably aware that the WMF obsesses over numbers around the "very active editors." I'm less interested in the numbers and more interested in the people behind them. If you're interested in telling me more about it, I've got a few questions for you: I've been told that "civility" is a *very* loaded word in the Wikipedia community. What does it mean to you? Or, if you'd rather, what does "lack of civility" mean to you?
I can't do anything about your new employment other than to congratulate you :D, but I'm curious if there is anything that might be changed or improved to get you more active on the project, and, hopefully, in the community? In any case, thanks for dropping by. What you've already said is incredibly interesting to me and, I suspect, many others who are watching this page. Best! ,Wil (talk) 00:39, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
@Doomsdayer520: Oops. I just noticed I forgot to ping you on the reply. ,Wil (talk) 01:06, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
What's up? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:48, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Ah, pee. My mistake. I keep forgetting the ping syntax, so I copied/pasted from Jimbo's page. Forgot to change the name. :) Now it's changed. Anyways, haven't see you round these parts, so welcome. Feel free to kick back and relax. ,Wil (talk) 03:05, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
My name wasn't even on there though, so maybe you are mistaken? Either way, welcome! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! Sorry bout the mixup. I get a little confused sometimes. :) ,Wil (talk) 04:23, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
@Doomsdayer520: Oops. I just noticed I forgot to ping you on the reply. (Trying one more time cause I may have screwed up the ping first time round. After this, I'll leave DS520 alone. I promise.) ,Wil (talk) 07:23, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Is an RfC voting?

First of all, thanks for adding the material to List of Wikipedia controversies. Second, would you mind moving your question about the RfC process down out of the lead part of the section into the threaded discussion section since if it starts a discussion where it is now it's going to gunk up the process? Third, RfCs look like voting, but they're not (I mean, they're not supposed to be, although many people, often those on the losing end, cynically say that they are just vote-counts). Editors are expected to explain their positions and discuss them as well. An RfC is a way to have a structured (as opposed to the usual anarchic style) conversation about a controversial matter with a very specifically framed question. Usually, unless it's entirely not obvious, one asks someone uninvolved to evaluate the various positions and make a call on the outcome. By the way, I didn't mean to say that dispute resolution in general is bullshit. The RfC process works surprisingly well, for instance. I was thinking only of WP:DRN, which actually is bullshit. Cheers!— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 13:33, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Moved! Thanks for the heads up. ,Wil (talk) 01:03, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Barnstar banter

Carrite, that is hilarious! The last thing I'd expect to be thanked for right now is "diplomacy." ;) But I'll thank you heartily for my very first barnstar. ,Wil (talk) 23:45, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Seriously, tho. When am I going to get my "Accused of Trolling on Wikipediocracy" barnstar? Now that's one I've actually earned. :D
I'm a funny dude, I guess. You'll have to make your own "Accused of Trolling on Wikipediocracy" barnstar, sadly WPO doesn't have such a thing yet. It's really easy to get discouraged between the careerists and the cynics; you just have to remember that there are a whole bunch of idealists out there, although you will have to find them in their element, they won't be found either at the drama pages or the off-site drama site. Do some serious editing work on serious topics in between the political forays. Not only is that the way to rub elbows with the "silent majority" at WP, but WP:NOTHERE is a real thing and you should be at least conscious of it. Carrite (talk) 23:55, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
BTW: here's what your contribution pie chart currently looks like: HERE. To keep the boogie man away, keep building up that salmon portion of the pie chart... And don't be afraid to hang some userboxes and some links to your work on your User page. Carrite (talk) 00:15, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! That's going to be very helpful going forward. I decided that, in addition to the pages I've already started editing, I should pick a completely random topic that I know very little about so that I can learn about something new while I edit. I chose Jesse James. I'd say "don't ask why," if I believed there were questions that shouldn't be asked. But I can say that I don't have a good answer. I just got a good book on the subject to kindle-out to tonight. ,Wil (talk) 03:31, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Have fun. The edit history for every page you work on can be your friend. You'll learn the names of the people who are contributing content by glancing and those and seeing who is adding content to this article or that. All those numbers in the edit history are the number of characters added or subtracted to a piece, by the way, in case you haven't figured that out already. Really big changes often draw scrutiny from the anti-vandalism people. All the people adding (+10) (-1) (+2) etc. are typically the copy editor "gnomes" who fix grammar and such. The people who show in the edit histories as (+1,251) (-550) (+2,744) etc. are generally the content writers. There are a whole other group of people that work on anti-vandalism, new page patrol, and so forth. I can show you around "backstage" sometime if you're interested. But have fun playing with content a little. Doing something on a new and fresh topic is a good idea, I do that frequently myself. You learn all sorts of interesting shit that way. (P.S. Glad you are taking a break from WPO. That's a good move. Work at being a Wikipedian for a while, the big issues we all care about aren't going away in the meantime...) —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 04:26, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
P.P.S. I see that Jesse James is a pretty mature page. As you read on him see if you can find some auxiliary topic that is covered in the source but undercovered on WP. There's a certain WOW factor to being able to add content to popular topics, but the real need is to find the frail pages and to flesh them out. Carrite (talk) 04:36, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, the Jesse James page itself is pretty well covered (as he himself was in his day), but the figures, places, etc. around him aren't. Those are the articles I'm looking to fill in details for. ,Wil (talk) 05:14, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Howdy from a homie

Responding to your invitation to post here on Facebook. Wikipedia makes me batshit insane too. Cheers. Oh No! It's Faustus37! it is what it is - speak at the tone 16:01, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

So what level of insane were you at before Wikipedia? Hey all, this is a friend of mine that I literally couldn't go back farther with. He was best buds with my brother since we moved to Idaho ~the time I was 5. He's got a lot of edits under his belt, many of which have not been reversed. Looks like you did a ton on Twin Falls, too. Are you sure it meets notability guidelines? ,Wil (talk) 19:12, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
@Faustus37: Can you do me a favor next time you're out by the canyon? I want a picture of Evel Knievel's ramp. Don't know if you put it in there, but there's a mention in Twin Falls, Idaho. I'd like to upload it to commons and add it to the article, then watch how long it takes before someone realizes that they are just looking at a pile of dirt from a distance and takes it down. :D Honestly, Twin Falls doesn't have a hell of a lot of history, so it's gotta flaunt what's there. Just email it to me or upload it to commons and send the file name if you want to bother with that. Thanks! ,Wil (talk) 23:43, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
@Wllm: Shame I didn't see this until just now as I was in Twin Falls this afternoon. But as you mention, the jumpsite wouldn't be much of a photo since (1) it's on private property and not easily accessible and (2) it really is just a pile of dirt. I think I did add that some years ago, now that you mention it. It's by far the single most significant historical event in Twin Falls. Oh No! It's Faustus37! it is what it is - speak at the tone 01:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
@Faustus37: Just use a zoom lens off the bridge. Or take a picture of a random pile of dirt by the canyon. No one will know the difference. ;)
FWIW, I've got a very old encyclopedic memory involving you. I remember one time during recess at Harrison Elementary, we looked in the window of one of the 4th of 5th grade rooms, and you saw an encyclopedia that was open to Adolf Hitler for some reason. You couldn't stop laughing. I must have been in third grade and had no idea who he was; you knew a hell of a lot for your age, IIRC. I think I may have mistaken him for Charlie Chaplin. Now I'm so fascinated with the rise of the Third Reich, I've read both Mein Kampf and the Zweites Buch in the original German. Turns out, they aren't very funny. Anyways, it's just one of my early encyclopedia-oriented memories, and you just happened to be the main character in this one. Well, you and Adolf Hitler. ,Wil (talk) 04:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Forums

Hi Wllm! I'm not entirely sure what the right forum on Wikipedia is, in the sense that this isn't directly related to content or management on WP. If it was in regard to on-Wiki actions then there are a lot of places, but as it relates to events that occurred at an independent (of Wikipedia, anyway) conference, it isn't an issue that Wikipedia is set up to handle. Accordingly, it seems you've been to the normal places - Newyorkbrad's talk page where it relates to NYB, Jimbo's talk page in regard to the WMF - and perhaps you might find that this sneaks in through the WP:Village Pump. But it seems to me the best avenue is through the WMF as sponsors, so Meta, or the regional chapters who ran the event (where I gather this is being pursued). - Bilby (talk) 02:22, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Bilby: Thanks for the advice. I would like to follow up with the regional chapter on this and the other concerns I have about the conference. I also want a balanced perspective to remember that a lot of great things happened at this conference, too, so I'll look around for some threads on that and post a list here when I have them. ,Wil (talk) 02:42, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I just ran across this, which is very disappointing. I don't know the full history either, but it doesn't look good to this editor who is outside the "inner circle". Just wanted to say that, regardless of the nature of the relationship, if you were my partner, I would be so proud of you. Keep up what you're doing. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I appreciate the note. I'd appreciate it even more if you copy and pasted it to Lila's talk page. :D JK! I will definitely keep holding people to their words and demanding that we be nice to each other. Wikipediocracy won't be a source of information for me anymore, but I'm sure if there's something that someone feels I can do to help somebody or the community, they will come here to tell me or send me a mail. That said, if someone wants my partner's ear, it won't be through me. Hope to see you round these parts again soon. ,Wil (talk) 23:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
JK≡"just kidding", right? User talk:LilaTretikov is surprisingly quiet; I wonder if people are afraid to post there? (I think I just "pinged" her) But if you really want me to copy the note, I'm willing to do that. And, yes, please do keep up your hyperfocus on holding people to their words and demanding that we be nice to each other. Even if that means being a bit unpredictable: joining sites, quitting sites and such. I can't really give any more advice than that; in spite of whatever disabilities you think you have, I think that you've been doing a wonderful job at pursuing your mission, much better than I could ever have done. Though you've been running a mile a minute, so I haven't read everything you've posted in the last few weeks, nothing I've read from you so far has upset me in the least. I'm going to start a new topic below. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:57, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. JK does indeed ="just kidding". Sometimes I think Lila could be reminded of how proud she should be of me, but doesn't every partner think that of each other? :) There is special ping syntax for pinging:
@Wbm1058: I just pinged you. ADHD has helped me in many ways, and it certainly adds to the unpredictability and running a mile a minute, although I'm treating my disorder and have my impulses more or less under control. But I'm quite comfortable with unpredictability, and I believe that it is sometimes a good thing. You're right about hyperfocus in this case; I am hyperfocusing on the social phenomena at work on Wikipedia and trying to change it so that we're all nicer to each other. Good catch! To say that hyperfocus leads to total dedication is an understatement. It has driven some of the most successful people in the world to achieve things that are entirely unprecedented. In fact, there is a high incidence of ADHD among entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, along with autistic-spectrum disorders like Aspergers. I just hope that I can help to reach a tiny sliver of the success that these individuals have achieved by making Wikipedia a better place for everyone. ,Wil (talk) 03:08, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Editing

Hi Wllm! It seems that you've had an interesting introduction to Wikipedia, Wikipediocracy and Wikimedia-L. I hope it is a tad atypical, as it doesn't look to me as an outsider as a welcoming experience overall. However, I was think about my own experience editing WP, and what made it work in the early days for me was the feeling of being involved in an incredibly collaborative environment - I come from academia, and generally collaborative work for me meant, at most, two or three people working together mostly by checking or offering suggestions on one person's writing. Early on I found the support of the Wikiprojects to be wonderful, but my best experience came from working in real time with other editors to collaborativly build an article (specifcially, the Shrine of Remembrance). When things get difficult here, I recall that experience to give me context.

@Bilby: BTW, I just took a look at the article you cited. It's very well written, but what an extraordinary structure! I've never seen a Grecian classical facade like that topped with a pyramid. Of course it makes sense; the Greeks were all about geometry, applying the Golden Ratio to almost all aspects of architecture, for example. Triangles are certainly prevalent in the Golden Age. So why don't we see more examples of pyramids in grecian structures? It makes me immediately wonder how much Athenian architects knew about the great pyramids and if they avoided this shape intentionally. This isn't a subject I know that much about, so it's possible that there are examples from antiquity that I'm not aware of. It's amazing how one Wikipedia article can spawn one thousand questions. ,Wil (talk) 05:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Anyway, the point of this was that it seemed to me you were exploring the various perspectives of the projects, and that you might want to see if some of the heaviliy collaborative editing would provide you with another. If you, like me, enjoy the reseach side of things, you might want to try the Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement list, or play at working on articles that show up at WP:Featured Article Review. Or you might not, as you see fit. :) Anyway, best of luck with future editing, whatever direction you wish to head in! - Bilby (talk) 06:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Bilby! As far as my introduction goes, no biggies. What matters is that I've gotten my hands dirty editing, despite many of these experiences. And that's what I've found most satisfying. I started off with Random Riffling. Then I went to town on the David Lynch article.
In every negative experience, there's always a positive outcome hiding somewhere. After my experience on Wikipediocracy, I turned my attention to the ADHD article and noticed that it didn't cite any of the well documented positive traits of ADHDers, so I'm trying to get a section in there. Moreover, ADHD is a very common disorder- to the point that many don't refer to it as such. Maybe someone who has been diagnosed will see that there's no reason to hide it; be proud of it! And there are people who may have it but haven't looked in to it or sought a diagnosis. For them I get a chance to say publicly that if you're like most adult ADHDers, treating it will literally turn your life around. And there you go! Even the chance of helping a person out makes it all worthwhile.
While I'm waiting for a response from the people who are the main editors on the ADHD article, I'm reading up on Jesse James. I decided to pick some random topic I knew nothing about and learn enough to contribute to the articles about him and the people around him.
Finally, I've got tons of audio loops to upload to commons to keep building the music sample library I started.
I'll try to bring in more people to the music samples effort. I don't know how one forms a project- if there is such a formal construct- around here, but I'll look in to whether there would be a good one around this effort. Thanks for the tips! ,Wil (talk) 06:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
A WikiProject is very much a formal construct. See WikiProject Council and the associated links in the sidebar for more information. There are literally hundreds of WikiProjects here (some more active than others), many of them dating back to the earliest years of Wikipedia such as WikiProject Military history founded in 2002. I'm a member of WikiProject Opera founded in 2004 and WikiProject Children's literature founded in 2006. As for starting your own project, I strongly suggest you do not try to reinvent the wheel, especially since you are very new to Wikipedia. There are several existing WikiProjects which you could join which would involve sound/music samples. See for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Music and Wikipedia:WikiProject Images and Media. Note also that even very short samples of copyright music and/or copyright performances of it may only be uploaded to Wikipedia under the Non-free content criteria and used only in specific existing articles, with each use requiring a detailed fair use rationale. Voceditenore (talk) 08:28, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm. What I'm doing doesn't look like it would fall under either of those projects. But if you think starting a project is not for the newbie, then I'll just keep uploading them myself. All of these are completely free-use samples under Creative Commons, either because I've carefully checked where I've gotten them or because I've created them myself. Thanks for dropping by! ,Wil (talk) 08:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Why would files like File:HipHopBeat@80BPM.wav, File:Techno@120BPM.ogg, etc. not be useful for music-related articles and consequently the projects working on them? You can read more advice about starting (or not starting) a project at WikiProject Council/Guide and WikiProject Council/Proposals. – Voceditenore (talk) 08:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
They could, although they aren't likely to be very interesting alone. These are more geared towards using to put songs together and are incredibly useful for music producers. For example, many people use them to make their own music, which could then be more useful in articles or other Wikimedia projects, or to create soundtracks or possibly sound effects for videos that could be used in Wikimedia projects. Can you think of an example where one would use something like a raw drum machine loop that is no more than 1-2 measures long in an article? Keep in mind that there will be quite a number of different drum loops in those folders soon. I'm probably not thinking of all the use cases. ,Wil (talk) 09:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
OK, if that's what you're trying to do, it's related to Wikimedia Commons, not the English Wikipedia. Perhaps try looking for collaborators at the Commons Village Pump? Voceditenore (talk) 06:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
Ah. That's probably the source of the confusion. Of course, I'm doing it all on commons. It's my little commons project so I can take a break from en.Wiki every now and then. ;) Thanks for the suggestion. I'm been meaning to visit the various village pumps, but haven't had a lot of time lately. Thanks for dropping by, and come on by whenever you have a hankering to! ,Wil (talk) 06:45, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I'm with you

I officially hate that page now. I'm unwatching. Wake me up when it's over. I'll be happy to come back to work on inclusion criteria. Pinging @Alf.laylah.wa.laylah: so they know I haven't abandoned the page on account of them, as I do love arguing with the Alfster, I just realized there are 4 million other pages in urgent need of my attention.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:26, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

OTOH, pestering NYBrad on that page for a matter he has already stated on his own page he will discuss no further is definitely out of scope for improving the article, so someone is going to soon tell you to zip it. I just unwatched... can't... deal.... anymore... Your best bet is to attend the next conference, get one of the "decision"-makers slightly tipsy, and perhaps they will spill the beans.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:31, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Not anymore. ;) I completely disagree. Now that NewYorkBrad himself has showed up to second my opinion that we would be well advised to stop talking about it, things just got interesting enough to start talking about it again. Let's finally get to the truth in this matter, so that we can all move on to those 4M other pages. In fact, if anyone cares about this issue, I suggest they head on over to Talk:List_of_Wikipedia_controversies to ask NYB what questions they may have directly. ,Wil (talk) 04:36, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Let me know how that works out for you. I bet Brad will tell you everything!--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:46, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Obi-wan, when it's all over, I expect to turn my head to the side where no one else is looking and see you sitting there in an apparition, with Yoda on one side and Darth Vader on the other, looking at me smugly like somehow you had something to do with the Death Star getting blown up. ;) ,Wil (talk) 04:51, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Obvious. The last fool of them all. Everyone else makes bank. That's how the stock market works, anyways. ,Wil (talk) 04:59, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Its another waste of time. More arguing over something that shouldn't be an argument. Everything about it - the ban decision, the nonsense on the talk page, the revert wars, the page protection - is STOOPID for the STOOPID'S sake. Just another day of blogging on WP. Its why so many don't hang about. John lilburne (talk) 08:34, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
I disagree with you here, John. It was getting stupid. Then the person at the middle of the controversy stepped in. Honestly, I have no idea why; that may be the best example of bad timing I've ever seen. It would have happened sooner or later, but this precipitated it significantly. By persistently asking for an answer until we actually get one, we will make this 100% clear: decision makers will have to take ownership of their decision to exclude. Now decide wisely. And, who knows? Maybe if we start doing more including instead of excluding, more people would settle in here. ,Wil (talk) 08:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Nothing but an audio-feedback squeal. The normal sound service of tumble-weeds blowing gently down the street has already been resumed. John lilburne (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Ah crap, I guess they saw my post. I reverted that since it wasn't well thought through, and I should not have implied that there was a legal threat of blackmail or extortion there - I intended "blackmail" in the colloquial "Do this or else" sense, not in the "so and so is making a threat that can be legally called blackmail" but it didn't come off that way and on consideration I just decided to delete it. Please apologize on my behalf if I caused any offense, I'm not a lawyer and should not have used that word. I've just finished reading through your introductory thread on the mailing list - sheesh! I'm going to cease future unsolicited advice giving as I clearly don't have anything new to offer, you've heard it all before... Best regards and good luck here, and I'm always willing to help if you need anything.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:34, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Sheesh. People really are afraid of the Wikipediocracy treatment. I can't say I blame them, tho you got off lucky with Vigilant OOTO. :D Anyways, everyone's been sticking on topic, more or less, on that thread. Keep in mind, they may be totally fuckers about it sometimes, but they *very* insightful people; a robust critique from them is a gift not given to every Wikipedian. I antagonize them every now and then just to see how I'm doing. ;) ,Wil (talk) 03:12, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Is it OK for them to email a child's school, Wllm? If you were a parent, how would you feel about that? That some dodgy outside force you'd never heard of was using your child as part of their campaign? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:27, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Is this something you'd like to talk about here? I don't mean to discourage you in any way; I'm just wondering if you feel comfortable with it and you think it might help. I also have to take policy in to consideration. I'm not even sure we're allowed to talk about it publicly at all. Gonna go look that one up. ,Wil (talk) 03:41, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
No worries. Let me know what you find. I wouldn't have pegged you as someone who would try to hush up what people deeply involved in Wikipediocracy have been doing in terms of their actions regarding children, so I didn't think you would have any problem with it being here on your talk page.
If you had a child of school age, would you want someone from Wikipediocracy - someone associated with those "Get ass cancer. Die." comments and the boxcutter comments - to be emailing your child's school? To be trying to draw your child into their arguments? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't have any problem talking about it. I know it's a big source of conflict between you and some others and has been discussed extensively on WO. I didn't know if you talk about it publicly on-wiki, and I didn't want to say anything that you would find damaging to your reputation. But I'm assuming you have nothing to be ashamed of. The policy thing I have to check, because I'm sure there are a few admins out there who would love to see me break policy right now. ;) Let me check on the policy real quick and come right back. ,Wil (talk) 05:01, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
If you had a child of school age, would you feel comfortable about them attending Wikimania 2014 on their own? Meeting people like that? Or not?
If not, why? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:56, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
"Real quick" is a timescale that's fine with me. By the way, are you planning to be at Wikimania 2014, Wil? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:07, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Looking at Wikipedia:Child_protection, it seems like all policy is addressing accusing an editor, not the editor discussing the accusations. How bout this? Tell me what happened and what your concerns are. I do have a child of school age, but I will take all of your questions as hypotheticals and answer them after your account. But I don't know enough. You'll have to start from the beginning. Thanks. ,Wil (talk) 05:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I sure will. Your child's teacher gets an email out of the blue. The teacher discusses it with the child. The teacher tells the child not to discuss it with you or your partner, or with any other teacher or anyone else. Is this OK with you, Wil? Is this really ok with you?
Will you be at Wikimania 2014, Wil?
Will you be encouraging your Wikipediocracy friends to be at Wikimania 2014, Wil?
Knowing what you know about how Wikipediocracy work with regard to younger editors, would you encourage younger editors to attend Wikimania 2014, Wil? Unaccompanied? Or at all? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:17, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
No. Really no. Maybe for the beginning. Yes. No. No. No, because I've never been to a Wikimania event and don't know what kind of environment it is. ,Wil (talk) 05:22, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Sorry for the extra indents, but I wanted to make sure you saw it, Wil. Here's another HYPOTHETICAL scenario. Your child starts using Wikipedia and editing it. Some creepy adult who seems to seek out youngsters on Wikipedia gets into contact with your child, encouraging your child to correspond with him by e-mail. You find out your child has been corresponding with a strange adult online, so you reprimand your child about the possible dangers of doing this, and you also access your child's e-mail account and delete their address book, in an attempt to discourage any recontact with strangers. Eventually, your child finds their way back online to Wikipedia, and they mention to a new creepy guy that they cannot contact a previous creepy guy, because you deleted their address book. The new creepy guy then gives your child the information that just because an address book is deleted, that doesn't mean that your child can't just manually type in the old creepy guy's e-mail address. Someone on an Internet watchdog site notices this happening, and they figure out the identity of your child and where he attends school. Someone who reads the Internet watchdog site takes it upon themselves to send a note to your child's teacher. Now, regardless of whether the teacher then decides to notify you about this note, or whether the teacher instructs the child not to talk about it further, my question is this -- are you thankful that the reader of the Internet watchdog site sent a note to your child's teacher, to inform them of the dangers of your child taking advice from creepy guys on the Internet? Or, are you not okay with your child's teacher being contacted in this way? - 2001:558:1400:10:A48B:3683:2A0:D4C8 (talk) 16:30, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for answering my questions, Wil. I promise I won't ask too many questions, but, like you, I am quite persistent. Sorry about that.
When someone claiming to be a very young teenager appears on Wikipediocracy, claiming to know things about a child of a similar age, and a "Global Moderator" at Wikipediocracy appears only minutes later, saying that he agrees the latter child's age is not faked, and publicly asking "Now if you could even find just the slightest hint to his real identity... having his real name would help..."
Does this make you think there may be something wrong on Wikipediocracy with regard to child safety?
Or does it all look absolutely fine to you? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:29, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Sorry if you're busy, Wil, but I have a proposal. I quite understand that, not having been to a Wikimania event, you don't know what kind of environment it is. I am talking to a number of parents who have very similar concerns. I don't want to omit things when I describe to them the sort of people that might be there, and the motives that some of those people might have. I'm sure you can understand that.
I would suggest that, whatever environment it ends up as, the organisers should take pains to make it an environment where everyone can feel safe. Kids, women, weather enthusiasts, minorities of all types.
Do you object to that?
If - due to troublemakers - it eventually ends up being a requirement for a "safe spaces" policy, would you speak against that? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:42, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
You shouldn't be sorry for being persistent. I'm not. :) It's not a lot of context here, but I think I can answer it. With no more context to go on, it looks like the Global Moderator isn't actually asking anything. Did anyone reply to this comment? Would you know if they went to a private forum to discuss it? I don't think Wikipediocracy was made for children. It's a fundamentally different site from Wikipedia. I certainly wouldn't want my child participating there, but it wouldn't matter anyways because they'd just bore the poor child. :) Practically nothing on Wikipediocracy looks absolutely fine to me. These Trix are definitely not for kids.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wllm (talk • contribs)
No, I would not know what private forums they may or may not have used to discuss the Global Moderator's request for the minor's name further. That's what we pay you for, remember? :)
Now hold up. I was supposed to get paid? OK, Wikipediocracy folks. Pay up. I'll be sending you an invoice for my time. ,Wil (talk) 05:07, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I do know how they've used such information historically, and you said (above) it was not OK.
Well, there's a start.
Now, I would suggest that, whatever environment Wikimania 2014 ends up as, the organisers should take pains to make it an environment where everyone can feel safe. Kids, women, weather enthusiasts, minorities of all types.
Do you object to that?
If - due to troublemakers - it eventually ends up being a requirement for a "safe spaces" policy, would you speak against that? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:42, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
@Demiurge1000: Obviously, I'd need to know what you mean by "troublemakers" before answering this question. ,Wil (talk) 05:07, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
Also, wait a minute, I perhaps misunderstood what you said? I assume you did not really imply that it was OK for Wikipediocracy Global Moderators to be seeking out the real life names of young children, in order to affect their use of Wikipedia, just because the children shouldn't be on Wikipediocracy to begin with? "I don't think Wikipediocracy was made for children" comes perilously close to implying that, so I really don't want to misunderstand you. Wikipediocracy staff's behaviour towards children in the past rather reinforces the concerns. You sound like you're not concerned. That puzzles me. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 06:05, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I need more definition to your question before I can answer. What do you mean by Wikipediocracy staff? I don't believe it's a for-profit venture, and, AFAIK, there are no employees who are paid to run Wikipediocracy. Also, who are Wikipediocracy's Global Moderators? Finally and most important, is the child safe? ,Wil (talk) 05:07, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Random thoughts

Wil...one thing I think you really need to remember is that your initial Wikipedia experience is quite different from that of most people. Risker called you a "cow in a china shop," but she missed an important point. Based on your partner's status, you're a sacred cow of a sort. That means you've got something of a force field around you...one that draws both high-level attention (Risker herself, NYB, and others who've posted here) and shields you from the sort of attacks that most reformers or advocates for change face. I'm not suggesting that you sought that kind of protection, but it's there just the same.

I'd really encourage you to look through the various attempts at reforming the Admin system and familiarize yourself with the attacks launched at those unprotected editors who advocated for any reforms. Even attempts to simplify Wikipedia policies (thatpeskycommoner was especially active in that area) attracted a massive amount of beat-down and hostility (her talkpage archives and linked projects are quite informative in this regard). The normal reaction is either that proposals for change are "causing damage," are "disruptive," or are somehow "hurtful." And those reactions often (but not always) come from those who are in positions of power or authority (although they'll usually toss out the "adminship is no big deal" deflector screen to try to convince someone that they have no power or authority).

There's nothing wrong with looking at the situation from the top down (which is what many here seem to be advocating), but you also need to slip outside your protected sphere and see what it's like in the trenches. That doesn't mean just editing articles...it means using logs and just watching to see what folks without that shield experience.

The ideas behind the project (I refuse to call it a movement, since that in my view encourages the closed society model that has developed) are good, but the structure needs serious work. I'm not that folks who are deeply vested in existing policy can see that or want to recognize it, but it's unavoidable. Keep looking, but always remember that you will never be treated as a normal editor (no matter how much you want to be). Intothatdarkness 14:44, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. I mentioned this in a comment on my blog today. I found myself in a very unique position on Wikipedia and Wikipediocracy for all the wrong reasons. It really didn't make sense to me why my private life seemed so important to everyone until took a closer look at wikimedia-l. There seems to be a significant group of Wikipedians who focus more on who you are, rather than what you say. It's probably clear by now that this is not my preferred MO. But I figured that if this is how I'm to be seen, I should use it for the greater good.
My unique position on Wikipedia is that I'm essentially unbannable. Or, more accurately, unbannable without really good cause. And I always act in good faith, respecting the environment that I'm speaking in. There's really no reason to deny it. And with growing understanding here, on Wikipediocracy, and on my blog, I gain even more protection from those who would prefer I didn't say what I do. Wikipedians are smart folk; this isn't lost on you or anybody else. Some on the wikimedia-l list seem to find a lot to fear in this: [3]. I would say that there is absolutely nothing to fear but honestly, openness, and justice.
To be clear, I will always be happy to speak up for justice where others aren't able to. But my voice is hardly enough to affect real change on Wikipedia. I can't wait for the day when everyone in the community can speak their minds without fear of retribution. I don't really care whether I agree with what they are saying or not. I just want to hear what they have to say. ,Wil (talk) 05:39, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Treatment of Whistleblowers on Wikipedia

OK, let's just start with keeping this on my page for now. Please do not remove this edit! If there is an issue with it, I would like to know and see how this is handled firsthand. Please either reply here or contact me privately if you believe this needs to be removed immediately. ,Wil (talk) 22:24, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Wllm, this is my second attempt to draw your attention to a situation which I believe will be of interest to you. My first attempt was rudely removed from your talk page before you had a chance to read it. I believe that you are willing to take people at face value and judge their arguments on their own merits. I doubt very much that the person who removed my messages to you was acting in your interest.

Yesterday I left you this message regarding my treatment when alerting Wikipedia to a sock of a banned user. Both accounts were blocked by admin Favonian. My third attempt to alert Wikipedia to this situation was reverted (by Favonian) and blocked (by Favonian), but it managed to serve its purpose.

Why did Favonian choose not to act on the information I was providing? Why did they instead block the informants accounts (including disabling talk page access for the latter two)? Why is Favonian so determined to block some sock, but not others? Was it necessary to call me a troll or a "jerk"? Why did NeilN decide to remove my messages from your talk page? I don't think I was treated very fairly or with civility. What do you think? Someone might want to take a look at User:ArgentinaSquarepants The Blowhole (talk) 21:18, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

  • ArgentinaSquarepants (talk · contribs) is  Confirmed as a rather obvious sock of Russavia (talk · contribs) - Alison ❤ 23:46, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Alison! Where the hell have you been? I was wondering when you were going to drop by. Welcome! ,Wil (talk) 00:05, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Anyways, I'm starting to suspect that this user might be a sock, too. ;) I can't really answer any of the questions here, because I wasn't involved in any of the decisions. I'm pretty sure you were aware that you were going to be shut down almost immediately with the usernames you're using. Why is it important that he's using a sock? How does this negatively impact other users? And is there no way to report such things besides creating socks yourself? In short, tell me why I'm the right person to take up this issue, and what you think I can do about it. If you aren't getting tired of filling out the registration form, just send the answers to my email. ,Wil (talk) 00:05, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
    • My day job is killing me right now, Wil. I've very little time for intarweb! Hopefully, things will ease up over the next few weeks. I owe you emails - Alison ❤ 01:49, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Sallright. Maybe we can grab some coffee next time I'm down there. FWIW, the new Mac Pro looks like Darth Vader's toilet.     -wʃʃʍ-     02:14, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
        • "I find your lack of appreciation of Apple products ... disturbing!" - coffee it is, so. Next time you or L. are around the South Bay, ping me. You have my cell number - Alison ❤ 02:32, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
    • You're asking why we don't allow blocked/banned editors to create another account and resume editing? You are aware he's trolling you, right? He's reporting he created a sock account. --NeilN talk to me 00:31, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Are you asking if I know that The Blowhole is a sock? Of course it is. And this person created at least two others, one of which left a message on my page. I'm not a huge fan of the word "troll"; I don't use it myself. I believe that this person is trying to tell me that User:Russavia was using socks, and one of them is named "Hola2014". Looking at Russavia's talk user page it looks like he was blocked indefinitely yesterday. "Hola2014" is indeed listed as one of the confirmed socks, as well as ArgentinaSquarepants. As far as I can tell, this matter has been handled, The Blowhole is obviously a sock and can be deleted along with the others, someone will probably do a checkuser on all of these socks but its likely that the person who created them in the first place has already been indef blocked, and there's absolutely nothing for me to do except remove this from my talk page. I'm not asking that any account be created; in fact, I'm not getting involved in this at all. Does that sound about right? Sorry, this is probably routine for you. I just wanted to see how it played out. Figured there would be little harm in leaving this up for a few hours. ,Wil (talk) 01:27, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

@NeilN: Did I have that right? Can I just archive this thread now? Thanks!     -wʃʃʍ-     08:27, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, archive away! --NeilN talk to me 13:14, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

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For your efforts at Jimbotalk to bring the strife between Oceania and Eastasia to an end. Anyone and everyone could have told you it was a fool's errand, but real peace is ultimately forged by those courageous enough to risk being thought of as fools. Your effort is appreciated. Carrite (talk) 22:11, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Why my epic fail of a "Your Wikipedia Experience" section was never likely to be useful

Hi Wil. Well this could grow to be a pretty large section I guess. There are some reasons why I don't think this is likely to be particularly useful (although you never know), one being if that you're wanting to find out why editors leave, asking editors who haven't left might not help that much. You could ask over at WO I guess, although there you're going to get a self-selected group which is nor really representational.

There is a page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention, and people talk about this on the talkpage sometimes. Occasionally someone will drop a "Why I am leaving" note. You might want to look at that page. Of course these are just individual anecdotes (which I guess is what you're looking for though). Reading that talk page over time, I see about an equal amount of "I'm leaving [or: editors leave] because the admins are horrible dictators" and "I'm leaving [or: editors leave] because the admins do nothing to protect me from horrible editors". (For admins, a common reason is along the lines of "I'm burnt out and/or tired of the personal abuse".) You can make of that what you will.

An interesting (and extremely large) project would be to collect all the "Why I'm leaving" essays people have written over the years (usually on their user pages). I'm not sure how you'd even go about doing this, or how useful it would be. My experience is that people of good character are usually circumspect about whining about or trashing organizations they retire from, and so these people say nothing or just pretty general statements. I think that editors who are just burnt out, tired, or bored with it (probably by far the main reason for long-term editors leaving) just slowly stop editing and don't leave a statement.

I'm also not sure that productive editors are leaving at a rate higher than you would expect for a project like this. Maybe. It's hard to say because there aren't any other projects exactly like this. There are some somewhat similar projects you could look at, like the Star Trek Wiki and other large wikis. But even those wikis have significant differences -- Star Trek fanatics represent a much smaller group with a particularly intense dedication in a small area. You could look at the other large language Wikipedias (the French and German and so forth) and see how that compares to the English Wikipedia. This'd be huge undertaking and I'm not sure it's possible to do that.

I don't see an editor leaving after four or eight years of productive work to necessarily be a sign of some failing. It's just life. People change hobbies all the time. As long as replacements are coming up there's probably not a huge problem. There may be, probably is, a problem in recruiting good new editors. This could partly be a function of a lot of the work that's interesting and easy having been done already. We do have some editor recruitment efforts in place, I think. We may be, probably are, less welcoming than in early days. I think we should be more welcoming, but a lot of people don't agree and they could be right, since being more welcoming ultimately includes accepting (that is, not reverting) more edits, and the downside of that is that the articles get degraded a little, which for good or ill there's a number of editors who you're going to have a hard time convincing to do that. Herostratus (talk) 07:03, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

  • All interesting points, and thanks for the links! Some of your points make good arguments for the criteria I've already been following: The editors that I'm reaching out to a) have had a burst of activity for no more than 2-3 years, b) seem to have left (or, much more often, just gone in to maintenance-mode editing) without a clearly stated reason. Mostly I'm just saying Hi. I try hard to avoid leading questions or any other attempts to prove hypotheses about these editors, although some of the ideas you mention sound plausible. Also, it's clearly not a scientific survey; but then again I'm not looking for stats, as you also mention. Maybe this will give some evidence that the declining editor numbers aren't so bad after all, as you've thrown out as a possibility above, although I can't imagine anyone making a good argument for not being friendly. :) Finally, this is as much about hearing what these people have to say and showing them that someone cares as anything else. It's pretty easy to gather anecdotal evidence of what people on WO or wikimedia-l think. ;D Now what about that silent majority a lots of folks have been telling me about? And who knows? Maybe if they know at least one person cares why they left, they might consider coming back. ,Wil (talk) 07:32, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Pongs

@Jayen466: Howdy Andreas. I retired my user on Wikipediocracy, so you won't be seeing me there anymore. But I hope we'll keep in touch as I get more active on-wiki. I've actually been wondering where you've been for some of the discussions above; you could added a lot of back up points to vague generalizations in some cases. BTW, are you a German living in London, or am I more confused than usual? ,Wil (talk) 00:09, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Wil, I don't edit Wikipedia much any more. I was sorry to see you retired from WO; I enjoyed your participation there. I also agreed with a number of your criticisms of the site. (I'm German originally, but have lived all my adult life in the UK.) But yes, let's stay in touch. All the best, --Andreas JN466 10:22, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
@Jayen466: You were a Wikipedian rock star! Is it the issues you mentioned on WPO that brought your edit count down, or is there something else to it? BTW, I spent a year in Kassel about 15 years ago. I checked out your top edit pages; are you a Scientologist or just an observer of the phenomenon? I'd describe myself as the latter. ,Wil (talk) 03:53, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi Wil. Yes, mostly the issues I mentioned on WO, plus the general culture and demographics here. While you can spend countless hours a day firefighting in Wikipedia (and I respect people who do), it's bad for your health and family life, you don't get paid for it, and it doesn't address the systemic issues. At some point I ran out of enthusiasm. There are only so many hours in the day, plus the WO work seemed more enjoyable – and actually more effective as a strategy to improve Wikipedia – than getting bogged down here in the details.
Scientology (and other fringe movements) were a topic area that I did get stuck in for a few years, because at the time it was an activist battleground with a large number of BLP problems (people like Will Smith and Gloria Gaynor declared Scientologists by Wikipedia on the flimsiest evidence, or biographies of politicians completely overwhelmed by Scientology material) and sourcing problems (mostly to do with the use of self-published sources like Scientology's own websites on one end of the spectrum and Clambake & Co. on the other, while the scholarly literature was almost completely ignored). Eventually, the arbitration committee topic-banned practically all the Scientologists and anti-Scientologists, and the topic area quietened down.
I don't mind Scientologists – I became friendly with one or two I met here, respect them as people, and sort of understand what they see in Scientology – but I couldn't ever envisage myself following in their footsteps. At one point I tried to read a Hubbard book, just because a scholar I met on the German Wikipedia (unlike here, they actually had a couple of genuine scholars contributing there) recommended I should read at least some of the primary literature (I know the secondary literature quite well), but I never made it past page 3.
I wrote a manual of style for the field once (WP:NRMMOS, which still exists today in more or less the form I wrote it. As well as some essays on other topics, notably WP:ADAM, WP:Hazing and WP:Notable person survival kit (none of which seem to have made much of an impact ...). If you squint at those, you can probably tell why I lost some of my enthusiasm and respect for this project. Best, Andreas JN466 14:21, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

@Scott: Hey Scott, I found out about this really cool thing called a "ping". You can really annoy the hell out of people with it! :) I just wanted to check- is it you posting as Hex on Wikipediocracy? ,Wil (talk) 04:27, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I think it's past his bedtime, but yes, that's him. :) 28bytes (talk) 04:43, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the help on the redirect. I caught it right when you did, so I had an "edit conflict" with identical text. :/ Nice to see you round these parts. I'd really like the whole ArbCom story from you sometime, and I'm sure you can't wait to tell it for the 1000th time. I'm thinking the whole Wikipediocracy stigma is wearing off a bit now. Too many big dogs barking over there to write it off. What do you think? ,Wil (talk) 04:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome. Heh, the ArbCom story. It was quite nerve-wracking at the time, but everything happens for a reason. :) As you've discovered, there are some folks who take a very dim view of anyone who posts on WO, regardless of how much they contribute here. I don't see that changing any time soon. For other folks, of course, it's a complete non-issue. 28bytes (talk) 05:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
You know, 28bytes, back in November 2008 a long-time Wikipedia Review editor, their user "One", ran for Arbcom. He came in fourth, with 73.5% of the vote. He was, of course, my esteemed colleague Cool Hand Luke. He was upfront about linking his Wikipedia account to his WR one, during the election, and took a fair amount of stick for doing so. But the community looked at the person and recognized someone who could move Arbcom in a better direction. The community never got the chance to work that out about you, 28bytes, because you obfuscated your connection to Wikipediocracy to the point that it was almost lying by omission. You didn't want to be judged by what you posted there, although you seemed then, and continue now, to believe that the criticism at Wikipediocracy can and should inform decisions here. You only owned up to the connection to your new colleagues when the folks at Wikipediocracy were about to out you. That you thought your participation and commentary at Wikipediocracy would be irrelevant to Wikipedians deciding whether or not you should be in a position of perceived power still rather shocks me. It's my personal opinion that you probably would have wound up with pretty much the same level of support if you'd been forthright, if you'd owned your activism. I'm still concerned that couldn't trust Wikipedians enough to support your Arbcom candidacy even as a member of Wikipediocracy; there were then, and still are, sitting arbitrators who participate. Well, the community set you straight on that, by welcoming you back after your break and returning without concern the bureaucrat bits. It was never about Wikipediocracy, 28bytes. Risker (talk) 06:53, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, there are plenty of people who've openly posted there and not been overly criticised for doing so. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:09, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Risker, and welcome! I see your point about 28bytes not revealing his participation on Wikipediocracy while running for ArbCom. On the other hand, my brief experience with wikimedia-l seemed to confirm what he is saying about the reactions of some members of the community towards Wikipediocracy and anyone who posts there. I can also see why these Wikipedians would feel that way; sometimes posts on Wikipediocracy shoot way beyond criticism in to straight up harassment. FWIW, I've never seen 28bytes/Mason harass anyone on Wikipediocracy. I personally find that kind of behavior very troubling, and I've made that very clear multiple times and most directly in this thread (That's a link to Wikipediocracy; it's not necessary for what I'm saying if you don't want to go there. It just shows the reactions of some posters towards the harassment on WO). Other very productive and/or prominent members of the community who post there seem to share many of my views on the nature of discourse at Wikipediocracy. I'd really like your opinion on this: if a poster finds a lot of the discourse on WO unhelpful, offensive, and harassing, then why do you think such a person would participate there at all? Also, 28bytes isn't the only prominent member of the community who posts there under a different name, although most of them readily disclose their usernames on Wikipedia. No doubt there are others who are still hiding their connections to the site, however. If they weren't running for ArbCom, do you feel like they should still be forthcoming about their connection to the site? Thanks for any insight you have; I'm still trying to work out my own perspective on participating there. ,Wil (talk) 14:11, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
@Risker: Well, I'm not sure saying it "was never about Wikipediocracy" is entirely accurate. It was – and is – very much about that for some folks. I'm sure you've seen some of the tongue-lashings even Newyorkbrad has received for participating there. But yes, I do understand the point about disclosure. People had a right to know that I participate there: I didn't appreciate that then; I do now. Live and learn. 28bytes (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't think I've seen NYB criticised for posting there. Actually I don't think I've been either....or if it was it was pretty civil/minor/clarified...can't remember. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:16, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Well, it's the old saying "if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen". Wikipediocracy members have linked every single arbitrator, and all "serious" candidates since 2008 (some of them did it at Wikipedia Review before the new site was created) to their real-world identities and (where applicable) their criticism-site identities, and have openly and publicly posted real-world connections to the majority of them; 28bytes had every reason to expect that he would receive the same level of scrutiny because he went into the election as possibly the best candidate on paper - and I include the sitting and former arbitrators who were running in that assessment. Thus his failure to disclose the link is particularly inexplicable: if he was afraid that people would not support him because of his WO links, then how did he expect them to react once they were known? This was especially concerning for a candidate who talked about the value of transparency during the election, and who recognized that there were reasons for the community or Arbcom to take action relating to off-wiki activities in certain circumstances. (You can read his responses to community questions here - note that when he was asked about Wikipediocracy, he said he read the site, but he did not say he participated there. I think just about everyone would have expected him to be forthright when he was asked specifically about WO.)

As to individuals who are not running for positions such as Arbcom, Checkuser or Oversight, my own opinion is that whether or not they link to their WO account is a personal decision. For roles that provide access to non-public personal information and other data covered by the privacy policy, I do think there is an obligation to make that link, because of WO's longstanding history of publishing that kind of information - at least Wikipedians could reassure themselves that the candidate did not participate in such behaviour at WO. In most cases, it will be taken as just a piece of information that will be given due weight based on their WO contributions. I suspect those WO members who have a history of repeating or releasing non-public personal information about Wikipedians would be given fairly short shrift; however, WO members who present reasonable and considered opinions, particularly if they've also been putting forth the same opinions on Wikipedia, may well find that their support is increased.

28bytes, it wasn't about Wikipediocracy; it was about you not being willing to take the heat for being a member. That would have been a walk in the park compared to the level of heat that many arbitrators take, on- and off-wiki, in their role as arbitrator. (There have indeed been real-world consequences for some arbitrators, only some of which you heard about.) You could reasonably have predicted that there would be an uproar when the information came out, as it inevitably would have, especially because your association with that site would have been proudly proclaimed by Wikipediocracy itself. Risker (talk) 15:32, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

You're selling past the close, Risker. I get it. I don't have a time machine, you know. 28bytes (talk) 15:45, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Fair comment, 28bytes; however, I was writing more for the education of Wllm, who has no knowledge of 95% of what I've written, than for you. Heck, I'd even suggest you consider running again this year, though I have no idea what the result would be; you're still a better candidate on paper, despite all of this, than many others who will run. Risker (talk) 15:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
I can't imagine putting myself through that ever again, but thank you nonetheless. 28bytes (talk) 16:29, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Risker, could it be that people can't stand the heat because the kitchen is on fire? Do you think that anyone has over-reacted to others posting there? I think it says a lot when someone like 28bytes feels he has to post anonymously. No one would want to go through my experience on wikimedia-l, either. While I don't see the doxing, deliberate attempts to do Wikipedia harm, etc. on-wiki, I also see some pretty hostile exchanges and personal attacks. That's something I haven't seen among Wikipediocrats, which may be surprising for some Wikipedians. Some of them certainly get nasty about other people, but no one has been nasty to other people on the threads that I've taken part in. For many, if you skip over the shit-talking, it's makes for a much more comfortable environment to discuss major issues with Wikipedia that don't seem welcome in many forums on-wiki and in wikimedia-l. Do you have any suggestions for where these editors might take their suggestions without getting shouted down? ,Wil (talk) 19:39, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
The heat mainly comes from off-wiki sources, including Wikipediocracy (I'm still regularly being doxed there despite my no longer being involved in the Arbitration Committee, for example, in a very deliberate manner so that it will show up in my google results - don't think for a minute that it's benign use of my RL name) and several of the members at WO although not directly through that venue. I know you have a nice warm feeling about these folks, and there are indeed good people there. I do not condemn people simply for participating at WO, and I have certainly used information first developed there to address problems on Wikipedia from time to time. In ancient Wiki-times, I was one of the very first Wikipedians to oppose the "BADSITES" philosophy of addressing off-wiki criticism, and I still hold that view even after all I've seen and been subjected to. I've also seen time and again how conscientious work on the part of some WO members has been undone or even sabotaged by other members. Just because some WO folks have helped you with certain information management issues doesn't mean that others weren't getting screenshots of the same problematic information and retaining it for some time when they feel its use will cause maximum damage. I think you confuse people pointing out your behaviour when it isn't okay or otherwise disagreeing with you with a hostile environment; that seems to have been the case with wikimedia-L. It's pretty clear to me that you don't recognize that your own actions have created a hostile environment as well in certain situations. I'm going to put this down to a "cow in the china shop" effect - not quite as serious as the angry bull, and probably intended to be quite benign, but still nonetheless causing recognizable harm. Risker (talk) 21:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Wil, to really get a better picture, alot of reading is required. I pretty much agree with Risker - there is alot of background. I am pretty sure someone must have mentioned this before. I am not keen to discuss specifics openly really. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:03, 13 June 2014 (UTC
@Risker: Right, and wikimedia-l is also off-wiki. ;) I can post in links from the wikimedia-l archives that are examples of some of the worst online behavior I've ever seen. And lots of people have also attempted to bully others on-wiki, too, which I'd be happy to back up with yet more links. I really can't agree that the heat "mainly" comes from off-wiki sources. But WO generate a lot of heat, no question. Ultimately, when it comes to these sorts of behaviors on both sides, I see no moral high ground. FWIW, there is a lot of righteous anger voiced on WO, as well, and some of it seems justified. As an aside, would you like me to talk to the authors of these posts about voluntarily removing your personal information? I agree that this is just not cool under any circumstances. I don't always convince them, but I'd be happy to try. I'm glad you've seen the value in some of the people who participate there. Have you ever popped in to say Hi yourself? I'd do my best to make sure it's not a hostile environment, but I'd totally understand if you didn't want to go anywhere near that site. Finally, I might be a "cow in the china shop," but ask yourself this: How much do you understand about the motives of a cow that wants to be in a china shop? :D Best. ,Wil (talk) 00:46, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

No, thank you, Wllm; I would not ask that of people I trust at WO, and I'm certainly not going to ask it of you. (Yes, you can assume that you have not earned my trust.) I don't actually care about the motives of the cow in the china shop; motive is not particularly relevant when they're busy smashing the plates and knocking over the pottery and leaving their patties on the floor. I disagree with you about wikimedia-L being truly "off-wiki" which is a term generally used to mean "fora not related to Wikimedia". If it's an official WMF mailing list, it counts as on-wiki. Yes, there is some occasional nastiness around the project, which is no surprise when there are 30K people posting on English Wikipedia every month. I have no interest in joining Wikipediocracy, any more than I had for its predecessor site. Even if it was the most civil site on the web, I'd be no more likely to join WO than I would Facebook or Twitter. Risker (talk) 01:19, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I hope I eventually can earn your trust. Best. ,Wil (talk) 01:44, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Your sig

Hello Wllm! I lurk over at ANI & saw a post of yours. Just a head's up, per WP:SIGAPP, please do not use <big> in your signature: "Avoid markup such as <big> [...]; this will often disrupt the way that surrounding text displays." Please note this is a policy. Rgrds. --64.85.215.226 (talk) 11:53, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) User:Technical 13 seems to be quite amenable to assist in providing updated code for signatures. Hence mine, which appears exactly as it did before. Many users have endangered signatures with deprecated and obsolete HTML tags at the moment. If you happen to show up at his talk page and sign, (no matter the reason you arrived there) he will suggest the appropriate text. ツ Fylbecatulous talk 12:33, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Hi. Thanks for the note. I'm pretty happy with my new sig. It doesn't seem more disruptive to me than many other custom sigs I've seen. I'll keep it the way it is for now. Thanks for dropping by, tho!     -wʃʃʍ-     13:09, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I was pinged here because of some obsolete code. Since you are using the <big> tag, I will tell you that is one of the tags that is dropped on my BlackBerry device. This means, that when viewing a page with your signature on it with that specific device, I don't see your signature (there is a whole RfC about this you can read at RfC: Should deprecated/invalid/unsupported HTML tags be discouraged?). As such, if you are willing, I suggest replacing:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<big>[[User:Wllm|<span style="color:#000000">-wʃʃʍ-</span>]]</big>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
with:
[[User:Wllm|<span style="color:#000;font-size:larger;padding:0em 1em;">-wʃʃʍ-</span>]]
which will result in a 86 character long signature (28 characters shorter) with an appearance of: -wʃʃʍ-
compared to your existing 114 character long signature of:     -wʃʃʍ-    
— Either way. Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 14:21, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
@Technical 13: Thanks for the updated style. It's been working perfectly for me. Much appreciated! -wʃʃʍ- 06:18, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
No, that, too, is unacceptable and violates Wikipedia policy. Again, per WP:SIGAPP, enlarging one's signature disrupts the way surrounding text displays. I wouldn't be so adamant about this if it was an essay, a guideline or a suggestion -- SIGAPP is a policy. For such a high-profile Wikipedian, the sig should be changed accordingly. Rgrds. --64.85.215.226 (talk) 15:43, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
In what way does it disrupt the surrounding text display? --NeilN talk to me 15:47, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
It changes the line spacing. Even if enlarging the sig text is ok, using obsolete html code when an alternative is available appears could be viewed as disruptive. --Ca2james (talk) 16:02, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I replaced the html with Technical 13's suggestion. I certainly don't want to be disruptive. I didn't realize that this matter was so serious and was affecting everyone so much. Please accept my apologies. -wʃʃʍ-
Alternatively, you could emulate Mies van der Rohe's precept of "less is more" with a simple but elegant Wllm which has the added advantage of making your actual user name clear. Voceditenore (talk) 17:05, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I actually like Wllm's current sig. Simple but distinctive. --NeilN talk to me 19:42, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
It's supposed to look something like the logo at the top of this page, which also says "wllm". Also, it's identical if rotated by 180°. -wʃʃʍ- 20:07, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Exaggerated accusations, Ca2james, whoever you are, are rude things to make, especially to complete strangers. It would reflect well upon you if you apologized. — Scott • talk 19:14, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

My apologies. I thought I had said - and I meant to say - "could be viewed as disruptive" and not "appears disruptive". My intent was not to accuse anyone of actually being disruptive. I have struck out and replaced the text above. --Ca2james (talk) 20:38, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Accepted. It's no big deal. In fact, I think that's kinda the point. It's a sig; it's no big deal. :) -wʃʃʍ- 02:18, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Firsts

Virus?

Hi, wllm. I am having computer problems after accessing your personal blog, I have also mentioned this here. I hope someone can figure out what is going on. Regards, —Neotarf (talk) 21:30, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

If you're getting a virus from my blog, you'll have to contact Wordpress about it; I even paid to not have advertising on and I don't have so much as a Javascript up there. The theme is also by Automattic, who runs Wordpress.com, so again, you'd have to contact them about it. Your other note seems to be about Wikipediocracy. Are you getting viruses from both sites? ,Wil (talk) 22:11, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
It seems like you might be a bit confused about how this kind of thing works. Do you need some help figuring this out? Just let me know if you have any questions. ,Wil (talk) 22:25, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Just checked again after cleaning my cookies several times, and I'm still getting it from both sites, specifically pirrit.com, adnxs.com, and suggestor.pirrit.com. See [4]. Wikipediocracy is also offering me an 18+ gaming site with lots of skin in a separate pop-up window. There are others as well, but those are the most aggressive ones I can identify and well worth it to me to take time to remove them, especially before doing any secure transactions. Most sites leave some kind of cookies, my wordpress subdomain leaves a "neotarf.wordpress.com" cookie, and yours also leaves a "wllm.com" cookie, which I don't find objectionable. It's not my website, and I don't intend to follow up on this any further, but I thought you would want to know. Regards, —Neotarf (talk) 01:31, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Cookies shouldn't have much to do with it. I'd expect wordpress to leave cookies for each blog to do stuff like track comments, provide analytics for bloggers, etc. At some point you've installed an executable on your machine- possibly a browser extension. You OS should have required you to confirm, but this kind of crap usually is a rider on freeware, etc. Sometimes the confirmation dialog box doesn't make it apparent what is going to be installed. I recommend getting a virus checker that also looks for and remove malware and adware- there are free options for pretty much any platform- and remove the executable that way. They can get very tricky about reinstalling and restarting themselves after you've given them the privs they need. Good luck. ,Wil (talk) 01:58, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
@Neotarf, how come your user page says you're retired? ,Wil (talk) 01:58, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll try it later, I have already run Lavasoft and it wiped out my proxy settings so I could no longer access my WIFI until I did a system restore. Spybot is currently unavailable, under construction. And at the moment I have better things to do with my time. The latest sad chapter of the retirement story is here. —Neotarf (talk) 03:25, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
@Neotarf: How did the malware saga turn out? Did you finally get it off your computer? ,Wil (talk) 04:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
What, this page hasn't archived yet? No, too busy, I'll have to take a look later. —Neotarf (talk) 03:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
BTW, hatting text conceals it from anyone who is doing a "find" on that page. On pages with a search function, like the dramah boards, it also prevents searches from examining the text. See, for example, arbitration enforcement. The cases are all hatted when they are closed, and the name of the person accused in put on the outside of the hat, even if they are innocent. This means that if someone files multiple complaints at AE, there is no way to find this out from a search, you can only search for the accused person. —Neotarf (talk) 04:04, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
I claim both ignorance and laziness. I've heard it before, but I have no idea what "hatting" is. Also, if I understand you correctly, archives can be easily searched, whereas change logs cannot? That would be a decisive factor for me; I want everyone to have as much access as possible to the conversations here. Also, yes, I haven't gotten around to archiving yet. ;) Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you get your computer back in order. I've been there before. Malware suuuuuuucks. ,Wil (talk) 06:05, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, by "hat" I mean {{hat}} and {{hab}} or {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}. You would sometimes hat an off-topic part of a conversation, to make a thread more readable. —Neotarf (talk) 06:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

You asked some questions on your blog about "lifeblood" editors. I'm not really sure where that was going, but I will try to answer that here, along with more about why I retired. I suspect your larger question, as a new user, is about how to structure your own editing.

I consider all editors who are not vandals to be "lifeblood". I tend to gravitate towards gnomes, editors who make a lot of small detailed edits, but there are all kinds of wiki-fauna, and they all have their contributions.

When I first came to Wikipedia I wanted to write an article about a specific subject, but I didn't know how to do it. One of my FB contacts was talking about human rights activist Susana Trimarco, but when I googled her, I found very little in English. So I wrote my first article about that, just for practice. I continued starting articles whenever I googled something and didn't find an article about it. At the same time I wanted to contribute something to the maintenance side of the project, so I started working with move requests. It's not a flashy, high-profile area like the front page, but you do need some critical thinking skills and you have to understand something about policy. Early on I also decided not to edit in any area where I have any credentials, but have some peripheral interest and skill. This makes it is easier to be neutral, since I am not passionate about anything I work on. Also, if you work on something for pay all day long, you don't want to do the same thing in your volunteer job, or you will not stay interested. At Wikipedia, I found I was working alongside people who in real life were PhDs, inventors, academics, and published authors, people I probably would not have come in contact with in real life, so this was another incentive to work for free.

I should mention that I did not receive any welcome from anyone when I started. The first message on my talk page was from the sockpuppet of a banned user. I had many more people leave nasty messages on my talk page. There was no socializing, only the tasks at hand, but I found them interesting. I watchlisted several talk pages of people I thought knew what they were doing, and learned quite a bit that way.


You have probably heard by now about the declining numbers of editors; in the last year Wikipedia lost about a thousand editors. You can see a video of Sue talking about the problem here. The best part is in the first ten minutes, you can skip the first two minutes as mostly setup. There is a minute by minute synopsis of the video here, but to understand it, you really need to hear Sue speak. This "and then something happens" explanation is probably as good a description as any of my first year at Wikipedia, and my withdrawal from the project (but not from trying to fix it.) After the incident I linked to above, I knew immediately that I could no longer edit, and posted a retirement banner. So did some of the others. But while a thousand other editors just left the project without saying anything, I have come back, and tried to challenge it, and to make it the kind of place where I, and people like me, can edit. So far, I have not seen anything that would justify removing the retirement banner from my page. At some point I will either have some success, or will exhaust the possibilities, and like so many others, stop trying. —Neotarf (talk) 06:33, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I know about the declining editors, and I'm all but certain it is because of negative experiences with other users and especially some admins. What measures have been taken so far seem to have failed. I haven't done that much in Teahouse, but it doesn't surprise me that it doesn't seem to be staunching the blood. Seems to me like lipstick on a pig. Maybe it makes it easier to pucker up, but in the end you're still kissing a pig. Don't think for a second that I've forgotten about you and the three other editors. I haven't had time to read about it in full.
There's one very important thing that seems to have gone by the wayside in the many discussions about declining editors. These are not just numbers; they are people. And there will be no headway on rebuilding the editor community at Wikipedia without treating them as such. To start with, we need to know why they left a project that they found so rewarding before. We'll get as many answers as there are retired editors. We can't just run an algorithm to figure out how to optimize key metrics. We'll have to pound the pavement some. We have to talk to these people and understand their concerns. We need to begin by showing them that someone truly cares, and then look at actions that can be taken to make Wikipedia rewarding for them again. That will take a big investment, but I'm confident that with a little dedication it will be well worth the effort. ,Wil (talk) 08:02, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
If you measure Wikipedia against its stated charitable mission – making high-quality educational material available – then the idea that Wikipedia should have as many editors as possible is revealed as a fallacy. Many people who edit Wikipedia are, quite frankly, undesirable (this includes numerous administrators).
One reason why content builders leave is that once a well-researched, well-sourced article is written, they have to defend it on a permanent basis against drive-by editors adding unsourced material here, removing well-sourced material there, and so on. It is well known in Wikipedia that quality articles in many topic areas tend to degrade into a mush once the person(s) who wrote it stop(s) watching it. (And of course, the more articles you have written, the more you have to watch ...) By counting edits and editors rather than measuring quality, the Foundation essentially considers such degradation (whether reverted or not) a "success": changes to an article are seen as a "sign of life". More edits! What this comes across as is good content not being valued. Eventually the person watching the article(s) tires and leaves. Sometimes they are replaced by someone else who is equally capable, more often they're not.
I once likened writing a Wikipedia article to trying to paint Mona Lisa on a busy beach frequented by children, drunken louts and horse riders (as well as other painters), all of whose footprints the painter is required to accept as good-faith attempts at improving their work. Of course, genuine and fruitful collaboration does happen sometimes, even between people espousing opposite points of view. But the non-constructive edits become wearisome, and most people will put up with such conditions for a limited amount of time only. The pride in their own work will sustain them for a few years, and then they will ask themselves: Why am I doing this? Long-term, it's corrosive and no fun: Wikipedia seems to want to undo the good work you have done.
Wikipedia needs something like Wikipedia:Pending_changes and editorial boards recognising wheat as wheat and chaff as chaff, or content builders will continue to leave. The problem is that Wikipedia has no regard for real-world qualifications and instead has had fakes like Essjay rising to positions of authority here (along with numerous schoolchildren who have lots of time on their hands). This means that given the present climate and demographics, and the dynamics of self-selection, the creation of editorial boards would make matters worse rather than better. The people most likely to want to be on them are hat collectors and content manipulators – the precise people who shouldn't be on them. Andreas JN466 10:45, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

ADHD and hyperfocus

I think you've said that you have ADHD and hyperfocus as well. I'm having a little trouble understanding that as it seems like "attention deficit" and "extreme focus" are like yin and yang: polar opposites of each other. I can maybe see the "talk nonstop" and "be constantly in motion", but most of the other ADHD symptoms don't seem to fit at all. I'm wondering if the label has been misapplied to you. As to hyperfocus, on a certain subject it can cause side-tracking away from assigned or important tasks—I've probably been guilty of that at times, but I'm hesitant to label it a "disease". Perhaps some doctors are overdiagnosing these kind of things so that they can sell more drugs and make money. Just because someone's brain works in a way that might put them outside the center region of the bell curve doesn't necessarily make them abnormal. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:23, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

All interesting points. I hope my reply serves to make things a bit clearer. Most ADHDers experience hyperfocus- even children. One of the fundamental issues with ADHDers is that their reward system is somewhat deficient. That means that we get bored easily and don't find most activities as rewarding as others might. I doubt that things like paying attention during lectures and doing homework feel particularly rewarding to someone who doesn't have ADHD, but many studies have show that the reward system of ADHDers operates at a lower baseline and is activated far less during most activities, especially those that require sustained attention like these. But that's not to say that there nothing that ADHDers find rewarding. In fact, when an ADHDer does discover the rare activity that s/he finds rewarding, they don't- perhaps understandably- want to stop or do anything else. They will hone in on it and milk it for all the rewards it can offer them; not only does their attention turn entirely to this task, but they have a unlimited self motivation to keep pursuing it. The trick is, ADHDers can't choose what stimulates their reward system and just getting something done that needs doing doesn't seem to activate it much more than anything else.
Do you mean most of the other ADHD symptoms don't seem to fit me at all? If so, are you someone who knows me personally as more than just an acquaintance? I'd be ecstatic if you were and still said that, because that would mean I'm doing a good job treating it. In any case, there is no way whatsoever you'd be able to rule out ADHD for me or anyone else based on online activity. I am very thoroughly diagnosed, and it runs in my family with other family members having been thoroughly diagnosed. I have also benefitted greatly from treatment. That said, it is simultaneously one of the most over-diagnosed and under-diagnosed cognitive disorders. Simply put, far too many children and adults are "diagnosed" with ADHD without using any accepted diagnostic standards like DSM-V or ICD-10 and prescribed drugs with significant side-effect profiles based on a single office visit. Besides by a complete disservice to the patient, this has been a huge factor in the widespread misperceptions about ADHD. Meanwhile, many ADHDers suffer without being diagnosed. The diagnosis as stated by DSM-V is very involved- even more so under ICD-10. People should insist on rigorous diagnoses for such disorders. This is one of the many reasons that increasing awareness is important.
There is a lively debate about whether ADHD should be considered a disorder. In fact, all of the behaviors that are indicative of ADHD also occur in people who don't have it. The difference is that these behaviors happen a lot more in ADHDers, and ADHDers don't seem to respond to the same incentives and disincentives that are effective in ending undesirable behaviors in non-ADHDers. This can be more easily understood by looking at the pathology of the disorder. The inhibitory signals that occur in the prefrontal cortex that serves as the primary mechanism by which the cerebrum controls the more instinctive impulses of the midbrain is weaker in those with ADHD. We may learn our lessons and encode them in the cerebrum but ADHDers often cannot use them to inhibit impulses in the moment. As with the irregularities in the reward system, the way our brains produce and respond to the neurotransmitter Dopamine seems to be the primary factor. And ADHD is very prevalent. The numbers I've seen have ranged from 0% (or, it doesn't exist) to 16% of the population. The most commonly used numbers are 3-5%. That's a lot of people. I think that the strongest argument for calling it a disorder is that it causes significant impairment in the context of our society. This seems to have been less the case in the past, but nowadays humans are expected to be much more productive with attention and executive function put at a high premium. For those with severe ADHD, like me, it causes serious impairment in almost every aspect of life. One aspect of cognition that ADHD doesn't seem to affect is intelligence; there is no well established correlation between ADHD and IQ. In other words, ADHD doesn't make anyone more or less intelligent, but may make it more difficult to demonstrate intelligence in academic settings.
Like I've mentioned on my blog ADHD is a condition that lots of people seem to think they know a lot about, and almost everyone has an opinion on. In my experience, the only people who have a strong grasp on the nature of the disorder are doctors who specialize in cognitive disorders, ADHDers, and close family members who have been greatly affected by ADHD. I encourage everyone to get to know more about it. The Wikipedia article on ADHD is pretty good, although I'm trying to get consensus that a section should be added for the most common benefits of adult ADHD. There are plenty of articles on this subject elsewhere, such as this one: [[5]]. If someone suspects they are suffering from ADHD, they can begin with an online self-assesment form: [[6]]. Please seek a full and rigorous diagnosis if such an assessment recommends it, or if you simply feel like you experience many of the symptoms; even if you don't have ADHD, there are other disorders that share some of its symptoms.
Finally, for everyone reading this, please learn more about the disorder before passing along inaccuracies or expressing ill-informed opinions. ADHDers truly suffer; misconceptions make it worse and may prevent an ADHDer from seeking help. In any case, I hope this serves as a good starting point for learning more. Best! ,Wil (talk) 01:57, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: Do you mind if I change the name of this section to "ADHD and hyperfocus"? The two are hardly at odds. I can give you much more eloquent sources than what I've written if you like. Now that I've outed myself WRT ADHD, I'd like to do everything I can to correct misconceptions and promote awareness. Thanks! ,Wil (talk) 05:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 Done Thanks for the detailed reply. A lot to consider before I respond to this. I get what you're saying. No, I don't know you personally. All I know about you is what's been posted online recently. Wbm1058 (talk) 12:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I took that online test, and it said that "mild ADHD is possible". My guess is that if you limit diagnosis to severe cases, that may be only 3% of the population, or less. If you broaden your net to include "possible mild" cases then you could be well over 16% of the population. Where you draw the line between sufficiently severe enough to merit treatment or not, seems to me will always be somewhat arbitrary and a bit of an art. The "ask your doctor about" constituency will be motivated to push the boundary outward. I'm not interested in pursuing a diagnosis myself, though I'm well aware that people with mental disorders may not be good at self-diagnosis (especially those with "beautiful minds"). I'm glad you've found a treatment that works for you. I'll admit your reply initially bordered on TL;DR for me, but I did take the time to read your response and I'm glad I did. Many topics bore me, but I think that's true of most of the population. People who are interested in such a broad array of topics that they do well at Jeopardy! are relatively rare. I can understand why your symptoms don't show up online. My mind sometimes wanders in RL, e.g. sometimes I may be thinking about Wikipedia rather than the unrelated topic being discussed. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:46, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
To be perfectly clear, "possible mild" isn't a case at all. What the results told you is that it is possible you might have a mild case; no researcher that I'm aware of would include this result in any sort of statistics for prevalence of ADHD in the general population. Had you decided that it was worth seeing a psychiatrist about, you might get a diagnosis of (most likely mild, depending on the accuracy of the online self-assessment) ADHD. Only then would your condition affect such numbers. Those online self-tests only exist to encourage those who have symptoms occurring often enough to potentially cause impairment to seek real diagnoses. I'm very glad I pursued mine, as the treatment has helped me in every aspect of my life. That doesn't mean that none of my symptoms show up online; in fact, I'm sure I'm not fully aware of which translate to the online world and which don't. I do know that there are symptoms I address with coping behaviors in my online behavior. Once again, all ADHD symptoms can occur in non-ADHDers. In ADHDers they occur *far* more often and usually more prominently as to present a significant impairment. That's why the differential diagnosis of ADHD has everything to do with how often some phenomena occur in how many different environments. And that's precisely why it's such a difficult diagnosis to get right, and why many- if not most- doctors don't bother to follow the actual criteria before making a diagnosis and throwing some Ritalin at the problem. In any case, I'm very happy you took the time to get to know more about it. ADHD is a very difficult condition for those who don't suffer from it to understand, and most don't try to. That doesn't stop a lot of people from very confidently asserting opinions and misinformation in conversations every time it comes up, however. Thanks for making it all the way through my reply to find out more, yourself. :) -wʃʃʍ- 01:49, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, questionnaires, like reading medical articles on wikipedia, are no substitute for being interviewed by a clinician (psychiatrist or psychologist)...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:31, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Exactly! In fact, it wouldn't hurt for Wikipedia to have such a disclaimer on all of its health articles, including ADHD. I found out during this discussion that Google doesn't go to the ADHD article in Wikipedia for their ADHD right-sidebar summary as is its usual practice, but to the NIH database, with a very prominent disclaimer directly under the heading. It seems that they are aware of the dangers of mis- or self-diagnosis. The only thing that those online self-assessments accomplish in practice is getting people to prioritize seeing a psychiatrist about a possible diagnosis; realistically speaking, almost everyone who bothers filling out such a form knows that they are impaired in some way with ADHD-like symptoms. And ADHD shares symptoms with a remarkable number of other cognitive disorders. -wʃʃʍ- 06:15, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

ADHD and hyperfocus

I think you've said that you have ADHD and hyperfocus as well. I'm having a little trouble understanding that as it seems like "attention deficit" and "extreme focus" are like yin and yang: polar opposites of each other. I can maybe see the "talk nonstop" and "be constantly in motion", but most of the other ADHD symptoms don't seem to fit at all. I'm wondering if the label has been misapplied to you. As to hyperfocus, on a certain subject it can cause side-tracking away from assigned or important tasks—I've probably been guilty of that at times, but I'm hesitant to label it a "disease". Perhaps some doctors are overdiagnosing these kind of things so that they can sell more drugs and make money. Just because someone's brain works in a way that might put them outside the center region of the bell curve doesn't necessarily make them abnormal. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:23, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

All interesting points. I hope my reply serves to make things a bit clearer. Most ADHDers experience hyperfocus- even children. One of the fundamental issues with ADHDers is that their reward system is somewhat deficient. That means that we get bored easily and don't find most activities as rewarding as others might. I doubt that things like paying attention during lectures and doing homework feel particularly rewarding to someone who doesn't have ADHD, but many studies have show that the reward system of ADHDers operates at a lower baseline and is activated far less during most activities, especially those that require sustained attention like these. But that's not to say that there nothing that ADHDers find rewarding. In fact, when an ADHDer does discover the rare activity that s/he finds rewarding, they don't- perhaps understandably- want to stop or do anything else. They will hone in on it and milk it for all the rewards it can offer them; not only does their attention turn entirely to this task, but they have a unlimited self motivation to keep pursuing it. The trick is, ADHDers can't choose what stimulates their reward system and just getting something done that needs doing doesn't seem to activate it much more than anything else.
Do you mean most of the other ADHD symptoms don't seem to fit me at all? If so, are you someone who knows me personally as more than just an acquaintance? I'd be ecstatic if you were and still said that, because that would mean I'm doing a good job treating it. In any case, there is no way whatsoever you'd be able to rule out ADHD for me or anyone else based on online activity. I am very thoroughly diagnosed, and it runs in my family with other family members having been thoroughly diagnosed. I have also benefitted greatly from treatment. That said, it is simultaneously one of the most over-diagnosed and under-diagnosed cognitive disorders. Simply put, far too many children and adults are "diagnosed" with ADHD without using any accepted diagnostic standards like DSM-V or ICD-10 and prescribed drugs with significant side-effect profiles based on a single office visit. Besides by a complete disservice to the patient, this has been a huge factor in the widespread misperceptions about ADHD. Meanwhile, many ADHDers suffer without being diagnosed. The diagnosis as stated by DSM-V is very involved- even more so under ICD-10. People should insist on rigorous diagnoses for such disorders. This is one of the many reasons that increasing awareness is important.
There is a lively debate about whether ADHD should be considered a disorder. In fact, all of the behaviors that are indicative of ADHD also occur in people who don't have it. The difference is that these behaviors happen a lot more in ADHDers, and ADHDers don't seem to respond to the same incentives and disincentives that are effective in ending undesirable behaviors in non-ADHDers. This can be more easily understood by looking at the pathology of the disorder. The inhibitory signals that occur in the prefrontal cortex that serves as the primary mechanism by which the cerebrum controls the more instinctive impulses of the midbrain is weaker in those with ADHD. We may learn our lessons and encode them in the cerebrum but ADHDers often cannot use them to inhibit impulses in the moment. As with the irregularities in the reward system, the way our brains produce and respond to the neurotransmitter Dopamine seems to be the primary factor. And ADHD is very prevalent. The numbers I've seen have ranged from 0% (or, it doesn't exist) to 16% of the population. The most commonly used numbers are 3-5%. That's a lot of people. I think that the strongest argument for calling it a disorder is that it causes significant impairment in the context of our society. This seems to have been less the case in the past, but nowadays humans are expected to be much more productive with attention and executive function put at a high premium. For those with severe ADHD, like me, it causes serious impairment in almost every aspect of life. One aspect of cognition that ADHD doesn't seem to affect is intelligence; there is no well established correlation between ADHD and IQ. In other words, ADHD doesn't make anyone more or less intelligent, but may make it more difficult to demonstrate intelligence in academic settings.
Like I've mentioned on my blog ADHD is a condition that lots of people seem to think they know a lot about, and almost everyone has an opinion on. In my experience, the only people who have a strong grasp on the nature of the disorder are doctors who specialize in cognitive disorders, ADHDers, and close family members who have been greatly affected by ADHD. I encourage everyone to get to know more about it. The Wikipedia article on ADHD is pretty good, although I'm trying to get consensus that a section should be added for the most common benefits of adult ADHD. There are plenty of articles on this subject elsewhere, such as this one: [[7]]. If someone suspects they are suffering from ADHD, they can begin with an online self-assesment form: [[8]]. Please seek a full and rigorous diagnosis if such an assessment recommends it, or if you simply feel like you experience many of the symptoms; even if you don't have ADHD, there are other disorders that share some of its symptoms.
Finally, for everyone reading this, please learn more about the disorder before passing along inaccuracies or expressing ill-informed opinions. ADHDers truly suffer; misconceptions make it worse and may prevent an ADHDer from seeking help. In any case, I hope this serves as a good starting point for learning more. Best! ,Wil (talk) 01:57, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: Do you mind if I change the name of this section to "ADHD and hyperfocus"? The two are hardly at odds. I can give you much more eloquent sources than what I've written if you like. Now that I've outed myself WRT ADHD, I'd like to do everything I can to correct misconceptions and promote awareness. Thanks! ,Wil (talk) 05:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 Done Thanks for the detailed reply. A lot to consider before I respond to this. I get what you're saying. No, I don't know you personally. All I know about you is what's been posted online recently. Wbm1058 (talk) 12:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I took that online test, and it said that "mild ADHD is possible". My guess is that if you limit diagnosis to severe cases, that may be only 3% of the population, or less. If you broaden your net to include "possible mild" cases then you could be well over 16% of the population. Where you draw the line between sufficiently severe enough to merit treatment or not, seems to me will always be somewhat arbitrary and a bit of an art. The "ask your doctor about" constituency will be motivated to push the boundary outward. I'm not interested in pursuing a diagnosis myself, though I'm well aware that people with mental disorders may not be good at self-diagnosis (especially those with "beautiful minds"). I'm glad you've found a treatment that works for you. I'll admit your reply initially bordered on TL;DR for me, but I did take the time to read your response and I'm glad I did. Many topics bore me, but I think that's true of most of the population. People who are interested in such a broad array of topics that they do well at Jeopardy! are relatively rare. I can understand why your symptoms don't show up online. My mind sometimes wanders in RL, e.g. sometimes I may be thinking about Wikipedia rather than the unrelated topic being discussed. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:46, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
To be perfectly clear, "possible mild" isn't a case at all. What the results told you is that it is possible you might have a mild case; no researcher that I'm aware of would include this result in any sort of statistics for prevalence of ADHD in the general population. Had you decided that it was worth seeing a psychiatrist about, you might get a diagnosis of (most likely mild, depending on the accuracy of the online self-assessment) ADHD. Only then would your condition affect such numbers. Those online self-tests only exist to encourage those who have symptoms occurring often enough to potentially cause impairment to seek real diagnoses. I'm very glad I pursued mine, as the treatment has helped me in every aspect of my life. That doesn't mean that none of my symptoms show up online; in fact, I'm sure I'm not fully aware of which translate to the online world and which don't. I do know that there are symptoms I address with coping behaviors in my online behavior. Once again, all ADHD symptoms can occur in non-ADHDers. In ADHDers they occur *far* more often and usually more prominently as to present a significant impairment. That's why the differential diagnosis of ADHD has everything to do with how often some phenomena occur in how many different environments. And that's precisely why it's such a difficult diagnosis to get right, and why many- if not most- doctors don't bother to follow the actual criteria before making a diagnosis and throwing some Ritalin at the problem. In any case, I'm very happy you took the time to get to know more about it. ADHD is a very difficult condition for those who don't suffer from it to understand, and most don't try to. That doesn't stop a lot of people from very confidently asserting opinions and misinformation in conversations every time it comes up, however. Thanks for making it all the way through my reply to find out more, yourself. :) -wʃʃʍ- 01:49, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, questionnaires, like reading medical articles on wikipedia, are no substitute for being interviewed by a clinician (psychiatrist or psychologist)...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:31, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Exactly! In fact, it wouldn't hurt for Wikipedia to have such a disclaimer on all of its health articles, including ADHD. I found out during this discussion that Google doesn't go to the ADHD article in Wikipedia for their ADHD right-sidebar summary as is its usual practice, but to the NIH database, with a very prominent disclaimer directly under the heading. It seems that they are aware of the dangers of mis- or self-diagnosis. The only thing that those online self-assessments accomplish in practice is getting people to prioritize seeing a psychiatrist about a possible diagnosis; realistically speaking, almost everyone who bothers filling out such a form knows that they are impaired in some way with ADHD-like symptoms. And ADHD shares symptoms with a remarkable number of other cognitive disorders. -wʃʃʍ- 06:15, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Geez

Thanks for the thanks. I was a bit curious about you given the few postings I'd seen of yours, so I just read about you, and who you are (and who you know, and what you've already done) - very interesting - I had no idea... And the above is peppered with a veritable who's who of well known wikipedians. Welcome to wikipedia! I never had such a welcoming in my day...

But, I'll add my own advice to those above, I'd suggest taking your time before coming to conclusions about this place (and please don't suggest bringing things to arbitration as you did for one recent silly edit war until you've read through a few arb cases to understand what level of things get brought there). I don't think I really understood much at all till I'd passed 10k edits and I still don't understand much - there are vast tribes, vast content areas, vast functional portions of the wiki that I have no idea how it works, who controls it, who the power brokers are, etc. This place is very very far from perfect, and perhaps your better half has a shot at helping to fix some of that, but while most editors can happily gnome along unaware of the bigger picture, you are now, as one article said, in the snake pit, and you have many rather powerful ppl vying for your attention and giving you advice, and warning, and saying do this and don't do that. I'm reminded of animal farm - all editors are equal, but some editors are more equal than others... :) I'm not powerful, I have no admin bit, but I still believe in wikipedia, deeply flawed as it is - I think anyone who contributes here believes in it, otherwise, why bother? Wikipediocracy has done a very good job at pointing out the foibles, but I think they sometimes fall short on the "so what" question, the "How would you structure it differently" question... As Churchill once said democracy is the worst form of government ,except all the others, in a way wikipedia is the worst form of collaboratively edited encyclopedia of human knowledge- except all the others. Some ppl want to blow it up and start their own, and maybe someday one of those forks will win, but until then, this is the ship we have. I once read that a critic is someone who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Nonetheless, criticism of wikipedia is healthy and we need more of it, and we can ALL become better editors, (myself included of course, prone to obtuse pontificating over categorization and occasional (and wrong) COI editing)) but that's my own cross to bear... But anyway, I'm rambling, welcome to wikipedia, if I can be of assistance as you learn the ropes here don't hesitate to drop me a note. If you want to relax, stop by @Drmies: page, the dive bar of wikipedia :) - it's sort of like the cantina in star wars, populated by all sorts of dubious folk but with great music, interesting drinks and colorful language. It also reminds me of those bars in the neutral zone where WW1 officers from opposing sides would stop by for a drink in between hostilities.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome and you're welcome! As far as my own welcome goes, if this is because of my private life they're here for all the wrong reasons. It's not going to take long for everyone to realize that even if the ED and I were talking about WP- and we're not- it might as well be some random person stopping her on the street and saying the same thing. We are very different who have gotten used to disagreeing about stuff. I'm avoiding conclusions as much as possible and trying to stick to the questions. Some things that I believe much up the material of a finely tailored community I will chime in on. Openness, transparency, empathy, free speech in lower case- all that stuff. The thing about Wikipediocracy is if you want those guys and gals to stop farting in an echo chamber all day, you have to ask them what they'd actually do about it. These people are smart, and they never asked me to shut up, in so many words or otherwise. Actually, they came close once, but with a critical twist: they challenged me to do some homework and come back to talk. And then they made fun of me cause it takes me a long time to read. And then they checked in on me. And then I finished my homework and we started where we left off. They nature of the homework was critical, too. All secondary sources. Most on-wiki. I certainly don't believe everything that's said on WO, but the links don't lie. BTW, I think you're intentionally trying to stuff all of my favorite quotes in to one post. :P I'm headed over to new lows now. See you there.,Wil (talk) 05:58, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm a fan of openness too - however, do you not accept that for certain cases, privacy of proceedings is sometimes needed? Arbcom has a private email list, the judge can retire to their private chambers, corporations and even non-profits have closed-door meetings where nothing about them can be openly published, etc. Wikipedia has special places that only oversighters can see, etc. Heck, even wikipediocracy apparently has it's back channels, its private forums. Why do humans set up those kind of structures, in parallel to open ones? Sometimes it's for nefarious purposes, other times it's just because a closed door means a different conversation. I guess I'm sometimes frustrated with people expecting wikipedia to represent some sort of ideal state of human society, but it's a human run institution like any other and as organizations with a lot more money (and perhaps a lot more smart people) have been unable to eliminate these basic foibles, why should we hold wikipedia to such a high standard? I do like the idea of engaging WPO people in constructive commentary about what can be improved, although I get the sense at least some of them would be very happy if the whole thing folded.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:48, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
I gotta mull over that privacy issue more. I agree that full transparency is not always the best answer. For example, we can't have Wikipedians running around accusing other Wikipedians of child abuse. The mere accusation of child abuse has consequences for the accused- potentially IRL- regardless of guilt or innocence. So, I could say that we'd create private arbitration entities to discuss these things and guarantee proper oversight. Then I could say that we'd have policies that would determine when a case would need to go before such a private arbitration entity. But I think I can predict at least some of the holes you're likely to poke in this. How do we guarantee proper oversight and ensure complete privacy? And same question as with policy above: policy can only go so far, so when will someone jump in to decide which cases need to go to such an entity and which don't? And how do we decide who that someone will be? It's a bit like the problem of "oversight" of the NSA in the American justice system. So, I'll punt on this for now and provide an answer that I do know: there are many Wikipediocrats who have publicly asserted they would be ecstatic if Wikipedia folded. Does this mean that WPO is not useful to you? ,Wil (talk) 00:21, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
if their search for problems, and manufacturing of controversy (eg by contacting the press and trying to get them to write up some non-story) is driven by the desire to destroy Wikipedia then, no, I don't see it as ultimately useful. I think the most useful thing they could do would be to start their own fork with better rules and better governance and compete with Wikipedia. If they could pull this off, contributors would eventually migrate to their fork - that's the way all open source projects evolve, through the right to fork - if the current trunk owner is not listening, then fork and do it better. I would support such an attempt and even donate money towards same if the idea seemed viable. Listen, I have no illusions, I know there are nasty people here, but there are also some nasty people there. If they want to improve it, come to the community and the ED and suggest improvements and commit their time and intelligence to helping bring those about. For example they have a section on crap articles - but they have about 10 pages of crap articles, while the number of crap articles in Wikipedia numbers in the hundreds of thousands. You can complain about it and laugh about it, or you can do what editors here do, which is take crap articles every day and improve them bit by bit. They are clearly a smart lot, so why not channel that energy into something constructive - either promoting change here, or making a better version? If someone is devoted to wikipedia's downfall then they will be doing neither. I also realize some serious contributors at WPO are also major editors here, so those ppl I have no issue with since they take things they see there and fix them here.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:38, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
OK, Obi-wan. You're starting to make me suspicious. What do you always ask exactly what I think are the right questions? Own up. Either way, you did not answer my question directly, and I also suspect you know it. "Does this mean that WPO is not useful to you?" But you did answer it indirectly. So you get an even more direct question in return: Why make it obvious that you know a lot about Wikipedia, without telling us that you find it useful when you are a very direct person otherwise? For one, you are calling them out on the most inconvenient of all questions for them. If you don't mind, I'm going to take this straight to the source: WPO peeps, what the dealio? I've asked people on WP to put up or shut up. I've asked the WMF to walk their talk. In fact, I've staked my rep several times now, and I'm not done yet. Now I'm asking you, why don't you stop whining for once and show people you can actually do better? On-wiki or off-, Obi-wan certainly isn't the first to question your self-righteous assertions on how to build an online encyclopedia better than Wikipedia. I, for one, have been wondering for a while now. So, let's see what you can do besides making snarky, personal comments. Here's a pot, and here's a kettle. Need I mention what color they are?
Onwards with Obi-wan's points. I don't believe in nasty people. Deciding anyone is bad, nasty, etc. has only one purpose; one can feel better about being bad, nasty, etc. to people they've so judged. I don't think this is particularly productive. In fact, IMO it is unbelievably destructive once someone decides- or, more often, others have convinced them- that they themselves are bad people. We could talk about this more in another thread, but we've got to get back on topic here, so. . . You know that the Wikipediocrats are smart. You have spent more time there than you're willing to admit directly. I immediately wonder if it's just in reading or in writing, too. :) They are indeed among the smartest in the WP community reasoning-wise that I've met so far. But emotionally. . . less than average. How do you think many of these smart m'er f'ers ended up getting indef blocked or banned? A lot of them fell from grace, not because they weren't an asset to the community, but because they didn't seem to know when- or they were completely unwilling- to stop fighting for what they saw as justice. That's one part of the answer; many of them are banned or blocked- whether rightly so or not- from editing on Wikipedia. Also, it's normal for someone who has been banished to tell themselves they wish harm on their homeland, while still keeping a great emotional investment in it. You'll hear the same people spout their disdain for Wikipedia almost in the same breath as suggestion to improve it. Frankly, we could speculate about these people's motives and methods til the sun goes down. Let's be more practical about what is best for Wikipedia here. What we, as a Wikipedia community, can't do is ignore them away. And, even if we could, we're doing a piss-poor job of it, because I almost always hear about what's been said on Wikipediocracy from a Wikipedian before I go to the actual site. Ultimately, I go back to my old standard: I don't give a shit where these people come from or what their motives are; all's I know is that they are saying something interesting, and I appreciate the fact that I don't have to gloss over a bunch of posts that are trying to get them to shut up as I read it. Obi-wan, no use playing coy. You know exactly what I'm talking about. :D ,Wil (talk) 05:24, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
I would say they can be very useful, but they also can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory through some of their negativity, trolling, doxing, etc. it makes people not want to listen to them, or mistrust their motives.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 10:19, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Just providing motivation. John lilburne (talk) 13:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Now I'm asking you, why don't you stop whining for once and show people you can actually do better? On-wiki or off-, Obi-wan certainly isn't the first to question your self-righteous assertions on how to build an online encyclopedia better than Wikipedia. I, for one, have been wondering for a while now. Many do. Do you suppose that Ed's logicmuseum isn't building and curating content? Do you suppose that the WO folk aren't contributing to other sites? Now as for the relationship to WP and fixing its content. Suppose you have a car which you park in the same spot on fancy paving each evening and at the end of a month you notice an oil stain, so you park the car in a different spot and clean the oil stain from the paving. At the end of the next month you notice an oil stain in your new spot. Obiwankenobi would suggest that you move the car to another spot and clean up the oil stain. What do you do? John lilburne (talk) 13:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
sorry, I dont get the metaphor. Can you explain further? I don't doubt that some WPO people make positive contributions, and critique itself can be positive but the framing matters. Is it done with a goal of diminishing Wikipedia and eventually destroying it, or is it done because they hope to improve it someday? That's not always clear to me.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Is that meant for me? If so then ... the issues of WP are structural/process orientated, it does no good to clear up a mess here when whilst you are doing that a 100 other messes are being added. In the case of the car you don't keep cleaning up the oil, you fix the cause of the oil leaking. But the structures/processes work against that, people don't have the time or inclination to argue for days about some crap on the web. That is just the simple stuff. Move to BLPs and the same issues arise week after week, month, after month, year after year. Its like desalinating the ocean one mm at a time. Lets not talk about the issues surrounding images. None of it is fixable by the current systems, even though people have spent years trying. Meanwhile oil is still flowing from the WP engine and whilst people are running around with mops and scribbuing brushes, it has flowed down the drains and is polluting the watercourse which we otherwise call the web. John lilburne (talk) 14:33, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
We could turn the car upside down. ,Wil
Torch it and watch that sucker burn. John lilburne (talk) 21:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm....quick, simple fix? Why not have a page linked from the main page that indexes all of Wikipedia's policies? Something obvious and simple that can take an editor to policies in no more than two clicks. Right now policies are scattered and buried under those damned blue links and less-than-obvious wiki-acronyms. It creates the impression that policies are somehow secret and can be used as weapons by experienced users against newcomers. And reduce essays to what they're supposed to be...essays. Not de facto policy. Intothatdarkness 14:47, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Between the time I asked about extant Child Protection Policy on wikimedia-l and got lynched by a mob, some very helpful people pasted in links to at least 10 CPP's, some of which were in a "proposed" state. So, I think that there are areas where policy either doesn't exist or is highly fractured across the projects. But I still think this is a great idea. In the process of creating such a page, we'll see what state our most crucial policies are in. We'll end up with what would likely be an internal index of everything we have, which we could update as we handle these issues with a eye toward simplicity, efficacy, suitability, and consistency. Once we have a list that we can link to from every page without looking like a bunch of assclowns, we'll know that we've made a huge step towards protecting our users. ,Wil (talk) 19:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
John I'm still not getting it. Yes Wikipedia has structural problems, always better to cure the disease than fix the symptoms. What are you suggesting? How do we cure the disease?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Start with adding a BLP opt-out for biography opt-out for people of marginal notability. Then we'll talk some more about the actual content. John lilburne (talk) 18:06, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic! You realize Wikipedia is full of marginally notable bios written by the subjects or by proxies of the subjects - they are banging in the door trying to get in! A BLP opt-out might be used by some tiny tiny fraction of BLPs and you'd have to establish at one point is someone notable enough they don't have an out. We already have enough debate over notability as a line, now you're going to add another line? Practically speaking how do you do this? Anyway I can't see that fixing the bigger issues. My preference would be to tighten notability standards significantly and eliminate tens of thousands of low-traffic BLPs - then we're just moving the bar up. Fewer BLPs means more watchers per BLP and less chance of shenanigans. We could also make admins and trusted active editors add low-watched BLPs to their Watchlist, it could even be done algorithmically.-Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
One suggestion would be is X a biographical subject in some other reliable reference source, say Britannica as one example. Pick a dozen other similar sources. That immediately tightens your notability criteria, and removes all the arguments. Is X included in the other references YES or NO. John lilburne (talk) 19:33, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
It's a good idea, but what about newly notable people? The books are too slow for us. Plus, those books have their own form of systemic bias...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm going to beat Obi-wan to this one. We could have policies that handle most cases, but there will be inevitable corner cases we can't think of or couldn't handle with policy if we could. We would need people to step in to make the final decisions on these issues. We also need someone to actually do this work. Maybe we can have some sort of standing biography board that would handle these issues, briefly discussing and actually voting when consensus can't be reached to just keep things on track. I think we could provide full insight in to their decisions for some form of community oversight. In fact, articles can be put on "probation", instead of immediately getting removed. The vast majority of biographies I'm seeing no one will give two shits once they're gone. If someone objects to a BDP being removed, there might be some appeal process, or maybe it just doesn't get removed. Finally, to take a BLP off probation, one has to commit (maybe hard, maybe soft staking their reputations) on keeping it up-to-date and accurate. I bet I'm not the first person throwing this idea in to the ring. ,Wil (talk) 20:16, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Looking at this from what I think is a different perspective, I've been putting in my edits by Random Riffling. It's been very enlightening. If "Random Page" is truly random, then apparently half of our articles are about obscure athletes and, strangely enough, tiny villages in either Poland or Iran. My point is that BLP's are highly dynamic, so most of these articles that already seem notability- and quality- impaired are also years out of date. Keeping these biographies is an inevitable and ongoing quality issue. I'm wondering, has Wikipedia ever undertaken an organized clean-up effort to remove less notable biographies? And, before anyone answers by bringing up those banners/flags/whatever, I noticed about half of the pages also seem to have one or more of those that are already a few years old. ,Wil (talk) 20:05, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
If "Random Page" is truly random, then apparently half of our articles are about obscure athletes and, strangely enough, tiny villages in either Poland or Iran. Actually, you do not get an entirely random article: [[9]]. Being the 'techy' person you are, I shall leave the algorithm abracadabra for your perusal. I have to focus on maintaining my ability to understand the plot to Primer. The question should have been what to do with the comatose man in the guest bedroom, (Wise words to live by). On, and you truly would not want to see all the village articles. Those in India cause me to break out in hives... Fylbecatulous talk 12:57, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Its a fools errand. Take a simple policy regarding the ethnic lists that are made all over the place. Each person on the list needs to have a reference link to the claim that they identify as such. Almost non of the lists do so. You can go around and trim them, removing all the claims and placing them in the talk page. Add notes that each entry needs to be sourced, but week by week, the unsourced entries grow again: See here and here. Then there are the stupid category tagging which results in Muhammad Ali being English and Irish. John lilburne (talk) 20:59, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, the whole descent-tagging is ridiculous. We literally have categories of (arbitrary nationality) of (arbitrary nationality descent) for any given country, 95% created by one user, even if such an intersection is never discussed in reliable sources. And then you add "Jewishness" ,which adds a whole other dimension of (nationality) of (nationality-Jewish descent). Jamaicans of Irish-Cypriot-Jewish descent? I bet it exists. Category:Norwegian_people_of_Danish-Jewish_descent exists... It's like rule 34. I've recently tried, unsuccessfully, to rescope Black billionaires to be List of African billionaires (regardless of skin color), since in my view, and the view of reliable sources, "black" is not an identity that is globally applicable, it is defined completely differently in each country - therefore unifying all of these disparate definitions of "black" makes no sense. An African-American man with light skin from the US would not be considered "black" in Brazil, whereas an african-looking-but-somewhat-light-skinned-and-identifies-as-pardo Brazilian (who doesn't see himself as black) would be seen as "black" in the United states, and under law, Indian people are considered "black" in South Africa. Some Ethiopians are said to discriminate against black people - how is this possible? Some of them don't consider themselves black! But on wikipedia, if one reliable source calls you black, you're black... a bingo, we get a wiki-view of the negroid race (and talk pages with people arguing how much black blood people have, etc, horrifying). We have around 10 lists of "black" people - but no lists of mongoloid or white people, thankfully, but no-one has ever been able to delete them (even though race-based categories are completely verboten by policy, race-based lists for black people, where black is defined by (...wait for it) continue to thrive)--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:45, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
You are right that if you play the random article game its all two sentence sports people, or the location of two yurt tents in the Gobi Dessert. The reason being that these pages can be generated by auto-ripping online sports almanacs and geographical database, the same is true of 100000 of biological organisms, and there are gangs going about doing just that creating 1000s of worthless pages as a result. I'm not getting at that particular kid, he's just one I've noticed in the past. As I said there are multiple players. John lilburne (talk) 20:59, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, athletes have a special inclusion criteria -all they have to do is compete at the highest level, once, and they're in. It doesn't matter if no-one ever did a profile on them. Try deleting an NFL player who played one game, and who was only mentioned in passing in a half a dozen articles, it will fail. Villages are all considered notable by default, that's a special case - significant geographical features and settlements are almost always notable. I don't know the best way to tighten inclusion criteria, but it would be an uphill battle - everyone will defend their turf - academics bemoan that the guidelines are already too tight for them, fanboys want their favorite band/musician in, sports editors their stringers, etc - everything is mitigating AGAINST removing bios here, so we're in the bad part of a Nash equilibrium, because the result is something like 600,000 BLPs. I've often wondered why people do these big edit drives to add more obscure women scientists to wikipedia, it would be much better if they did an edit drive to delete obscure male scientists, or to beef up articles about significant women scientists - why is quantity preferred over quality?? Whats the point of creating an article about a scientist - of any gender - that will get 50 views a month and have 2 watchers, it's just likely to be spammed or defaced some day. Either that, or multiply the # of editors by 10 or 100.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:44, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

as an example, I went to Category:Women chemists and clicked on 4 random articles. Of the 4, 3 have less than 200 page views a month, and two have little over 2 pages views a day, and less than 30 watchers (the software wont tell me how many, that's a secret, to avoid spammers identifying pages with very few watchers). See [10], [11], [12] - I'm not picking on chemists or on women, and I'm sure these people have made wonderful contributions to the world, and if we did the experiment with male chemists we'd find the same thing. But every BLP, indeed every bio, is a burden, much more so than a village. We should be more particular. (warning - potentially controversial idea:) Perhaps popularity of bios could be one way - of course this could be gamed, but if someone games the system, at least that means people care. Bios must meet GNG, but those which don't achieve their quota of page hits are automatically nominated for deletion, whereby a stronger criterion is applied for keeping. Brutal, but perhaps effective at filtering down to what the world - e.g. our readers, who we're doing this for - actually care about.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Interesting idea. Both of you have far more experience to lean on than I when it comes to how this stuff somehow gets in. I have a few questions: What do you guys think might happen to the number of active editors if we decided to focus on quality rather than quantity? Would they likely go up, down, or stay the same? And, seriously, what is up with Poland and Iran? Every third page is about a village of 100 people in one of these two countries. I assume there are tiny villages to encyclopedify in other parts of the world. ,Wil (talk) 22:13, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
it gets in by consensus. Changing notability criteria to drastically limit which bios are notable across fields - eg academia, entertainment, arts, sports - would take several months, massive site-wide RFCs, and ultimately would likely fail. These are well protected fiefdoms. Only a mandate from wmf could fix that, but can they mandate notability criteria? I don't think so. I don't know how much ability to create articles about your favorite barely notable sportsperson helps in going on to edit other biographies, but it's also a human instinct to want to create something new from scratch vs edit someone else's (sometimes carefully guarded and owned) bio. It's rather daunting, I don't think I've ever made significant contribs to a well established bio, as it requires a lot of work (so I just tweak categories instead hehe). Rewriting a FA bio is for the hardcore content editors, of which we don't have many. As for Iran I think there are just a few Iranians who love doing that stuff, one of the longest disambiguation pages I've seen was for some Iranian village of which there are like 100 with the same name.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Obi regarding: "...can they mandate notability criteria? I don't think so." They can but choose not to. (I don't know why. I've been thinking it must be User:Mike Godwin's doctrine ("look the other way and whistle and no one will blame you for any shit that happens") but that didn't stop them from forcing the existing BLP policy onto the project; so that is a smoke-screen - it must be something else. Now I'm suspecting it's a religious faith in the wisdom of the dysfunctional mob. But I'd like to know. I asked User:Sue Gardner once and she ignored me. User:Sj? Can you explain why the foundation refuses to impose policy here?) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

ask and you shall receive: Wikipedia:List_of_policies. There are also categories for policies and guidelines.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:39, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Is that list of policies for all of the Wikimedia projects, or just the English Wikipedia? ,Wil (talk) 02:35, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
Just the English WP, though I suppose many others have very similar ones....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:26, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Focusing on quality will certainly drive down the number of active editors. It's one of the reasons why the number of editors has been falling for the past few years. Writing good, encyclopedia-worthy prose with high-quality sources is hard. --NeilN talk to me 02:44, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Read the first line of the page, it will enlighten you. :)--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
AHC, The WMF can implement global policies. Currently limited to principles that affect all projects (neutrality, free licensing, privacy, multilingualism, accessibility, vision). Since the projects became large enough to impact people's lives via articles or media about them & high search-engine rank, both the editing communities and the Foundation have talked more about how to respect subjects covered by the projects: definitely part of our vision. That included the BLP resolution and the emphasis on subject consent for media.
Notability is more varied from project to project, and tied to to editorial decisions, which are currently owned entirely by the editing communities. These are less likely to see a Foundation discussion. We may all come up with improved models for this over time, but that is not now part of the Foundation's facilitative role. Alternatives to 'dysfunctional mobs' are always welcome; there are many functional non-mob parts of the projects. Deletion/inclusion discussions seem particularly unstructured on many projects.
I've advocated for letting non-public figures opt-out on Commons, where there is no special reason to keep media of them. That would shift the standard from "is it freely licensed, and plausibly educational?" to "is it sufficiently important to keep over the subject's removal request?". I would be interested to see a similar guideline on other projects. I believe the subject's wish is already considered in deletion discussions here, but not always respected. – SJ + 22:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
@Sj:: Could the same definition of "public" vs. "non-public" be used on en.Wiki, or are you mentioning these efforts more as an analogy? It would certainly help to have something that is easier to pin down than "notability" as part of the criteria for deletion of any given article. ,Wil (talk) 03:34, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
I clarified the above comment somewhat. public v. non-public applies equally on both projects, but is separate from notability. (Public figures expressly give up certain rights to privacy, by the nature of their jobs.) The equivalent to "notability" on commons is "part of an image/file that has plausible educational use". Yes, there a similar guideline could be proposed here that people who ask for their articles to be removed would be refused only where the article was sufficiently important to justify the refusal. – SJ + 01:09, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
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