Wikipedia has two mechanisms for appealing a block that do not require you to avoid the block:

* Blocked users are still allowed to edit their user talk pages. There is a "request for unblocking" code you can place on this page that will allow you to make an appeal.

* There is a mailing list of administrators who will listen to requests for unblocking.

I do agree that they are often too quick to block for sockpuppeteering, though. I've seen it happen on occasions when I've been very unsure of the supposed evidence.

Posted July 24, 2007 3:21 PM by Jules

Regarding the plot summary... undoubtedly somebody will soon attempt to have it deleted, as recently happened to the plot summary of Les Misèrables.

Posted July 24, 2007 3:26 PM by Jules

The wikiwienies strike again.

Perhaps some other user can block this person for advocating the homophobic agenda.

Posted July 24, 2007 3:27 PM by Robert L

Perhaps some other user can block this person for advocating the homophobic agenda.

Oh, no. He has external sources for that, so it must be true. That and pictures of his wang, which wikipedia always encourages.

Posted July 24, 2007 4:05 PM by Greg London

Somewhat related... I play on a team in the Stevens Point Trivia contest - question read on the radio, limited time to answer, points per question based on how many teams get it right. This last year, one of the teams started changing pages on Wikipedia to either remove the right answer or add in a wrong answer. (ie, if the question asked for the name of a dog in a movie, either the name would be removed from the page, or a false name would be added)

The data would be changed back pretty quickly, but not within the 6-8 minutes we would have to answer a question.

I've yet to decide if I'm deriding them for this, or admiring the way they found to game the system....

Posted July 24, 2007 4:31 PM by melissa

"Wikipedia is being gamed with increasing success by people with bad agendas"?

What happened to "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence"?

I'm not saying a bad thing hasn't happened. All I'm saying that sensationalist generalisations about Violence Inherent in the System got old about two years ago.

I'm a Wikipedia admin - I know all too well that we're regrettably humans. And yes, block-happy and sick and tired of the millionth sockpuppet of some random vandal and as a result prone to making mistakes. But note that we can and will listen to reason if the evidence speaks for itself.

Then, a few random thoughts for people who start thinking "oh, but there's this obscure rule that means that you can't be unblocked anyway":

1) Pulling random rules out of the hat is wikilawyering, plain and simple.

2) It doesn't matter if the rules are being obscurely applied. A wrong block is a wrong block. If people agree you got blocked for a valid reason, that's good. If people don't agree you got blocked for a valid reason, it takes a considerable amount (read: too much) of rule-throwing to get out of that.

- User:Wwwwolf

Posted July 24, 2007 4:41 PM by WWWWolf

The wikiweenies make decisions that just leave me going, "Bwah?" sometimes. One example I'm personally aware of is when they banned Station 8 (www.s8.org) as a source for citing information about Disney's Gargoyles.

The reason given: link spamming. Essentially, too many links to one source and "members of the community" kept putting the links back when they were edited out.

Station 8 has been around in various incarnations since the dawn ages of the internet. Most of the links in question were to articles and entrees by Greg Weisman, the ***creator*** of the series, who has a very large blog-like section on the site called Ask Greg. Yes, lots of links. Yes, lots of canon, verifiable information there.

Mind, there isn't another source on the Web that anyone can cite or quote that isn't derivative of Station 8. But Station 8 is now blacklisted and can't be used as a source.

Posted July 24, 2007 4:43 PM by Leva

melissa@5: The data would be changed back pretty quickly, but not within the 6-8 minutes we would have to answer a question.

You could go to an article, immediately go to the history, and then click on whatever version just before the contest started. You could then see the entire article the way it was before anyone gamed your contest.

Posted July 24, 2007 4:49 PM by Greg London

#9 - tried appealing? With those exact same reasonings? You know, posting to blogs doesn't help, but we have tons of different channels to appeal. Weird stuff happens. All we can do is to point out the weirdnesses, within the site.

On a contrary example, links to MobyGames were ultimately not considered spam, even when a large bunch of them were added by alleged co-founder of the site. It all comes down to what is useful and how the links are ultimately used...

Posted July 24, 2007 4:53 PM by WWWWolf

(Egh, I meant to point to #7, sorry) - Oh, it appears the debate has more to do with the fact that spammers used the site as a redirector.

Also, there's the separate issues on whether or not the site can be (at markup level) linked to, and whether it can be used as a source... A lot of material is used as sources even when they're not linkable (or even exist in the web). To me, the correct action would be to retain the links to the site, with the note that the links can't be accessed directly due to the site being in the spam blacklist.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:03 PM by WWWWolf

WWWWolf, I think the "people with bad agendas" refers to the homophobe who got some admins who were block-happy and sick and tired of the millionth sockpuppet of some random vandal to block a legitimate editor because they couldn't be bothered to look past their nose.

At which point, admins become unthinking block-bots of whatever user submits a request.

In short, some user was a bigot, and some admin failed to do their job as filter between the request for block and the actual block.

As far as "listening", the post explains that trying to protest the block received further punishment for "self confessed block evasion".

Which means yet another admin also failed to do their job as well, and simply acted as a rule-bot. i.e. Oh, this person is blocked, and he tried to post from a different IP, block that IP too.

What is consistently lacking in these wikipedia issues are admins acting with any sort of judgement that distinguishes them from bot scripts that mindlessly apply the rules and refuse to apply common sense.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:06 PM by Greg London

#6:

"Wikipedia is being gamed with increasing success by people with bad agendas"?

What happened to "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence"?

This is silly. I'm obviously not "attributing malice" to Wikipedia. I am arguing that its present rule set acts to disproportionately empower a small number of malicious people. I'm on record as praising the basic ideals and aims of Wikipedia. Its founder is a good friend of one of my best friends.

If you want to argue that there are no malicious people among the thousands who contribute to Wikipedia, do feel free. Alternately, you might consider the possibility that you've deployed the wrong maxim for this particular situation.

"I'm not saying a bad thing hasn't happened. All I'm saying that sensationalist generalisations about Violence Inherent in the System got old about two years ago."

Actually, it's not really clear what you're saying, since you seem to be shifting from sentence to sentence. Certainly nobody here has made any "sensationalist generalisations about Violence Inherent in the System". To point out that a particular set of rules has a bad effect is not to make a "sensationalist" claim, nor is it a claim of inherency. To say nothing of the matter of "violence," which (again) nobody brought up until you did. Do you actually know what words like "inherent" mean, or are you just stringing together cliches of Internet argument and Monty Python quotes in a half-conscious way?

Posted July 24, 2007 5:09 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

As for #9, "tried appealing? -- we've been here before, too. Criticism of Wikipedia--its processes and its results--is not solely the privilege of those who immerse themselves in its procedures.

Ultimately Wikipedia stands and falls on its usefulness and the extent to which the general public respects it. It is indeed useful. It also loses respect points every time behavior like this gets displayed to the wider public. Yes, Wikipedia is run by volunteers, who are human and prone to all the ills to which flesh is heir. That's praiseworthy. It's not a magic amulet against any and all criticism. In particular, when volunteers create and sustain injustice, their status as volunteers is a pretty weak defense. Lynch mobs are also made up of volunteers; that doesn't make their behavior, and its results, into something we ought to admire.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:18 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

OT, but coming from PNH's last link: Live Journal is apparently down, again.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:35 PM by JESR

#9 -- I believe the link you posted to demonstrates the point nicely that many decisions made by wikipedia make me go, "Bwah?" The site in question was NOT the source of spam and was apparently banned because of the behavior of a look-alike site scraping content; the site owner was willing to fix the problem (and I believe, may have done so); station 8 is still banned. It is *the* source for canon, accurate information on Gargoyles.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:40 PM by Leva

And I'm arguing that for the small number of malicious people there are a giant bunch of people who don't want utter sheer insanity to happen.

The rules get changed through consensus - if people aren't aware of bad stuff, nothing gets done about it. The right place to complain about this is within Wikipedia. I've seen altogether too many people complain about stuff in their blogs rather than taking the lead and changing things from within.

Okay, I admit I whine about this stuff in my blog, but at least I try to bring these topics up in Wikipedia too.

I'm sorry for bringing things up without any introductionary words whatsoever - usually not in my habits to present an allegory without making it very clear what I'm commenting on. Anyway...

My point is that in my opinion, blogging about this accomplishes nothing, especially if you're trying to point out that this isolated incident is utterly and definitely part of the larger problem. Wikipedia is a giant big mess of isolated incidents, and trying to generalise something out of it gives somewhat conflicting results.

So with this view, I hope the random Pythonesque peasant seems a bit more in place. There's always someone who cries that Stuff Is Wrong; We know the Stuff Is Wrong. The Stuff is also (simultaneously, in a completely different location) Completely Right. And tomorrow, probably the other way around.

(And here comes another big point of mine:)

All I've seen over the last few years is that people have pronounced Definitive Verdicts on various areas of Wikipedia. Every single time, I have to look at the sweeping allegation for a long time, consider what the most correct response would be, and all I can say is "It's not that simple."

And that's really all I can say about this particular incident, as it relates to the whole giant mess that we have for rules. This is, ultimately, an isolated incident - whether you want to categorise it as one or not. A lot of isolated factors led these people to these situations.

Wikipedia's problem is that we're not consistent, policy-wise. We like to think that we are, but that's not true. Conversely, the big problem of people who complain about Wikipedia is that they make sweeping generalisations about a site that's neither generalisable nor sweeping very well. People who complain about Wikipedia always seem to forget to mention the exact things that lead them to these annoying dilemmas of theirs. Yes, in perfect world, they wouldn't matter - but we're not consistent and knowing the past is very important in order to assess the situation.

And I'm sorry for not being particularly consistent myself - it's past midnight here. I'm really confused today and I hope I made at least some sense.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:43 PM by WWWWolf

All I've seen over the last few years is that people have pronounced Definitive Verdicts on various areas of Wikipedia.

Here's one of those verdicts: Wikipedia thinks that danah boyd does not know how to spell her own goddamn name.

Go ahead, explain why it's not that simple.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:51 PM by Anticorium

"Criticism of Wikipedia--its processes and its results--is not solely the privilege of those who immerse themselves in its procedures."

You appear to believe in this sort of flow of information: 1) make a Big Stink, 2) hope someone notices it, 3) hope the people involved notice the people who noticed the Big Stink, 4) hope the people in charge notice the people involved who noticed the people who noticed the Big Stink, then 5) The whole thing is settled through an administrative fiat from the Very Top of the Command Chain.

In Wikipedia, however, we fix the process this way: 1) Someone tells people that things are wrong. 2) People debate. 3) Things get fixed.

Of course debating about Wikipedia's flaws isn't the sole right of the Wikipedians themselves. The thing that matters is that fixing the process is the responsibility of Wikipedians themselves.

In other words, practical ideas for improvement are much better than exposing the injustices and expecting people to howl in terror.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:55 PM by WWWWolf

#17 - It's not that simple, because someone forgot to either provide a source or edit the article to remove an obviously incorrect statement.

(After all these years, people forget the correct answer for the question "Why does the article X have the error Y?" is "Because you didn't fix it." =)

Posted July 24, 2007 5:58 PM by WWWWolf

"Being gamed with increasing success" doesn't seem to me to be a sweeping generalization.

Posted July 24, 2007 5:59 PM by Scraps

People who complain about Wikipedia always seem to forget to mention the exact things that lead them to these annoying dilemmas of theirs.

Dude, that's like a sweeping generalization, and after looking into it for a long time, I can only say, it's not that simple.

For instance, this particular post lists the exact things that led to the problem. That this post wasn't made on wikipedia, in the proper form, on the proper page, with the proper carbon copy, hasn't got anythign to do with whether or not the problem exists.

That someone tried to protest the block and got more punishment, seems to justify the need for posting problems off of wikipedia.

That admins like you come here and howl in protest about people making "sweeping generalizations" for criticizing wikipedia about a specific incident makes me wonder what the hell you would do if this had been posted on wikipedia. Deleted the page, deleted its history, and blocked everyone involved for a week?

How about you listen to what is actually being complained about rather than viewing any and all criticism as some global attack or sweeping generalization about wikipedia?

Posted July 24, 2007 6:05 PM by Greg London

#20 - no, but "people with agendas" sounds awful lot like "Someone(tm) is Behind This Thing, and They're Out to Get Us(tm)(r)(c)".

When, in truth, it's either 1) everyone backstabbing everyone else, or 2) someone in charge doesn't understand the policy as well as they should.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:05 PM by WWWWolf

expecting people to howl in terror

For a guy who's advocating practical approaches to problems, your rhetoric isn't very constructive. Are you attempting to persuade, or just howling, yourself?

Posted July 24, 2007 6:06 PM by Scraps

JESR #14: Not just LJ -- it's also Craigslist, Technorati, Netflix, Yelp, and others.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:07 PM by Adam Lipkin

OT reply to #14: LJ, 6A, and 2nd Life having outages. No power in San Francisco.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:07 PM by Bill Humphries

22: "People with agendas" sure appears, in this context, to mean precisely (and accurately), people with agendas.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:09 PM by Scraps

Actually, you know, that came out a little harsher than necessary, and yet not harsh enough. It takes very little effort to find evidence, over and over, that Wikipedia has decided that contempt for authority is a guiding principle.

It happened when the SFWA just wasn't credible as an information source on American science-fiction and fantasy writers.

It happened when Teresa Nielsen Hayden just wasn't credible as an information source on disemvowling.

And, as I said already, apparently danah boyd doesn't know how to spell her own goddamn name. Which charge you have just agreed is pretty much accurate. I mean, you couldn't have done better to show the point I was trying to make if I'd slipped you twenty bucks and given you explicit instructions on how to reply! She has tried to fix it, and been jerked around because Wikipedia Law says that danah michele boyd is not a sufficiently good source of information on dahan michele boyd.

There are more examples, I'm sure, but I find it interesting that all I needed to do to find those three was to open my front door in the morning. How many more could I find if I actively searched, I wonder.

These are real problems. And every time they come up, there's always someone to complain that the criticism does not count because it is insufficiently genteel, and these barbarians have the gall to make suggestions without even once considering putting their lives on hold to devote themselves to learning the vast unwritten canon that is Wikipedia Law.

If you're trying to build an encyclopedia edited by people who value politeness over correctness, then you're doing a heckuva job.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:13 PM by Anticorium

WWWWolf @ 19 - Sorry, but that's not the case. The page in question is now the subject of formal mediation because secondary sources such as the New York Times are being cited as more reliable than primary sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Danah_Boyd

Posted July 24, 2007 6:16 PM by Steve

Bill @ 25

Thanks - I'll pass the word in other locations. That's got to be making things truly wonderful there.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:17 PM by P J Evans

That admins like you come here and howl in protest about people making "sweeping generalizations" for criticizing wikipedia about a specific incident makes me wonder what the hell you would do if this had been posted on wikipedia. Deleted the page, deleted its history, and blocked everyone involved for a week?

Deferred them to the correct place to complain about? You know, like I always try to do?

I guess I missed the noticeboard message where Admins Like Me were told to be vindicative, and I will bring up the issue with them shortly - but if you specifically want me to buy a new pair of jackboots, that can be arranged. I hate them, though - always leave my feet sore. Of course, I can't tell before I've fitted them.

How about you listen to what is actually being complained about rather than viewing any and all criticism as some global attack or sweeping generalization about wikipedia?

Oh, I was just thinking aloud. If no one likes it, I guess I can gladly shut up. I'll just make my own blog post. Obviously, not as world-changing as this one, but since no one reads my blog anyway, it's of no consequence.

And I definitely want to apologise for everyone inconvenienced by a random passer-by who has the chronic inability to shut up.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:18 PM by WWWWolf

"people with agendas" sounds awful lot like "Someone(tm) is Behind This Thing, and They're Out to Get Us(tm)(r)(c)".

What????

I already explained in #11 that "people with agendas" refers to the guy who requested the block. He is, apparently, some kind of homophobe, and his request to have the user block includes an accusation that the user is following the "homosexual agenda". The homophobe requests the user be blocked for being a sockpuppet, which he isn't.

The homophobe is teh person with the agenda.

He gamed the wikipedia system by getting someone blocked for being a sockpuppet, when the person wasn't a sockpuppet, and the real motivation behind his request for a block is that he is a homophobe, and he viewed the user as in his way.

Have you read any of this thread? Or did you just see a complaint about wikipedia and start thrashing about with your sweeping generalizations.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:18 PM by Greg London

Um, speaking for myself, though I know I'm not alone, I have far better things to do with my time. Hint: Reading comprehension is your friend. And what's with all the hostility, huh? Project much? Sucks to be you, eh? So just have a nice hot mug of STFU and, uh, get a life. 'k? Buh-bye.

Oops, sorry, wrong thread.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:20 PM by Barry Freed

I was always afraid that this day would come: I've officially lost my marbles, don't know what is going on, and despite my sincere attempt to the contrary, managed to cause much more harm than good.

It's clear that I need a long holiday. This just isn't working.

I'd definitely like to appeal to the readers of this thread to apologise for wasting everyone's time, energy and disk space.

Ban me if you think it does any good. I've deserved it for being a certified 100% genuine idiot.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:28 PM by WWWWolf

WWWWolf: I guess I missed the noticeboard message where Admins Like Me were told to be vindicative

Funny how vandals don't need a noticeboard to tell them to vandalize wikipedia, and yet they do it in spades.

And yet, when an admin misbehaves, he apparently could only have done so because "Someone is behind this thing and they're out to get us" or because the noticeboard informed all admins to be ijiots.

Hey, I got an idea, how about some admin failed to do his job and no one needed to tell him to do it?

How about an admin failed to exercise judgement and no one needed to give him a memo telling him to do it?

You can try to reframe a specific complaint about a specific case into some sort of nutcase conspiracy theory about wikipedia, but I'll just point out the only one who used those sorts of phrases like "they're out to get us" was you.

Or, to sum up:

Some admins screwed up.

Suck it up.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:29 PM by Greg London

WWWWolf:

The previous thread here on Wiki's policies (or lack thereof):
Grep That Spool

Read it now, before you get any deeper in the hole.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:29 PM by P J Evans

Teresa, I think you have a few new entrees for flamer bingo. ;-)

Posted July 24, 2007 6:30 PM by Leva

#14 ::: JESR wondered about downed sites:

(07-24) 15:12 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- At least 20,000 customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in downtown San Francisco lost power this afternoon, the utility said.
Brian Swanson, a spokesman for the utility, said outages have been reported throughout downtown and along the Embarcadero, including at PG&E's office on Beale Street near the Ferry Building. It was unclear initially how many customers who lost power remained without it for a sustained period.
Power outages were also reported in the South of Market neighborhood, the Outer Mission and down the 3rd Street corridor south of Mission Bay.
PG&E officials said they did not know why power had gone out, but most customers appeared to be back online by 3 p.m.

Laughing Squid is also keeping a tally.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:34 PM by xeger

Aw shit,

Now I feel like Dick Cheney on a canned-pheasant hunt (if Dick Cheney had a conscience).

WWWWolf,

Go to the main page of this blog, about three or so posts down to the one entitled, "Flamer Bingo."

Posted July 24, 2007 6:35 PM by Barry Freed

xeger, I'd found that article, although not the running tally.

If things don't look up soon I'm going to be forced into actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing, darn it. (Second worst thing about being self employed: the quality of the supervisory staff is just awful. The worst thing is one never gets that grand feeling of release when one comes home from work).

Posted July 24, 2007 6:40 PM by JESR

Anticorium @ 27 "unwritten canon that is Wikipedia Law."
Well, I don't think you can actually fault them for unwritten or unpublished law. Jesuitical hairsplitting over minor arcana, perhaps, but it's all written down. On the other hand, I'm not an admin, so maybe there are esoteric writings to go with all of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:XYZZY .

Posted July 24, 2007 6:40 PM by Steve

As I mentioned on the last Wikipedia post to ML, my boyfriend and I both got banned on Wikipedia for sockpuppetry. Why? Same IP address. Obviously we must be the same person!

Posted July 24, 2007 6:45 PM by Torie

WWWWolf...

I'm afraid it isn't *that* simple, either. I don't know anything about the article in question here, but I have seen this happen before:

* Article contains incorrect information, or lacks critical information
* Subject of article publishes information that corrects this oversight on blog or other similar medium
* Somebody adds the information to wikipedia, sourced to the blog
* The change is immediately reverted because "blogs aren't reliable sources".

Yes, I know this isn't supported by policy (among other things, I'm an active editor of WP:V -- I recently managed to get consensus for a change to the definition of allowable self-published sites, from "professional researcher" to "established expert" which seems much more appropriate to me), but it is an attitude that's prevalent, and if somebody isn't prepared to spend hours fighting it, that's where it's likely to stay.

But I do get your point: things will only change in wikipedia if we take the time to make those changes. But I'm not sure I agree that discussing what changes are required *here* isn't productive. The last time we discussed wikipedia here, my attention was drawn to the fact that articles were being deleted inappropriately. Since then, I've spend as much time as I can spare at Articles for Deletion, arguing against deletion in the cases I feel the articles are worth saving. I haven't always been successful, but only last week I managed to save this article from deletion. OK, so I failed with "Wedge-type character" (admittedly somewhat of a lost cause to start with, but I felt it was worth a shot), but it doesn't always work that way.

Posted July 24, 2007 6:53 PM by Jules

Err... my last post was in response to WWWWolf @19. You know, I was *sure* I'd refreshed the thread recently...

Posted July 24, 2007 6:59 PM by Jules

There's a difference between "Wikipedia doesn't think danah boyd knows how to spell her own name" and "there is debate on Wikipedia over how to represent names with unconventional orthographies". I'd say that the latter seems rather more accurate.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:20 PM by Damien Neil

I can't stop crying. I promised to shut up, but I have to say that I feel absolutely horrible for failing extremely spectacularly to make things better. It is not often that I have to admit, from the bottom of my heart, that I really wish I hadn't opened my big mouth whence the words of infinite clueless spring forth from.

(Despite of the appearances, I'm most emphatically not being sarcastic this time. I really am dumb and admit it, plain and simple. The unusual word choices are here just to make it easier for me to write this. Sorry if they make me look less sincere.)

I feel it is this spectacular failure for which in particular I have to apologise, much more than I ever have. (And sorry if this doesn't read what I think it should read - my grammar already went to sleep.)

I'm a horrible person. Yes, I really need to learn to read - all over again. I really need to learn to stop talking about things I haven't got the clue about. And leave this "debating" stuff for people with stronger minds.

Once again, sorry and good night.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:20 PM by WWWWolf

Executive summary: one Wikipedia user was a jerk; two admins made mistakes; the first admin went on holiday and the second, on being provided with evidence of the mistake, has since unblocked the user in question. (At least the first, I'm not yet sure about the 77.etc IP address but discussion is ongoing.) I understand the second admin will follow up with the first admin on their return.

Patrick, my impression is that at least the vast majority, of Making Light posts about Wikipedia have been "Look, they've done something stupid *again*" in nature. This tendency creates the impression that no matter how much admiration you have for its ideals, in practice you think that it completely sucks. I honestly can't tell whether or not that's the impression you want to give; if not, you could counter the impression by occasionally posting or commenting about the times Wikipedia gets things right. In which case "Yay for them fixing it but it shouldn't be broken in the first place" would be less effective than "Shame it was broken in the first place but yay for them fixing it."

The other reason I'd encourage this is that if there are a dozen posts about how it's useless trying to fix Wikipedia, it'll convince good people not to try; whereas if there a dozen posts about how trying to fix Wikipedia is productive, it'll convince good people to try -- and on the whole, Wikipedia will work a lot better and be a much better product if good people try to fix it.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:27 PM by Zeborah

For those curious about that LJ post, a cached version can be read here. Unfortunately, all its links are to other LJ sites (i.e., they're unavailable as well), but it may be better than nothing.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:39 PM by Dori

(After all these years, people forget the correct answer for the question "Why does the article X have the error Y?" is "Because you didn't fix it." =)

Posted July 24, 2007 8:43 PM by Gag Halfrunt

While I'm waiting for LiveJournal to return so I can read up on this thing, I just want to admire this truth: "...In particular, when volunteers create and sustain injustice, their status as volunteers is a pretty weak defense. Lynch mobs are also made up of volunteers...

Frankly, I'm no longer particularly surprised by the depths to which anti-gay-rights types will stoop. Just wait till you get a load of what's coming down the pike as the Matthew Shepherd Act is pressed in Congress. I'm starting to regard this sort of stuff as an untreated infection that will eventually go away once the patient gets off his ass and gets treatment.

But that's just a general comment. As I say, I have not yet been able to read up on this current mess.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:54 PM by Michael Weholt

Which reminds me, some Wikipedian has decided that North Korea has only made forty films, simply because that's the number of North Korean films with entries in the IMDB. Of course, for an obscure field like North Korean cinema the IMDB is entirely dependent on information submitted by users, and North Korean cinema is largely unknown outside the country, so the number of titles listed in the database doesn't prove anything.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:55 PM by Gag Halfrunt

Zeborah @ 46: Yes, I unblocked the 77 IP address myself, about 4 hours ago...

Posted July 24, 2007 8:55 PM by Arwel

WWWWolf, everyone has a bad day. No harm done and no offense taken. Still, I do want to note in response to:

"people with agendas" sounds awful lot like "Someone(tm) is Behind This Thing, and They're Out to Get Us(tm)(r)(c)".

As for the idea that "blogging about this accomplishes nothing," obviously I disagree. I'm well aware that there are smart people involved in Wikipedia, trying very hard to make it work. That's important. You know what else is important? The rest of the world. Your public. That would be us--the people who actually use Wikipedia every day. We're your reputation. Raging at us to not have opinions about the spectacular ziggurat you're raising in the middle of our commons is about as sensible as demanding that the ocean be less wet. We're going to have opinions and we're going to express them. You can brush them off as the views of uninformed non-insiders who refuse to master the Wikipedia Science of Mental Health With Key To the Scriptures--or, alternately, maybe you can extract some useful information from them. Like, for instance, when four people tell you you're drunk, lie down. And when Wikipedia increasingly has a reputation among non-insiders as being someplace where you're liable to be treated unjustly, maybe that's useful information to have. I would think.

Posted July 24, 2007 8:56 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Gag@50: So why didn't you take out that line? Until just now that North Korean cinema article had only ever been edited by one person -- which is in itself a reason to treat the articles' accuracy with care. Claiming they'd only ever produced 40 films looks very like "original research" which should never have been allowed to stand anyway, as there were no citations, which was grounds enough for me to take that line out.

Posted July 24, 2007 9:07 PM by Arwel

Zeborah #46: How interesting is an article "Wikipedia has a reasonable article about X"? Man bites dog is news.

What you need to worry about is when "Look at this new stupid thing Wikipedia did" is no longer news.

Posted July 24, 2007 9:10 PM by Seth Breidbart

Zeborah, #46: "Patrick, my impression is that at least the vast majority, of Making Light posts about Wikipedia have been 'Look, they've done something stupid *again*' in nature."

Zeborah, if you can find a single place in my post atop this thread where I made a generalization about Wikipedia, or "they", having "done something stupid," I will mail you a shiny new dime.

My entire point has been that flaws in Wikipedia's ruleset are empowering a small number of persons of ill will. If you think that amounts to a categorical claim that Wikipedia has overall "done something stupid again," you're mistaken.

You claim that "[I]f there are a dozen posts about how it's useless trying to fix Wikipedia, it'll convince good people not to try; whereas if there a dozen posts about how trying to fix Wikipedia is productive, it'll convince good people to try". In fact what convinces people "not to try" is the fact that practically all of us, at this point, know multiple people who tried to do something reasonable on Wikipedia, were treated with surpassing rudeness or subjected to outright injustice, and simple decided to leave rather than fight it out. Quite possibly, the overwhelming majority of them could have gotten things set-to-rights if they'd stayed, boned up on the complexities of the system, and fought it out. Guess what: most people don't enjoy being kicked around for trying to do something useful, even if the kicking-around does get corrected on appeal. Wikipedia's system is like a miniature implementation of many of the more dubious features of free-market libertarianism: logical in a sense, but impractically hard on actual human organisms in the real world. If you implement a system in which too many things wind up being resolved by a form of trial by combat, you'll wind up with a system full of combative people, which the general public regards with a skeptical eye.

As for the rest of it, I'd probably enjoy having the kind of power you attribute to me, in which the precise balance of my comments about Wikipedia ("Wikipedia stock rose today as PNH's positive comments reached an unprecedented 36%, but insiders warn that more reproofs may come as the hot August days of summer in Brooklyn set in") had a substantial effect on the institution itself. Forgive me for doubting that I do...

Posted July 24, 2007 9:18 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Arwel@53: I thought it was better to make my argument on the talk page than just to edit it. I'll take it out tomorrow...oh, you've done it.

Posted July 24, 2007 9:20 PM by Gag Halfrunt

(Also, What Seth Said in #54, with bells on. In his second line is much wisdom.)

Posted July 24, 2007 9:23 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

PNH @ 55: Guess what: most people don't enjoy being kicked around for trying to do something useful, even if the kicking-around does get corrected on appeal.

That's a group dynamic that is particularly painful and harmful and serves to maintain the status quo very effectively. You can always dismiss the problem someone's trying to draw attention to by attacking the person instead (including criticizing how the person brought up the problem). If the person wears out and goes away, no more problem. If the person blows up in frustration first, even better, because that's proof they didn't have a valid point to begin with.

Posted July 24, 2007 9:50 PM by Aconite

What you need to worry about is when "Look at this new stupid thing Wikipedia did" is no longer news.

I think we've got to that point. I listen to a lot of presentations on distributed computing in science and humanities research. Mentions of, or quotes from, Wikipedia are common. References to Wikipedia that don't include the near-obligatory amused acknowledgement of its notorious unreliablility are rare.

Posted July 24, 2007 9:57 PM by Iain Coleman

WWWWolf, blow your nose, snag one of the comfy chairs, and stick around. Anyone whose first impulse, upon realizing that they've been wrong, is to announce (with every bit as much fervor as they'd previously brought to arguing that they were right) that THEY'VE BEEN WRONG, is displaying Right Attitude.

However, the Fluorosphere Award for Right Attitude goes to Anticorium, who wrote to me this evening to say he'd lost his temper, and could he please be banned for a week?

I have indeed banned him -- but mind, it's only because he asked.

Posted July 24, 2007 10:01 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Zeborah@46: you could counter the impression by occasionally posting or commenting about the times Wikipedia gets things right.

Look, when a bunch of white, land owning males hammered out the United States Constitution, in secret, and presented it to the states for ratification, a number of people, rightly I would say, went ape shit.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a representative government. There were, however, seriously fcking problems with a set of rules about how to run a nation, albeit representitively, that didn't also happen to put some lines in the sand and say "this is off limits".

And so they came up with the Bill of Rights. So, while the US constitution contains rules for how politicians are elected, judges are selected, and laws are made, the Bill of Rights says, in effect, that it don't care if you have "consensus", it's nothing more than mob rule if you screw with someone's free speech, or a person's religion or lack thereof, or due process, or torture, and so on.

Do you understand that no one would have wasted their time with the Bill of Rights if they thought the Constitution was shit? By it's very existence, the Bill of Rights confirms the validity of the Consitution, and also fixes some seriously damaging, gaping holes.

Wikipedia is, metaphorically, like the US Constitution. It is an attempt to hammer out a set of rules on how admins are elected, how users may edit, and how disputes are resolved.

Pointing out serious, gaping, bleeding wounds in the set of rules that is Wikipedia, is attempting to address a problem that is fixable.

No one is saying kill wikipedia and start something else. No one is saying chuck it and start with a complete do over. No one is saying "They" are out to get "Us". Implicit in pointing out the problems is the idea that there is something of value that should be saved, should be fixed, and should be made complete.

The problem, however, is that wikipedia is a collection of rules, made in secret, by a bunch of property owning, white, males.

Metaphorically speaking.

Wikipedia has a power structure that rewards people who have made more edits than others, who are admins, and who have managed to accumulate a sufficient number of allies to help them in whatever "consensus" vote they wish to sway. The rest of us are, metaphorically speaking, female, slaves, or "other persons". We have been driven out by the mob, beaten down by the relentless, and given up. What's left are those who've learned the system, gamed it as neccessary, and have influence.

And you folks will either listen and adapt, or ignore the complaints and probably crash in revolution. Because you folks are the ones who have to give up some of the power by taking on the metaphorical equivalent of a Bill of Rights.

If you want wikipedia to last beyond your time in office, if you want it to survive after Jimbo Wales finally leaves for the big server in the sky, you damn well better fix some of the serious problems or it will more than likely collapse in on itself.

It means you'll have to give up some powers because you'll have to implement a seperation of powers. It means being an admin won't be a life time appointment, but something that is up for review every few years or so.

Or something. Something needs to be put in place to address the complete assinine behaviour that occaissionally occurs on wikipedia from those who have power.

If you think there isn't a problem that needs addressing on wikipedia, then it's already over, and we just need to sit back and watch the implosion.

But to look at these issues and complaints and problems and say that it doesn't validate anything that wikipedia has right, is to miss the fricken point.

Posted July 24, 2007 11:01 PM by Greg London

I think the place where the system really broke down was not in the initial banning request (people are jerks on the internet) or even the initial banning (overworked admins sometimes make mistaken snap judgments, even [or especially] when they're about to leave for vacation). The turn that made this incident into a farce was the automatic banning in response to a reasoned objection to the initial banning.

I think this turns on a basic piece of how humans process information. When faced with a barrage of information people look for easy ways to sort out what's relevant and what's not. If you're a wikipedia admin you can't do that on the basis of expertise (credentials are easy to make up) so instead obscure wikipedia policies become the credentialing system. If you can quote chapter and verse from the policies, then you've at least spent some time on the site and presumably have its best interests at heart, if not you're at best a hopeless newbie and at worst a drive-by vandal.

And once this tendency starts it becomes self-reinforcing, since the people who rise to the top tend to attract others to emulate them and drive away those who disagree. Before you know it you have a group of policy lawyers who serve as gatekeepers and venerate the policies above all else. People need a way to judge the accuracy of incoming information against known standards. It's a case where a perfectly reasonable heuristic (absent other information, the editor who displays knowledge of wikipedia is probably more reliable on a given topic than the one who doesn't) turns into a pernicious social dynamic (knowing the policies word for word is more important than direct, first-hand knowledge of a subject)

Doesn't mean wikipedia isn't a worthwhile project and a wonderful tool, but there are a few of these pernicious social dynamics that don't seem to be adequately addressed.

Posted July 24, 2007 11:03 PM by Chris W

I was using "they" as a bog-generic "some people belonging to Wikipedia"; apologies if that was not clear.

If the only members of Wikipedia you talk about are a) the perpetrators of stupidity/malice/power-mongering/nitpicking and b) the victims thereof, then it gives the impression that the majority of members fall into these camps. No, you never say "the majority"; your shiny dimes are safe. But it's not about what you say nearly as much as about what you don't say.

As to your power of persuasion: you're pretty well respected in the field, Making Light has a lot of readers -- and the whole point of Wikipedia is that every little bit counts.

Posted July 24, 2007 11:33 PM by Zeborah

Thanks, Zeborah -- but you know, if we mean the majority, that's what we say.

Don't start in with the "it's what you don't say" riff unless you're willing to include in your reading the set of all the things we haven't said.

Posted July 24, 2007 11:46 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

#62 seems to me the smartest thing that's been said in this entire conversation. I wish, I passionately wish, that Zeborah would pay attention to it.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:03 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

WWWWolf,

What Teresa said in comment 60. Please stay; you seem like someone that would be a pleasure to have around.

You don't write sonnets, do you, by any chance?

Posted July 25, 2007 1:06 AM by abi

Thanks for picking this up and running with it, Patrick; meant that while Livejournal was out there was still somewhere external to the bowels of WikiPedia where things could be discussed. Thanks also to Arwel for his actions, and to various contributors above for their helpful comments. Those who want to read further details on WikiPedia can see them here and here.

I'm going to address the idea that blogging about this achieves nothing. First off, I believe that for the WikiPedia user concerned, it was a last resort, not a first resort. He is a rules man; he attempted to go through the system; the system reacted by banning him again and banning one of hs friends, because it apparently automatically penalises people who make unjust decisions. It is at that point that he reached for livejournal.

I too am a rules man; I too am a WikiPedia editor; I had a good long look at how I might flag this issue up internally in WikiPedia on my friend's behalf; I found I understood even less of it than my friend did, and what I could see was not encouraging; so I too reached for my livejournal.

If your procedures are not user-friendly, and your actions are unfriendly, people will talk.

As for the idea that "blogging achieves nothing"; well, it got this block reversed for a start; and hopefully it will get some WikiPedia folks to look long and hard at how their procedures got them into this mess in the first place, before this incident disappears into the bowels of the archives.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:05 AM by Nicholas

That's a group dynamic that is particularly painful and harmful and serves to maintain the status quo very effectively. You can always dismiss the problem someone's trying to draw attention to by attacking the person instead (including criticizing how the person brought up the problem). If the person wears out and goes away, no more problem.

And sometimes the person is less than rational, unwilling to listen to alternate views, and creates a hostile environment. The community as a whole benefits when, as TNH has just demonstrated, the irrational and uncharitable element is excised, as one does with a cancerous growth.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:08 AM by Lisa Spangenberg

My own experience suggests that some Wikipedia administrators are jerks with no social skills.

Worse, they so heavily shorthand references to the Wikipedia rules which justify their actions, that any attempt to track down a specific ruling ends in a maze of twisted policies, all alike.

One solution would be to find a trustworthy group of competent people to go through the policy documents with fire and sword, and edit them as a coherent whole. This is something that the fragmented nature of the Wikipedia editing process makes extremely difficult.

Failing that, it is all too easy to find a phrasing in a policy document which can be abused, and little harder to come up with a misleading description of policy. How many problems, for instance, come from a confusion between "reliability" and "verifiability"?

I've seen several cases, when these arguments explode into public attention, where the admins (well, I think they're admins, but how do you tell as you read the discussion page) only make vague handwaves at policy.

For instance, if information is in a members-only area of a website, I'd understand doubts about using it as a source. I'd also be inclined to accept a site which required free registration, But if you link there, mention the requirement on the Wiki page. But I don't see any attempt to explain.

Still, it's hard to be sure. Are these admins unable to give a clear reference, because of the tangles of policy pages, or do they choose not to?

It's an ugly thought, but the history of Wikipedia policies may become an example of how laws, and lawyers, come into being in a society. So far, all we seem to have are self-appointed Police with little sign of training in the law they enforce.

Think of the sterotype of the incompetent, but still-elected, County Sheriff. And we don't even have the fun of driving the General Lee.

Posted July 25, 2007 4:40 AM by Dave Bell

#17: "Here's one of those verdicts: Wikipedia thinks that danah boyd does not know how to spell her own goddamn name."

C'mon .. Wikipedia doesn't think that. There's no dispute about the spelling - like any other publication it has a style guide that sometimes gets in the way ... so 'danah boyd' is capitalised as 'Danah Boyd'. Even 'e. e. cummings' gets this treatment !

I can understand why taking the person's word on their personal details may not be the wisest ... I know actresses who have ensured that IMDB has their 'official' age as several years younger than what they really are!

Mac

Posted July 25, 2007 4:55 AM by Mac

Zeborah @ 46

I'm not an expert on Wikipedia, nor have I been following its detailed operation, but I have been involved with organizations that had systemic organizational problems. There are organizations which cannot be sustained by individual effort and good will, no matter how great the souls, minds, and hearts of the individuals. Not because the organizations are inherently flawed or inherently evil (though there are such), but because their structure is compromised wrt fulfilling the purpose for which they were created, or because their operation is affected by meta-level dynamics from within or without (e.g., gaming, parliamentarianism, co-option, etc.). From what's been said about the admin wars in Wikipedia recently, I suspect that it is in danger of being seriously impeded, if not damaged, by both gaming and parliamentarianism.

I get no satisfaction from this possibility; I use Wikipedia on a daily basis, both for personal and professional purposes. If it were to implode, or even just become less reliable than it is, I would be immensely irritated. But that doesn't mean I'm ready to ignore what appears to be going on, because reliability is not something I can measure all by myself in this case. I need to know how effective and reliable other people have found the site to be. And if the problem with Wikipedia is in fact systemic, it may be that fixing it will require action at the meta-level where the problem is, rather than at the routine level where operational problems are addressed.

IOW, if Wikipedia is to be a Web-wide resource, with Web-class reputation, then you cannot reasonably ask that it not be discussed in the wider world outside the site itself. And such discussions should be from the point of view of onlookers and users, not of admins or of boosters.

Posted July 25, 2007 5:02 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

WWWWolf

abi asked if you write sonnets. I heartily recommend that you give it a try, even if you don't. She dared me to write one a few months back, and I wrote a poem for the first time in more than 40 years. I loved the experience, and I've been writing them pretty regularly since (except for right now, because remodeling my house seems to interfere with my muse).

And echoing Patrick and abi, please stick around. It's incredibly refreshing to hear from someone who cares about the effect of what he or she says on those it's said to.

Posted July 25, 2007 5:18 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Of course, I neglected to refresh my view of the thread before responding to Zeborah, and basically just underscored what Patrick and others have said.

But I want re-emphasize one point: you cannot fix systemic, meta-level problems using routine, ortho-level actions. Problems at Wikipedia arising from gaming and from the unintended consequences of admin rules have to be fixed by changing the ways in which admins operate. And that won't happen through appeals, or through discussions among admins. It has to come by pressure from the user community to change.

Posted July 25, 2007 5:25 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

E. E. Cummings used capitals to refer to himself.

The iMac is referred to as the iMac, the iPod as the iPod, and so-on. Why should danah boyd be treated differently?

Posted July 25, 2007 5:44 AM by Keir

Dave Bell @ 69

One solution would be to find a trustworthy group of competent people to go through the policy documents with fire and sword, and edit them as a coherent whole.

Unfortunately, the usual response of those present to fire and sword is extinguisher and shield (or parry), and in either case you get something that could be called a firefight. That's why constitutions are so much easier to institute early on, before anyone has a chance to get entrenched enough to be willing to defend an unconstitutional position at all costs.

But you're right: in the long term the rules have to be made at least mostly consistent, and a lot less subject to on-the-fly amendment or reinterpretation for Wikipedia to remain a going and useful concern.

Posted July 25, 2007 6:17 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Mac, #70:

"#17: "Here's one of those verdicts: Wikipedia thinks that danah boyd does not know how to spell her own goddamn name."

C'mon .. Wikipedia doesn't think that. There's no dispute about the spelling - like any other publication it has a style guide that sometimes gets in the way ... so 'danah boyd' is capitalised as 'Danah Boyd'. Even 'e. e. cummings' gets this treatment!"

"I can understand why taking the person's word on their personal details may not be the wisest...I know actresses who have ensured that IMDB has their 'official' age as several years younger than what they really are!"

I've been Patrick Nielsen Hayden since Patrick Hayden married Teresa Nielsen on March 23, 1979. We were married in California under a legal loophole that allowed us to do so without paying $100 for a marriage license--but which also left us with no legal record of our name change. Despite this lack of documentation, in the years between 1979 and 1995, I was Patrick Nielsen Hayden in every respect: on my passport, on my bank account and credit cards, in the eyes of the Social Security Administration, to my employers, as a public figure, and to my family and friends. I only finally got the court order when the US passport office tightened their rules, refusing to accept a name at variance with a birth certificate without a marriage license or a court order.

In your scheme of things, what I was doing from 1979 to 1995 is the moral equivalent of somebody lying about their age. This is meretricious bullshit in a clown suit, and someone who professes it has no business editing a grocery list, much less an encyclopedia meant to be used by millions of people.

Posted July 25, 2007 8:08 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I can understand why taking the person's word on their personal details may not be the wisest...

Patrick, may I submit the following points for your consideration?

1) Understanding why a principle has been applied does not necessarily imply agreeing with the principle or its application in this instance.

2) "May not be" is not the same as "is not".

Posted July 25, 2007 8:56 AM by Dave Luckett

Lisa Spangenberg @ 68: And sometimes the person is less than rational, unwilling to listen to alternate views, and creates a hostile environment. The community as a whole benefits when, as TNH has just demonstrated, the irrational and uncharitable element is excised, as one does with a cancerous growth.

Certainly, that can happen, too. There are always people in any community, online or otherwise, who don't fit. It can be difficult, sometimes, to tell if the problem is with an individual or with the community dynamic. Healthy communities have a sense of the existance of loyal opposition and don't impose penalties for pointing out problems. They also notice when a problem is pointed out by multiple individuals, which lessens the chances that it's just the ravings of an irrational, uncharitable cancerous growth. This makes it possible for problems to be identified and dealt with without the kinds of difficulties PNH mentioned regarding burnout.

Such communities also don't feel the need to make sure anyone they think is making unflattering statements about their own community is punished for speaking out. Ever since I left a particular online community, my character has been attacked by members of that community when I have made statements here about group-dynamic problems. I have no desire to be rude and bring that conflict to this forum, but I also don't intend to spend the rest of my life making sure I never say anything that community might find irritating lest I have my character ripped up both to my face and behind my back.

I do not believe I have, in any of my statements, attacked the character of any individual from that community, and I have certainly never identified it; rather, I have mentioned certain group dynamics that play out there and elsewhere. For the most part, I respect what that forum is trying to do, and I respect most of the people trying to do it. But one of the problems I do have with that community is the way people--not ideas or conclusions--get labelled as defective for various reasons, one of them being saying that anything might be a problem.

As I am quite seriously angry now, I am going away for a few days lest I be tempted to use our hosts' forum to hit back where I've been hit.

Posted July 25, 2007 9:09 AM by Aconite

A followup thought on the name issue. There are two matters under consideration here, closely related but not identical.

One is the question of how much the world is obliged to respect the (sometimes eccentric) choices that individuals make about their proper names. Obviously I'm inclined, based in part on personal experience, to side with the individuals. But I don't actually take an absolutist position. I never felt obliged to refer to Prince by his chosen unpronouncable glyph.

The other is the question of whether it's fair to equate self-naming with lying, as Mac did in #70. No amount of mumbling around the issue with "may not be" and "I can understand why" can redeem this grotesquely thoughtless and inappropriate assertion. People who change their names, however quirky their choices may be, are in no way doing something equivalent to the sin of bearing false witness.

Posted July 25, 2007 9:11 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick @ 79... There are still people who equate lying with using anything other than one's full legal name? That one is never going to be laid to rest, obviously.

Posted July 25, 2007 9:39 AM by Serge

Dave@69: any attempt to track down a specific ruling ends in a maze of twisted policies, all alike.

Or when you do track it down and find out the admin is wrong, and tell them by citing the actual page that contains the rule, the admin goes and changes the rules page. And changing it back turns into charges of harrassment. (Well, you had never edited that page before, had you? And after this admin edited it, you go and revert. And since admins are never wrong, your revert must be wrong, and must have been maliciously driven.)

Anyone who thinks there aren't seriously fcked up individuals with way too much power in wikipedia, who takes any criticism of individual actions as blanket attacks on wikipedia (their adminship, their edit count, or whatever metric they've decided to use to grant them power), needs a get-a-grip message in the form of a bat in the side of the head, or a boot up their ass.

Posted July 25, 2007 9:54 AM by Greg London

I'm sure Wikipedia would never refer to someone by spelling her name with lower case letters when the links from that article point to a couple of 404 pages, a source that spells it with capital letters, two articles that don't mention her name at all, and a court ruling that also uses capital letters.

(In fact, of all the sources in the article, the only one that uses the lower case spelling is the subject's own biography page on her website.)

But clearly that's different from the danah boyd situation because...um...well, I'm sure it's different, because Wikipedia policies would never be applied arbitrarily. It certainly can't be because the subject herself discusses it on the talk page.

Posted July 25, 2007 9:58 AM by Christopher Davis

Patrick @76

autistic parking-lot lawyerism

Please don't blame this on autistics, who aren't necessarily acting with malice. This is more probably pure and simple neurotypical parking-lot lawyerism, chew'd, swallow'd and digested.

Posted July 25, 2007 10:47 AM by abi

Bruce @72:

They're good sonnets, too.

I always ask this of new people who sound interesting and intelligent; I'm forever trying to get more recruits for the Hono[u]rable Society of Making Light Versifiers and Doggerel-Smiths.

Posted July 25, 2007 10:52 AM by abi

Bruce @ 71: I agree with all of your points but one. What I take away from WWWWolf's and Zeborah's lament about issues being discussed on blogs is not "Don't talk about it outside of Wikipedia," but "I wish you'd (also) bring this to our attention on the site." There are a lot of blogs, and it's easy to miss potentially good suggestions just because no one who's heavily involved in editing Wikipedia reads those blogs. And that's an impulse I can both understand and sympathize with.

Posted July 25, 2007 11:21 AM by Stephen Granade

Stephen [#85], if that's what they mean, why don't they say so?

Posted July 25, 2007 12:30 PM by Dave Bell

Having rummaged around in the Admin talk pages for a bit, especially those related to global warming, it seems to me that one of the problems with the WP culture is that it privileges those who are expert at WP rules and culture over those who are expert in a scientific discipline. Until that kink is rectified, there's always going to be an odor of "toy encyclopedia" floating around WP's reputation.

Posted July 25, 2007 12:56 PM by JESR

"No amount of mumbling around the issue with "may not be" and "I can understand why" can redeem this grotesquely thoughtless and inappropriate assertion."

On teh intarwebs, Patrick, nobody can hear you mumble.

I agree absolutely. Any assertion that people who use a self-coined name and style are liars would certainly be grotesquely inappropriate and thoughtless.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:02 PM by Dave Luckett

Now, I may be something of a thicky
but this fact is clearer than plainest glass:
any old fool can edit the wiki
and turn a hero into a dumb ass.
Rules when applied distort the simple truth
that any rule will run into a wall
and legislation may lead to more ruth
than if there were no bloody rules at all.
Vandals and liars stalk the Internet
altering pages wherever they can;
it's not enough to edit and to vet
nor can you make truth by veto or ban:
You have to learn the best point to concede,
and use force only when there's a real need.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:05 PM by Fragano Ledgister

JESR: (wikipedia) privileges those who are expert at WP rules and culture over those who are expert in a scientific discipline

That's it in a nutshell. The problem would be that those who are privileged because they're experts at the rules, have high edit counts, and a posse on call whenever they need "consensus", aren't going to walk away from that privilege just because they don't know anything.

I mean, that's what drew them to wikipedia in the first place, wasn't it?

Posted July 25, 2007 1:12 PM by Greg London

wikipedian protester.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:23 PM by Greg London

#85: "I wish you'd (also) bring this to our attention on the site."

The links from Patrick's original posting show that those who did bring it to their attention on the site were also banned.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:32 PM by Jon Meltzer

At this point in time, it seems that the only way to get around malice or thickheadedness in Wikipedia is to shout about it on your blog or livejournal and get people outraged enough to come to your aid. Clearly, not an ideal situation, but one that has evolved as people have learned that trying to follow the Wikipedia rules are pointless unless you're a fulltime contributor or admin.

We've recently had the James Nicoll kerfuffle, the Steve Gilliard fiasco, the spat between 'pedia and our estimable hosts, the jihad against webcomix.

Each time we've seen ordinary users and editors on Wikipedia, people who actually write and edit articles there, trying to find out why their work is being deleted, or why they're blocked as sockpuppets, trying to work through the Wikipedia rules and finding it's a swamp you cannot find your way through unless you have the kind of lawyery mind that thrives on this.

Worse, often the people on the other side deciding James Nicoll is not worthwhile enough to be in Wikipedia, or who dislike webcomix, often are people who are well versed in Wikipedia policies and politics and who also have the time and energy to immerse themselves in Wikipedia.

It's therefore only when people publicise their plight and get outside help that they stand a chance of reversing an obviously wrong decision such as the one that started this post. Because suddenly there were several other people protesting this decision, the admin in question changed her mind at Nicholas' friend being a sockpuppet.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:45 PM by Martin Wisse

Damn, spent so long writing that JESR at #87 said it earlier and better.

One correction to be polite to the original post however: the editor with the "homosexual agenda" fixation was not the one who started the ban in the first place, but a semi-bystander with no real input in this kerfuffle.

Posted July 25, 2007 1:53 PM by Martin Wisse

Dave @ 86, John @ 92, I think they are saying "Please also report it on the site," only it's been compressed and shorthanded after a lot of repetition. The result is that what from their side seems like a reasonable request from our side looks like them asking us not to talk about it except on Wikipedia. And it doesn't help that, if you're familiar with Wikipedia, you'll see all of these ways to go about appealing silly decisions or getting around being banned for appealing silly decisions, while from the outside all we see is a mass of pages and procedures that make an IVR's byzantine setup look positively straightforward.

Ideally Wikipedians would come up with rules that don't optimize for cluelessness and unhelpfulness. It's not that Wikipedia doesn't optimize for expertise; it just optimizes for the wrong kind of expertise. And that demonstrably keeps people from helping out, or from helping out more than once. I've looked at pages on subjects that I'm knowledgeable about, thought about editing them, and then backed away slowly.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:06 PM by Stephen Granade

PNH @79: I never felt obliged to refer to Prince by his chosen unpronouncable glyph.

Well, that wasn't so much a sincere name change as a clever social hack to get around an abusive record label contract. When his contract with Warner expired, he went back to being Prince.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:15 PM by Avram

serge #80 -- The problem is made more baroque by the years of ambiguity in what really was one's legal name -- it's gotten a lot sniffier in the last five-ten years, despite (I am told; IANAL) solid legal precedent that a free citizen can choose her own name for any legal purpose.

The loophole seems to be that we have the right to choose our names, but the gov't doesn't have to put them on any paperwork until humbly plea'd and paid. I think this also points up how much more we need paper than we did twenty years ago.

JESR #87 -- Oh, too true, and I don't know how anyone has time to learn the details of a subject, and the grant game needed to research it, and enough Wiki-clicky to post there about it.

I assume that the first, optimistic impulse of Wikipedia was more like "we can accumulate the bits of expertise everyone has" than "expertise is untrustworthy", but the latter appeals to a deep old strain of USian anti-intellectualism.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:22 PM by clew

Abi #83: Good point.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:36 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

#95: On the other hand, I think to the Wikipedia veterans, what PNH is doing here comes across as "I see that you have a problem, but instead of helping you solve it I'm just going to stand over here and bitch at you from a safe distance". It's not surprising that that gets a less than warm reception (especially from people who already know about the problem and are trying to fix it with mixed success).

I think there's a sense that if you're not working to improve WP, you shouldn't claim the right to second-guess the people who are. Is that too confrontational? Maybe, but I do see where they're coming from.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:37 PM by Chris

clew @ 97...

Which is why one of my friends will still go by her ex's name after the divorce is complete. Which is one reason why, when I became an American citizen, I didn't change my name to something that doesn't sound like a tummy-trouble med.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:46 PM by Serge

To Chris, RE #99:

Of course Patrick is bitching from a safe distance! You must have missed Chapter 37 of Our Story, In Which WP admin Will Beback tried to obliterate all things Nielsen Hayden from the face of the Earth (or at least from the face of Wikipedia), until God Jimbo Himself stepped down from the clouds to put an end to hard feelings and nastiness.

It would not be prudent for a Neilsen Hayden to make remarks in WP itself.

Posted July 25, 2007 2:59 PM by Kathryn Cramer

To follow on Mac @ 70, some organizations do have style guides that call for "normalization" of unusual name capitalization and punctuation in some cases, although they still would preserve unusual spelling.

The online Chicago Manual of Style, for instance, calls for capitalizing names that start with lowercase when the name starts a sentence, but also prefers recasting the sentence to place the name away from the front (in which case the capitalization stays as-is). (8.163).

The Library of Congress also appears to prefer capitalizing personal names in headers; I can't find a rule for this, but they have both "Yronwode, Catherine" and "Hooks, Bell", where Wikipedia, ironically, uses all-lowercase for both of those names. (LC doesn't seem to have any entry for danah boyd, so I can't compare there.) On the other hand, they do seem to get unusual spellings and parsings right, at least when told; as of now, at least, our hosts' names are correctly filed under "Nielsen Hayden..." (rather than "Hayden") in the LC authority files, though the tracings show that it took a note from the publisher or author to get it right.

Posted July 25, 2007 3:31 PM by John Mark Ockerbloom

Keir @ 74: The iMac is referred to as the iMac, the iPod as the iPod, and so-on. Why should danah boyd be treated differently?<