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Hi Jimbo. Is there a way I can get a 5k or 10k share of the 7.5 million for some camera lenses, a new computer, and a wide screen monitor. I will put them to very good use in helping to expand the world's encyclopedic knowledge base. Or is the money going to be put to even better use? ChildofMidnight ( talk) 19:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
For instance, it's customary for people volunteering as EMTs in events to be "compensated" with food, admittance and (often) some sort of party at the end. (I did so once for the Grand Prix in Montreal). — Coren (talk) 21:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
First of all, apologies to ChildofMidnight if I misinterpreted his/her comments as provocative; however, this topic has perhaps developed into something worthy of wider discussion. I agree with Tango that buying equipment is not helpful, because that would raise legal issues of ownership, trust law, and misuse. The idea of a stipend is more attractive rather than capital expenditure, although of course there has to be a cost/benefit approach that makes this acceptable to the WMFoundation, and with the best will in the world I can't see it happening. It would inevitably create divisions between editors. What might work, however, is a competitive Scholarship scheme in which editors are given a time-limited specific grant to produce or improve content, which would be subject of tender, and judged on the basis of likely benefit to the project. Problem with that is that of enforcement on failure to deliver, so all in all, I'm not sure we are really geared up to do that. Personally, all I need is a quiet house to live in, but at present, that depends on me winning the National Lottery or selling enough on eBay to get out of here. I'll get me coat. Rodhull andemu 02:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
We could create a virtual library that would lend tools such as cameras, scanners, or paid database access, or books, to those in need. Jehochman Talk 14:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
2009 (UTC)
Database access would be very helpful to me. I had a subscription to Highbeam for a while but it didnt provide me enough information for the $200 USD they charged per year. I live in Mexico and I have very limited access to English-language resources, even about Mexico. I can read in Spanish, which is tremendously useful for the articles I write, but the Internet and libraries here have limitations. Id even be interested in participating in some kind of cooperative scheme to have more access to more information at a reasonable price. As for cameras and stuff, it would be too easy to have to appearance of impropriety as someone is going to get miffed if they don't get something they want. However, I will say that I have two digital cameras, one from 2001 but still works like a charm, that Id be willing to donate to someone. Thelmadatter ( talk) 23:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Jim,
I live just over the bridge in Tampa. But I am not writing for myself. Lady Gaga would like her page corrected to reflect that she is not from Yonkers. Other than that...everything's great. I use Wikipedia constantly. Thank you.
DCS —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
71.99.212.234 (
talk) 04:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I have a blogger who is claiming that the banners to promote the fundraiser are a very recent development and is challenging me to prove that we've had them in the past. Uh, ok. Well, so I don't quite know how to do that, but I'm assuming if I ask here, people will provide extensive links, preferably to screen shots or archive.org pages, and preferably as old as possible. Thanks!-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 03:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
is the one that I can find on commons.
Ks0stm If you reply here, please leave me a {{
Talkback}} message on
my talk page. 03:38, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Speaking of fundraising banners -- bear with me -- you know how, during public telivision fund-raising drives they offer little momentos and so-called premiums to folks who contribute? Well -- the Urban Dictionary site hawks these cool coffee mugs (& also apparently baseball caps, t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, magnets, blah blah) printed up with whatever U-D definition on 'em. (Eg you go to the Urban Dictionary def for Wikidemon ( --> here) and hit the tiny colored bar that leads you to the merchandise.) Indeed. Why not? 96.240.16.231 ( talk) 13:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
[The DRv related to much of what I discuss below is here.]
Perhaps what follows can be open to alternate perceptions or interpretations but nonetheless is sincerely how I view things. And, the long and the short of my feeling is that some Wikipedians -- too many of them, really -- seem too often to claim that stringently neutral editors (such as how I see myself) to be fanboys of conservatism, simply because we recognize there to be natural leftish bias to the editing of WP and try and tow a more stringently neutral line in the face of it. A very meandering story but here goes.
In fact, Jimbo, I'll use the quote about your not liking user boxes that is contained wihin the link above to the Jimboism Urban Dictionary definition as a segue, in that what I'd like to propose is for WP to adopt something a bit more formal about Wikicontributors', for example, not bringing their blatant POVs into !voting contexts. As an informative example (or so I believe), I recently started an article about the recent Fox News versus Obama Administration brouhaha. It was a couple of sentences that could have been contributed in a couple of likely places but I figured its own article might be best and put it there and other editors greatly expanded it. In the new article's deletion discussion, many said, Merge the info to here or there.
A few said the info didn't belong anywhere and a reasonable contingent said, Keep the article in some form. Many of the comments revealed very blatant political bias, however. The closing admin said he didn't even read the article but he did look at the references (which seemed strange, but apparently is an accepted form of review) -- but also said he was discounting any Keep !votes because he didn't believe that appealing to WP:N was an appeal to guidelines whereas an appeal to WP:NOTNEWS was. So, what many might take to merit a no consensus close or a merge close, he instead felt merited a delete. Which is fine and dandy, however, then one of the most blatantly political commenters in the AfD contacted him on his user page and gave him a barnstar for being so brave against supposed enemy partisans on Wikipedia and he accepted it graciously. I myself said I could support the delete as a reasonable interpretation of guidelines, nonetheless I pinged the admin's talkpage with a question as to why he would make the editing history and content inaccessible through the very resolute delete, when the option seemed available for a more mid-way choice of a "suggestion to merge" close, which would have seemed both more contributor friendly as well as more in line with the majority of commentors in the AfD. (He didn't respond to my question at all. Instead he was busy emoting how he felt that a contingent of unnamed editors were now editing Wikipedia without proper intentions and that their lack of respect to folks in positions of decision making had come to make him feel less enjoyment in his continuing participation in the project....) Anyway, my point? Hey, most every contributor to the deleted article was stringently neutral in tone whereas many of the !voters this admin (himself carefully neutral) endorsed in his close were themselves extremely partisan.
Especially since I'm not even a contributor to Wikipedia now (I'm signing here using the IP of my home computer and not my user name BTW), I'll myself violate the "no partisan user boxes" Jimboism/suggestion and point out that my own political leaning aren't, say, objectivist (sorry! bad joke) or libertarian (although I appreciate the efforts made to figure out such theories)...but rather tend to align all the way over on the collectivist and internationalist side of the spectrum along with the sensibilities and critiques of the status quo as given by Noam Chomsky! As additional examples, I happened to have been the Wikipedian who started both the Palin "image" article and the Obama "image" article. Yet note that presently the Palin article is a repository of lots of negative stuff whereas the Obama article has almost none. Perhaps due to my own political leanings, the complete deletion, rather than mere merger, of info about the "Fox vs Obama White House tiff from the Fall 2009" topic doesn't really bother me -- just as the states of the Obama image article or the Palin image article don't bother me. Nevertheless, I would tend to acknowledge and recognize that, for example, these two "Image" articles' state would tend to reflect -- and even showcase -- how the distrubution of Wikicontributors' political leanings would be plotted on a bell curve, whose center would likely be decidedly to the left of that of the general public.
Is that OK? I think so, sure; however, I believe the WP enterprise could be measurable imprroved through our efforts to even aspire to more neutrality than this. Let's adopt a zero tolerance for paranoid, unsupported contentions of random editorial bias and lack of good faith. Neither "These editors are right wing shills" nor "That edit is 'too conservative'" should be recognized as legit argumentation unless either would be backed up by diffs or specifically shown to be violations of actual editing guidelines. Don't sanction uses of The New Republic in contexts where we wouldn't do so with regard to the Weekly Standard.
Let's make Wikipedia "all CNN -- but not at all MSNBC"! 96.240.16.231 ( talk) 22:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
The fund raising, I mean couldn’t it be some other time in the year when people like me don’t have all their money tied up in this most pestilent of holidays events? Because I really would like to donate. And on top of Christmas, going to South Korea isn’t cheap either (I leave on the 26th Dec). No money at all to give ): -- Sooo Kawaii!!! ^__^ ( talk) 22:08, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
...as to why you're the coolest guy ever?! — Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!) What I Do / What I Say 08:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
F.Y.I: [1] Bielle ( talk) 22:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Jim, I live just over the bridge in Tampa. But I am not writing for myself. Lady Gaga would like her page corrected to reflect that she is not from Yonkers. Other than that...everything's great. I use Wikipedia constantly. Thank you DCS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.99.212.234 ( talk) 04:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I have closed this Request for Comment. My detailed review of the issues and the results of that discussion may be found here. To summarize, I found that consensus exists as follows:
Questions or comments may be posted at The RFC's Talk Page. Thank you to all who participated. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 16:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
←Thanks for your response, Jimbo. I think the community will be pleased to hear that there will be consultation in the event that a top-up to 18 arbs and the 50% rule are incompatible.
When you say, "I was referring there to not having a desire to make appointments 'out of order' ", do 'out of order' appointments include the re-appointment of arbs whose terms have expired but who have either (a) not stood for re-election, or (b) failed to gain a seat through the relative strength of their vote? If you are not ruling out such appointments/extensions, can we presume that this would be done only with the agreement of the community? I note that your original statement was in response to my explicit question as to
"whether you will extend the term of any sitting arbitrator or make any appointment beyond the scope of the election results".
Tony
(talk) 15:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not taking a position, but I think we should ask first before invoking your name at the bottom of multiple policy pages. Please see the short discussion at User_talk:Dmcq#WP:EDIT. One option would be to swap WP:IAR in for "Jimbo's statement", and merge some of your content into the "Simplified ruleset", if that works for you. - Dank ( push to talk) 14:27, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I just wanted to wish those Wikipedians who have been nice enough to give me a barnstar or smile at me, supportive enough to agree with me, etc., a Happy Thanksgiving! Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 07:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Couldn't hurt to have a link to wikipedia:Wikipedia and User:Jimbo_Wales on that page, so people can read about what they are donating to if they reached the page from somewhere else. CompuHacker ( talk) 08:05, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Additionally, I really wish you/staff/someone would take the account restrictions off wikimediafoundation.org. Either by just quietly opening registrations or lowering the approval standards on the request page to near non-existent levels. CompuHacker ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC).
A few days ago user:LKD claimed Bertram to deny the genocide commited by Nazi Germany (verbatim: ' Berti denials the holocaust"). That's not chicken feed and LKD was pressed to deliver suitable diff links to evidence this outrageous allegation but never furnished proof (and never ever will be able to provide a diff link for there simply are no diff links). (Meanwile they actually bring forward the 'argument' he who doesn't deny the holocaust on wikipedia must be a holocaust denier because he avoids to deny the holocaust and therfore ist to bee expulsed from wikipedia. Bravos!)
But back to topic. Forced reelection as a sanction for such a defamatory statement is in my humble opinion not good enough by half. LKD is in a very tight corner. But nevertheless LKD's defamation is an undreamt scandal, LKD still isn't blocked and banned. Until now no admin on de.wikipedia.org screwed up his courage.
Well, I'm not here to have a heart-to-heart talk and I don't even say love me, love my dog. But Attention, please. I can't but invite you and the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to please block and ban LKD.
Yours sincerly
-- Bertram calling ( talk) 08:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC) ) (that's me: Bertram)
You might want to read this NY Times Op-ed by Evgeny Morozov. He seems to propose an independent panel of philosophers, journalists, scientists and experts to deal with content issues such as those recently with the Wolfgang Werle case. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 15:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I too think that the piece is not meant to be offensive, nor should be interpreted like that. The problem I have is that this panel is either gonna be a 24hour job for people, and help issues before they get to court, or can't stop things from reaching court. I also think that court is actually a good thing, because it is the only way any of these issues are ever gonna be settled in international law. Still, much as the Foundation has an Advisory Board, there might be something to be said for a Content Advisory Board. Perhaps we shouldn't dismiss suggestions people make too quickly ? — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 13:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
(en-0) Why don't you protect your user page? There are a lot of vandalism. -- 79.26.164.143 ( talk) 20:51, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
1,940 reasons why. Darrenhusted ( talk) 21:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
(Additional) Jimbo also uses his own user page as a scanner for vandals and trolls. If you notice it has been vandalised a lot of times; and thanks to the number of people that put this article on their watchlist these trolls are kept away from Wikipedia. It is just like a big scanner for vandals and trolls. Kangxi emperor6868 ( talk) 07:58, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi! I've been recently looking at Wikipedia reconciliation and having seen many of these projects, am interested in creating a similiar "India-Pakistan" cooperation board. I believe that such a project would be one of the most interesting reconc. projects and would like to have your comments/thoughts on this. Rana A.R ( talk) 10:17, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Socionics/Workshop
Your opinion, sir. Tcaudilllg ( talk) 17:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi! So you founded Wikia and WikiPedia? AWESOME!!!-- 75.120.50.216 ( talk) 01:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject community rehabilitation/Idea/We are all Switzerland ↜ (‘Just M E ’here , now) 16:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I think this deserves a lot of attention, and I think the core value put forward here is exactly right. One way I used to say it: for a really good Wikipedian, you ought to be unable to accurately guess at political affiliation or opinion. I think we should all leave our personal politics (and the polemics that go with them) politely at the door.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 03:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm the coolest looking Wikipedian. I got depressed looking at Wikipedia:Facebook. Daniel Christensen ( talk) 01:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
So you made Wikipedia and Wikia? Cool!-- 75.120.50.216 ( talk) 22:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
First of all I am not user:PIO neither my logged nicknames or IPs but in every case action of user:AlasdairGreen27 in article pallone is vandalism because version before suspected socks is this but not this disaster or stub! removing valid contribution of PIO who was banned by an Italian admin after these edits but for other reasons not pertinent this article regarding some Italian famous sports. I can develop this article because I have books and sources but I request your action against vandalism of AlasdairGreen27 who is notorious in Italwiki for his battle in meatpuppetry with user:DIREKTOR against all Italian and Serb editors in several articles of European history and this point I will report to you in future. Actions of admins user:Spellcast and user:MuZemike against my logged nicknames are nonsense. If you want, I can develop a lot of articles but I request unblock at least of account user:Vastaso. You can leave your answer here under. Regards, 29 November —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.95.253.173 ( talk) 18:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
LessHeard vanU, MuZemike, Spellcast stop your absurd POV battle against valid editors who request ban of vandals AlasdairGreen27/DIREKTOR: these guys are admirers of criminal dictator Tito! Read : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Incipient edit war at Josip Broz Tito. Jimbo go! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.95.254.117 ( talk) 19:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
hi jimbo.
how do you feel about this developments on wikipedia [3]. is it in your view conflicting wikipedia's goal of being transparent? 93.86.205.97 ( talk) 23:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC) −−i love you--
90.217.173.246 (
talk) wishes you peace!
I like u —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.217.173.246 ( talk) 19:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
One apparent positive side effect we can already see, however, is increased early participation. I was of the opinion that more people will feel comfortable voting if their votes are in private, and current trends seem to agree — with the caveat that it may be a related but distinct phenomenon: maybe voters are more inclined to vote early since there is no point to waiting to see the "trend", but that participation will remain at roughly the same level. — Coren (talk) 02:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Did you participate in asking Mike Godwin to intercede on behalf of David Gerard in this issue? Cla68 ( talk) 23:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Unable to resist bacon's temptations, rogue editors have kicked off the Bacon Challenge 2010 before the New Year even starts! This is a fun and collegial event and all are welcome. There are many non-pork articles for editors who enjoy some sizzle, but object to or don't like messing with pig products. This year's event includes a Bacon WikiCup 2010 for those who may want to keep score and enjoy engaging in friendly competition. Given the critical importance of this subject matter, I know you will want to participate, so remember to sign up today and get started A.S.A.P. ChildofMidnight ( talk) 19:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose that Wikipedia run adds for 2-3 years and use the income to pay off the US national debt. Supposedly with adds Wikipedia could generate an income of $580 billion a year, which means in 2-3 years Wikipedia would earn more than enough to pay off our national debt. I understand that Wikipedia doesn't want to come across as a "money-driven" website, and it refuses ads to keep with it's egalitarian message - which is why I believe this proposal would be genius - it would further enhance the site's egalitarian reputation and would stay within Wikipedia's mission goal (the revenue money would be used for the benefit of our country, not just for the pocketbooks of the site's staff). I firmly believe in this idea and I'm just making my mind known. I would love to hear what others have to say as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.40.102 ( talk) 06:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Is it you on wikianswers [4] or is just someone impersonating you? -- 84.165.113.81 ( talk) 22:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello Jimbo,
I was just wondering where you stand on what I think is an issue for Wikipedia at the moment. In the past, I have watched many a good candidate fail at WP:RFA because they were not content contributors, but vandal fighters. Many believe that because a candidate has not written a good article, or worked with a wikiproject to create a good article, that the candidate will not have sufficient knowledge to be an administrator. Some argue that through building an article, an editor can learn how to solve disputes, and can learn policies that are essential for an administrator. With this I can agree, writing articles is of the utmost importance, this is an encyclopedia after all. However, I must argue against people that insist that a person working as a vandal fighter cannot gain the same knowledge and skill as the content contributors. As avandal fighter myself I know the dispute resolution process as well as anybody, and I didn't learn that through writing an article. My userpages being vandalized, being screamed at by some of the worst faith editors around has taught me how to keep my cool and deal with problems that arise, I feel, better than writing an article could have. In short, I guess you could say I am fed up of seeing people being opposed at RFA because they are not great authors. The general Wikipedia symbol for an administrator is the mop after all, not the pen and paper.
I was just wondering how you, and all others that watch this page, feel about this issue.
Kind regards, -- Gordonrox24 | Talk 18:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
So, how about this? Consider dichotomy not Content-creator/Vandal-fighter ... but rather Content-creators/Chaos-controllers. Proofreader77 ( talk) 21:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Didn't intend to comment so extensively ^^, but re: "chaos-controllers," consider the case of (what I call) "current-events wrangling," when there is often a rush of new editors who most likely don't understand Wikipedia policy (e.g., NPOV). Helping "control chaos" in the midst of that is something that is a necessary adjunct to content creation. (I.E., Not everything RC patrollers do is reverting vandalism.) Proofreader77 ( talk) 22:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the thoughts on this article, I changed up the language. What do you think? SADADS ( talk) 20:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Looks a lot better!-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 21:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Changed on front page as well. SADADS ( talk) 00:01, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
You called for them last January. Do you know why they have not been turned on yet? NW ( Talk) 02:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Wonder what overall stats are where flagged revisions are in effect. Less vandalism surely, but perhaps less editing altogether. Hope to read more ... Proofreader77 ( talk) 02:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Turnover in the technical staff, and staffing issues in general, seem to have delayed the implementation here. Nathan T 20:27, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I know you are a supporter of "smaller" languages and believe in autonomy. What do *you* think? Thanks. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 04:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't think I understand what's going on well enough to be able to comment intelligently.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 17:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
The fact that attempts to put Pearl Harbor under "this day in history" are being ignored is a slap in the face to every US soldier, man/woman/black/white/gay/straight who fought in WW2. I refuse to donate because of this and the excuse of "Its on POTD" means NOTHING. 67.232.50.1 ( talk) 17:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
hi jimbo,
i tried to find info in relevant policies, but didn't succeed.
could you verify this:
A) checkusers have access to logs of actions that refer to user's edits
or
B) checkuser have access to both logs of actions that refer to user's edits, as well as to logs of which pages users have visited without editing them
thanks in advance for your reply. 109.93.174.125 ( talk) 12:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Dear Mr. JW: could you consider directing some of the foundation's investments towards copyright cleanups? Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations is seriously backlogged; User:Coren's bot has been tremendously helpful in flagging newly created articles as copyvios, but as you can see by looking at the first link and drilling down, hundreds of older articles still contain copy-pastes. The primary copyvio cleanup editors, User:Moonriddengirl, User:MLauba, and User:CactusWriter, have worked really hard to address these manually; but I can't help but feel that some support from you, whether in the form of your calls for more involvment or a dedication of remedial software funding, would be helpful. Sincerely, Novickas ( talk) 19:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
I know you like to keep these things under your hat until after the election, but might you consider a public indication of how many Arbs you expect to appoint in view of User:John Vandenberg's recent resignation? Some of us let the number of available seats inform our support threshold (possibly going so far as to support exactly as many candidates as there are seats available), and we'd appreciate knowing if you expect to appoint nine instead of eight. Cheers, Steve Smith ( talk) 10:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the page Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009, on which every voter's expectations about the elections are probably based, states that all incoming arbitrators are going to be elected to two-year terms. I would be very disappointed to see a change of the rules during the election: I'd rather see these elections taken more seriously and handled more professionally. — Kusma talk 11:04, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I made a note about Jimbo's plans on the election talk page: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009. I haven't changed the actual election page, as I still hope that Jimbo will change his mind again and do what is written there. — Kusma talk 18:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Jimbo, here are the facts we must now grapple with.
"after the last elections some arbitrators were appointed for 1 year terms, some for 2 years and remaining for 3 years. I think that the term length should remain flexible, so that User:Jimbo Wales can decide term lengths based upon the number of votes each candidate receives during elections and upon other circumstances."
Furthermore, the discussion above about turnover assumes that all arbs see out their term. This has never been the case: 2009 alone has seen an attrition rate of one third, and while we will seek to minimise it in the future, the fact is that a high attrition rate is historical. Neither you nor ArbCom nor the community can predict how many vacancies there will be—so we should not try to, beyond sharing what is almost a certainty that there will be attrition and thus an increased number of vacancies. The problem will not be too few arb vacancies for any particular election, but too many as we face this time around. A one-year tranche, apart from being in utter conflict with the community's determination that terms will be of two years' duration, is likely to present us with too many vacancies next year. In any case, in the highly unlikely event of zero attrition between elections, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with filling just three or four seats.
Tony
(talk) 04:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The two tranche system makes sense to me, and it also seems to be in accord with the result of the RfC. The RfC dealt with terms and tranches as separate issues; there was consensus for one, but not the other. Avoiding dramatically imbalanced elections is a reasonable goal, and taking one year to transition to a two year term system is a reasonable way to achieve that goal. The folks who are approaching this like lawyers arguing over technical interpretations are treating Jimbo's own words as the rule he is supposedly violating. I understand that having Jimbo make some relatively minor decisions causes some people to feel as though their own influence over events is reduced. Luckily, this is a minor enough detail that we should be able to get past it. Nathan T 20:24, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Jimmy, the time to make proposals and express your views was during the RFC. The premise of the RFC was to determine the preferred number & term for the new arbitrators for 2010, in order that your role could be purely ceremonial. As I stated at the top of the RFC, the community can have another RFC next year in order to fine-tune the system and "to cater to the different needs of the next election". The community strongly supported two year terms for the arbitrators appointed at the conclusion of this year. There was not strong support for a tranches system or for one year terms. There was very little support for letting Jimbo decide, or leaving it "adaptable to the current situation". John Vandenberg ( chat) 01:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me the problem here is a flawed RFC, which isn't Jimbo's fault. I didn't take part in the RFC and didn't even know it was going on that. I'm not blaming anyone for that. But my reading of it now agrees with Tango. The communities intention was for a standard term length to be 2 years. Whether to abolish the trache system was unclear from the RFC. The Jimbo decides bit was a red herring since it wasn't worded clearly enough. My reading of it was the community doesn't want Jimbo deciding at random how long terms should be which he basically did last year when he decided to expand the number of arbs. However this isn't a case of Jimbo decides. Rather it's a case of the community decided on a standard two year term length but couldn't decide on traches therefore as always with wikipedia, we stick with the original option (which in this case is also less disruptive) which is we preserve tranches. Jimbo ceremonially appoints editors to ensure there are 9 in the 2 year remaining tranche from the real elections and 9 in the 1 year remaining tranches from the byelection. Reading the above, it appears the RFC was rushed. While I understand the reasons, I think the highlights the problem with rushing things... Unfortunately it appears nothing but an RFC is going to clear this up. I suggest the future RFC be properly worded to ensure everyone understands that a 2 year term means a standard term lasts 2 years but a term resulting from a byelection will last 1 year if they decide to keep tranches. Alternatively you could have a question on a definite term length and make it clear that with such a term length, it is likely the tranche system will be effectively abolished or at least 'limited' and that there's a fair chance the number elected each year is going to vary significantly with sometimes it could easily be 4 and other times 14. To put it a different way, the community needs to know precisely what they are voting for in the RFC, and how it will affect matters. Nil Einne ( talk) 13:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo - I saw that you're planning on recording a ' WikiVoices' conversation near christmas - it'll be great to hear how that goes - good luck creating the news article :-) - if you browse the WikiVoices page, you'll further see that there's a conversation planned for this weekend (sunday at 01.00 UTC), and that one of the topics is 'Internet safety for underage Wikipedians' - I posted to the foundation mailing list a little while ago, following learning that wiki administrators under the age of 18 are taking routine admin. actions in respect of images which could reasonably be described as pornography - in one case, the admin. Julian C. is a self identified minor, and the image (which will appear if you click the link) is of a woman masturbating - the file is called 'Masturbating Amy'.
To echo my foundation post, I'd like to see some external advice sought on this matter, and I'd like to see Wikipedia:Child protection grow to contain some meaningful ideas for consideration. However, even should the Wikipedia community consensus feel that it's appropriate for minors to work with explicit media, I believe measures should be taken to ensure that they are discouraged or prohibited. Would you agree? Privatemusings ( talk) 01:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
< you chaps make interesting points, but also sort of miss mine - I think I'll head over to JC's talk page too, because it interests me that he notes that he didn't view the image, and doesn't intend to (which to me almost implies that he may feel it would be inappropriate for him to do so?) - my issue is really that working on this encyclopedia is attractive to children (it should be! it's wonderful to engage young people in a positive effort!) - and that we are rather irresponsible when it comes to offering advice / guidelines / policy to ensure that the material children are working with is appropriate. Obviously any child is going to be able to find very (very!) explicit material on the internet with a click of a button - but I'm afraid that doesn't abdicate our responsibility for the material we host here (and the foundation's responsibility for wmf projects in general, of course) - as I mentioned, I really just wanted to make sure Jimbo was personally aware that there is a large amount of very explicit material now available on both wikipedia, and commons, and that children are regularly accessing, and routinely administering, such material - hopefully jimbo may agree with me that this is an issue worth considering :-) Privatemusings ( talk) 00:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Mahalia Merita Angela Smith (6lb 11oz), heaven help her, was born this week, delivered by Wikipedia! Who needs a midwife, when you've got "The kid that anyone can deliver". See here.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 10:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)Heaven help here.
I'm not a huge fan of personality pigeon holes (e.g., Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), but it is clear (at least to me) that some relatively significant percentage of "totally unnecessary" contention among Wikipedians arises from their being, um, different species.
Has there ever been any discussion of such things at Wikipedia? (And yes, I'm thinking about this because of how "peaceful/uneventful" the Arbcom election has been. Have even threatened to compose a Wikipedia Western holiday musical review with songs inspired by the various "barfights" I've witnessed. :-)
Knowledge/links/random noise welcome. In any case, happy holidays. Proofreader77 ( talk) 00:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
For example (perhaps), there is a discussion on AN at this time between two POVs (which I've lightly labeled pro-silly and anti-silly) about a disruptive (some say) humorous (amusing enough to be worth allowing, some say) editor ... and whether that argument is based on a profound philosophical difference in perspective .... or a personality-encoded reaction ... hmm, well, that's the issue I'm raising here. :-)
SO: Have Wikipedians ever "took a meta-look" at their discussions from that perspective (of personality types, etc)? And I ask this here, because I figure Jimbo ... being the ultimate (when he feels it necessary or useful) Matt Dillion of the grand saloon (yep, not salon) of all knowledge that is Wikipedia, ... would know.
PS:-) To celebrate Arbcom election closing day, I have mightily exceeded my piss-ant 100-word "editing restriction" (not
publicly catalogued, but
privately imposed after one of those "carwreck" ANIs which have become more frequent in recent months, and which I'll probably have to straighten up at Arbcom with many hundreds of hours of wasted effort on the part of many good (and some transiently-bad^^) people — unless, of course,
Matt Dillon decides to celebrate Arbcom election day by a
pardon for
Proofreader77 ... in acknowledgement that some usually wise Wikipedians sometimes get their panties in a twist over things that shouldn't be an issue, but get sideways in "personality and communication style differences," and damn foolishness results. Amen. :-) (Oh, and, let me know if you'd like a
sonnetized executive summary. I'm pretty dang rhetorically competent, but some rudely and, yes, foolishly, have claimed otherwise ... How strange to be threatened with being SITEBANNED for matters such as these. Up to you, Mister Dillon — how 'bout sparing Arbcom some foolishness? :-)
-- (And, in any case, happy holidays to all.)
Proofreader77 (
talk) 18:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
You may also like to watch this debate. [11]. Alex Harvey ( talk) 04:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm the user Charli31898, previously I have created 2 pages Charlotte Beazley and Country Road (film) and they have both been deleted. I wanted to make those pages because Charlotte Beazley is an actress and will be in Sleepover Girlz next year in February and next year December in Country the film. And then in 2021 will be in Mamma Mia but that's a long time away so can you please make a page for Charlotte Beazley only and I will send you an image and information for the article, thank-you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charli31898 ( talk • contribs) 07:29, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello, The Page of Laurance W. Marvin was deleted without reason by strange user....[ Jayjg]. All in formation on the page was factually accurate and up to date. I wish to file a complaint against this user [ Jayjg]. And for the page Laurance W. Marvin to be returned. If you need additional information I can put you in contact with Mr. Marvin. the majority of his history is on actual paper not on the net. Also if you need any additional information I will provide it to you. Please contact me...Thankyou. -- Yoko-Litner ( talk) 22:43, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi! As you have expressed an interest in the initial The Great Wikipedia Dramaout, you're being notified because we are currently planning another one in January! We hope to have an even greater level of participation this time around, and we need your help. If you're still interested please sign up now at Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/2nd. Thanks, and Happy Holidays! JCbot ( talk) 04:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The first dash in your personal appeal is shorter than the other two dashes you've used. Given that it seems to have the same grammatical purpose – marking off a sort of parenthetical phrase – shouldn't the first dash be an endash like the other two dashes? Emw ( talk) 02:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
User:GoneAwayNowAndRetired/Wikipedia is broken and failing: Things like this scare me a little. Is it true that we are loseing more valued editors than gaining inexperianced ones? This essay has shown a lot of points. Shouldnt something be done about this? (I would post more examples but its getting late here).-- Coldplay Expért Let's talk 02:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
as far as "new-user-experience" goes, it would be fair to say that for all the wm projects i've worked on to any extent (wp/eng & wmc), an incoming noob faces considerable hostility, & a vicious learning curve:
after the welcoming-spam msg(s), the typical new user's first experiences with "the community" are mostly (& most often) negative: speedy deletions, ordinary deletions, problems with their contributions, & little or no help (fixing problems, etc.) from other editors. the style of communication received is also, typically: cold, neutral, and/or (at best) form-letter "nice". @ wmc, some established users are even in the habit of sending snarky form-letter msgs to new users whose contributions they do not value; i.e.: related to sexual content (primarily).
we have enough problems with losing good, experienced editors (for a variety of reasons),
but
if we continue the trend of driving off noobs too, wikimedia is dead.
if anything, the continual influx of new people is more essential to an open-source, open-collabouration wiki-project's ongoing viability.
we really need to fix this (on both points)!
Lx 121 ( talk) 16:10, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
(unindenting, because i can)
1. improved "mentoring" system
2. an more active, organized "welcome" process (related to the above); to the point of having dedicated users whose job it is to:
3. revise wm processes to at least reduce the "negative" experiences (& messages) that a noob user gets in their "start-up" phase @ a project.
4. wandering a bit off-focus, but what about more pro-active recruitment? schools, professional organizations, enthusiast clubs, etc.?
3 sub-cats we should consider focussing efforts on:
it's not hard to see how efforts to contribute material to wikipedia could be organized as an academic challenge; both for the topics coverd & as writing.
professional-quality work could also be of benefit to the contributing editors, as a part of their portfolio/resume/college applications/etc. we should look at ways to facilitate that.
challenges could also be set up, on a more "fun" level; to encourage students to contribute material about "their" school, "their" community, or "their" x____?. some care (& much tact) would be needed to incorporate their efforts into the larger wiki-community & maintain the quality standards of "final product", but there are fixes that could be used to keep peace & order. one obvious possibility would be "sandboxing" projects; in the sense of creating a "working space" user area for the students (or etc.), separate from the mainline article, then incorporating the "best" work back into it. there are a variety of ways to structure something like that, & i won't attempt to suggest a "best" process.
5. rewards/honours.
tricky subject.
it can get to be a "game", like "featured picture" status on wmc; or worse, a "game" controlled by a small group of dedicated users.
but
it would help encourage more people to greater efforts, if there was more positive feedback, in a variety of ways; something beyond "barnstars" & "feature" status; both of which suffer from a degree of inconsistency in their application (& yes i know we're working hard to tighten up "feature article" ratings).
lunchtime here, & reading back i see that this post is long, rambling & messy; i hope the core ideas are clear enough to follow, though; & i'll return later to clean up my text. my apologies @ JW for cluttering up his talkpage; but i feel much better now! ^__^
Lx 121 ( talk) 18:03, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Would love to donate, but I've been abused by your admins too much.-- Otterathome ( talk) 18:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I've commented on this before, and it seems to have been neglected, ignored, or simply gone unnoticed.
During server outages, a page is returned that states "This wiki has a problem". It states that the server is down, the database cannot be accessed, or whatever other problem the site is experiencing. In addition, it provides a Google search box. This is not a problem.
However, the Google logo is served from Google's servers, which is a problem. (Specifically, the file " http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif".) This allows Google to record an entry into its logs every time I access Wikipedia during a server outage (IP address, page accessed, date and time, etc.). The Wikimedia privacy policy regarding IP addresses states "When a visitor requests or reads a page [...] The Wikimedia Foundation may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published..." There is no mention that external parties will also record this information, or how they will treat that information, though I think it's unacceptable to provide Google or any other party this information (especially for logged in users for whom the privacy policy explicitly states that IP address info will not be shared or disclosed).
I would assume that this is unintended, and would like to see this corrected immediately. I think the easiest thing to do is either replace the logo with plaintext, or host the Google logo on a Wikimedia server. (I have no problem with the search box, so long as it is explicitly clear that the transaction will be processed by Google, because at that point I can make the decision.) Mind matrix 19:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
By the way, here is the HTML of the page in question:
<html><head><title>This wiki has a problem</title></head><body> <h1><img src="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki.png" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;" alt="">This wiki has a problem</h1> <p><strong>Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.</strong><br>Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.</p><p><small>(Cannot contact the database server: No working slave server: Unknown error (10.0.2.160))</small></p><hr><div style="margin: 1.5em;">You can try searching via Google in the meantime.<br> <small>Note that their indexes of our content may be out of date.</small></div> <!-- SiteSearch Google --> <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search" id="googlesearch"> <input name="domains" value="http://en.wikipedia.org" type="hidden"> <input name="num" value="50" type="hidden"> <input name="ie" value="utf-8" type="hidden"> <input name="oe" value="utf-8" type="hidden"> <img src="http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif" alt="" style="float: left; margin-left: 1.5em; margin-right: 1.5em;"> <input name="q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" type="text"> <input name="btnG" value="Search" type="submit"> <div> <input name="sitesearch" id="gwiki" value="http://en.wikipedia.org" checked="checked" type="radio"><label for="gwiki">Wikipedia</label> <input name="sitesearch" id="gWWW" value="" type="radio"><label for="gWWW">WWW</label> </div> </form> <!-- SiteSearch Google --></body></html>
Thanks. Mind matrix 19:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
^ -- MZMcBride ( talk) 15:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
You have my support. I signed.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 19:50, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, the above thread ( permanent link) is well worth a read through - being a friendly, and to my mind, interesting chat through an important issue - the short version is that "...I really just wanted to make sure Jimbo was personally aware that there is a large amount of very explicit material now available on both wikipedia, and commons, and that children are regularly accessing, and routinely administering, such material..." - I'd really like you to request the board of advisers offer some feedback on this issue, or you could raise it with the board proper. See above for more - and a quick note that you (jimbo) have seen this would be appreciated :-) Privatemusings ( talk) (archiving signature, this thread is already continuing an older thread.) Fram ( talk) 11:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
(unindenting, because i can, again)
1. we delete materials meeting the definition of child pornography because they are illegal; same with copyright violations, though that generally falls under different parts of the law. beyond that, the questions of what to include/exclude should be based on definitions of project scope, (verifiable) factual accuracy, & quality (which is a tricky, extremely subjective, nnpov thing).
in terms of contents the line could perhaps be modified to something like: "wikimedia is NOT censored, except for materials that are illegal for wm to host, & materials that (clearly) fall (well) outside of a given project's scope."
sex is a topic that easily fits in as educational, as do related subject like human special interaction, art, etc.
2. tangentially, both the laws governing intellectual property & the laws governing child pornography are becoming an unmanageable mess, & getting worse, not better. i won't get into a debate about IP law here, because it is "outside of scope" lol; but i will expand (very) briefly on the subject of child pronography laws, & how hard it is becoming to define workable boundaries on the definitions of same.
problem 1. defining which materials are & are not "kiddie porn": the range of opinion on this could (& does) range from the extreme conservative "anti" i.e.: any nudity (full or partial; not even necessarily involving "naughty bits"), any sexual or erotic qualities in a work, any image, or other material, that makes a judgemental observer feel "uncomfortable". & all this applies to any depiction of persons under the age of 18 or, potentially seeming to be under the age of 18, & it even includes works that are non-literal depictions (i.e.: not photographs, video, audio, or etc. recordings) of persons under the age of 18, & fictional works (i.e.: not involving the use of any real persons).
the other extreme "laissez faire/libertarianism"(?) would be a true "freedom of expression" without limits, at least as re: sexual content; where governing legal principals would perhaps relate to issues of consent, IP rights, etc., but not to the control of content per se.
in between, it is quite hard to come up with reasonable, satisfactory "middle ground" that does not stray too far towards one extreme, or the other.
for the last few decades (as with IP law), the debate has been dominated by the more conservative/restrictive factions, & the law is being pushed gradually towards an unmanageable extreme, where "reducto ad absurdam" situations are becoming increasingly commonplace.
& no, personally i do not really agree with either extreme in this dabte; i'm usually a rational, pragamatic moderate, in most things, although i am quite strong on individual rights; i'm also somewhat of a liberal-democratic-socialist, as well as a monarchist, & occasionally a confucian! ^__^
problem 2. how to define boundaries for acceptable uses of materials? i.e.: artistic, educational, entertainment, medical/scientific, personal/private, sexual, etc.
problem 3. we live in an age of widely available internet, audio/video recording devices that are becoming ubiquitous to the point of being universal, etc.
we've gone beyond marshal mcluan's age of centralized mass media, to a place where (almost)everyone now has access, (potentially at least) to the resources necessary to produce & distribute content, "en masse" to the point of (near) universal access. ...at least (most) people living in the more developed/technologically advanced parts of the world now have these abilities.
so; it's basically the same problem for IP law, child porn, privacy, & any other legal restrictions on the free movement of information.
essentially: when should we control what people do? & how are we going to control what people are going to do?
a) what laws are reasonable/acceptable to society?
b) what kinds of legal controls are possible/practical?
in particular, how do you control what a person (or persons) create & distribute as consensual, self-authored, self-published works?
so far, the political/legislative & judicial branches of most governments have not managed to work out a viable balance on these kinds of things; typically, the politics seem to be (at least) a good 10 years behind the technology.
problem 4 (miscellaneous). what about older materials? should there be a "grandfather" clause? exceptions historical/archaeological works? exceptions for "old" art? what about a "statute of limitations"? anything 100+ yrs old say... & should that be a one-time locked limit? 100 years pre-2009? or floating? 100 years before "now"?
what about works depicting a person who was under 18 at the time the work was created, but is now 18+, & freely consents to the work's distribution? what about self-authored works meeting the preceding criteria?
"the devil is in the details"; & it is wise to know when one is facing an impossible (and/or impassible) quagmire.
i know i've gone far beyond the initial scope of our specific discussion, but please consider the above as "complicating factors" for the issues you have raised.
as regards wikimedia:
we don't want to break the law, or get into non-viable legal situations
wikimedia projects (generally) have definitions of scope, which outline what to include/exclude
we are working to achieve "continuous improvement" in quality standards (including, but not limited to, verifiable factuality).
we have practical, technical limits on our available resources; storage space is not a serious issue (so far), software functionality is, however.
...& if anybody wants to contribute an extreme hi-res multi-gb scan of the mona lisa (for example), we are going to have one hell of a time figuring out what to do with it, & how
"pax et finis" for this subject, at least @ jw's talk page
XD
Lx 121 ( talk) 16:05, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
:)
poke no. 1 on the above :-) - and merry christmas! Privatemusings ( talk) 01:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi privatemusings, yes, I'm aware of discussions in this area.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 18:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Merry Christmas.-- Sky Attacker the legend reborn... 01:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
On behalf of the scrutineers -- Mardetanha talk 22:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm sitting her, reading some articles about different football players and i have come across some errors in some of the facts. For example the english article about Ryan Giggs, says that he has played 576 matches for Man Utd, but i know the real number is 821. The problem is now, that the article is protected, and i can't edit it. Here i would like a button saying something like "Suggest Changes". Here i would like to be able to suggest something to the author and if he find that info to be correct, that person can edit the article himself. Maybe it could be made so that i could edit the article, send my new suggestion to him, and my changes will be highlighted, he then just have to accept my new draft and the changes will be put into the article. I hope you understand where i'm going with this and that you will take it to consideration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BandittenJacob ( talk • contribs) 23:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Bonjour,
N'ayant pas d'argent nous vous proposons une idée sans savoir si elle est réalisable. Pourrions-nous utiliser comme de nombreux projets mathématiques (the Grid)les ordinateurs des volontaires pour traiter une partie de Wikipédia et ainsi créer un SUPERCLUSTER FREE. Best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.194.102.41 ( talk) 07:10, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
"Hello,
Having no money we offer an idea without knowing whether it is feasible. Could we use as many math projects (the Grid) computers of volunteers to handle some of Wikipedia and create a FREE Supercluster. Best regards" -- Yowuza yadderhouse | meh 11:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
As you are no doubt aware, the subject of AGW has become extremely controversial as a result of the release of a dossier of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. This controversy has been exacerbated by the failure of the Copenhagen COP15 conference to reach a substantive agreement on climate change. Interested neutrals on this matter will seek relevant information in Wikipedia. Here they will find a strong bias in favour of Global Warming as a result of editing activities since 2003 on various subjects by William Connolley. It is clear that this individual has generated a lot of controversy and has engaged in the same type of activity (excluding opposing views from publication) that the UEA CRU people have been accused of. As someone who has supported the highest ideals of the Wiki initiative for several years (in spite of a spurious block for sock-puppetry that was lifted) I feel that this is a subject of such immense political and scientific importance that it deserves your personal intervention. If you are interested in my further ideas and supporting references on this matter I should be glad to be of help. Geologician ( talk) 17:25, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
How come there is an article on some senator named Spencer Coggs but there is no article on the word "the"? I am disgusted by this. 68.191.178.216 ( talk) 18:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I have requested a checkuser to be done for user:mardetanha which is a steward on Meta. Here!. I am quite sure that he uses at least one sock and quite openly abuses his power by banning any opposing ideas of himself. Obviously other stewards didn't do the checkuser (read they have done and saw that it is positive) because he is also a steward and their friend. If you are entitled to keep your website clean, please check it out!-- Feuer1000 ( talk) 14:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello (tr:Selam) We look at this Turkish news Wikipedia is heavily criticized. This article we de wikipedia Turkish village, we expressed our fountain. User:Levent, E-mail at the news vendor has written. But could not get a response. News labeled it were Akşam (TR: AKŞAM) papers. In News The world's most famous virtual encyclopedia Wikipedia, the financial crisis has requested 340 million user support. The site's founder has received written article in Wales 'make a donation or can not survive was said
Cries of distress of Wikipedia's Free Encyclopedia. The only surviving without ads and donations passed 340 million users that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales encyclopedic knowledge, to overcome difficulties in which they had written an emotional post. Wikipedia users can read articles entering 'Please read: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales a personal request' title brings. Wales, her language written in the article that users can learn, 'the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,' wanted to donate to his foundation. Foundation's president said in a statement some time ago in Florence Devouard 'financial distress can be based on the most 3-4 months. Servers to continue to work a maximum of 3 or 4 months we have a power 'he said. Wales article summarize as follows:
We NEED your SUPPORT VAR: you, I would like to support Wikipedia donated. And 8 years, I've started Wikipedia in 2001, the largest encyclopedia in human history to create hundreds of thousands of volunteers have joined me in the face I'm surprised. Every month more than 340 million people use Wikipedia says, that almost one-third of the world's population connected to the internet is. That you are a member of our community.
LIVING HARD are to: Wikipedia, like we can do something to show the power of people is extraordinary. Wikipedia writers word by word, people like us. People like us who financed him. This is proof of our potential to change our world. We want to keep it free and ad-free.
Profit not: Wikipedia to operate, enlarge, develop and set up in 2003 in order to protect the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit groups in Turkey. U.S. $ 10 million annual budget and fewer than 35 employees and the world's fifth most widely read web site operates. Order to continue our business would like your support.
BECOME PART of HISTORY: So, imagine a world that every single person on the planet, humanity can get all the knowledge freely. Is our goal. Please donate here today.
If it's your opinion?-- Yusuf Avcı ( talk) 15:28, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
My English is not very good. translation is wrong:)-- Yusuf Avcı ( talk) 22:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Wednesday evening, east coast US time. Expect no surprises. I'm just "doing the paperwork" at this point. :-)-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 22:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
David Tombe's comments |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Jimbo, As regards the ARBCOM elections, do we have a figure for the total eligible electorate? The number must be very large, and certainly many orders of magnitude larger that the nine hundred odd who turned out to vote. I would guess that the figure of 994 represents a very poor turn out, such as should seriously undermine the credibility of the results. 994 must surely be well below 50% of the electorate. But it gets worse than that. Only one of the candidates actually secured more than 50% of the support votes cast, and even then, his result was only marginal. So in actual fact, the remainder of the candidates are very heavy losers. But it gets even worse still. All of the canditates additionally had a distinct anti-vote cast against them. So whether or not their net vote is positive or negative, it means that the results are particularly poor. And of course, the situation is particularly appalling for those who got net negative votes. The net negative candidates have been thoroughly whipped at the polls, and thoroughly rejected. As for all the congratulations that are going around for the ones who got small net positive votes, these congratulations appear to be congratulations for not having polled extremely badly. You told us not to expect any surprises. I would be surprised if you continued to appoint any arbitrators at all based on these results. Do you not think that the time has come to do away with the arbitration committee altogether? It certainly doesn't have any consensus. Law and order can easily be maintained on wikipedia with the block mechanism, limited to a finite duration. I would support the idea of some kind of arbitration committee to examine the fairness of blocks, but such a committee would have to be completely independent of the administration that issues the blocks, and it would need to be appointed behind the scenes in the real world. David Tombe ( talk) 03:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Crum375, I also agree with the idea of having Jimbo as a "benevolent dictator" final authority. But the time has come when we need to see that role becoming much more pro-active. The status quo is anything but satisfactory. I would like to see ARBCOM getting the stamp of disapproval for a change, because they have totally surpassed themselves. David Tombe ( talk) 04:17, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Finell, I didn't say that Jimbo should ignore the elections. I am saying that he should heed the results of the elections. The results clearly tell us that all but one of the candidates are losers, and that we have a ridiculous situation in which these losers are being congratulated. It's a bit like saying "Congratulations on the fact that there were others who did even worse than yourself". I am saying to Jimbo that there needs to be a major shake up. We need a temporary emergency measure involving an interim benevolent dictatorship, until the full details of a better organized system can be worked out. Of course we need some kind of arbitration committee. But the existing set up has lost all credibility. There is a clear pattern emerging in which administrator User:jehochman stirs the pot by imposing some unlawful sanction on an editor. The ensuing argument then ends up at ARBCOM, where the only arbitrator who can see right through User:jehochman is User:Stephen Bain. This vicious cycle needs to be brought to an end if wikipedia is to have any credibility over the next decade. I haven't checked out all the recent arbitration cases, but I have seen enough to realize that User:jehochman has been the root cause of quite a few of them, and I know from personal experience that User:Stephen Bain is the only arbitrator who studies the cases objectively and who is brave enough to act on his findings. David Tombe ( talk) 12:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Viridae, If you can give me immunity from the topic ban, I will be more than delighted to give you the back story. Meanwhile, it suffices to say that there is a pattern involving User:jehochman, who was thoroughly whipped at the polls, and who has therefore lost any mandate to hold a position of authority in the outfit. The time has now come for a full enquiry into his abuses of power. I can state the date 19th August 2009 for some prime evidence. David Tombe ( talk) 12:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Viridae, This thread is about the 2009 ARBCOM elections. I am commenting on the credibility of the elections. Please don't try to change the subject to 'dispute resolution'. In my statement above, I was merely defending myself against the inuendo in your statement about not disclosing the back story. I can now see that you have knowledge of the Ottava Rima case. As such you will already by now have seen a parallel, and hence know exactly what I am talking about. David Tombe ( talk) 12:52, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
No Jehochman, There is a recent pattern of ARBCOM playing second fiddle to yourself. Only arbitrator User:Stephen Bain seems to be outside of whatever is going on. Your request to have disciplinary action taken against me for my comments on this thread is merely further evidence against yourself. There is a clear pattern in existence for anybody who is willing to see it. David Tombe ( talk) 14:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
|
Hi Jimbo, sorry to break the perma ban I had to request myself in order to be left in peace by certain persons and bother you again, but some poor soul has been wrongly accused of being a sockpuppet of me, by a couple of "the usual suspects". This is not fair, it's just a slur on the user concerned, and on myself, there wasn't even a proper sock check run...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Zeraeph/Archive
User:Alamanth had nothing, whatsoever to do with me, and this is the first I have heard of him/her, today, check the actual pathways and I feel sure you will find that out. I have no sockpuppets. I also REALLY think it is time someone put a stop to User:Penbat's more abstract capacity for equal misinformation, he is filling up psyhology articles with left of field nonsense, most of which is, at best, a considerable distortion of any source he cites, and, at worse simply made up off the top of his head. signed - The REAL Zeraeph -- 109.79.193.159 ( talk) 08:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
PS Merry Christmas
Good Day, Mr. Wales. Pre'd like to apologize for your English, I'm from Czech Republic, and I'm not very good speakers - this letter is a combination of Google transtator
and knowledge of the schools that are not good.
I read your comments on the situation where the new loses wikipedia authors, but authors who could be called a veteran too.
Personally, I blame them - I personally feel on wikipedia, it does not like people driving, but some (and malfunctioning) computer AI algorithms. Maybe
I'm the one language version of the article changed the picture for the version from the Bundesarchiv version that has cropped the white border.
It is the aesthetics, also wikipedia commons itself is a template which enjoys the cutting watermarking from picture.
But there was a five-reverting, with justification as "me it somehow seems, but it's a strange, and I rel that way To be not" - while the license under
which they were dedicated to these files allows me to modify the file.
And then there came another oven, which gave me a ban for "editing war". Actually it came to me as though both of these people read the rules wrong,
and yet they could not fully understand. Just "I once read somewhere on a site that should not cut the white edges and the admin gave you ban" here I
heard somewhere that in early reverting two ban '
And it's not interested in what the particular situation, just act completely machine-non-self-reflection and without any effort to understand the
problem - just "the rules say that, I will perform is what I think any trouble."
Which in turn refers to other problems - im got a photo of a man who died in 1927. Photo therefore bound to be more than 70 years old, and I can
release it under the template for works which are 70 years old, and their author is unknown.
But then you always start running a series of absurd scenarios, like "but I do not know me it seems somehow - just the same: a what if, what if yonder,
what if this, what if maybe - then the problem of content any commons develop, because almost always begin a cascade of meaningless words, which is not
for nothing do not just burden the community and to make the project work lengthy ordeal.
Sometimes I find, as the authors of wikipedia itself any typ feared terror act, if not exactly according to the rules and take your work into their own
hands.
He is a big challenge to improve anything, especially because I specialize in historical and political articles, where the multimedia illustrations
make difficult "own hands".
What can prove even the next episode - the website of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (old.mzv.cz) is explicitly written that the files
(pictures) are available for ANY use by any institutions.
But when I uploaded the files somewhere that, once the user is sure of the German wikipedia, which I do not want unnecessary name, suggested to delete
and wit stupid arguments as "but it thing to me that this is only for newspapers and magazines", "and similar nonsensical speech.
And did not help anything - not even the copied e-mail telling me a representative of the Ministry explicitly says that the actual files and pages can
To be a type of wikipedia, or even Orts e-mail. The first evidence was the reaction of the "do not copy here foreign private mail" and other "it is a
false ORTS".
Files were deleted, as the German could not in any way at all to speak, because once thought the brain, but the rules. And any dialogue with him was
like arguing with a deaf and blind ...
Mr. Wales then do not be surprised that losing wikipedia authors.
Have nice day.
Ladislav Šafránek, Czech Republic —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredy.00 ( talk • contribs) 08:39, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I would like to see more arbcom members chime in at the enforcement sections like they used to. Right now, a topic banned editor who is a self proclaimed single purpose account ( updating his userpage to look less ominous) has been permitted to resume editing (albeit on a 30 day trial) in the topic he was banned from and this was done after only one day of discussion and with only a few people chiming in. We should see more involvement from arbcom in this area.-- MONGO 03:59, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Having the judges be the enforcers is always seen as dangerous — and not without reason — which is why the tradition has always been to leave that to the admin corps; and the immediately obvious solution of empowering "enforcement admins" for the task is unlikely to be well received. — Coren (talk) 15:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
A lot of Wikipedians, including administrators, misunderstand Wikipedia's sequence of checks and balances. The community can add upon ArbCom sanctions (for example, the community ban of Mantanmoreland), so people presume the community can subtract from its decisions also. Durova 386 02:11, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Good points about the need for arbcom to be somewhat distancing in this area to avoid any future COI issues, I guess. In this particular case, and there may be similar ones, sadly, the editor in question, even after numerous efforts to encourage him to edit outside his topic ban, failed to do so...a loss to us I believe since I know for a fact that this editor is articulate, intelligent and understands how to edit here...etc. So a topic ban was lifted in this case when we had no evidence (since he hadn't edited elsewhere) that any "reform" had occurred. I know Henrik has done what he thinks is the correct thing, and I don't hold this against him....perhaps I would just like to have seen a lengthier period for discussion and more involvement from various editors, knowing that I am of course not a neutral in this matter...the original topic ban against this editor was applied under the "discretionary sanctions"...and arbcom upheld this when the editor tried to appeal his sanction in April of this year. It sure would have been nice to see some editing in areas outside the topic ban...but there was a totality of almost zero to go by....so that is why I felt that arbcom members who may be more familiar with previous related cases as well as may have participated in in the last appeal effort by this editor may have been more involved.-- MONGO 00:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Nevermind... I think we're already seeing why (long thread) and here) the Collapse of the World Trade Center article has been so difficult to even bring to Good Article standing...so long as SPA's are going to try and violate the NPOV clauses governing issues centered around "undue weight" in such difficult topics, it is going to be difficult to see a lot of improvement in such articles.-- MONGO 01:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 45 | ← | Archive 50 | Archive 51 | Archive 52 | Archive 53 | Archive 54 | Archive 55 |
Hi Jimbo. Is there a way I can get a 5k or 10k share of the 7.5 million for some camera lenses, a new computer, and a wide screen monitor. I will put them to very good use in helping to expand the world's encyclopedic knowledge base. Or is the money going to be put to even better use? ChildofMidnight ( talk) 19:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
For instance, it's customary for people volunteering as EMTs in events to be "compensated" with food, admittance and (often) some sort of party at the end. (I did so once for the Grand Prix in Montreal). — Coren (talk) 21:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
First of all, apologies to ChildofMidnight if I misinterpreted his/her comments as provocative; however, this topic has perhaps developed into something worthy of wider discussion. I agree with Tango that buying equipment is not helpful, because that would raise legal issues of ownership, trust law, and misuse. The idea of a stipend is more attractive rather than capital expenditure, although of course there has to be a cost/benefit approach that makes this acceptable to the WMFoundation, and with the best will in the world I can't see it happening. It would inevitably create divisions between editors. What might work, however, is a competitive Scholarship scheme in which editors are given a time-limited specific grant to produce or improve content, which would be subject of tender, and judged on the basis of likely benefit to the project. Problem with that is that of enforcement on failure to deliver, so all in all, I'm not sure we are really geared up to do that. Personally, all I need is a quiet house to live in, but at present, that depends on me winning the National Lottery or selling enough on eBay to get out of here. I'll get me coat. Rodhull andemu 02:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
We could create a virtual library that would lend tools such as cameras, scanners, or paid database access, or books, to those in need. Jehochman Talk 14:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
2009 (UTC)
Database access would be very helpful to me. I had a subscription to Highbeam for a while but it didnt provide me enough information for the $200 USD they charged per year. I live in Mexico and I have very limited access to English-language resources, even about Mexico. I can read in Spanish, which is tremendously useful for the articles I write, but the Internet and libraries here have limitations. Id even be interested in participating in some kind of cooperative scheme to have more access to more information at a reasonable price. As for cameras and stuff, it would be too easy to have to appearance of impropriety as someone is going to get miffed if they don't get something they want. However, I will say that I have two digital cameras, one from 2001 but still works like a charm, that Id be willing to donate to someone. Thelmadatter ( talk) 23:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Jim,
I live just over the bridge in Tampa. But I am not writing for myself. Lady Gaga would like her page corrected to reflect that she is not from Yonkers. Other than that...everything's great. I use Wikipedia constantly. Thank you.
DCS —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
71.99.212.234 (
talk) 04:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I have a blogger who is claiming that the banners to promote the fundraiser are a very recent development and is challenging me to prove that we've had them in the past. Uh, ok. Well, so I don't quite know how to do that, but I'm assuming if I ask here, people will provide extensive links, preferably to screen shots or archive.org pages, and preferably as old as possible. Thanks!-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 03:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
is the one that I can find on commons.
Ks0stm If you reply here, please leave me a {{
Talkback}} message on
my talk page. 03:38, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Speaking of fundraising banners -- bear with me -- you know how, during public telivision fund-raising drives they offer little momentos and so-called premiums to folks who contribute? Well -- the Urban Dictionary site hawks these cool coffee mugs (& also apparently baseball caps, t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, magnets, blah blah) printed up with whatever U-D definition on 'em. (Eg you go to the Urban Dictionary def for Wikidemon ( --> here) and hit the tiny colored bar that leads you to the merchandise.) Indeed. Why not? 96.240.16.231 ( talk) 13:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
[The DRv related to much of what I discuss below is here.]
Perhaps what follows can be open to alternate perceptions or interpretations but nonetheless is sincerely how I view things. And, the long and the short of my feeling is that some Wikipedians -- too many of them, really -- seem too often to claim that stringently neutral editors (such as how I see myself) to be fanboys of conservatism, simply because we recognize there to be natural leftish bias to the editing of WP and try and tow a more stringently neutral line in the face of it. A very meandering story but here goes.
In fact, Jimbo, I'll use the quote about your not liking user boxes that is contained wihin the link above to the Jimboism Urban Dictionary definition as a segue, in that what I'd like to propose is for WP to adopt something a bit more formal about Wikicontributors', for example, not bringing their blatant POVs into !voting contexts. As an informative example (or so I believe), I recently started an article about the recent Fox News versus Obama Administration brouhaha. It was a couple of sentences that could have been contributed in a couple of likely places but I figured its own article might be best and put it there and other editors greatly expanded it. In the new article's deletion discussion, many said, Merge the info to here or there.
A few said the info didn't belong anywhere and a reasonable contingent said, Keep the article in some form. Many of the comments revealed very blatant political bias, however. The closing admin said he didn't even read the article but he did look at the references (which seemed strange, but apparently is an accepted form of review) -- but also said he was discounting any Keep !votes because he didn't believe that appealing to WP:N was an appeal to guidelines whereas an appeal to WP:NOTNEWS was. So, what many might take to merit a no consensus close or a merge close, he instead felt merited a delete. Which is fine and dandy, however, then one of the most blatantly political commenters in the AfD contacted him on his user page and gave him a barnstar for being so brave against supposed enemy partisans on Wikipedia and he accepted it graciously. I myself said I could support the delete as a reasonable interpretation of guidelines, nonetheless I pinged the admin's talkpage with a question as to why he would make the editing history and content inaccessible through the very resolute delete, when the option seemed available for a more mid-way choice of a "suggestion to merge" close, which would have seemed both more contributor friendly as well as more in line with the majority of commentors in the AfD. (He didn't respond to my question at all. Instead he was busy emoting how he felt that a contingent of unnamed editors were now editing Wikipedia without proper intentions and that their lack of respect to folks in positions of decision making had come to make him feel less enjoyment in his continuing participation in the project....) Anyway, my point? Hey, most every contributor to the deleted article was stringently neutral in tone whereas many of the !voters this admin (himself carefully neutral) endorsed in his close were themselves extremely partisan.
Especially since I'm not even a contributor to Wikipedia now (I'm signing here using the IP of my home computer and not my user name BTW), I'll myself violate the "no partisan user boxes" Jimboism/suggestion and point out that my own political leaning aren't, say, objectivist (sorry! bad joke) or libertarian (although I appreciate the efforts made to figure out such theories)...but rather tend to align all the way over on the collectivist and internationalist side of the spectrum along with the sensibilities and critiques of the status quo as given by Noam Chomsky! As additional examples, I happened to have been the Wikipedian who started both the Palin "image" article and the Obama "image" article. Yet note that presently the Palin article is a repository of lots of negative stuff whereas the Obama article has almost none. Perhaps due to my own political leanings, the complete deletion, rather than mere merger, of info about the "Fox vs Obama White House tiff from the Fall 2009" topic doesn't really bother me -- just as the states of the Obama image article or the Palin image article don't bother me. Nevertheless, I would tend to acknowledge and recognize that, for example, these two "Image" articles' state would tend to reflect -- and even showcase -- how the distrubution of Wikicontributors' political leanings would be plotted on a bell curve, whose center would likely be decidedly to the left of that of the general public.
Is that OK? I think so, sure; however, I believe the WP enterprise could be measurable imprroved through our efforts to even aspire to more neutrality than this. Let's adopt a zero tolerance for paranoid, unsupported contentions of random editorial bias and lack of good faith. Neither "These editors are right wing shills" nor "That edit is 'too conservative'" should be recognized as legit argumentation unless either would be backed up by diffs or specifically shown to be violations of actual editing guidelines. Don't sanction uses of The New Republic in contexts where we wouldn't do so with regard to the Weekly Standard.
Let's make Wikipedia "all CNN -- but not at all MSNBC"! 96.240.16.231 ( talk) 22:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
The fund raising, I mean couldn’t it be some other time in the year when people like me don’t have all their money tied up in this most pestilent of holidays events? Because I really would like to donate. And on top of Christmas, going to South Korea isn’t cheap either (I leave on the 26th Dec). No money at all to give ): -- Sooo Kawaii!!! ^__^ ( talk) 22:08, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
...as to why you're the coolest guy ever?! — Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!) What I Do / What I Say 08:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
F.Y.I: [1] Bielle ( talk) 22:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Jim, I live just over the bridge in Tampa. But I am not writing for myself. Lady Gaga would like her page corrected to reflect that she is not from Yonkers. Other than that...everything's great. I use Wikipedia constantly. Thank you DCS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.99.212.234 ( talk) 04:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I have closed this Request for Comment. My detailed review of the issues and the results of that discussion may be found here. To summarize, I found that consensus exists as follows:
Questions or comments may be posted at The RFC's Talk Page. Thank you to all who participated. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 16:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
←Thanks for your response, Jimbo. I think the community will be pleased to hear that there will be consultation in the event that a top-up to 18 arbs and the 50% rule are incompatible.
When you say, "I was referring there to not having a desire to make appointments 'out of order' ", do 'out of order' appointments include the re-appointment of arbs whose terms have expired but who have either (a) not stood for re-election, or (b) failed to gain a seat through the relative strength of their vote? If you are not ruling out such appointments/extensions, can we presume that this would be done only with the agreement of the community? I note that your original statement was in response to my explicit question as to
"whether you will extend the term of any sitting arbitrator or make any appointment beyond the scope of the election results".
Tony
(talk) 15:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not taking a position, but I think we should ask first before invoking your name at the bottom of multiple policy pages. Please see the short discussion at User_talk:Dmcq#WP:EDIT. One option would be to swap WP:IAR in for "Jimbo's statement", and merge some of your content into the "Simplified ruleset", if that works for you. - Dank ( push to talk) 14:27, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I just wanted to wish those Wikipedians who have been nice enough to give me a barnstar or smile at me, supportive enough to agree with me, etc., a Happy Thanksgiving! Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 07:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Couldn't hurt to have a link to wikipedia:Wikipedia and User:Jimbo_Wales on that page, so people can read about what they are donating to if they reached the page from somewhere else. CompuHacker ( talk) 08:05, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Additionally, I really wish you/staff/someone would take the account restrictions off wikimediafoundation.org. Either by just quietly opening registrations or lowering the approval standards on the request page to near non-existent levels. CompuHacker ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC).
A few days ago user:LKD claimed Bertram to deny the genocide commited by Nazi Germany (verbatim: ' Berti denials the holocaust"). That's not chicken feed and LKD was pressed to deliver suitable diff links to evidence this outrageous allegation but never furnished proof (and never ever will be able to provide a diff link for there simply are no diff links). (Meanwile they actually bring forward the 'argument' he who doesn't deny the holocaust on wikipedia must be a holocaust denier because he avoids to deny the holocaust and therfore ist to bee expulsed from wikipedia. Bravos!)
But back to topic. Forced reelection as a sanction for such a defamatory statement is in my humble opinion not good enough by half. LKD is in a very tight corner. But nevertheless LKD's defamation is an undreamt scandal, LKD still isn't blocked and banned. Until now no admin on de.wikipedia.org screwed up his courage.
Well, I'm not here to have a heart-to-heart talk and I don't even say love me, love my dog. But Attention, please. I can't but invite you and the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to please block and ban LKD.
Yours sincerly
-- Bertram calling ( talk) 08:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC) ) (that's me: Bertram)
You might want to read this NY Times Op-ed by Evgeny Morozov. He seems to propose an independent panel of philosophers, journalists, scientists and experts to deal with content issues such as those recently with the Wolfgang Werle case. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 15:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I too think that the piece is not meant to be offensive, nor should be interpreted like that. The problem I have is that this panel is either gonna be a 24hour job for people, and help issues before they get to court, or can't stop things from reaching court. I also think that court is actually a good thing, because it is the only way any of these issues are ever gonna be settled in international law. Still, much as the Foundation has an Advisory Board, there might be something to be said for a Content Advisory Board. Perhaps we shouldn't dismiss suggestions people make too quickly ? — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 13:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
(en-0) Why don't you protect your user page? There are a lot of vandalism. -- 79.26.164.143 ( talk) 20:51, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
1,940 reasons why. Darrenhusted ( talk) 21:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
(Additional) Jimbo also uses his own user page as a scanner for vandals and trolls. If you notice it has been vandalised a lot of times; and thanks to the number of people that put this article on their watchlist these trolls are kept away from Wikipedia. It is just like a big scanner for vandals and trolls. Kangxi emperor6868 ( talk) 07:58, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi! I've been recently looking at Wikipedia reconciliation and having seen many of these projects, am interested in creating a similiar "India-Pakistan" cooperation board. I believe that such a project would be one of the most interesting reconc. projects and would like to have your comments/thoughts on this. Rana A.R ( talk) 10:17, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Socionics/Workshop
Your opinion, sir. Tcaudilllg ( talk) 17:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi! So you founded Wikia and WikiPedia? AWESOME!!!-- 75.120.50.216 ( talk) 01:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject community rehabilitation/Idea/We are all Switzerland ↜ (‘Just M E ’here , now) 16:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I think this deserves a lot of attention, and I think the core value put forward here is exactly right. One way I used to say it: for a really good Wikipedian, you ought to be unable to accurately guess at political affiliation or opinion. I think we should all leave our personal politics (and the polemics that go with them) politely at the door.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 03:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm the coolest looking Wikipedian. I got depressed looking at Wikipedia:Facebook. Daniel Christensen ( talk) 01:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
So you made Wikipedia and Wikia? Cool!-- 75.120.50.216 ( talk) 22:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
First of all I am not user:PIO neither my logged nicknames or IPs but in every case action of user:AlasdairGreen27 in article pallone is vandalism because version before suspected socks is this but not this disaster or stub! removing valid contribution of PIO who was banned by an Italian admin after these edits but for other reasons not pertinent this article regarding some Italian famous sports. I can develop this article because I have books and sources but I request your action against vandalism of AlasdairGreen27 who is notorious in Italwiki for his battle in meatpuppetry with user:DIREKTOR against all Italian and Serb editors in several articles of European history and this point I will report to you in future. Actions of admins user:Spellcast and user:MuZemike against my logged nicknames are nonsense. If you want, I can develop a lot of articles but I request unblock at least of account user:Vastaso. You can leave your answer here under. Regards, 29 November —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.95.253.173 ( talk) 18:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
LessHeard vanU, MuZemike, Spellcast stop your absurd POV battle against valid editors who request ban of vandals AlasdairGreen27/DIREKTOR: these guys are admirers of criminal dictator Tito! Read : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Incipient edit war at Josip Broz Tito. Jimbo go! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.95.254.117 ( talk) 19:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
hi jimbo.
how do you feel about this developments on wikipedia [3]. is it in your view conflicting wikipedia's goal of being transparent? 93.86.205.97 ( talk) 23:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC) −−i love you--
90.217.173.246 (
talk) wishes you peace!
I like u —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.217.173.246 ( talk) 19:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
One apparent positive side effect we can already see, however, is increased early participation. I was of the opinion that more people will feel comfortable voting if their votes are in private, and current trends seem to agree — with the caveat that it may be a related but distinct phenomenon: maybe voters are more inclined to vote early since there is no point to waiting to see the "trend", but that participation will remain at roughly the same level. — Coren (talk) 02:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Did you participate in asking Mike Godwin to intercede on behalf of David Gerard in this issue? Cla68 ( talk) 23:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Unable to resist bacon's temptations, rogue editors have kicked off the Bacon Challenge 2010 before the New Year even starts! This is a fun and collegial event and all are welcome. There are many non-pork articles for editors who enjoy some sizzle, but object to or don't like messing with pig products. This year's event includes a Bacon WikiCup 2010 for those who may want to keep score and enjoy engaging in friendly competition. Given the critical importance of this subject matter, I know you will want to participate, so remember to sign up today and get started A.S.A.P. ChildofMidnight ( talk) 19:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose that Wikipedia run adds for 2-3 years and use the income to pay off the US national debt. Supposedly with adds Wikipedia could generate an income of $580 billion a year, which means in 2-3 years Wikipedia would earn more than enough to pay off our national debt. I understand that Wikipedia doesn't want to come across as a "money-driven" website, and it refuses ads to keep with it's egalitarian message - which is why I believe this proposal would be genius - it would further enhance the site's egalitarian reputation and would stay within Wikipedia's mission goal (the revenue money would be used for the benefit of our country, not just for the pocketbooks of the site's staff). I firmly believe in this idea and I'm just making my mind known. I would love to hear what others have to say as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.40.102 ( talk) 06:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Is it you on wikianswers [4] or is just someone impersonating you? -- 84.165.113.81 ( talk) 22:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello Jimbo,
I was just wondering where you stand on what I think is an issue for Wikipedia at the moment. In the past, I have watched many a good candidate fail at WP:RFA because they were not content contributors, but vandal fighters. Many believe that because a candidate has not written a good article, or worked with a wikiproject to create a good article, that the candidate will not have sufficient knowledge to be an administrator. Some argue that through building an article, an editor can learn how to solve disputes, and can learn policies that are essential for an administrator. With this I can agree, writing articles is of the utmost importance, this is an encyclopedia after all. However, I must argue against people that insist that a person working as a vandal fighter cannot gain the same knowledge and skill as the content contributors. As avandal fighter myself I know the dispute resolution process as well as anybody, and I didn't learn that through writing an article. My userpages being vandalized, being screamed at by some of the worst faith editors around has taught me how to keep my cool and deal with problems that arise, I feel, better than writing an article could have. In short, I guess you could say I am fed up of seeing people being opposed at RFA because they are not great authors. The general Wikipedia symbol for an administrator is the mop after all, not the pen and paper.
I was just wondering how you, and all others that watch this page, feel about this issue.
Kind regards, -- Gordonrox24 | Talk 18:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
So, how about this? Consider dichotomy not Content-creator/Vandal-fighter ... but rather Content-creators/Chaos-controllers. Proofreader77 ( talk) 21:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Didn't intend to comment so extensively ^^, but re: "chaos-controllers," consider the case of (what I call) "current-events wrangling," when there is often a rush of new editors who most likely don't understand Wikipedia policy (e.g., NPOV). Helping "control chaos" in the midst of that is something that is a necessary adjunct to content creation. (I.E., Not everything RC patrollers do is reverting vandalism.) Proofreader77 ( talk) 22:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the thoughts on this article, I changed up the language. What do you think? SADADS ( talk) 20:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Looks a lot better!-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 21:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Changed on front page as well. SADADS ( talk) 00:01, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
You called for them last January. Do you know why they have not been turned on yet? NW ( Talk) 02:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Wonder what overall stats are where flagged revisions are in effect. Less vandalism surely, but perhaps less editing altogether. Hope to read more ... Proofreader77 ( talk) 02:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Turnover in the technical staff, and staffing issues in general, seem to have delayed the implementation here. Nathan T 20:27, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I know you are a supporter of "smaller" languages and believe in autonomy. What do *you* think? Thanks. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 04:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't think I understand what's going on well enough to be able to comment intelligently.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 17:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
The fact that attempts to put Pearl Harbor under "this day in history" are being ignored is a slap in the face to every US soldier, man/woman/black/white/gay/straight who fought in WW2. I refuse to donate because of this and the excuse of "Its on POTD" means NOTHING. 67.232.50.1 ( talk) 17:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
hi jimbo,
i tried to find info in relevant policies, but didn't succeed.
could you verify this:
A) checkusers have access to logs of actions that refer to user's edits
or
B) checkuser have access to both logs of actions that refer to user's edits, as well as to logs of which pages users have visited without editing them
thanks in advance for your reply. 109.93.174.125 ( talk) 12:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Dear Mr. JW: could you consider directing some of the foundation's investments towards copyright cleanups? Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations is seriously backlogged; User:Coren's bot has been tremendously helpful in flagging newly created articles as copyvios, but as you can see by looking at the first link and drilling down, hundreds of older articles still contain copy-pastes. The primary copyvio cleanup editors, User:Moonriddengirl, User:MLauba, and User:CactusWriter, have worked really hard to address these manually; but I can't help but feel that some support from you, whether in the form of your calls for more involvment or a dedication of remedial software funding, would be helpful. Sincerely, Novickas ( talk) 19:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
I know you like to keep these things under your hat until after the election, but might you consider a public indication of how many Arbs you expect to appoint in view of User:John Vandenberg's recent resignation? Some of us let the number of available seats inform our support threshold (possibly going so far as to support exactly as many candidates as there are seats available), and we'd appreciate knowing if you expect to appoint nine instead of eight. Cheers, Steve Smith ( talk) 10:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the page Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009, on which every voter's expectations about the elections are probably based, states that all incoming arbitrators are going to be elected to two-year terms. I would be very disappointed to see a change of the rules during the election: I'd rather see these elections taken more seriously and handled more professionally. — Kusma talk 11:04, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I made a note about Jimbo's plans on the election talk page: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009. I haven't changed the actual election page, as I still hope that Jimbo will change his mind again and do what is written there. — Kusma talk 18:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Jimbo, here are the facts we must now grapple with.
"after the last elections some arbitrators were appointed for 1 year terms, some for 2 years and remaining for 3 years. I think that the term length should remain flexible, so that User:Jimbo Wales can decide term lengths based upon the number of votes each candidate receives during elections and upon other circumstances."
Furthermore, the discussion above about turnover assumes that all arbs see out their term. This has never been the case: 2009 alone has seen an attrition rate of one third, and while we will seek to minimise it in the future, the fact is that a high attrition rate is historical. Neither you nor ArbCom nor the community can predict how many vacancies there will be—so we should not try to, beyond sharing what is almost a certainty that there will be attrition and thus an increased number of vacancies. The problem will not be too few arb vacancies for any particular election, but too many as we face this time around. A one-year tranche, apart from being in utter conflict with the community's determination that terms will be of two years' duration, is likely to present us with too many vacancies next year. In any case, in the highly unlikely event of zero attrition between elections, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with filling just three or four seats.
Tony
(talk) 04:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The two tranche system makes sense to me, and it also seems to be in accord with the result of the RfC. The RfC dealt with terms and tranches as separate issues; there was consensus for one, but not the other. Avoiding dramatically imbalanced elections is a reasonable goal, and taking one year to transition to a two year term system is a reasonable way to achieve that goal. The folks who are approaching this like lawyers arguing over technical interpretations are treating Jimbo's own words as the rule he is supposedly violating. I understand that having Jimbo make some relatively minor decisions causes some people to feel as though their own influence over events is reduced. Luckily, this is a minor enough detail that we should be able to get past it. Nathan T 20:24, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Jimmy, the time to make proposals and express your views was during the RFC. The premise of the RFC was to determine the preferred number & term for the new arbitrators for 2010, in order that your role could be purely ceremonial. As I stated at the top of the RFC, the community can have another RFC next year in order to fine-tune the system and "to cater to the different needs of the next election". The community strongly supported two year terms for the arbitrators appointed at the conclusion of this year. There was not strong support for a tranches system or for one year terms. There was very little support for letting Jimbo decide, or leaving it "adaptable to the current situation". John Vandenberg ( chat) 01:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me the problem here is a flawed RFC, which isn't Jimbo's fault. I didn't take part in the RFC and didn't even know it was going on that. I'm not blaming anyone for that. But my reading of it now agrees with Tango. The communities intention was for a standard term length to be 2 years. Whether to abolish the trache system was unclear from the RFC. The Jimbo decides bit was a red herring since it wasn't worded clearly enough. My reading of it was the community doesn't want Jimbo deciding at random how long terms should be which he basically did last year when he decided to expand the number of arbs. However this isn't a case of Jimbo decides. Rather it's a case of the community decided on a standard two year term length but couldn't decide on traches therefore as always with wikipedia, we stick with the original option (which in this case is also less disruptive) which is we preserve tranches. Jimbo ceremonially appoints editors to ensure there are 9 in the 2 year remaining tranche from the real elections and 9 in the 1 year remaining tranches from the byelection. Reading the above, it appears the RFC was rushed. While I understand the reasons, I think the highlights the problem with rushing things... Unfortunately it appears nothing but an RFC is going to clear this up. I suggest the future RFC be properly worded to ensure everyone understands that a 2 year term means a standard term lasts 2 years but a term resulting from a byelection will last 1 year if they decide to keep tranches. Alternatively you could have a question on a definite term length and make it clear that with such a term length, it is likely the tranche system will be effectively abolished or at least 'limited' and that there's a fair chance the number elected each year is going to vary significantly with sometimes it could easily be 4 and other times 14. To put it a different way, the community needs to know precisely what they are voting for in the RFC, and how it will affect matters. Nil Einne ( talk) 13:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo - I saw that you're planning on recording a ' WikiVoices' conversation near christmas - it'll be great to hear how that goes - good luck creating the news article :-) - if you browse the WikiVoices page, you'll further see that there's a conversation planned for this weekend (sunday at 01.00 UTC), and that one of the topics is 'Internet safety for underage Wikipedians' - I posted to the foundation mailing list a little while ago, following learning that wiki administrators under the age of 18 are taking routine admin. actions in respect of images which could reasonably be described as pornography - in one case, the admin. Julian C. is a self identified minor, and the image (which will appear if you click the link) is of a woman masturbating - the file is called 'Masturbating Amy'.
To echo my foundation post, I'd like to see some external advice sought on this matter, and I'd like to see Wikipedia:Child protection grow to contain some meaningful ideas for consideration. However, even should the Wikipedia community consensus feel that it's appropriate for minors to work with explicit media, I believe measures should be taken to ensure that they are discouraged or prohibited. Would you agree? Privatemusings ( talk) 01:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
< you chaps make interesting points, but also sort of miss mine - I think I'll head over to JC's talk page too, because it interests me that he notes that he didn't view the image, and doesn't intend to (which to me almost implies that he may feel it would be inappropriate for him to do so?) - my issue is really that working on this encyclopedia is attractive to children (it should be! it's wonderful to engage young people in a positive effort!) - and that we are rather irresponsible when it comes to offering advice / guidelines / policy to ensure that the material children are working with is appropriate. Obviously any child is going to be able to find very (very!) explicit material on the internet with a click of a button - but I'm afraid that doesn't abdicate our responsibility for the material we host here (and the foundation's responsibility for wmf projects in general, of course) - as I mentioned, I really just wanted to make sure Jimbo was personally aware that there is a large amount of very explicit material now available on both wikipedia, and commons, and that children are regularly accessing, and routinely administering, such material - hopefully jimbo may agree with me that this is an issue worth considering :-) Privatemusings ( talk) 00:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Mahalia Merita Angela Smith (6lb 11oz), heaven help her, was born this week, delivered by Wikipedia! Who needs a midwife, when you've got "The kid that anyone can deliver". See here.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 10:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)Heaven help here.
I'm not a huge fan of personality pigeon holes (e.g., Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), but it is clear (at least to me) that some relatively significant percentage of "totally unnecessary" contention among Wikipedians arises from their being, um, different species.
Has there ever been any discussion of such things at Wikipedia? (And yes, I'm thinking about this because of how "peaceful/uneventful" the Arbcom election has been. Have even threatened to compose a Wikipedia Western holiday musical review with songs inspired by the various "barfights" I've witnessed. :-)
Knowledge/links/random noise welcome. In any case, happy holidays. Proofreader77 ( talk) 00:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
For example (perhaps), there is a discussion on AN at this time between two POVs (which I've lightly labeled pro-silly and anti-silly) about a disruptive (some say) humorous (amusing enough to be worth allowing, some say) editor ... and whether that argument is based on a profound philosophical difference in perspective .... or a personality-encoded reaction ... hmm, well, that's the issue I'm raising here. :-)
SO: Have Wikipedians ever "took a meta-look" at their discussions from that perspective (of personality types, etc)? And I ask this here, because I figure Jimbo ... being the ultimate (when he feels it necessary or useful) Matt Dillion of the grand saloon (yep, not salon) of all knowledge that is Wikipedia, ... would know.
PS:-) To celebrate Arbcom election closing day, I have mightily exceeded my piss-ant 100-word "editing restriction" (not
publicly catalogued, but
privately imposed after one of those "carwreck" ANIs which have become more frequent in recent months, and which I'll probably have to straighten up at Arbcom with many hundreds of hours of wasted effort on the part of many good (and some transiently-bad^^) people — unless, of course,
Matt Dillon decides to celebrate Arbcom election day by a
pardon for
Proofreader77 ... in acknowledgement that some usually wise Wikipedians sometimes get their panties in a twist over things that shouldn't be an issue, but get sideways in "personality and communication style differences," and damn foolishness results. Amen. :-) (Oh, and, let me know if you'd like a
sonnetized executive summary. I'm pretty dang rhetorically competent, but some rudely and, yes, foolishly, have claimed otherwise ... How strange to be threatened with being SITEBANNED for matters such as these. Up to you, Mister Dillon — how 'bout sparing Arbcom some foolishness? :-)
-- (And, in any case, happy holidays to all.)
Proofreader77 (
talk) 18:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
You may also like to watch this debate. [11]. Alex Harvey ( talk) 04:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm the user Charli31898, previously I have created 2 pages Charlotte Beazley and Country Road (film) and they have both been deleted. I wanted to make those pages because Charlotte Beazley is an actress and will be in Sleepover Girlz next year in February and next year December in Country the film. And then in 2021 will be in Mamma Mia but that's a long time away so can you please make a page for Charlotte Beazley only and I will send you an image and information for the article, thank-you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charli31898 ( talk • contribs) 07:29, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello, The Page of Laurance W. Marvin was deleted without reason by strange user....[ Jayjg]. All in formation on the page was factually accurate and up to date. I wish to file a complaint against this user [ Jayjg]. And for the page Laurance W. Marvin to be returned. If you need additional information I can put you in contact with Mr. Marvin. the majority of his history is on actual paper not on the net. Also if you need any additional information I will provide it to you. Please contact me...Thankyou. -- Yoko-Litner ( talk) 22:43, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi! As you have expressed an interest in the initial The Great Wikipedia Dramaout, you're being notified because we are currently planning another one in January! We hope to have an even greater level of participation this time around, and we need your help. If you're still interested please sign up now at Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/2nd. Thanks, and Happy Holidays! JCbot ( talk) 04:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The first dash in your personal appeal is shorter than the other two dashes you've used. Given that it seems to have the same grammatical purpose – marking off a sort of parenthetical phrase – shouldn't the first dash be an endash like the other two dashes? Emw ( talk) 02:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
User:GoneAwayNowAndRetired/Wikipedia is broken and failing: Things like this scare me a little. Is it true that we are loseing more valued editors than gaining inexperianced ones? This essay has shown a lot of points. Shouldnt something be done about this? (I would post more examples but its getting late here).-- Coldplay Expért Let's talk 02:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
as far as "new-user-experience" goes, it would be fair to say that for all the wm projects i've worked on to any extent (wp/eng & wmc), an incoming noob faces considerable hostility, & a vicious learning curve:
after the welcoming-spam msg(s), the typical new user's first experiences with "the community" are mostly (& most often) negative: speedy deletions, ordinary deletions, problems with their contributions, & little or no help (fixing problems, etc.) from other editors. the style of communication received is also, typically: cold, neutral, and/or (at best) form-letter "nice". @ wmc, some established users are even in the habit of sending snarky form-letter msgs to new users whose contributions they do not value; i.e.: related to sexual content (primarily).
we have enough problems with losing good, experienced editors (for a variety of reasons),
but
if we continue the trend of driving off noobs too, wikimedia is dead.
if anything, the continual influx of new people is more essential to an open-source, open-collabouration wiki-project's ongoing viability.
we really need to fix this (on both points)!
Lx 121 ( talk) 16:10, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
(unindenting, because i can)
1. improved "mentoring" system
2. an more active, organized "welcome" process (related to the above); to the point of having dedicated users whose job it is to:
3. revise wm processes to at least reduce the "negative" experiences (& messages) that a noob user gets in their "start-up" phase @ a project.
4. wandering a bit off-focus, but what about more pro-active recruitment? schools, professional organizations, enthusiast clubs, etc.?
3 sub-cats we should consider focussing efforts on:
it's not hard to see how efforts to contribute material to wikipedia could be organized as an academic challenge; both for the topics coverd & as writing.
professional-quality work could also be of benefit to the contributing editors, as a part of their portfolio/resume/college applications/etc. we should look at ways to facilitate that.
challenges could also be set up, on a more "fun" level; to encourage students to contribute material about "their" school, "their" community, or "their" x____?. some care (& much tact) would be needed to incorporate their efforts into the larger wiki-community & maintain the quality standards of "final product", but there are fixes that could be used to keep peace & order. one obvious possibility would be "sandboxing" projects; in the sense of creating a "working space" user area for the students (or etc.), separate from the mainline article, then incorporating the "best" work back into it. there are a variety of ways to structure something like that, & i won't attempt to suggest a "best" process.
5. rewards/honours.
tricky subject.
it can get to be a "game", like "featured picture" status on wmc; or worse, a "game" controlled by a small group of dedicated users.
but
it would help encourage more people to greater efforts, if there was more positive feedback, in a variety of ways; something beyond "barnstars" & "feature" status; both of which suffer from a degree of inconsistency in their application (& yes i know we're working hard to tighten up "feature article" ratings).
lunchtime here, & reading back i see that this post is long, rambling & messy; i hope the core ideas are clear enough to follow, though; & i'll return later to clean up my text. my apologies @ JW for cluttering up his talkpage; but i feel much better now! ^__^
Lx 121 ( talk) 18:03, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Would love to donate, but I've been abused by your admins too much.-- Otterathome ( talk) 18:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I've commented on this before, and it seems to have been neglected, ignored, or simply gone unnoticed.
During server outages, a page is returned that states "This wiki has a problem". It states that the server is down, the database cannot be accessed, or whatever other problem the site is experiencing. In addition, it provides a Google search box. This is not a problem.
However, the Google logo is served from Google's servers, which is a problem. (Specifically, the file " http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif".) This allows Google to record an entry into its logs every time I access Wikipedia during a server outage (IP address, page accessed, date and time, etc.). The Wikimedia privacy policy regarding IP addresses states "When a visitor requests or reads a page [...] The Wikimedia Foundation may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published..." There is no mention that external parties will also record this information, or how they will treat that information, though I think it's unacceptable to provide Google or any other party this information (especially for logged in users for whom the privacy policy explicitly states that IP address info will not be shared or disclosed).
I would assume that this is unintended, and would like to see this corrected immediately. I think the easiest thing to do is either replace the logo with plaintext, or host the Google logo on a Wikimedia server. (I have no problem with the search box, so long as it is explicitly clear that the transaction will be processed by Google, because at that point I can make the decision.) Mind matrix 19:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
By the way, here is the HTML of the page in question:
<html><head><title>This wiki has a problem</title></head><body> <h1><img src="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki.png" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;" alt="">This wiki has a problem</h1> <p><strong>Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.</strong><br>Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.</p><p><small>(Cannot contact the database server: No working slave server: Unknown error (10.0.2.160))</small></p><hr><div style="margin: 1.5em;">You can try searching via Google in the meantime.<br> <small>Note that their indexes of our content may be out of date.</small></div> <!-- SiteSearch Google --> <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search" id="googlesearch"> <input name="domains" value="http://en.wikipedia.org" type="hidden"> <input name="num" value="50" type="hidden"> <input name="ie" value="utf-8" type="hidden"> <input name="oe" value="utf-8" type="hidden"> <img src="http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif" alt="" style="float: left; margin-left: 1.5em; margin-right: 1.5em;"> <input name="q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" type="text"> <input name="btnG" value="Search" type="submit"> <div> <input name="sitesearch" id="gwiki" value="http://en.wikipedia.org" checked="checked" type="radio"><label for="gwiki">Wikipedia</label> <input name="sitesearch" id="gWWW" value="" type="radio"><label for="gWWW">WWW</label> </div> </form> <!-- SiteSearch Google --></body></html>
Thanks. Mind matrix 19:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
^ -- MZMcBride ( talk) 15:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
You have my support. I signed.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 19:50, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, the above thread ( permanent link) is well worth a read through - being a friendly, and to my mind, interesting chat through an important issue - the short version is that "...I really just wanted to make sure Jimbo was personally aware that there is a large amount of very explicit material now available on both wikipedia, and commons, and that children are regularly accessing, and routinely administering, such material..." - I'd really like you to request the board of advisers offer some feedback on this issue, or you could raise it with the board proper. See above for more - and a quick note that you (jimbo) have seen this would be appreciated :-) Privatemusings ( talk) (archiving signature, this thread is already continuing an older thread.) Fram ( talk) 11:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
(unindenting, because i can, again)
1. we delete materials meeting the definition of child pornography because they are illegal; same with copyright violations, though that generally falls under different parts of the law. beyond that, the questions of what to include/exclude should be based on definitions of project scope, (verifiable) factual accuracy, & quality (which is a tricky, extremely subjective, nnpov thing).
in terms of contents the line could perhaps be modified to something like: "wikimedia is NOT censored, except for materials that are illegal for wm to host, & materials that (clearly) fall (well) outside of a given project's scope."
sex is a topic that easily fits in as educational, as do related subject like human special interaction, art, etc.
2. tangentially, both the laws governing intellectual property & the laws governing child pornography are becoming an unmanageable mess, & getting worse, not better. i won't get into a debate about IP law here, because it is "outside of scope" lol; but i will expand (very) briefly on the subject of child pronography laws, & how hard it is becoming to define workable boundaries on the definitions of same.
problem 1. defining which materials are & are not "kiddie porn": the range of opinion on this could (& does) range from the extreme conservative "anti" i.e.: any nudity (full or partial; not even necessarily involving "naughty bits"), any sexual or erotic qualities in a work, any image, or other material, that makes a judgemental observer feel "uncomfortable". & all this applies to any depiction of persons under the age of 18 or, potentially seeming to be under the age of 18, & it even includes works that are non-literal depictions (i.e.: not photographs, video, audio, or etc. recordings) of persons under the age of 18, & fictional works (i.e.: not involving the use of any real persons).
the other extreme "laissez faire/libertarianism"(?) would be a true "freedom of expression" without limits, at least as re: sexual content; where governing legal principals would perhaps relate to issues of consent, IP rights, etc., but not to the control of content per se.
in between, it is quite hard to come up with reasonable, satisfactory "middle ground" that does not stray too far towards one extreme, or the other.
for the last few decades (as with IP law), the debate has been dominated by the more conservative/restrictive factions, & the law is being pushed gradually towards an unmanageable extreme, where "reducto ad absurdam" situations are becoming increasingly commonplace.
& no, personally i do not really agree with either extreme in this dabte; i'm usually a rational, pragamatic moderate, in most things, although i am quite strong on individual rights; i'm also somewhat of a liberal-democratic-socialist, as well as a monarchist, & occasionally a confucian! ^__^
problem 2. how to define boundaries for acceptable uses of materials? i.e.: artistic, educational, entertainment, medical/scientific, personal/private, sexual, etc.
problem 3. we live in an age of widely available internet, audio/video recording devices that are becoming ubiquitous to the point of being universal, etc.
we've gone beyond marshal mcluan's age of centralized mass media, to a place where (almost)everyone now has access, (potentially at least) to the resources necessary to produce & distribute content, "en masse" to the point of (near) universal access. ...at least (most) people living in the more developed/technologically advanced parts of the world now have these abilities.
so; it's basically the same problem for IP law, child porn, privacy, & any other legal restrictions on the free movement of information.
essentially: when should we control what people do? & how are we going to control what people are going to do?
a) what laws are reasonable/acceptable to society?
b) what kinds of legal controls are possible/practical?
in particular, how do you control what a person (or persons) create & distribute as consensual, self-authored, self-published works?
so far, the political/legislative & judicial branches of most governments have not managed to work out a viable balance on these kinds of things; typically, the politics seem to be (at least) a good 10 years behind the technology.
problem 4 (miscellaneous). what about older materials? should there be a "grandfather" clause? exceptions historical/archaeological works? exceptions for "old" art? what about a "statute of limitations"? anything 100+ yrs old say... & should that be a one-time locked limit? 100 years pre-2009? or floating? 100 years before "now"?
what about works depicting a person who was under 18 at the time the work was created, but is now 18+, & freely consents to the work's distribution? what about self-authored works meeting the preceding criteria?
"the devil is in the details"; & it is wise to know when one is facing an impossible (and/or impassible) quagmire.
i know i've gone far beyond the initial scope of our specific discussion, but please consider the above as "complicating factors" for the issues you have raised.
as regards wikimedia:
we don't want to break the law, or get into non-viable legal situations
wikimedia projects (generally) have definitions of scope, which outline what to include/exclude
we are working to achieve "continuous improvement" in quality standards (including, but not limited to, verifiable factuality).
we have practical, technical limits on our available resources; storage space is not a serious issue (so far), software functionality is, however.
...& if anybody wants to contribute an extreme hi-res multi-gb scan of the mona lisa (for example), we are going to have one hell of a time figuring out what to do with it, & how
"pax et finis" for this subject, at least @ jw's talk page
XD
Lx 121 ( talk) 16:05, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
:)
poke no. 1 on the above :-) - and merry christmas! Privatemusings ( talk) 01:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Hi privatemusings, yes, I'm aware of discussions in this area.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 18:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Merry Christmas.-- Sky Attacker the legend reborn... 01:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
On behalf of the scrutineers -- Mardetanha talk 22:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm sitting her, reading some articles about different football players and i have come across some errors in some of the facts. For example the english article about Ryan Giggs, says that he has played 576 matches for Man Utd, but i know the real number is 821. The problem is now, that the article is protected, and i can't edit it. Here i would like a button saying something like "Suggest Changes". Here i would like to be able to suggest something to the author and if he find that info to be correct, that person can edit the article himself. Maybe it could be made so that i could edit the article, send my new suggestion to him, and my changes will be highlighted, he then just have to accept my new draft and the changes will be put into the article. I hope you understand where i'm going with this and that you will take it to consideration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BandittenJacob ( talk • contribs) 23:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Bonjour,
N'ayant pas d'argent nous vous proposons une idée sans savoir si elle est réalisable. Pourrions-nous utiliser comme de nombreux projets mathématiques (the Grid)les ordinateurs des volontaires pour traiter une partie de Wikipédia et ainsi créer un SUPERCLUSTER FREE. Best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.194.102.41 ( talk) 07:10, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
"Hello,
Having no money we offer an idea without knowing whether it is feasible. Could we use as many math projects (the Grid) computers of volunteers to handle some of Wikipedia and create a FREE Supercluster. Best regards" -- Yowuza yadderhouse | meh 11:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
As you are no doubt aware, the subject of AGW has become extremely controversial as a result of the release of a dossier of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. This controversy has been exacerbated by the failure of the Copenhagen COP15 conference to reach a substantive agreement on climate change. Interested neutrals on this matter will seek relevant information in Wikipedia. Here they will find a strong bias in favour of Global Warming as a result of editing activities since 2003 on various subjects by William Connolley. It is clear that this individual has generated a lot of controversy and has engaged in the same type of activity (excluding opposing views from publication) that the UEA CRU people have been accused of. As someone who has supported the highest ideals of the Wiki initiative for several years (in spite of a spurious block for sock-puppetry that was lifted) I feel that this is a subject of such immense political and scientific importance that it deserves your personal intervention. If you are interested in my further ideas and supporting references on this matter I should be glad to be of help. Geologician ( talk) 17:25, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
How come there is an article on some senator named Spencer Coggs but there is no article on the word "the"? I am disgusted by this. 68.191.178.216 ( talk) 18:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I have requested a checkuser to be done for user:mardetanha which is a steward on Meta. Here!. I am quite sure that he uses at least one sock and quite openly abuses his power by banning any opposing ideas of himself. Obviously other stewards didn't do the checkuser (read they have done and saw that it is positive) because he is also a steward and their friend. If you are entitled to keep your website clean, please check it out!-- Feuer1000 ( talk) 14:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Hello (tr:Selam) We look at this Turkish news Wikipedia is heavily criticized. This article we de wikipedia Turkish village, we expressed our fountain. User:Levent, E-mail at the news vendor has written. But could not get a response. News labeled it were Akşam (TR: AKŞAM) papers. In News The world's most famous virtual encyclopedia Wikipedia, the financial crisis has requested 340 million user support. The site's founder has received written article in Wales 'make a donation or can not survive was said
Cries of distress of Wikipedia's Free Encyclopedia. The only surviving without ads and donations passed 340 million users that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales encyclopedic knowledge, to overcome difficulties in which they had written an emotional post. Wikipedia users can read articles entering 'Please read: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales a personal request' title brings. Wales, her language written in the article that users can learn, 'the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,' wanted to donate to his foundation. Foundation's president said in a statement some time ago in Florence Devouard 'financial distress can be based on the most 3-4 months. Servers to continue to work a maximum of 3 or 4 months we have a power 'he said. Wales article summarize as follows:
We NEED your SUPPORT VAR: you, I would like to support Wikipedia donated. And 8 years, I've started Wikipedia in 2001, the largest encyclopedia in human history to create hundreds of thousands of volunteers have joined me in the face I'm surprised. Every month more than 340 million people use Wikipedia says, that almost one-third of the world's population connected to the internet is. That you are a member of our community.
LIVING HARD are to: Wikipedia, like we can do something to show the power of people is extraordinary. Wikipedia writers word by word, people like us. People like us who financed him. This is proof of our potential to change our world. We want to keep it free and ad-free.
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If it's your opinion?-- Yusuf Avcı ( talk) 15:28, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
My English is not very good. translation is wrong:)-- Yusuf Avcı ( talk) 22:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Wednesday evening, east coast US time. Expect no surprises. I'm just "doing the paperwork" at this point. :-)-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 22:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
David Tombe's comments |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Jimbo, As regards the ARBCOM elections, do we have a figure for the total eligible electorate? The number must be very large, and certainly many orders of magnitude larger that the nine hundred odd who turned out to vote. I would guess that the figure of 994 represents a very poor turn out, such as should seriously undermine the credibility of the results. 994 must surely be well below 50% of the electorate. But it gets worse than that. Only one of the candidates actually secured more than 50% of the support votes cast, and even then, his result was only marginal. So in actual fact, the remainder of the candidates are very heavy losers. But it gets even worse still. All of the canditates additionally had a distinct anti-vote cast against them. So whether or not their net vote is positive or negative, it means that the results are particularly poor. And of course, the situation is particularly appalling for those who got net negative votes. The net negative candidates have been thoroughly whipped at the polls, and thoroughly rejected. As for all the congratulations that are going around for the ones who got small net positive votes, these congratulations appear to be congratulations for not having polled extremely badly. You told us not to expect any surprises. I would be surprised if you continued to appoint any arbitrators at all based on these results. Do you not think that the time has come to do away with the arbitration committee altogether? It certainly doesn't have any consensus. Law and order can easily be maintained on wikipedia with the block mechanism, limited to a finite duration. I would support the idea of some kind of arbitration committee to examine the fairness of blocks, but such a committee would have to be completely independent of the administration that issues the blocks, and it would need to be appointed behind the scenes in the real world. David Tombe ( talk) 03:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Crum375, I also agree with the idea of having Jimbo as a "benevolent dictator" final authority. But the time has come when we need to see that role becoming much more pro-active. The status quo is anything but satisfactory. I would like to see ARBCOM getting the stamp of disapproval for a change, because they have totally surpassed themselves. David Tombe ( talk) 04:17, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Finell, I didn't say that Jimbo should ignore the elections. I am saying that he should heed the results of the elections. The results clearly tell us that all but one of the candidates are losers, and that we have a ridiculous situation in which these losers are being congratulated. It's a bit like saying "Congratulations on the fact that there were others who did even worse than yourself". I am saying to Jimbo that there needs to be a major shake up. We need a temporary emergency measure involving an interim benevolent dictatorship, until the full details of a better organized system can be worked out. Of course we need some kind of arbitration committee. But the existing set up has lost all credibility. There is a clear pattern emerging in which administrator User:jehochman stirs the pot by imposing some unlawful sanction on an editor. The ensuing argument then ends up at ARBCOM, where the only arbitrator who can see right through User:jehochman is User:Stephen Bain. This vicious cycle needs to be brought to an end if wikipedia is to have any credibility over the next decade. I haven't checked out all the recent arbitration cases, but I have seen enough to realize that User:jehochman has been the root cause of quite a few of them, and I know from personal experience that User:Stephen Bain is the only arbitrator who studies the cases objectively and who is brave enough to act on his findings. David Tombe ( talk) 12:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Viridae, If you can give me immunity from the topic ban, I will be more than delighted to give you the back story. Meanwhile, it suffices to say that there is a pattern involving User:jehochman, who was thoroughly whipped at the polls, and who has therefore lost any mandate to hold a position of authority in the outfit. The time has now come for a full enquiry into his abuses of power. I can state the date 19th August 2009 for some prime evidence. David Tombe ( talk) 12:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Viridae, This thread is about the 2009 ARBCOM elections. I am commenting on the credibility of the elections. Please don't try to change the subject to 'dispute resolution'. In my statement above, I was merely defending myself against the inuendo in your statement about not disclosing the back story. I can now see that you have knowledge of the Ottava Rima case. As such you will already by now have seen a parallel, and hence know exactly what I am talking about. David Tombe ( talk) 12:52, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
No Jehochman, There is a recent pattern of ARBCOM playing second fiddle to yourself. Only arbitrator User:Stephen Bain seems to be outside of whatever is going on. Your request to have disciplinary action taken against me for my comments on this thread is merely further evidence against yourself. There is a clear pattern in existence for anybody who is willing to see it. David Tombe ( talk) 14:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
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Hi Jimbo, sorry to break the perma ban I had to request myself in order to be left in peace by certain persons and bother you again, but some poor soul has been wrongly accused of being a sockpuppet of me, by a couple of "the usual suspects". This is not fair, it's just a slur on the user concerned, and on myself, there wasn't even a proper sock check run...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Zeraeph/Archive
User:Alamanth had nothing, whatsoever to do with me, and this is the first I have heard of him/her, today, check the actual pathways and I feel sure you will find that out. I have no sockpuppets. I also REALLY think it is time someone put a stop to User:Penbat's more abstract capacity for equal misinformation, he is filling up psyhology articles with left of field nonsense, most of which is, at best, a considerable distortion of any source he cites, and, at worse simply made up off the top of his head. signed - The REAL Zeraeph -- 109.79.193.159 ( talk) 08:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
PS Merry Christmas
Good Day, Mr. Wales. Pre'd like to apologize for your English, I'm from Czech Republic, and I'm not very good speakers - this letter is a combination of Google transtator
and knowledge of the schools that are not good.
I read your comments on the situation where the new loses wikipedia authors, but authors who could be called a veteran too.
Personally, I blame them - I personally feel on wikipedia, it does not like people driving, but some (and malfunctioning) computer AI algorithms. Maybe
I'm the one language version of the article changed the picture for the version from the Bundesarchiv version that has cropped the white border.
It is the aesthetics, also wikipedia commons itself is a template which enjoys the cutting watermarking from picture.
But there was a five-reverting, with justification as "me it somehow seems, but it's a strange, and I rel that way To be not" - while the license under
which they were dedicated to these files allows me to modify the file.
And then there came another oven, which gave me a ban for "editing war". Actually it came to me as though both of these people read the rules wrong,
and yet they could not fully understand. Just "I once read somewhere on a site that should not cut the white edges and the admin gave you ban" here I
heard somewhere that in early reverting two ban '
And it's not interested in what the particular situation, just act completely machine-non-self-reflection and without any effort to understand the
problem - just "the rules say that, I will perform is what I think any trouble."
Which in turn refers to other problems - im got a photo of a man who died in 1927. Photo therefore bound to be more than 70 years old, and I can
release it under the template for works which are 70 years old, and their author is unknown.
But then you always start running a series of absurd scenarios, like "but I do not know me it seems somehow - just the same: a what if, what if yonder,
what if this, what if maybe - then the problem of content any commons develop, because almost always begin a cascade of meaningless words, which is not
for nothing do not just burden the community and to make the project work lengthy ordeal.
Sometimes I find, as the authors of wikipedia itself any typ feared terror act, if not exactly according to the rules and take your work into their own
hands.
He is a big challenge to improve anything, especially because I specialize in historical and political articles, where the multimedia illustrations
make difficult "own hands".
What can prove even the next episode - the website of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (old.mzv.cz) is explicitly written that the files
(pictures) are available for ANY use by any institutions.
But when I uploaded the files somewhere that, once the user is sure of the German wikipedia, which I do not want unnecessary name, suggested to delete
and wit stupid arguments as "but it thing to me that this is only for newspapers and magazines", "and similar nonsensical speech.
And did not help anything - not even the copied e-mail telling me a representative of the Ministry explicitly says that the actual files and pages can
To be a type of wikipedia, or even Orts e-mail. The first evidence was the reaction of the "do not copy here foreign private mail" and other "it is a
false ORTS".
Files were deleted, as the German could not in any way at all to speak, because once thought the brain, but the rules. And any dialogue with him was
like arguing with a deaf and blind ...
Mr. Wales then do not be surprised that losing wikipedia authors.
Have nice day.
Ladislav Šafránek, Czech Republic —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredy.00 ( talk • contribs) 08:39, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I would like to see more arbcom members chime in at the enforcement sections like they used to. Right now, a topic banned editor who is a self proclaimed single purpose account ( updating his userpage to look less ominous) has been permitted to resume editing (albeit on a 30 day trial) in the topic he was banned from and this was done after only one day of discussion and with only a few people chiming in. We should see more involvement from arbcom in this area.-- MONGO 03:59, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Having the judges be the enforcers is always seen as dangerous — and not without reason — which is why the tradition has always been to leave that to the admin corps; and the immediately obvious solution of empowering "enforcement admins" for the task is unlikely to be well received. — Coren (talk) 15:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
A lot of Wikipedians, including administrators, misunderstand Wikipedia's sequence of checks and balances. The community can add upon ArbCom sanctions (for example, the community ban of Mantanmoreland), so people presume the community can subtract from its decisions also. Durova 386 02:11, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Good points about the need for arbcom to be somewhat distancing in this area to avoid any future COI issues, I guess. In this particular case, and there may be similar ones, sadly, the editor in question, even after numerous efforts to encourage him to edit outside his topic ban, failed to do so...a loss to us I believe since I know for a fact that this editor is articulate, intelligent and understands how to edit here...etc. So a topic ban was lifted in this case when we had no evidence (since he hadn't edited elsewhere) that any "reform" had occurred. I know Henrik has done what he thinks is the correct thing, and I don't hold this against him....perhaps I would just like to have seen a lengthier period for discussion and more involvement from various editors, knowing that I am of course not a neutral in this matter...the original topic ban against this editor was applied under the "discretionary sanctions"...and arbcom upheld this when the editor tried to appeal his sanction in April of this year. It sure would have been nice to see some editing in areas outside the topic ban...but there was a totality of almost zero to go by....so that is why I felt that arbcom members who may be more familiar with previous related cases as well as may have participated in in the last appeal effort by this editor may have been more involved.-- MONGO 00:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Nevermind... I think we're already seeing why (long thread) and here) the Collapse of the World Trade Center article has been so difficult to even bring to Good Article standing...so long as SPA's are going to try and violate the NPOV clauses governing issues centered around "undue weight" in such difficult topics, it is going to be difficult to see a lot of improvement in such articles.-- MONGO 01:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)