User:Arcticocean/Garden of Eden

I occasionally use this page to document comments by other editors that I find especially profound, pertinent, or incisive.

Garden of Eden

From User talk:Iridescent/Archive 10#Arbitrary break: Today's sermon is taken from Ecclesiastes, Nabokov and Jimmy Wales:

Everyone's time here is wasted. As someone (I think it may actually have been Jon Awbrey before he slipped into total gibberish) once pointed out, part of the way Wikipedia maintains momentum is that one's work decays if not tended, so people tend to come back to clean up the mess even after they've retired. The half-life of the decent content in an article is generally in inverse proportion to its popularity (the deterioration of Michael Jackson last week was so obvious it could be watched in real time). This is both Wikipedia's key strength – that it draws people in faster than it loses them – and what will eventually kill it.

But trying to build something permanent in any medium is an exercise in futility; yes, it will decay, but so does everything. "There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them" is as true today as ever, but so is "So I saw that there is nothing better for people than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?". The "why bother" mentality is an argument against doing anything, and what the critics of Wikipedia fail to realise is that ultimately, the flaws in the model don't matter because every model is flawed, and every model is doomed to failure. For better or worse, this is currently one of the most visible media in the world, and what we do here affects people's lives more than one might think.

Children read pages here and develop interests that divert the course of their lives; people can look up things they never knew; people can jump in seamless logical progressions from videogame characters to the geography of Uruguay. And there is nowhere else where this is possible. Those who criticise the much-maligned Kid in Africa speech miss the point – and I'm not sure Jimmy Wales himself understood the underlying point – but what is unique here isn't the whole "free knowledge" principle, in either of that phrase's double meanings. There are any number of gratis information providers; there are any number of information providers without a set agenda. But what Wikipedia does is allow people to realise that research isn't some ivory-tower pursuit that they can never aspire to, but something anyone can do and be valued in so doing. The chain of events that begins with a 13-year-old correcting the spelling on a cartoon character can lead to the 23-year-old who isn't willing to accept what they've always been told, and to the 33-year-old who changes the world.

So, don't look on Wikipedia as writing a work that will take a thousand years to die; look on it as a garden. Some people don't have the right mentality to spend year after year pulling up weeds in the sure knowledge that one day the weeds will win, and that's fine, but some people are willing to, with varying degrees of effort. The reason I don't believe Jimmy Wales should be in a position of authority on Wikipedia is not that he's a bad person; it's that I don't really think he appreciates that the Garden of Eden configuration he built has grown into a full-fledged world that's too big for top-down control.

I look forward to this post being mercilessly sneered at for years to come by all and sundry, but I suspect a surprising number of people in the most unlikely of places will find themselves agreeing.

Written by User:Iridescent on 22:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Checkuser is not magic pixie dust

From Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Checkuser requests#Essjay's questionnaire:

This is what I usually tell people: If all of the following questions make sense to you, and you could answer them thoroughly if asked, then checkuser may be right for you. If none of it makes any sense, then probably not.

Technical questions: Do you know about the operation of IP addresses? Can you spot a dynamic IP vs. a static or semi-static one? Do you know how to confirm an open proxy? Are you familiar with the major ISPs and how they operate (for example, which ones use proxy pools and which use transparent proxies, and indeed, what those are)? Do you know where to go to find more information about an IP? Do the terms DNS, traceroute, whois, IMAP, ping, and reverse lookup have any special meaning to you? Are you familiar with the operation of IP ranges? What do the terms /8, /16, and /24 mean to you? What does 0.0.0.0/0 represent?

Policy questions: Are you familiar with the checkuser policy and the privacy policy? Are you willing to provide your real name and proof of identification to the Foundation's counsel, and to accept any liability that may result from your actions with checkuser? Are you aware of the various levels of consequences concerned with releasing a contributor's IP address, for you, the Foundation, and the contributor?

Practical questions: Do you know how to say no? Are you the kind of person who would rather do something than tell someone they are out of line? Do pushy editors make you particularly uncomfortable and stressed? Are you comfortable accessing and retaining extremely dangerous personal information? Do you have the time to dedicate several hours a week to running checks and the resulting investigation? How much time and investigating do you think goes into the average check?

And the last one, which, even when I don't ask for answers to the above, I still like to hear the answer to: what kind of output do you expect you'll see when you click "Check user" for the first time?

You needn't answer any of the above questions (though, as I say, I'm always interested in the last one), just think about them, and whether or not you could answer them. If you can confidently go down the list and answer them all, then go for it. If most make sense but you want to know more, ask one of us that has it and we'll be happy to tell you. (And, of course, if you get it, we're happy to walk you through your first few checks, and are always available to double check if you need it.) If none of the technical questions makes any sense, and the practical ones are anxiety inducing, then the tool and the responsibility (burden?) that comes with it might not be a good match for you. Feel free to email me or any of the other checkusers privately if you want to discuss it more.

Date of writing unknown.

BLPs and sourcing

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. [Information that cannot be sourced] should be removed, aggressively […] This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons."

Jimmy Wales on wikien-l in May 2006

Adminship as a trophy

People who announce early in their Wiki careers that they want to be admins, probably shouldn't be. Adminship is better approached as a duty taken on by an established Wikipedian, than as a trophy for a newbie to aspire to. The best admins are those who are drafted, and not those who eagerly await a three-month threshold or a certain edit count. Adminship is not a trophy and beware those who want to pin it on like a shiny badge.

Antandrus in his excellent observations on Wikipedia behaviour

For all users

Any edit that improves the encyclopedia is a good edit. Before clicking "save page", always run this through your final mental checker: does what I just did in that edit box improve the encyclopedia?

Antandrus in his excellent observations on Wikipedia behaviour

Article-writing

[I]nform new users of the neutral point of view role early, and help show them examples of what is and is not a fair and equal point of view[… S]how all views on Wikipedia, but not any one too much. Remember this when writing articles, and Wikipedia will become a more accurate encyclopedia.

Buggie111 in a April 2011 editorial for WP MilHist

Professionalism

The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors.  Doing so requires that participants in the project act with an appropriate level of professionalism towards our readers, towards other participants, and towards the subjects of our articles.

User:Kirill Lokshin in his essay on professionalism

Speculation

Please refrain from speculation regarding my opinions: the normal way of resolving that type of uncertainty is to ask for clarification.

User:Durova in a comment on the administrators' noticeboard

We are not Congress

The First Amendment[…] doesn't apply here. First, it says "Congress shall make no law." Sorry, we aren't Congress, we're the cabal. Second, we are a private foundation running a private website; we can ban who we want, block who we want, and restrict the contributions of who we want, and the only things that we have to answer to are our own policies, which we can change at our discretion, and Jimbo Wales, who formed the ArbCom and gave them the power to issue orders like the one against SEWilco. Outside of that, we can censor what we like. You have two rights on Wikipedia, and two rights only: the right to fork, and the right to leave.

User:Essjay in a comment on the administrators' noticeboard

The problem with the Arbitration Committee

This is perhaps the most well-reasoned (and entertaining) critique of the Arbitration Committee that I have read yet:

Jimbo, ArbCom, stalkers, random-passers by, whoever. I'm frustrated, but please don't dismiss me because I'm frustrated, please hear me out. My confidence in the Arbitration Committee has taken a few serious dents recently, and I have a feeling that others' confidence in that Committee might also have suffered in recent weeks and months. So, I've identified what I think are the problems and how I think they can be solved. I may be completely wrong, but it can't hurt to hear me out.

Over the last few months, I've noticed what, to me, seems to be a dangerous trend from the Arbitration Committee. I hold most of the 18 individuals who make up that Committee in the highest esteem, one or two of them, I have the honour of being able to call friends. But collectively, something seems to have gone wrong. The Committee has become very good at implementing and adjusting its procedures and policies to its liking and at passing motions on obscure details on the wording of pages that, while of course valuable, spend most of their time gathering dust. There is nothing deeply wrong with this, per se, but I would suggest to you, Jimmy, and to anyone who might be reading this (since this seems as good a place as any to say what I have to say), that this has become more important to the Committee than dispute resolution.

Dispute resolution is the defining purpose of that Committee, yet its noticeboard is full of relatively minor adjustments to its policies and procedures (like a slight update to the procedure on handling motions) and its members seem pre-occupied with issuing secret instructions to clerks. Almost all of its business is done on its private wiki or its mailing list (I assume) and all the "dirty work" is passed either to its clerks, who are charged with maintaining and supervising the case pages or to administrators in the form of discretionary sanctions. This all contributes to my impression that it is out of touch with the community and has become too wrapped up in making sure people obey its rules (for arbitration pages) and rulings (for the result of a case or motion).

The specific events that prompted me to post this are this notice, which I'm certain was ordered by an arbitrator, but I have no idea which one or where, since the Committee leaves no on-wiki paper trail, and the broader MickMacNee case, but I've felt there's a problem for a while. A week into the case and four arbitrators have made any sort of comment at all, out of the 10 who voted to accept the case and the 16 who are active and not recused. As each day passes, my confidence that arbitration will solve the problems, or at least not make them worse, decreases. This is an important case. There are things that need to be dealt with and issues that need to be resolved where RfCs and and other dispute resolution fora have been tried and failed, but arbitrators don't seem interested. In fact, my prediction is that it will turn out to be very much like the Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling case, where nothing new or useful arises and the disputes only get worse and the damage to various people's reputations ranges from shrapnel wounds to the irreparable.

There are, however, other examples. One from the top of my head that illustrates my point perfectly is this motion. The dispute was not resolved, questions about administrator misconduct (which the Arbitration Committee is the only body with the power to deal with) and the Committee hugely exceeded its powers by effectively re-writing part of the protection policy and lumbering admins with more unneeded red tape.

I apologise for the length of my post, and for putting it here, because I know you're a busy man, Jimmy, but where else can I take a dispute with the highest dispute-resolution body? What I would like to see is:

The Committee conducting its business and, where practical, its discussions on the wiki, except where privacy is concerned.
An increased focus towards dispute resolution, giving it the highest priority behind whatever urgent privacy concerns etc it has to deal with; that also means attempting to find the root cause of a dispute and dealing with it (even if that means attracting controversy) rather than passing the buck through discretionary sanctions
All active, non-recused arbitrators actively partaking in cases. Not just voting, but actually making an effort to comment in discussions about proposals and evidence and being seen to work suggestions from parties and passers-by into the final decision.
Raising issues with parties, such as evidence length, on their talk page in person, instead of secretly ordering a clerk to do it. And, more importantly, being more concerned about getting the best, yet most concise, evidence instead of forcing evidence into an arbitrary word limit.
Monthly (or at least quarterly) reports to the community on what the Committee has done in that time and a collegial discussion between community members and arbitrators on how anything could have been handled better.
Clearly defined scope to cases, to be determined before the evidence phase opens, and the removal of any evidence outside the scope of the case.
It would also be nice to see one arb a fortnight spend that fortnight on the "front line" as an admin (since all are currently admins) dealing with vandals, closing AfDs, answering RfPP requests and doing what admins do. I think, with one or two exceptions, those arbitrators who had significant experience of day-to-day admin work have forgotten their experiences there and some had very little before they were elected arbitrators (and I mean that not as a criticism; I understand being an arb is not easy and the job has a high burn-out rate).

I love Wikipedia, so I'm not posting this because I need to vent, though my experiences will inevitably be reflected in my opinions. I'd like to hear what you and others have to say, and if the consensus is that there is no issue and I'm just bitter about my recent experiences surrounding arbitration, then I'll shut up.

User:HJ Mitchell in a comment on Jimbo's talk page

Another problem with the Arbitration Committee

Related to the immediate above:

I agree with most of HJ Mitchell's systemic criticism [note: see #The problem with the Arbitration Committee] and strongly support his suggestions. Seen from the outside, the Committee as a body seems to spend too much time administering itself and trying to run a government of sorts, rather than actively resolving arbitration cases, which is its job description. Even simple cases last for months with ill-defined scopes and little arbitrator activity (on the WP:AESH case, several active members did not even vote!), while arbitrators are busy micro-managing and dabbling in the community's feuds and soap operas via e-mail (at least that's the superficial impression one gets from the e-mails being leaked on external websites). Arbitrators should focus on their main job (resolving the cases before them), do their work onwiki and refrain from accepting or sending e-mail unless really necessary for privacy reasons, come up with a sensible division of labor (an 18-strong committee can't do much as a body), and stop wasting time on complex "rehabilitation" projects of disruptive editors instead of just banning them and letting the rest of us get on with their work. Of course, there's little that Jimbo can do about that.

User:Sandstein in the same thread

On 'requests for comment'

As the act of disputants asking a non-expert outsider to the topic area to help them resolve a dispute, not as the act of using Wikipedia's "RFC" system:

Disputes on Wikipedia that reach the point where you start asking outside editors to comment on them are basically unresolveable without immense time and effort being invested, and often even then. That time and effort is, from my perspective, disproportionate to any benefit derived (especially given the very real chance of said benefit being non-existent).

User:Steve Smith's amusing apostrophe (which can be read in full on his userpage) about his departure from ArbCom and decision to return to editing