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new foreign language tool

hi there! i was wondering if it is possible to program some cue, so that a person can type in an english word for their subject of interest, but on wikipedia in a foreign language...for instance, i could type in orca in english, but on the french wikipedia, and this pulls up the french article on that subject, without needing to know that in french the word is orque...is this a difficult matter to arrange, if not it could be nice not just in a major language such as french, yet in some of the others too...bon jour! FreyasCrystalizedAngels (talk) 11:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The best way is to just find the article in the English Wikipedia and then look at the interwiki links (bottom of the sidebar on the left) and see if the language you are after is there. Interwikis are not automatically added but a lot of people work on adding them and you should find it quite a reliable system. violet/riga (t) 11:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Electric Eye

(comment removed, R. Baley (talk) 23:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC))

ElectricEye is trolling. Please look at his full history. Oh and his userpage. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 23:01, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes look at my history starting from the beginning so you will have a better understanding of my actions. --ElectricEye (talk) 23:14, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

(comment removed, R. Baley (talk) 23:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC))

I have made a post at ANI regarding this harassment (link). R. Baley (talk) 23:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Enough of this silliness. I've blocked ElectricEye (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) indefinitely, as his only contributions in the last seven months were to state (repeatedly, in several locations) that he has "...joined the ranks of those who oppose [Wikipedia]." and to launch this attack here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

DRV Close

Hi Jimbo, I now have my e-mail reenabled. Cheers Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool, thx. I sent you email. Let me know if you don't get it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:41, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Messages

Wow I'm not surprised you don't answer many messages -must get on your nerves all this attention you get!!! It would drive me up the wall having ten messages everytime I log in. LOL ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 15:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I read it all. Some of it doesn't seem to be for me in particular, it's general questions that are answered by other people, etc. For some of it, I just have no idea what to say, so I don't. :) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a pity that this fell into one of those categories. I had hoped you'd just missed it. A timely answer could have prevented yet another valuable contributor leaving. Yomangani^talk 18:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I regret not answering, then. But I actually just don't know what to say to it. I have no opinion about it. Questions about the boundaries of such things are not my decision to make, they are up to the community at large. I like to have input into such things, and will speak up if I think something is violative of a core principle, but in general, I think the community should thoughtfully consider things and will do a better job through open dialog and discussion than I can ever hope to do as just one thoughtful person doing my best.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah I see. You'll need a new wiki site just to archive your messages soon enough lol! Anyway I've been pretty busy. I've a keen interest in south-east Asia and am attempting to fill in some gaps. Over the next few weeks I aim to get all of the communes of Cambodia onto wikipedia, unfortunately many of the provincial articles are still stubs. I'll be creating a template for each province of the country such as Template:BattambangProvince etc (its a little big perhaps) and filling in some gaps and to cover each area of the country in more detail (I'm hoping soon enough photos will become available as they make a big difference). I only wish I could get more people interested in parts of the world such as this. I feel it extremely important to try to address uneven coverage. I;ve also been attempting to do something with Burma, but this is incredibly difficult given the current political situation and lack of web info -we'll get there I;m sure. Anyway enough chit chat by me. Regards Baldy ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 15:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Claiming a "new" article as one's own, after oversighting the original

Is it okay for an admin to delete an article, then say they re-wrote it from scratch, but it's clear that they copied a lot of the original, then say that their new article is the start of the GFDL license for that article, since they oversighted the original version? That seems to have happened over here. - Yug Pah Yug (talk) 03:06, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no opinion about that particular dispute. I would note an error in your description of what happened there, though. The original, to my knowledge, has not been oversighted, but merely deleted. This means that any admin can review the situation and undelete anything that should not have been deleted. To be clear, I have no personal objection to that happening, nor am I asking that it happen. I really don't have an opinion here, one way or the other. I think hyped up drama over trivialities is best avoided.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:25, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

According to the off-wiki discussion, the admin who deleted the versions prior to his re-write now admits that he "probably copied the infobox, to save time and because I'm not good on subject-specific infobox syntax". Are the text and formatting found in an Infobox_Company exempt from the terms of the GFDL? The GFD license is a core value of the entire Wikipedia, so I am surprised that you would fail to form an opinion about this. It really all comes down to "credit where credit is due", and a key administrators is running roughshod over that principle. It's been pointed out to you, and you're calling it "trivial". - Yug Pah Yug (talk) 02:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Put it in perspective - is an infobox a truly creative work? It is summarizing information already widely known. Is using the same middle initial a copyvio, or would a reasonable person have a reasonable chance of doing the same thing. What intellectual property was stolen? Franamax (talk) 03:06, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't miss the point. The plagiarizing admin said exactly: "the current article on Arch Coal was a complete rewrite form the ground up by me, ab initio, from a blank page, without the content imported from your wiki". Now he's stepping back from that statement to admit that the Infobox was copied. This followed his decision to go one step further and delete from Wikipedia the previous two editors' work FIFTEEN MONTHS AFTER THE FACT, so that origination would not only appear to come from him alone, but he also boasted that he is now the originator. The evidence shows that his entire version of the article was written in 26 minutes, including the same wikilinks for relatively obscure choices of words like "subsidiary" and "sulfur", including the same complex merger and acquisition history that was reported in the original article, and even including multiple forays into the Deletion Review (DRV) -- ALL during that same 26 minutes. Twenty-six minutes? Does anyone think they could write an article of this quality completely from scratch in 26 minutes, nevermind the Infobox? Please step forward and show us, if you think you can. - Yug Pah Yug (talk) 04:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Does the evidence really show that it was written in 26 minutes? What makes you think it wasn't written in the hours before? Why does the clock start ticking at the point you are talking about? (These are real questions, I honestly don't know the answer.) I call this a trivial thing for people to be in a drama about because if there is a problem, the old version can be undeleted. Problem solved. No need for all the drama is all I mean.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:46, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The admin in question, while he has denied just about everything, has not denied the 26-minute claim. In fact, he stated "26 minutes is ample time to find and check the four sources cited." It is highly improbable that any work was being done by this admin on a "new" article prior to the time the old one was blanked, because the Deletion Review process was in fact ongoing at that point, and no consensus at that time had even been close to forming, and the admin was still participating in the DRV while he was supposedly writing a "new" article "from scratch". This twisting of the circumstances to try to make it look like plagiarism didn't occur is outright hilarious. What benefit to the Wikipedia project was the deletion of the original article from the history (and its accreditation), some 15 months after the article was re-written? Just name the benefit. Is it personal vengeance for a frequently cantankerous admin to get his jollies? That's what Wikipedia is all about now? This isn't about "drama", Jimbo. That's a red herring. It's about knowing right from wrong and standing up and doing something when you see wrong. Do you know how to do that? - Yug Pah Yug (talk) 05:57, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I do know right from wrong, and I do believe in standing up and doing something when I see wrong. I just see no reason to have drama about it. As I said, if there is a problem, the old version can be undeleted. Problem solved. You want to file an ArbCom case, file a case. We have processes for a reason. What else were you hoping that I would say? Off with his head?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, by the time I got to it, JzG himself had already restored most of it, except for my original deletions. So I just restored the rest of it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? Now the history (the important principle here) rightfully says:

• 04:06, 3 October 2006 Ravedave (Talk | contribs) (add ref tag, fix infobox)
• 15:04, 19 September 2006 J.smith (Talk | contribs) (Copying GDFL Article from http://mywikibiz.com/wikifiedarticles/corp-artcls/Arch_Coal.html)

So, anyone who is interested can learn where this article really came from -- MyWikiBiz.com. Thanks for righting the wrong. - Yug Pah Yug (talk) 06:57, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

No, of course it wasn't hard. And that was precisely my point in the first message I left about this. "I think hyped up drama over trivialities is best avoided."--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:06, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting this out quickly and quietly. - hahnchen 11:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Advice

Jimbo, I have had a tumultuous history on this site. I even vandalized a little on the 2nd and 5th of this month. I have been stressed, yet I really want to improve. May you give me some tips on how to handle stress on this site? I think part of it is real-life stress also. But, how do I handle Wikistress, and how can I improve as a member of this fine community? Tech43 (talk) 07:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

threats

Hello Jimbo, I apologize for going "straight to the top" when you're probably terribly busy, but a frightening situation has just revealed itself. All I will say publicly is that a wiki-colleague of mine, a member of an oft-persecuted ethnic minority, is receiving very threatening messages via email and elsewhere on the internet from another Wikipedia user who has been trolling and being obnoxious for weeks but now seems intent on actually causing harm to my colleague. Also, this troll now knows the address of my friend's place of residence. I'm frightened enough by this situation, and of the possibility of provoking this creep, that I'm even writing to you now from a sockpuppet account (never before used, never to be abused) so the person I'm talking about won't find this in my regular account's contribs list and know I know about it...etc.! Anyway, are you the one I should talk to about this? If not, who should I talk to? I think this is a very serious situation--the troll is probably bluffing, but I'm not taking ANY chances. Please reply on the talk page of this account. AlbinoSquirrel69 (talk) 23:21, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

As with any real-world threat of violence or unmitigated stalking, the victim is to contact the local police and escalate as necessary from there. Please don't bother the Wikimedia Foundation for this. Their terms of service do not include police protection and the like. - Yug Pah Yug (talk) 02:18, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The above is Yug Pah Yug's third edit; I would weigh his advice in the context of his apparent level of experience. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Bothering you? What's the problem? If this is a problem, I would've thought the foundation would want to know about it. People like that should'nt use the site.--Hammerandclaw (talk) 10:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

You're right that the editor should go to the police, but he/she should also tell the Foundation what's going on, and Jimbo is on the board. So I don't think this is a case of "bothering the Wikimedia Foundation." Cla68 (talk) 06:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Is your real first name actually Jimmy?

Southern American English-speaking region

I'm just curious if Jimbo Wales was born a James or actually Jimmy. A minor bit of trivia, but Jimmy is typically a nickname. --Fandyllic (talk) 1:01 AM PST an 2007

Yes, it is my real first name. I am from Alabama, which may help explain that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Mr. Wales, I don't quite understand how Alabama makes you called "Jimmy", could you please explain? :). Blueanode (talk) 16:18, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

In much of the Southern United States, the name Jimmy is not considered informal. Other common nicknames from the rest of the U.S. are also considered less informal and are likely to be a given name there, e.g.: Bubba, Buck, Duke, Dolly, Hank, Jeb, Sissy, etc. Boowah59 (talk) 21:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Im totally curious why the extreme southern part of Texas and a little part of South Carolina are not marked in pink!Thelmadatter (talk) 00:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I am wondering what your real birth day is? aug 8 or the 7

==

2008 Travel Plans

Hi Jimbo. I was just wondering if you had any planned visits to the UK this year. I understand that you were due to visit in December 2007 with the possibility of attending a meetup but I've no idea what happened with this. It would be nice to meet you in person sometime and plans are beginning to be formulated for some UK meetups so hoped you might be able to tell me if you expect to be over here sometime to permit a meetup to be arranged to coincide. Regards. Adambro (talk) 20:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

That reminds me... are you still interested in visiting my school here in Mexico? This semester Im teaching a bunch of teachers to write in Wikipedia!Thelmadatter (talk) 00:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Well it would be nice to see you in Latin America, anyway. Thanks, SqueakBox 06:24, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikimusic?

I remember a time a few years back when you were soliciting suggestions for "open information" style projects that could benefit from funding. I'm no expert on music, but one of the great voids I've noticed on the internet is the lack of free recordings of famous music pieces. Most music written until the mid-20th century is in the public domain, but while the sheet music is freely available, high-quality recordings are not. While MIDI is great for getting the gist of what a composition sounds like, it fails to capture the true effect of the music. I don't know if this is a potential idea for the Wikimedia foundation, or if this is a project that could be supported by the wiki process, but it would be great to have access to a free repository of recordings of great works of music from human history. Do you have any thoughts on this? - Chardish (talk) 03:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this could be part of Wikimedia Commons? --Carnildo (talk) 09:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Adding existing projects to wikimedia?

I know that for wikia you bring existing sites in, but has/could this ever happen wit a wikimedia project??? There are some realy cool ones that imo could make really good wikimedia sister projects. 66.225.230.183 (talk) 08:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Such as... ? Mr.Z-man 08:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

BLP policy discussion

Jimbo, If you have a chance, could you add your 2 cents to this discussion, which you commented on your talk page about 1 month ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Undue_Weight

Thanks! --Jkp212 (talk) 19:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Inequality in coverage

I just managed to sort out locator maps for the cities in Cambodia and in checking the articles on the cities -they are even worse than I thought. Provincial capitals like Pursat etc which have tens even hundreds of thousands of inhabitants as yet don't even have basic facts and are still one liners, yet places on provincial capitals in the UK and America etc would have hundreds , even thousands of articles on that place alone and an oversized article to boot. What you see on the Pursat article is the product of nearly two years work. What concerns me is that few people seem to care about it, few people have even attempted to actively try to develop some of the major cities and towns in places like cambodia, vietnam, Laos etc let alone the smaller settlements. At best there are only three or four people working on articles on countries like this and even then this isn't particularly consistent . I can't attempt to sort out places like this alone!!! If this encyclopedia is to become completely authoritive on the web , then this major uneveness needs to be addressed asap. Basically if you compare it to a developed country such as the UK - with Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Laos etc only places like London, Birmingham and Manchester are covered and have half decent articles -the rest of the country - 99% isn't even really covered except a few minor stubs here and there. It is a huge problem gaining access to a decent and reliable amount of information. Surely there should be more people interested in places like this or at least be trying to address this. Yet in all due respect, workgroups like WikiProject Lego, Pokemon etc have many contributors. Do you find this uneveness concerning for a serious encyclopedia? I know it will take time to build this, just wish there was more people contributing in poorly developed parts of the project. Let me know what you think about my ideas. Thanks ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 12:50, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

You should take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. - hahnchen 13:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I should add the undeveloped parts of south east asia to the main page of this project as requiring attention -perhaps it would create more interest. Even if it was two or three it would make a big difference ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 16:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you're on the right track by highlighting it on the WP:BIAS talk page. You can also try Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/open tasks and its talk page, it's an ever growing list though. Try and engage the editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Southeast Asia and Wikipedia:WikiProject Cambodia, I don't know how active those projects are. - hahnchen 17:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there is some bias but dont forget that it is a lot harder to get information in English about a lot of these places than it would be for the UK and others you mentioned. I think one way to counter this would be to reach out to English-as-a-foreign language teachers (like moi) to get their students to write and improve articles in English about their home countries. I do this with my classes here in Mexico. Not only does Wikipedia get contributions, for students its a chance to show off their bilingual skills. However, I can see one possible problem with this... sources are most likely to be in the students' original language rather than English. This may not be such a huge problem for me as there are many English/Spanish bilinguals to help verify information my students contribute... but I suppose it would be more difficult for a number of other languages. I would like to work on recruiting EFL teachers to do projects similar to my own but I would like to know if there would be a language/verification issue.Thelmadatter (talk) 18:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Foreign language sources are absolutely fine, and completely necessary when there is no English source. Many of our scientific sources make no sense to a layman but a source does not have to be understandable for every 12 year old to be valid. Remember we are writing the encyclopedia of everything, using English to express that knowledge, we are not creating an encyclopedia about how the world is seen by English speakers. Countering systemic bias is a crucial part of our work here, I agree with Blofeld but as lmadatter indicates there are many English speaking wikipedians all over the world (there are an estimated several million ex-pat Brits in the world right now) and many wikipedians who are multi-lingual, plus many more wikipedians whose second language is English, for instance one of our most consistently prolific contributors is Russian, etc etc18:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC). Thanks, SqueakBox

That certainly makes sense SqueakBox. I put a message on an EFL forum I participate in a lot [1] on Daves ESL Cafe to see if anyone is keen on the idea. Its a start.Thelmadatter (talk) 18:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Those are indeed excellent points made by both of you. The problem however becomes more apprarent with lesser developed countries where english or indeed the Internet is not made available and away from widely spoken languages such as Spanish, French, German, Italian etc. For articles related to south east asia particularly countries like Cambodia most info is likely to be available in Khmer - often they don't speak english and are highly unlikely to use english wikipedia and often they haven't got access to the Internet duue to poverty etc and are therefore unable to relay what info they know even in their own language let alone english. This problem of course is even more prominent in many parts of Africa where while the amount of info is gradually becoming available online it is still extremely backwards and uneven. There are also parts of Latin America -particularly countries like Bolivia, Ecaudor etc which are not well covered. I have been struggling to keep in contact with one of the few Burmese users on here User:Ekyaw who I have encouraged to take photographs and upload as much as he knows and to spread the word about wikipedia to the owner of the national library in Yangon and try to get as much on here as possible -although many references are in Burmese. It would just be great to be able to access information from all of the places cited and write it for what may be the first time in the english language and get universal coverage -e.g you search for x number of places on a map and wikipedia has a good article on each one. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 21:03, 6 January 2008 (UTC).

so true about the lack of Internet access. Thats why reaching out in ways other than Wikipedia itself is a good way to counter this. Many people from the US, Canada and the UK live abroad, be they English teachers like myself or retirees or those "escaping" the "horrible politics" (dont get me started) in their home countries. There are web sites that cater to these folks and many probably have the time and inclination to do something for their adopted homes. While admirable, I dont think writing a page or two on Wikipedia will really reach the kinds of people we really want to recruit as editors. Most of us who would read it would already fit the profile of the "Wikipedia class" We need other ways to reach out to other folks. Thelmadatter (talk) 00:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

One Laptop Per Child is making a special effort to get computers connected to the internet in these types of places. See Arahuay and its links. Everyplace that the OLPC are installed, we should make an article on that place. WAS 4.250 (talk) 02:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I have observed here in Central America that many people can afford to buy a cheap, perhaps even second hand computer if they save hard, but the high monthly internet fee makes these computers virtually useless in terms of what they can do, and I fear that this will also be an issue for the One Laptop Per Child computers. If the wikipedia foundation were hugely cash rich I would love to see them pursue the charitable knowledge goal by offering wireless internet coverage throughout the third world. Internet is expensive here, and in so much of the third world, is expensive, slow and unreliable, and that is in the big cities. In the smaller towns and villages you might get dial-up but otherwise you'd have to go for satellite internet, which is even more expensive. Thanks, SqueakBox 02:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

So true, and in most cases the problem is basically corruption. Example: Belize, where nearly all communications is through a goverment-granted monopoly [2] to a private corp (BTL) which is controlled by a few powerful families and investors, and charges exorbitant com fees. This ultimately hurts the economy and development of Belize in the worst way because it strangles Belize's comunications with the outside world. It persists because of something very much like bribery-- money influencing government officials. In the end, BTL will need to be trustbusted like ATT, but with a special kind of flavor that you see in getting rid of the vestigages of feudalism with land reform. Once a few owners own everything of value, they own the government also, and that's a very tough problem. SBHarris 05:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

"no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with "mesh" technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the others [...] first-grade teacher Erica Velasco [...] just sent them to the Internet to seek out photos of invertebrates [...] What they work with most is the (built-in) camera [...] Before the laptops, the only cameras the kids at Santiago Apostol school saw in this population-800 hamlet arrived with tourists [...] Peru's head of educational technology, Oscar Becerra, is betting the One Laptop program can reverse this rural exodus to the squalor of Lima's shantytowns [...] The XOs that Peru is buying will be distributed to pupils in 9,000 elementary schools [...] Although Peru boasts thousands of rural satellite downlinks that provide Internet access, only about 4,000 of the schools getting XOs will be connected [...] Negroponte says One Laptop is committed to helping Peru overcome that hurdle. Without Internet access, he believes, the program is incomplete.[3] WAS 4.250 (talk) 07:28, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

It certainly is incomplete without internet. With at least 80% of the world's children living in the third world its going to be a helluva task to obtain access everywhere. Peru is one thing, Latin America another and the world another, you only offer this to select poor countries and you just give them an unfair competitive edge. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:08, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Paul Otellini is quoted by the BBC today saying "Eventually we will blanket the globe in wireless broadband connectivity", hopefully this is an idea whose time is coming now, and certainly with such an infrastructure in place wikipedia, and multi-language wikipedia, will prove more than ever and considerabl;y more than now its weight in gold. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia for English as a foreign language teaching has stirred some debate at Dave's ESL Cafe teachers forum. See [4] for discussion of the pro's and con's from that perpective. Thelmadatter (talk) 21:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

This is what I'm talking about Jimbo check out Hsipaw. I want the encyclopedia to be covering places like this in detail. I've managed to make several agreements with some people at flickr who stated they'd be pleased for wikimedia to use their bank of images -I added all of the images -the local school and workers too -real eye openers!. I'll search flickr and try to get us some images of these places -of the people I've contacted many seem more than happy that their images are being used -I;m sure we could get hold of millions of images that are labelled as "copywrighted" if people just requested them. The problem is I'm concerned if I upload them to the commons that people will start sniffing -people always seem trigger happy to nuke images in the commons. If we could create articles using images like this and soon enough develop them into detailed articles about places you'd never dream about seeing this is when I feel the encyclopedia will be taken to the next level. Hopefully we can start building content in those places in Africa and South America that are highly undeveloped and search for more of those world travellers on flickr who have access to images of all these amazing locations. What do you think? I;ve also been covering articles like Cambodian Red Cross. There are so many important articles missing. Have a read of the article I wrote Deforestation in Brazil. (one of the major global issues today but took 7 years to start)! I was amazed it was missing! It may still need some work but its a start! ♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 22:47, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll agree with that last para. I have successfully gained copyright permission for several images from Flickr (see userpage) and many more besides, Flick users are perfectly happy to release their images if you ask nicely. It is a shame that many users on Commons are indeed trigger-happy; many of the publicity shots of celebrities I uploaded there were deleted because they were apparently "unfree", despite the fact that I showed ample proof of the source websites' releasing them as free for public use. Alternately, Commons doesn't have as exhaustive a range of license templates as Wikipedia does, so your free image could be deleted because you have used the wrong template. Something needs to be done about this. Ekantik ^talk 00:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better then to upload your images to this site and let one of the regulars reupload to the Commons, that way if anyone challenges it here a bot will post to your talk page. I wouldn't dream of uploading straight to Commons though many of my images are now at Commons. I heartily endorse getting free images people have taken themselves and was happy to post some of my local Latino city that my wife took, indeed we should get a digital camera of our own and take more. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

A [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Vanished user|brewing Wikipedia controversy]] requires your attention

You're a busy man, so I'll be brief:

In an ongoing ArbCom decision (currently suspended for 30 days), it's proposed that [[User:Vanished user]] have his admin privileges taken away for blocking User:MatthewHoffman over his edits to Irreducible Complexity. There isn't a large consensus either way. Currently, most admins involved support taking away Vanished user's privileges, but most users in the RFC discussion seem to support retaining them. Your opinion carries a lot of weight and may help people walk away from the matter without being bitter.

See [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Vanished user]] and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman. Zenwhat (talk) 07:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo's comments carry no more weight than any other user. 86.143.168.128 (talk) 18:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Hello. I am one of the sysops of Turkish Wikipedia and this is my userpage. Today I got a mail from an advertising or sth. company from Turkey. Mail says; you will be in Turkey at some certain time in this or next month i really do not remember. I asked other sysops but they had not got such a mail. I wanna ask you whether somebody is kidding me or are you going to Turkey??? Actually the latter make me happier :))). Anyway, if you can answer me on my Turkish userpage I will be happy. If you do not this account is also ok. Thank you. Sincerely.Sağlamcı (talk) 14:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Quick Question

Me and a few other wikipedians have created a wiki in response to the deletion of "shops" on wikipedia. There has been a recent account creation in your name and I was curious as to know if this is an impostor, see here. http://codesnippets.wikia.com/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales Thanks. Sirkad_talk 01:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

nevermind, I figured it out. lol no need to respond Sirkad_talk 05:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Developer discretion?

Typically at some point in a controversial decision someone notifies you, and although this hasn't gotten too terribly heated, it seems likely to head in that direction, especially since it involves the actions of a developer. Hopefully, we can avoid a heated debate altogether if someone can give some input on exactly how far developer discretion goes. Justin ^chat —Preceding comment was added at 01:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggested talkspace enhancement

It would be nice to be able to somehow mark or create a subpage for a user which is readable by that user and certain other authorized people but not everyone in the world, to avoid having to go to e-mail in those circumstances. This would also keep more communication on-wiki and transparent to the ArbCom and others with similar privilege. —Whig (talk) 08:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I have read comments from people who tried to modify the copy-left MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses, in order to allow that and they have concluded that the openness that was built into it from the start can not be easily removed, making Wikimedia an inappropriate software package for controlled writing/reading projects. The functionality you mention is available in some other internet user interface packages (forums and such). Wikis are inherently open. Different things are good for different purposes. WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, WAS. I could certainly make a strong argument that having a wiki platform with privileges on certain spaces is not self-contradictory. Certainly there are parts of Wikipedia that only admins and members of other classes can read or write, but it may not be fine-grained enough to enable per-user permissions to be easily implemented. —Whig (talk) 00:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way I can certainly see serious policy implications of this feature if it were created so it is by no means a given that it is a good idea at all. I just thought I'd suggest it in case it was something people had not given much thought to. —Whig (talk) 20:50, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki can't do this but there are other wiki software packages (prowiki at least) that claim to. Drupal can also do wiki-like stuff, and can do access control. --Chriswaterguy talk 12:59, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikia in Catalan interview

A Catalan radio channel - http://catradio.cat/ el internauta - is interviewing me this evening about WikiaSearch. I would therefore ask you this question: What do you think will WikiaSearch mean for minorised languages as ours (Catalan)?. http://pacoriviere.cat/ /ca-WP admin). --Paco ✉ 13:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it best if I answer this question over at my [Wikia Search userpage http://search.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales].--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Please stop screwing things up by intervening

Since when does the community require the approval of, first, the Arbitration Committee, and second, the Foundation, in order to make new policy? Obviously the Foundation has the final say in any project matter, but the idea that it needs to explicitly approve new policies is ludicrous. As for the Arbitration Committee... until now they have explicitly not made policy, but based their decisions on existing policy. And now you're effectively giving them the power to veto any policy the community comes up with? Have you really thought this through? – Gurch 23:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Gurch, I believe you have entirely misread what I have done here. Far from taking power from the community, I have given the power to the community to make the sort of decision that traditionally would have rested with me, the developers, or the Foundation. I have put the community (of which the ArbCom is a part of course!) firmly in charge of this. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it is a matter of arbcom making policy. The community does that. But the community cannot agree, at this point, whether there is a consensus for this new policy or not. Arbcom's role is to be a representative voice in matters where the community cannot agree. Arbcom should NOT decide whether rollback is bad or good. They should, however, be called to arbitrate the community dispute as to whether there exists a settled consensus. Better that an elected body does that, than Jimbo by fiat, a single dev with no mandate, or simply allowing the strongest loudest voices to prevail.--Doc^g 23:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Doc, precisely my point here. The idea here is to systematize an orderly procedure whereby the English Wikipedia community (including the ArbCom as a trusted smaller body able to come to a single answer) can control this sort of thing, rather than having me do it, the developers do it, or the Foundation staff do it. I am a bit confused that anyone could interpret this as me taking policy-making power away from the community!

But things like rollback never did need the approval of you, the developers, or the Foundation staff (though obviously, any of those groups could block such a thing if there was a problem). What happened was consensus was sort-of-but-not-quite reached to implement rollback and then the Bugzilla request was made and handled a bit too early. Developers were only involved as far as it is unavoidably necessary for them to be involved in order for software changes to be made; neither yourself nor the Board were involved, and ArbCom was neither here nor there. So we have gone from needing community consensus plus no "veto" from yourself, the Board and the developers to needing community consensus plus no veto from those three groups plus approval of ArbCom, which was very much not present in policy-making before – Gurch 09:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Allowing the loudest voices to prevail? That's ironic don't you think Doc given there's about 10 uses who are kicking up a stink about this where everyone else is trying to get a long and work out the best ways to make this work. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:37, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I take absolutely no position myself on whether or not the feature is a good idea. But I think all sides can agree in principle to an orderly process of making a determination of what to do.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC).

You have, however, taken an unusual position on the process, by saying it should be done through a poll that is then ratified by ArbCom. Polling is not our usual method of policy making, or at least it wasn't during the 3+ years that I was here. It also doesn't work very well, see the non-implemented Wikipedia:Attribution/Poll. Kusma (talk) 09:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

We do at least have instances where decisions have been made by polls in the past. It's the "ratification by ArbCom" bit that is completely new, completely unexpected and completely baffling – Gurch 09:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Not completely new, and not IMO unexpected; but you have to do some thinking to realise how: ArbCom was meant to replace Jimbo in day-to-day decision making; Jimbo has traditionally claimed the ability to "assent to" results of polls, thus making them official policy; this is merely a transfer of that ability to ArbCom. That said... Jimbo, your poll sucks. At the very least, it needs to be clear whether or not people can specify what their "second choice" is. (and, due to the documented variety of opinions on which two are acceptable, I would go further and say that people must, in fact, be able to specify this) —Random832 14:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, I don't think "ratify" was quite the verb you intended, and that has confused people here. As far as I can tell from reading in between the lines, the role you proposed for arbcom to play was to evaluate the results of the poll and make sure it was counted correctly; not to have their own little vote on whether it should be implemented. The right word for that would be to "certify" the results of the vote. —Random832 14:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo with all due respect this poll is a complete disaster. Next time you have an idea like this please be more specific because this is all over the place now with people more or less not caring about the outcome anymore. This is why we don't do these things. If you're gonna intervene then please follow up on what you proposed. This is far worse than yesterday now - the only thing we agree on is an image of a cute white cat. EconomicsGuy (talk) 15:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo, maybe you should just write the poll and post it, and declare it binding after the AC counts votes. Anything other than a pure up and down vote penned by you is probably not going to work at this point, as there are already about 5 talk pages involved, 10 alternate polls, protected pages, a pending RFAR, and any attempt by anyone to try to goad progress forward is being instantly met with 5 good suggestions, 5 complaints, 5 images of a lolcat, and 5 people screaming THIS IS SPARTA. I'm not kidding. Lawrence Cohen 16:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Releasing IP addresses of registered users: the Video Professor incident

Since this talk page does not appear to be an appropriate forum to discuss what the Foundation's actions in this incident, per the archived discussion User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 31#Wikipedia surrendering users' info without a fight, I have started a discussion at the Village Pump policy page at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)# Releasing IP addresses of registered users: the Video Professor incident. Your comments are welcome. Thanks. Edison (talk) 15:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

all sides can agree in principle to an orderly process of making a determination of what to do

Jimbo, you said "all sides can agree in principle to an orderly process of making a determination of what to do" above.

May I recommend a tried and tested system? Representative democracy for making new policy within the limits set by the law and the Foundation. I suggest you take the lead and move the English language wikipedia community in that direction. Let's start with suggesting that everyone name some wikipedia user as his policy representative using a template that can be used to automatically tally results. Anyone can change their policy representative at any time. The details of the use of this template and choice of policy representative will not be defined in advance as there are far too many unsettled issues (socks, circular linking, qualifications to be counted either as a Wikipedian or as a representative, etc). The idea is to try it out as an experiment and see what the results look like. I'm betting the results will be good enough to eventually lead to a House of Policy Representatives to balance Arbcom (which is our Supreme Court that interprets policy and hands down specific rulings in specific cases). Prior efforts show that a site notice of a policy vote merely leads to uninformed thoughtless vote casting that solves nothing. We need a deliberative body for creation or alteration of existing policy. We are now too big for the former ways to successfully work on English language Wikipedia site-wide policy anymore. WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like an interesting idea, but it would (it seems to me) have a number of potential unintended consequences. I am just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if such a concept could be tried as a "shadow policy body" first to test it. I don't know of anything that would prevent it being tried out, but I recommend that the proposal to try it be widely circulated first to get people's feedback on whether it sounds worth trying. To me, it seems like it would be worth trying at least.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Intriguing ideas (as ever) come from WAS 4.250! It would need to be balanced by the caveat that only users with a committed identity revealed to Arb||Com be enfranchised, though. Then we could get rid of all the sockpuppet witchhunts and daft canvassing rules (currently we must rely on either telepathy or huge watchlists) which waste a lot of sound and fury and productive editing... Alice^✉ 20:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't know of any reasonable way for the ArbCom to confirm personal identities...--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Identity confirmation is already in place in the financial system (as is identify theft, but not for complex transactions, so wait a bit). Level one identity confirmation is simply have the person make a $1 credit card or Paypal donation to Wikifoundation. Level two is a wire transfer of $1, which requires somebody to present themselves in person to a bank and get their identity checked. There are also notaries in the US and in other places. Geez, this is the digital age. If identities could not be confirmed remotely for ordinary transactions of this sort, the whole banking world wouldn't work at all. If my brokerage house (who I've never met) knows who I am when I log in and buy or sell something (and the IRS gets to know it, too), how come Wikipedia can't? You yourself are more than saavy about financial matters, according to your bio. So think in terms of online brokerage services and ebay, and so on. Umm, and I might add that "phishing" for Wikipedia identification information doesn't seem very likely, so wiki-identity theft, once a user is verified, is never going to be a problem of the same magnitude that it is when it involves money. SBHarris 23:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ooooh, a combination of liquid democracy and personal accountability for use of power! How... subversive! SBHarris 22:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Email sent to you

I have sent you a private email. Thanks, --Solumeiras ^talk 23:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Sandbox

What you said about the sandbox that was what i thought was right but apparently he is about to kick me off. Mygerardromance (talk) 05:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)mygerardromance

thanks for the pic

Thanks for the pic. I love it. Mygerardromance (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Most vandalized ever?

Hey Jimbo. I was surprised (well I shouldn't be, but anyway) that your user page undergoes about 20 reverts a day now. It got me thinking and I wonder if there is a page that lists the Most Vandalized Articles and User Pages on Wikipedia (ever). Might be interesting to see what patterns emerge. Of course if this page already exists, I would appreciate if I was redirected towards it.

Always a fan of the place and Wikia as well. Rock On! -- Riffsyphon1024 (talk) 06:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages, but it doesn't give any numbers. I seem to remember there used to be a "most vandalised admin award" but I can't find it now. Hut 8.5 12:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

It's at User:Most reverted admin award. It's a relatively old page, but not as old as I thought. Graham87 13:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

And there's a slightly more up-to-date version at User:JIP/Most Reverted Admin Award. Graham87 14:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

3rr or vandalism of your user page

Resolved

A user has just made a bad faith report of me for 3rr for removing vandalism from your user page [5]. This looks like an established user trolling to support an anon vandal inserting that you are the co-founder on your user page. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Please WP:AGF. I filed 3rr reports on both yourself and the IP, so that it would be reviewed. I don't care about the content issue. I saw two users both crossing 3rr, so I reported it to be evaluated. It was, and it's done. Lawrence Cohen 16:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I am assuming good faith in that you must have confused User:Jimbo Wales with Jimmy Wales as I assume you were not supporting a vandal vandalising somebody's user page on this project, if I thought you were further action in order to revoke your editing priviliges would be 100% necessary as the idea of trying to frighten people from reverting user page vandalism is completely unacceptable. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

yes, Lawrence says he was mistaken so this one is totally sorted. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:48, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Squeak, there's no evidence that the report itself (or the user making it) was in bad faith. Mistaken, yes; Bad faith, no. --SSBohio 16:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes I agree, Cohen was not acting in bad faith any more than I was but he was mistaken and has fully realised it. If it had been a series of reverts at Jimmy Wales or wikipedia it would have been a content dispute and subject to 3RR, but unwanted material should always be removed form somebody's user page. User Larry Sanger says on his user page that he co-founded and if somebody apart from him were to remove the word co I would treat it in exactly the same way as I did with Jimbo's user page, ie revert as vandalism. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you about userpages; The user theirself gets (mostly) to decide what's on their userpage. The editor who kept adding co- seemed to be doing so out of the belief that Wikipedians should share credit for the creation, not out of a reference to the Larry Sanger business. I agree that it needed to be reverted; I just don't agree that it was of necessity vandalism. Either way, I'm glad you were around to step in & clean it up. --SSBohio 03:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

German Wikipedia

Hello. I thought I was a German Wikipedia virgin, aside from a few copy-edits on TeX displays and such. But I just created a user account over there and when I click on Benutzerbeiträge I find a large number of edits attributed to me. It looks as if they're articles copied from English Wikipedia with the edit histories intact and later translated into German. I had no idea such things happened. Are your own edits on German Wikipedia the same sort of thing? I saw you had a few and assumed at first that meant you were not a complete German Wikipedia virgin.

Anyway, I've just (finally!) lost my German Wikipedia virginity, albeit anonymously, with this edit and the two right after it. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

...and now three right after it. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you gotten bitten by an admin yet? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I have edited very rarely on German Wikipedia, aber mein deutsch ist sehr schlecht ("but my German is very bad"), so I have contributed nothing of substance to article space for sure.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo, your earliest edit in German Wikipedia appears to have been this one: 2 April 2001 (!)

What happened?

• The edit was actually an edit in English Wikipedia: 2 April 2001
• The article was imported *with edit history* in German Wikipedia (nice technique GFDL-wise), and translated: 13 August 2007

The only thing I don't know how they handle it at German Wikipedia, is what happens if two different people choose the same user name in two different Wikipedia's? --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Giving an example of the problems that might occur:

User:D-Day has quite some edits on German wikipedia [6], but the username appears not to have been taken yet in de:Wikipedia: de:Benutzer:D-Day apparently doesn't exist. All the German Wikipedia edits from this user/Benutzer are "imported" from English Wikipedia.

Suppose a German guy accidently chooses D-Day as his user name in German Wikipedia, not knowing the prior history (how would he?). From Michael Hardy's story above I learn Michael was only accidently the same person creating the same username in German Wikipedia. So this German D-Day could get a prior edit history of the English user D-Day, listing edits from a completely different person. Might take some time before the new German Wikipedian finds out about this, so by that time his own part of the edit history is mixed with the "imported" edits, and there is no easy way to separate the one from the other. Not even talking about other possible consequences of being associated with someone else's editing behaviour, nor about possible bad-faith usurping of someone elses work. Don't know whether at German Wikipedia there is a mechanism preventing this? --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Oops, made an error: a year ago someone registered the username D-Day at German Wikipedia [7]

That doesn't mean that what I said was wrong, someone experimented sucessfully with another username at de:Wikipedia [8] (Translation: "OMG!!! I couldn't believe this and just tried it, with a made-up password. Currently I write with an usurped account, with edits from an imported article transferred to it! Could someone please, please repair this vulnerability ASAP [...]"). --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it the same person? Is there any way to tell, except by asking the two users if they're both the same person? Michael Hardy (talk) 05:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Continued, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Interwiki_transfer_of_edit_histories --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Ich habe deutsch vergessen und jetz will ich die Sprache wieder lernen. I've been looking at German talk shows on youtube and sometimes I understand a sentence without thinking about it and sometimes it's just like a foreign language. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:35, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Deutsche Talkshows sind dafür allerdings eher die schlechteste Variante... German talk shows aren't the best way to re-lern it... --Marcl1984 (talk) 18:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Also German songs and various other things. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Status Bot

Have you ever thought about using one? --HPJoker ^{Leave me a message} 22:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. Tell me more?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

See User:Chris G Bot 3 and User:StatusBot for directions on how to set it up. Regards, —Animum (talk) 02:26, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Basically, it scrapes your contribs and shows an "online" message when you're online, and an "offline since" message when you're offline. Quite useful, really. Best, Keilana^talk 02:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought there was one that could be pinged with javascript so that it shows when you're viewing, rather than just when you're editing. —Random832 03:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if Jimbo want to risk beeing stalked in real time :) _→AzaToth 15:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Tacit Consensus and Permenent Lack of Consensus

Hello Jimbo, I have a few active months in, and have been somehow sucked into editing what seems to me to be really bad articles on controversial subjects, the worst of which might be Allegations of state terrorism by the United States. Such articles always have a core consensus of people with a shared pov, that is the pov these article project. These articles do not welcome newcomers, nor do they welcome consensus shifting. They practice "Permenent Lack of Consensus".

I'm asking for your insights about tacit Consensus. Not about the article offered as an example, but about the process. What happens in practice is that the entrenched defenders deny any shift in consensus until the challenger retreats. This is not good for WP, because honest and open debate was not engaged in, no real consensus emerged, these debates are really meaningless defenses of the stats quo.

What I have developed as a theory is that defenders rely upon the unnamed strategy of Permenent Lack of Consensus, which locks controversial articles in place. I'm actually fine with this in regard to content disputes, but am not fine in regard to policy disputes. In practice, a lack of consensus on policy is the primary defense for it's application.

• My first question for you (as a busy man) is if the preceeding stimulates enough interest to continue this discussion?

• My second question is if my comments below to the entrenched defenders of Allegations of state terrorism by the United States are correct?

:::Nope. No consensus. At least four editors here say no. Stone put to sky (talk) 18:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

:::We do not have consensus on content, agreed. We presently have tacit consensus on policy, in this case the "extraordinary claims" policy. One editor advocates that IPS is unreliable as a matter of policy and not one editor has yet to object on this policy question.

EXAMPLES (from IPS):

:::*Four editors challenge the NPOV deletion of material on the basis that they disagree with the NPOV policy. Their disagreement is irrelevant to consensus regarding policy, they need to cite policy to be engaged in any policy dispute. If they limit their participation to irrelevant arguments, they have actually offered no argument at all. The consensus is 1-0 in favor of the NPOV argument. :::*An editor challenges a citation on the "exceptional claims" policy, and four editors disagree on content grounds. Again the consensus is 1-0, because objections related to content concerns don't count for consensus regarding a policy issue. :::*An editor challenges a citation on the "exceptional claims" policy, and four editors disagree on policy grounds. Now the consensus is 4-1, because objections related to policy concerns do count for consensus regarding a policy issue.

:::Unless someone brings the challenged citations into policy compliance, or makes some valid argument against the application of the WP's "extraordinary claims" policy, we will have tacit consensus for the deletion of any citations successfully challenged on policy (not content) grounds. Raggz (talk) 18:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC) Raggz (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Continuing rollback

Hey Jimbo, I know that you and everyone else are sick to death of hearing about this rollback business, but I'm a little confused as to why it's being allowed to continue. For such a contentious feature that has so bitterly divided the community, until it's finally been decided whether or not this even has consensus to go through, it seems to me that we should heed the advice of users, including myself, calling for a moratorium. Considering that we were never able to get a full-fledged discussion, and that the ArbCom case seems unlikely to be accepted (despite your wishes that it be heard by them), our best bet is to wait until the end of the quarter, and have a new poll, as has been decided. In the meantime, though, we don't know what ramifications of giving all these users this tool will be; and until we've discussed everything fully, it doesn't make sense to let this continue. Thanks for your consideration. GlassCobra 03:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for rollback/Vote

Wikipedia:Requests for rollback/Vote

Everyone can hate me after it closes, instead of you and each other. Lawrence Cohen 03:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I hate you. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC) That and we need more and clearer guidance on when and where use of polls, discussions and votes is actually appropriate. Random application like this is extremely disruptive

Where is the single best place for this discussion now? There was an explosion of similarly named pages and now I find it all very confusing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure whats being asked but if you are asking about the process discussion see WT:RFR Alexfusco⁵ 02:50, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about whether to keep it, and in what form, is really not being continued. WT:RFR has devolved into promoting bureaucracy, and everyone who objected to the initial proposal for that reason has left the discussion. ^Avruchtalk 00:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

What happened to discussion of exactly how the proposal was passed with "consensus"; how it was immediately implemented in an apparently indiscriminate fashion; and how editors were given the tool without ever having requested it? I gave up commenting as soon as the proposal suddenly passed and 100 people were given the tool within very little time. I haven't seen any satisfactory explanation of this "process". Franamax (talk) 00:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Wei Wenhua

If you support freedom of speech and oppose the Chinese government, please change the policy against Tor and other open proxies. Chinese must use Tor (or other open proxies) to read and edit Wikipedia because of the Great Firewall. Blocking Tor and other open proxies supports the Chinese government censorship and restricts free speech. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.64.224 (talk) 12:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Tor is used by a lot of vandals. "The existence of an evil is not justified unless to prevent a greater evil." Tor itself is likely used by the Chinese government itself to vandalize Wikipedia en masse. This is unfortunate, but it's not something Wikipedia is to blame for. For help, though, see Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall. Wikipedia has gone far out of its way to promote free speech in China than any other website I can think of. Can you think of another website where users actually set up closed proxies to help people gain access? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 06:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the problem with vandals is so bad that you have to block Tor. Blocking Tor forces Chinese to use competition, like Baidu Baike, which do not have freedom of speech. The advice and closed proxies should be easier for Chinese users to find. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.9.61.227 (talk) 10:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Call them disgraceful instead

Calling an article about you a disgrace? Well, you should instead call those trolls a disgrace to the Wikipedian community, Jimbo. This is the first time that I have (or had) heard (or read) such a thing around here. What you need to do is to undo the damage (by either reverting or replacing the vandalized information with the correct information). I have my share of vandalism clearing too, especially the article about Makati City (darn IP addresses vandalizing that page). If I were you, I would probably give them their final warning. And if those pests/trolls keep up with the vandalism, then it's high time to ban them from editing that article about you. From San Pablo City, good evening! --iaNLOPEZ1115 TaLKBaCK Vandalize it UBX 13:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikia's Annex and the IRS

It's been over a week snce this was first posted. A number of users said you and Mike Godwin are easily approachable. Has there been any official response yet or will there be?

The caveats used by the Annex may be used as a legitimate legal defense, but seeing how a similar argument didn't protect the Liberty dollar from getting raided, it's certainly plausible that the IRS may react in the same way. Even if you're in the right (which is certainly possible and arguable), they may go after Wikipedia even if there's the mere appearance of a tax shelter. "Guilt" isn't a necessity for investigation or prosecution to go forward -- only strong evidence of impropriety. That standard of proof wasn't met by you just being the CEO of Wikia and Wikipedia, but it is met by the creation of the Annex. See also the recent senate investigations into corrupt Christian ministries. With a Democratic Congress, too, they're certain to be pro-active about this kind of thing. Zenwhat (talk) 23:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I am also interested in a response to this, though I think the strongest complaint is that it's simply giving off far too strong an appearance of a conflict of interest. I believe that Wales has lamented many times about how the mainstream media often confuses Wikia, Inc. as a "for-profit arm" of Wikipedia. Wikia projects such as this Annex that overtly solicit both material and labor directly from the Wikipedia community cannot possibly be helping with Jimmy's stated desire to increase separation of the two entities, not union. - John Russ Finley (talk) 17:15, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I was wrong. The GFDL protects against this kind of thing, since Jimbo can't profit anymore than anybody else. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 05:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that you've come to an incorrect conclusion on the second go-around, Zen. I still would like the question answered (and Jimbo's decided silence is perhaps more telling than anything), given that there are matters like IRS Form 1023 (Section V, Lines 2a through 3b) to consider, as well as specific actions that Jimbo has taken in the past that would personally control exactly which off-Wikipedia GFDL sites may, or may not, re-use content from Wikipedia and/or deliver content to Wikipedia. I'd rather not get into specifics, but Jimbo probably knows which site I am talking about. Wikia Annex is indeed enjoying a privileged status vis-a-vis Wikipedia, which does indeed pose at least some threat to the Foundation's 501(c)(3) status. The Foundation itself would be wise to encourage Jimbo to transfer the activity of this particular Wikia to some other off-Wikipedia wiki that is not affiliated financially with Jimbo or any other key personnel of the Foundation. -- John Russ Finley (talk) 03:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The simplest solution is not to change hosts for Annex, but to change how it is stressed. Currently, the main issue is that the Annex is seen as the first port of call for moving content to. As I understand it, the IRS issue (and more importantly, the moral one) should vanish if editors are careful to state "An off-site GFDL wiki, such as (link to list)", rather than "Annex, or another off-site wiki". The list mentioned here would be what has been discussed about elsewhere - a sorted by content set of wikis, to allow proper and appropriate alternative homes for content to be easily found. LinaMishima (talk) 03:54, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Lieberman's question about what the government can do

I just saw your recent Senate committee testimony. (video) During the question period, Senator Lieberman asked you what the government can do to help Wikipedia and similar projects thrive. You went on an anecdotal spiel that didn't come close to answering that question. There's no way in hell I could have done any better. I get tongue-tied speaking before my city's parks and bicycle paths commission.

But I'm guessing that you'll be in a similar position in the future, so let me suggest that you might want to have some more fiscally-minded words at the ready. Next time, you might mention something about having to get by on shoestring budgets and unfunded project plans. Maybe even what a tiny fraction of any agency's budget it would take to insure development and successful delivery for years to come. J T Price (talk) 11:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree; we don't need the government's money. What we need is the Public Domain Enhancement Act, which would open up vast archives of free content that is only still copyrighted (or has the appearance of being copyrighted) because of legal technicalities and bureaucratic obscurity, and of which the purported owners have taken no interest in such content for decades.--Pharos (talk) 01:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Judging by how well the fundraiser did this year, being picky about where money comes from is probably a bad idea. The U.S. government still has more than the Foundation needs to meet all of its immediate goals. I agree that Public Domain Enhancement Act would be a great thing, but we can live without it. Money is a different story. J T Price (talk) 14:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not censorship.

Removing remarks from here or User talk:Jimbo Wales/Statements of support where people say, "It's sad about Wei, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T CENSOR WIKIPEDIA EITHER!" is not censorship. This is private property and it's not as if you're beating them to death, making such analogies spurious, and coming at you like that over someone's death is just tasteless and in clear violation of policy. I strongly support you remove such comments and don't think any reasonable person would object. One such user made comments here. I removed the personal attacks if that's OK with you. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 06:23, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Yup. And I think I will lock that page as an archive of a moment in time soon. No sense in having a simple little page about something that moved me become a home for trolling and vandalism.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I see in several places on the web where people have contrasted Jimbo's promotion of free speech with his rejection of changing Wikipedia from an encyclopedia project into a free speech forum; not taking into account that it is typical to promote that someone may do something without allowing them to do that thing anyplace or everyplace. I support free speech too; but don't write on my living room walls! WAS 4.250 (talk) 13:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

And more importantly, you don't claim that freedom of speech implies that you have the unquestioned right to be able to write on other people's living room walls. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Major BLP embaressment in the news media

Has led me to file:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Corey Delaney

After admins were unwilling to delete and recreate the article minus it's history. This involves a minor. I would have nuked the history myself, but I am not an admin, so had no recourse but this. Lawrence Cohen 14:23, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Update

Jimbo, I strongly ask that you weigh in here. This legal minor has been charged now with child pornography in Australia, making us keeping his name and AFD visible a BLP nightmare, and his name must be expunged from WP. Some are refusing. Please help. Lawrence Cohen 00:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

A further Update: The Wikipedia discussion has been reported upon in the Australian press, and so one can reasonably assume the page histories will be read. --Pleasantville (talk) 01:13, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If it will educate a few newbees how to read history of a wikipage then it is a good thing. Anyway the AFD is harmless, no need for the air strike here Alex Bakharev (talk) 02:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Use of photos

Hallo Jimbo Wales

Excuse me, but i'm italian and i don't talk english, but i hope you can understand that i write. i am an user and i write in it:wiki es:wiki and en:Wiki and i'm user of commons. i uploaded in commons many photos from italian navy website, but many administrators deleted my photos and they say that photos from italian navy website aren't Pd. I wrote to italian defense email address and an officer answered me that the photos from italian navy website are free and you can see at [9] and use of photos is allowed if the site italian Navy is mentioned, but an user before deleted the template PD-ITGov-Military-Navy and another user made a Deletion requests/Images from Italian Navy website. In the page of discussion this user says that i wrote is a personal attack. You can see all and i hope you can give your opinion. You can give your opinion in commons and it:wiki too.

Thank you

Greetings--Gaetano56 (talk) 16:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I would use commons:Template:Copyrighted free use provided that for commons and {{Copyrighted free use provided that}} here. There might be needed to clear the question if the Italian Navy allow to modify the images as this right is sometimes seen as a different from the right to simply use the images Alex Bakharev (talk) 02:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review of Dr. Eli Todd

Hello Jimbo,

I have recently written an article entitled Dr. Eli Todd. I listed this article for peer review because I wanted a general consensus of other people's criticisms and comments. I would want any reviewer to especially focus on expanding the Introduction, making the section called Later personal life flow better, and to help expand the conclusion. I also wanted to receive a broader perspective on how this article may be improved. I am not offended by any criticism and open to anybody's thoughts. However, I have heard that the Peer Review on Wikipedia is "Dead" and even if it is not, I can see how it would take a very long time for every article nominated for peer review to get an in depth review by many Wikipedians that would greatly enhance the article as much as needed when the list of articles nominated for peer review is so long.

I therefore decided to contact a random admin and ask them to review my article, but I could not decide which one out of the long list of admins would be the best reviewer and improve Dr. Eli Todd the most. I decided to ask you as I thought you may know most of the admins and their abilities the best. I was wondering whether you could recommend an admin to review Dr. Eli Todd or if you aren't too busy, to read over it yourself. That would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading--Eli Todd (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Admins have no extra abilities in reading over articles. Any user can review articles, you don't need to be an admin to read and review an article. Metros (talk) 23:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jimbo - Question.

Mathematically, all edits done on Wikipedia ever will be impossible to be stored at some point in the future. How is the Foundation going to deal with that?. Thanks. --Damifb (talk) 16:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Space is cheep. At seven letters per word, a 300 GB hard drive that costs around $70 US can hold 45 billion words, which equals to 6.9 million words “per penny”. I don't think that the foundation will run into this problem anytime in the foreseeable future. Jon513 (talk) 22:21, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

And the price is getting cheaper every year, see Moore's law. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:20, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Moore's law refers to transistors on a microchip, but point taken. However, the physics involved means that density of anything (storage, transistors, etc) is going to eventually hit a wall. —Random832 19:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Local, Search, and the sustainability stuff

I'm watching Wikia's Local and Search sites with great interest, and also the social networking aspects. I've often thought about a wiki that would help people to connect locally - e.g. search for geeks in Kuala Lumpur, yogis in Alexandria, or people in Sydney's inner west who are into green technology... a bit like WiserEarth but unlimited in scope. I don't know if that's part of the idea with Local.Wikia, but it'll be interesting to see how it evolves.

Would also love to see a less spammy version of Facebook. Here's hoping Local and Search both take off.

I'm also emailing you about the sustainability wiki stuff that we talked about. --Chriswaterguy talk 01:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure that 30 or so years down the line, old edit histories might finally be removed :) --Gigitrix (talk) 18:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:Don't give up hope

Recently, User:JzG and User:ScienceApologist both quit. Both were very good editors. A great editor I've worked with on monetary theory, User:Gregalton, has also expressed that he's considering quitting.

So, a policy proposal:

Wikipedia:Village pump#Policy proposal: Don't give up hope.

☯  Zenwhat (talk) 07:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

User:JzG is not retired, but rather "tired". He is still contributing extensively to the project. - John Russ Finley (talk) 14:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Re:Status Bot

I just find it neat. I think it's a way for your peers/friends/people you're having a conversation with to see if you're online. I really like it. There are a few ways to have it on your page like me, I just have it in the middle. A friend of mine his it in the top right and just says your status. --HPJoker ^{Leave me a message} 03:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikia Search

I just did my first Wikia Search. Wikia Search It works great considering it is just getting started. 63.3.15.1 (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Might be a good idea to remove this section, as Wikipedia's User space is not supposed to be used to advertise or promote a private, commercial venture. To quote, "Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Examples of unrelated content include: Advertising or promotion of a business or non-Wikipedia-related organization (such as purely commercial sites or referral links)" - John Russ Finley (talk) 14:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally there's leeway for users who spend a substantial amount of time working on the encyclopedia. (OTOH, how many mainspace edits does Jimbo have in the last six months?) —Random832 16:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Enough, anyway it wasn't Jimbo who added the link. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Is anyone else alarmed that a poignant commentary on this thread was just removed by an administrator, the user was banned, and his GFDL image that contained no external link was deleted from Commons? The Wikipedia administration is really making this worse for the appearance of Wikia-Wikipedia conflict of interest. I have been a productive contributor since March 2006. Will I now be banned for objecting to the admin User:Metros' unjustified actions? - John Russ Finley (talk) 14:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The user wasn't banned, he was blocked. He was blocked for having a user name that is too similar to another user. He was also blocked for spamming. His image was nothing but spamming. Metros (talk) 15:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the image was WP:POINT; not spamming as such. —Random832 19:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Well considering the image was called "Wikia At Ad (300x250).jpg" I think that the intent was to advertise (hence the "ad" in the title). Metros (talk) 19:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

And what is the intent of anonymous IP 63.3.15.1 (with many unproductive contributions to the Wikipedia project) spamming Jimbo's talk page with a link to Jimbo's for-profit enterprise? I really just don't understand this community. Have any of you taken any time to learn more about financial conflicts of interest among the trustees of non-profit organizations? Why do you think the IRS has a Section V on its Form 1023? Also, if the difference between an "indefinite block" and a "ban" is that no other admin is willing to lift the block, then I think we can call SqweekBocks' block a "ban". Or, is there an admin willing to lift the "block"? - John Russ Finley (talk) 21:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You guys have got it seriously mixed up with all this conflict of interest nonsense. Jimbo hasn't made any edits at all since this post, so there's no indication he has even seen it, let alone made a conscious decision to keep the link on his talk page. So does the poster have a financial interest in Wikia? Unlikely. Either this is a rather successful troll for complaints about conflicts or interest, or it was a good faith comment (or perhaps an attempt at being ironic giving the search's current misgivings) that the user thought Jimbo should receive.

The only aspect of this that should be an issue is the fact that using the user talk pages for talking about anything unrelated to Wikimedia projects goes against the project guidelines, and that the fact it is about anybody's commercial interest make it more important. So either let's delete this sorry afair or ignore it and see if Jimbo wants to thank the anonymous user for his kind words which stirred up this little storm-in-a-teacup. If nobody voices an objection, I'd go for deletion. BigBlueFish (talk) 01:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I would say that the crux of the problem is actually a multiple set of problems that are together pointing to danger. At one time, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees was run with 3 out of the 5 people being principals of Wikia, Inc. They didn't fully disclose this on the WMF's Form 990 to the IRS, and Jimbo on his own User page calls them "completely separate" organizations, even though he wears Wikia shirts to Wikimania conferences, for example. Furthermore, there was a flap two months ago about "private" (some called them "secret") mailing lists being hosted on Wikia servers, where Wikipedia admins would discuss the suspicious behavior of Wikipedia editors and consider the potential for blocking them (even as they turn out to be innocent, highly productive contributors to the project). Then, we have the Annex Wikia that lists as its objective to make a home for content that the Wikipedia community deems unsuitable for Wikipedia (but would be welcomed on a site that hosts advertising that pays the Chairman Emeritus of the WMF, the head of the WMF Advisory Board, and the former Treasurer of the WMF). If this is still not clear as a problem to anyone, I again suggest a closer reading of the IRS' Section V of Form 1023. It asks about business relationships and transactions that could indicate impermissible private benefit. It asks the applicant to disclose transactions with "related parties". If you don't think that Annex Wikia interacting with the Wikipedia community in this way is not a transaction of related parties that has the potential of leading to self-dealing, then you must have a dark sack over your head. - John Russ Finley (talk) 06:23, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Contributions

Is it true that the contributions of each users will be kept forever? D@rk ^talk 21:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It depends on one's definition of forever but unless wikipedia shuts down it is likely that they will remain for the rest of our lives (assuming we live normal and not greatly drug-extended lifespans). Thanks, SqueakBox 22:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Or greatly reduced because we spend our time hunched over a computer. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 00:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Slim, you need to move your monitor higher up, well lots of people do (that's you too Jimbo), back straight and the screen should be directly in front of the eyes. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't see the keyboard from up here. What do you have against hunt-and-peck typists? MilesAgain (talk) 16:47, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I recommend editing while in a reclined position, such as while in bed. Sitting upright is too much effort. WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll go with the reclined vote, I have a zero-g chair and it's fan-freaking-tastic. Dureo (talk) 06:40, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Virginity

Well, I've lost another aspect of my German Wikipedia virginity, by creating an actual (stub) article over there: [10]. But ignore this silly comment (unless you don't ignore it, of course). Michael Hardy (talk) 16:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there any point of telling Jimbo and the world this? ACBestDog and Bone 16:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It merely continues an earlier conversation, now archived. But it's not of great moment. The earlier conversation had a point. But you can't see that any more unless you look at earlier versions of this page. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Alo, Michael is a friend of mine from pre-Wikipedia days. Not everything having to do with me is really a public thing. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, sorry Jimbo! ACBestDog and Bone 19:03, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

YOU ARE AWESOME

I hope this is not an inapropriate place to put this, but I want to say: Without you, there would be no Wikipedia. And without Wikipedia, everyone would be dumb! Paul Italiano (talk) 23:56, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Such a preposterous statement, one wonders if he's trolling for the backlash. - John Russ Finley (talk) 06:24, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sadly, I doubt he is.  :-) Jimbo has more groupies than Led Zeppelin ever did. Except Led Zeppelin probably had less nerds and men for groupies. (the word nerd is used lovingly here, as in, "what's up mah' nerd?") daveh4h 09:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Argumentum ad Jimbonem

I dislike people interpreting away on your intentions. Now I just did that. Oops. Could you hit me with a cluestick if my hermeneutics on your intentions went too far at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Worked on the part about objectivity., notably the second paragraph of this edit: [11]? Thanks! --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

On the topic of east Europeans and draconian sanctions

Hi Jimbo,

recall your email exchange you had in February, 2004, where you asked whether the internal squabbling was getting worse, whether the mediation/arbitration system was working and what could be done to build a sense of love and harmony. One wise contributor Caroline responded: "We still have a geographical bias, partly but not soley due to the different levels of internet access amongst different communities and countries. As this divide narrows we will get more contributors who disagree with the current consensus on various articles. Most articles on countries and political movements have not been edited by people from the relevant country. If we sometimes have trouble getting Wikilove between the US and UK then it will probably get worse as net access improves in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, for example." [12]

So how has Wikipedia coped in the intervening years with the arrival of contributors from eastern Europe editing articles about their own countries? Not very well I am sad to say. It is rather unfortunate that a certain sector of established editors and admins have reacted adversely to this influx of new editors who have challenged their established notions. Their response has been to characterise these newcomers as "nationalist POV-pushers", for example [13], regardless of the fact that these multi-lingual east Europeans may actually know more about their own country's history than many of these mostly US based editors could imagine. In fact one admin even characterises this influx of contributors as a "plague" (User:Moreschi/The Plague) that must be eradicated in the most draconian manner.

This intolerant attitude by an established sector against these newcomers is driving these newcomers away. These people, who have much potential to contribute in east European topics due to their intimate local knowledge and language skills, are essentially being vilified for the fact of their east European origin and their sincere intellectual effort is dismissed as "axe-grinding" without any further thought [14]. Their departure is a far greater loss to Wikipedia than any alleged disruption these established editors and admins believe they are fighting against.

Case in point. We had a number of new editors from the former Soviet Union country of Estonia who joined the project mid year and who greatly expanded Wikiproject Estonia and contributed to a variety of articles concerning Estonia. They also challenged the established concensus through articles like Occupation of Baltic states. Add into the mix around the same time in May of 2007, the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn incident occurred where a monument to the Red Army was moved from downtown Tallinn to a military cemetary. As you may be aware, rioting among young Russians broke out in Tallinn and Estonia was also subjected to severe cyber attacks apparently orchestrated within the Russophone blogosphere. This conflict appeared to have also spread into Wikipedia with a number of established editors conflicting with these new Estonian editors. The result was significant disruption to almost exclusively Estonian articles which these Estonians either created or greatly expanded, ranging from Estonia-Russia relations to country specific articles such as Estophilia (which btw was initially speedy deleted by an admin who believed it was WP:POINT creation as a part of this conflict), Monument of Lihula, Jüri Uluots, Lydia Koidula, Estonian Government in Exile, Rein Lang, Erna Raid, etc. Given that many admins seem to believe in the "nationalist plague" view, these Estonian editors on balance seemed to have come off worst in terms of blocks. In one extreme case an Estonian editor was blocked for one week for the nominal reason of reverting the article Anti-Estonian_sentiment one single time, while extensive page move disruption of Soviet occupation by an established editor earned a mere 30 minute block.

Anyway, all this culminated in a case being brought to ArbCom Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren, where the complainant wanted ArbCom to initially investigate all Estonian editors. The outcome of this case was User:Digwuren and User:Petri Krohn banned for a year. The justification for this remedy was this particular finding of fact "In cases where all reasonable attempts to control the spread of disruption arising from long-term disputes have failed, the Committee may be forced to adopt seemingly draconian measures as a last resort for preventing further damage to the encyclopedia." Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Digwuren#At_wit.27s_end. However there were no reasonable attempts made in the case of User:Digwuren. Mediation or a RFC/U, which is is customarily required before taking a case to ArbCom, was never under taken first.

While ArbCom may have became increasingly frustrated at the numerous cases before them concerning Eastern Europe, including:

• Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Ghirlandajo
• User:Durova/Mediation
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus-Ghirla
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Molobo
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Irpen
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Halibutt
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Irpen

it must be noted these cases were primarily between Russian and Polish editors (hence the east European tag). This conflict came to a head in Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus, the outcome being a general amnesty for those participants. Given that these Estonian newcomers who arrived around May 2007 were not a party to these earlier cases and hence had no knowledge or participation in this past disruption, it was assumed that this amnesty would also be extended to them too [15]. However these Estonians appear to have carried the brunt of ArbCom's frustration and resultant draconian measures, in other words they were collaterally damaged by an earlier conflict not of their making. In essence, User:Digwuren was banned for a year for defending articles about his own country, which he either created or significantly expanded.

Let's not throw the baby (these new editors) out with the bath water (disruptive practices). With a country of only 1.4 million, the demographic of university educated Estonians is already small, the demographic of university educated fluent english speaking Estonians willing to contribute to Wikipedia is tiny. Due to this hostile environment against any east European who may challenge the comfortable concensus acheived by established editors mostly based outside Europe (i.e. USA), we have seen the exit of:

1. User:Constanz [16],
2. User:3 Löwi [17],
3. User:Erik Jesse [18],
4. User:Klamber [19], the departure of
5. User:Sander_Säde [20], who was instrumental in getting Wikipedia:WikiProject_Estonia off the ground as Project_Estonia coordinator, and finally
6. User:Termer [21], who was the driving force behind the establishment of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Baltic states military history task force.

In addition several others like User:Alexia_Death have reduced their involvement considerably. Without this core group of enthusiasts putting energy and vitality into WikiProject_Estonia, it is essentially dead, with now only a minimal amount of house keeping edits now being done by people without the background, language skills or interest needed to create and further expand Estonia related articles.

I don't know how to fix this apparent systematic bias, dare I say xenophobia, against east European editors that seems to held by a section of established editors and admins within Wikipedia. Perhaps you could reflect on Caroline's words form 2004 and think about how best Wikipedia could end throwing the babies out with the bath water. If you believe that Wikipedia is enriched by the inclusion contributors from other communities and countries, perhaps you could encourage ArbCom to look favorably at the proposals here: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Digwuren#Requested_motions_to_.2FDigwuren, maybe some of this damage can be undone and these editors may be encouraged to return. Martintg (talk) 02:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm gone now too for all practical uses. I will not let our history get distorted again beyond belief as it was when I joined and I fully expect harsh times even with this little involvement. But I will not put more into this project. Giving and only receiving abuse is not worth more. Ive tried to make proposals to break the cycle of power, they have gone unheeded because those that have it will not give any of it up. I wrote it on my userpage the day my final disillusionment came and now I repeat it here.

Wikipedia is said to be a libertarian anarchy. It no longer is because the liberties are going away one by one. Now its just an anarchy with ever-changing rules on what you are not allowed to do interpreted at seen fit by admins. Where are the liberties? Policies that state what are my rights? They do not exist because on Wikipedia you have NONE. You are at the mercy of the admins interpretation of the rules. If expressing an opinion countering the ruling clique or an admin in your own user space earns you a block and a gag, then things are much worse than I suspected.

See also: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Daniel_Case

All in all the whole experience has been depressing. Just like you don't want to know exactly what goes into your sausages, you don't wish to know how Wikipedia is made and how much of what goes into it is actually meat over the odd bits of beast not presentable enough to go anywhere else. You just cant ever look at a sausage the same way once you do...

--Alexia Death the Grey (talk) 18:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I have one last proposal to add to this. Make adminship available to anyone who gives up their real life identity. Who state clearly who they are and can be validated to tell the truth like Sander, who now has left due to anonymous trolls. Admins would thus be responsible for their actions as people and wont be able to hide in their decisions behind the safety of anonymity... Give these users more credit and right than the anonymous ones and there may be hope still. Tarnishing ones name is a strong motive to keep honest.--Alexia Death the Grey (talk) 18:59, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hear, hear, on your last suggestion. Anonymous people always do nastier things, which is why so many IP vandals exist. Even making people pick an anon user name makes them more responsible! Also nastier, are people who have little fear of being held responsible for petty viciousness, which the average admin does not (not really-- have you ever seen anybody get desysoped for an indefinite block which wasn't justified?). As to your suggestion about a Bill of Rights, it's an old one in other contexts. The first thing the English wanted after their revolution in the 17th century was a Bill of Rights for the common citizen (in wikispeak that would be the common nameuser). When the Americans had their own revolution a century later, they wanted a Bill of Rights because the English had one. A bill of rights protects the lowest of the low against those in authority. In medicine, we have a Patient Bill of Rights. Nothing of the sort exists on Wikipedia. About all you get is the "right" (if you can figure out how to do it) to petition the Lord High Appeals Court for clemency, if you get zapped by the cops. That's no way to run any organization. SBHarris 00:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Before today, I have had no interaction with Alexia Death so I comment solely on her ideas and not her editing character or behaviour: her ideas are intriguing and thought provoking and I recommend them to Wikipedians with an open mind who are interested in improving our project:

User:Alexia Death/Community Court for community issues

User:Alexia Death/Accusations of collaboration: 3RR hurts Wikipedia

Alice^✉ 08:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Following on from User:Alexia_Death's essay on 3RR mentioned by Alice above, I've added a proposal to the Village Pump here: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#A_better_3RR_policy. Martintg (talk) 23:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I dont feel there is very much love and harmony going on, if any. This says alot right here Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Vintei/shop Sirkad_talk 05:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

"(if you can figure out how to do it)" as mentioned by Sbharris sums up your rights within Wikipedia. I come from the UK rather than Eastern Europe, but I found that all it took was to be labelled a "vandal only account" by one arrogant admin, and I was doomed. There was no way I could figure out where or how I was meant to appeal, and it eventually lead to a life ban. Personally I believe the whole Wiki project is a great idea, and morally I don't feel the ban was in any way justified, so I carry on contributing via an IP address. But you've got to realise you've created a "community" somewhat akin to any fascist state - most of the dirty work is conducted by a group of narrow minded admins, with little or no accountability for their actions, with an appeals system which is entirely inaccessible except to those whose want to use it as a stick to beat you with. There would be far less need to go round awarding each other smilies and barnstars (surely the most childish way to spread WikiLove - why not just encourage a polite (and adult) "thank you" where necessary?) if the entire project wasn't built upon a foundation of suspicion, officiousness and WikiHate. --91.104.41.177 (talk) 01:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a great technical achievement, but more thought must be given to the human/organisational aspects of running an encyclopedia. Requiring admins to give up their anonymity would be a step in the right direction. Martintg (talk) 02:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems you have all misunderstood my statement above. I don't think admins should be forced to give up anonymity, I don't think anybody should. I said that anybody who does should be eligible for admin rights(you know, with the rights everybody used to have...) without vote.

Also, the talk about preserving ones anonymity... Its tall tales and sugar dreams, If you are in a content dispute you can bet on it that you wont be allowed to keep it. I would have been blocked not long into my membership as a sock and so would have been Sander Säde, if we had not chosen to reveal much more about us than we ever intended, by a simple check user process. Accusation of being someones sock is fast and dirty way of either getting a content opponent blocked or banned.

There must be tons of new users gone this way and let me tell you, its rather insulting to be declared a non-individual. There must be rights granted to common name users and given a path to file a complaint against and admin that cannot be gagged and will be acted up on by a neutral party. Nobody should be promptly permanently banned based on solely sock accusations to a known troll. And the list goes on. A change is needed to mend things.

Sigh... None of it would not even be an issue without 3RR. 3RR is where it all starts to run wrong. Consensus or content polices no longer matter, the one with the biggest gang wins. Admin elections suffer from this phenomena too. I doubt any admin can say that they have the support of even 10th of community. Its too large for this. So there are two ways of making an improvement. Make removal of admin privileges very much simpler(complaint threshold+jury duty by common users) or devaluate adminship by giving it to anybody who asks it under their real name and has some Wiki experience to show. The name may be only known to the Foundation, but it must be verified.--Alexia Death the Grey (talk) 21:42, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Here's one more idea for you: An admin is somebody that has an "admin contract" that sets some rather clear and rights granting boundaries to admin action. This contract is signed by the admin and protected. This contract has an extra where all complaints against an admin can be filed. The complaint list has an edit limit before a higher party must review the complaints, remove patently false ones and if enough is left take the matter for community to decide on notifying all that have filed complaints. The result of this is a decision if a breach of contract has occurred. If it has then the rights are removed without a chance of getting them back.--Alexia Death the Grey (talk) 22:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a recipe for limiting the power of admins to act as they see fit without getting paranoid while increasing the power of disgruntled non-admins. so it sounds like a bad idea to me. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Then apparently you are an admin. Having to account to nobody in exercising power is a recipe for a police state. Is that any better? --Alexia Death the Grey (talk) 05:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually Squeakbox is a very long term ordinary editor with a remarkable talent for being bold.

Trying to depersonalise this a little, the country where Squeakbox originates from has no written bill of rights or constitution but regards it as important that policemen are able to be identified by the numbers on their shoulders; that seems to jive with your ideas on identifying admins outlined above... Alice^✉ 08:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I think Martintg is right that edit warring and conflicts in wikipedia are on the rise, which forces many good people to leave the project. This problem might be addressed by focusing on this encyclopedia content, rather than on people's personal problems. Perhaps we need an editorial board that would deal with content disputes, unlike ArbCom that deals with behavior problems. To be efficient, this board would reply to only one specific type of question: "should a disputed segment of text remain in article X as sufficiently sourced and relevant?". Two sides would simply provide a disputed segment of text and their very brief arguments. Any person from the editorial board could take a look and just tell quickly: "please leave it there", or "delete it" (or else modify the disputed segment himself), without any voting and negotiations/arguments of the sides. Perhaps this member of editorial board should not be from Russia or Estonia if he judges an article about Russia-Estonia relations. Then, vast majority of disputes would be resolved immediately. That would be much better and easier than eviction of good and productive users, such as in the Digwuren case, when all sides were disappointed with the ArbCom decision, and perhaps some clemency is needed: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Digwuren#Requested_motions_to_.2FDigwuren.Biophys (talk) 03:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Another excellent idea for improving our encyclopedia and reducing editor stress.

Is there a page on Wikipedia where all these suggestions are collected together? Alice^✉ 14:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not really know. My point is very simple. Some people spend may be 50% lot of their time arguing with others or in "conflict resolutions", instead of productive editing. How to make their work more efficient? The existing "Conflict resolution procedures" are extremely time-consuming. Instead of looking for an impossible reconcilation with another person who holds an opposite view, I would prefer an impartial person (who thinks about WP benefits and good content rather than anything else) just take a look and decide what is the best. I think we have to sacrify some democracy here for the sake of efficiency and articles quality. I think we actually need some draconian measures, but with respect to the content, not people. We suffer from too much anarchy. An editorial board must control production of any good encyclopedia.Biophys (talk) 20:20, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello, since the issues have been brought all the way to this talk page, and I see my username mentioned, I guess it’s not going to hurt in case I’d throw my few cents in here even though it most likely is not going to make any difference and it’s going to be buried in the archive soon. The reasons I’ve chosen to withdraw from WP:
First of all, I don’t think there is anything wrong with the written policies. And therefore all those suggestions above are not going to make a difference I think. WP:Five pillars as the constitution would do just fine in case the rules were followed and enforced. Most notably the WP:NPOV, if it was respected the way it has been laid out : The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly, It means citing verifiable, authoritative sources whenever possible, especially on controversial topics and everything would work just fine. Everybody would just feel free to add whatever viewpoint they might like to pick and cite from verifiable, authoritative sources side by side and it would be the end of the content dispute. The problem is, the consensus building on WP is not based on the WP:NPOV policy and citing verifiable, authoritative sources but it’s enough to have one guy who can take a position "I don’t like it" and is free to spam articles with the totally-disputed tags thereafter, and start a content dispute based on his/her opinion without bothering to put any effort into improving an article according to the viewpoint he/she might support or referring to any sources to back up the opinion whatsoever. Also, as it has became evident, it’s tolerated to back up such opinions with ethnic epithets instead and in case some editors might think this kind of arguments are way out of line, they actually end up getting warnings of incivility by themselves. So, I’m sorry, I just can’t take it seriously how the project is governed. In case in the future there might be a chance that the rules of WP, the five pillars are going to be followed and enforced without exceptions and applied to everybody the same way, not according to who is my friend or not etc. I’d be gladly willing to participate in the project as long as playing by the rules is going to be the name of the game, instead of the project being ruled by editorial and administrative opinions, that is the status quo for the way it's been run in my opinion. And sorry but that’s just not going to work for me.Thanks!--User:Termer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.168.108.240 (talk) 05:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

As someone who lived in the Soviet Union, I must admit: this is a typical political repression and censorship that must be stopped immediately. Welcome to Glavlit Web 2.0! Not surprisngly, people from the former Soviet "socialism camp" are running.Biophys (talk) 22:57, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It is no coincidence that many of the blocks issued by admins were given in response to editors disputing the earlier actions of admins as being overly arbitrary. There needs to be a balance struck between giving editors free rein to express themselves and admins imposing sanctions. I applaud the approach taken by ArbCom in Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles/Proposed_decision. Hopefully the Working Group that will be formed as a result, will come up with a solution. I think the last thing we all want is for Wikipedia to gain the dubious distinction of becoming the world's first cyber orwellian regime. Martintg (talk) 23:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I do agree that Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles/Proposed_decision was handled by ArbCom much better. It very narrowly defines the subject of an editorial conflict, instead of punishing all editors on the Eastern European subjects, "broadly defined". Main question however is how well the remedy works in practice. I simply do not think that all these warnings have been properly issued, after looking at the edits histories and arguments of the sides. This negatively affected all work in the "Eastern European" sector, a result that should be avoided.Biophys (talk) 20:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Mzoli's

Do you still have those photos of Mzoli's you said you had in September? I haven't seen it but I'm not sure the current picture is the clearest of views. BigBlueFish (talk) 17:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Along the same line, have you come across any new sources we could use? (That is, sources about the restaurant, not stuff like this.) Zagalejo^^^ 23:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Eastern Europe getting botched

Jimmy, what do you think of this map of Eastern Europe? Furthermore, which article about the Music of Eastern Europe do you prefer? The version of the article from March 2005, or the version from January 2008? I thought that Wikipedia is constantly improving. These examples have been discussed extensively on a site that more than a few Wikipedians have dismissed, labeling those sites as "full of banned trolls." These lousy examples of scholarship -- signaled on a site critical of Wikipedia -- have remained untouched for weeks, if not years. Is this failure to address problems brought to light on "bad" sites part of the WP:DENY campaign? - John Russ Finley (talk) 00:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• • No, I think it is rather that no one has noticed the debates on that site who also felt qualified to improve the article. The article does suck, there's no denying that. But I am not sure what else you want me to say. Some articles in Wikipedia need attention to be brought up to our usual standards? Yes, of course.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
• It is a very strange map. I do not understand what orange color is suppose to mean, probably Commonwealth of Independent States, but while Crimea is not the same color as the rest of Ukraine and Kaliningrad Oblast is not the same color as Russia is beyond me. Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I agree. Surely we have another map of Eastern Europe somewhere. But it is unclear to me whether this article even addresses a cognizable topic.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Five maps and six definitions in Eastern Europe (all of which disagree btw), but Music of Eastern Europe is just as much as an unsourced OR-fest in 2008 as it was in 2005. Boowah59 (talk) 08:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Glad to see it being addressed finally. I'll be keeping my eye on that "bad" site. It's been awfully useful in pointing out some glaring flaws with Wikipedia, another of which I'll comment about below. - John Russ Finley (talk) 02:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Africa wiki projects

Just to let you know in case you are interested we've set up around 50 Category:WikiProject Africa projects to beginning assessing African articles by country towards developing the encyclopedia in the areas which we talked about previously. This a big step towards organizing a vastly undeveloped part of the project and to build upon this by increasing the coverage of articles and content by each of the countries. At present membership of these groups needs to increase but it is the organization benefits of it I feel are necessary. I hope you are pleased with these developments and appreciate the work done here. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 18:47, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello

Wie geht es Ihnen? I saw that you had the language template on your page as I was browsing through users' pages and decided to stop in and say hi. I am learning German also, but I really want to learn Romanian too. Bis spaeter! Entbark (talk) 22:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Whoa...

Comment: You REALLY have a busy life. --Drahcir ^{my talk} 02:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Admins who blindly delete images

Sorry to post here, but not sure where to post this. There is a major problem with images being deleted that are being used properly but lack some technical detail, usually relating to the fair use rationale then can usually be easily fixed. BetacommandBot tags images by the 1,000's with a 7 day warning, the some administrator come by after 7 days and blindly delete the image. This just does not seem the best practice for Wikipedia to be doing to simply meet a techincal rule. Is there anything that can be done about this. There is just no way to keep up with BetacommandBot and fix the needed FUR's before the 7day warning tag expires. As an example see Image:All Eternity.jpg used in article All Eternity deleted by User:Maxim. As an example see the following log entries http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&limit=250&offset=750&type=&user=Maxim&page=&pattern= No one can delete 250 images in 5 minutes and claim to have actually looked at the image before deleting it. Dbiel ^(Talk) 05:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the answer is actually the astounding rate at which images which are not freely licensed for use on wikipedia are uploaded. I'm not an expert in this area but my impression is that loading an image without doing the reference work of citing who owns it and that wikipedia can freely use it is the same as writing something that is controversial without providing a source. This is an encyclopedia, not a repository for every thought and image. It may be frustrating but it is better to learn how to take a few extra steps to ensure an image is sourced correctly if the image is to have a future here. Benjiboi 10:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Many of these images were uploaded over a year ago before the rules changed and are now being tagged on technicalities that can easily be fixed but end up getting deleted because of the tag. Dbiel ^(Talk) 12:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually these rules have been in place for over a year and a half, they just were not robot enforced. Like I have stated other places Dbiel you dont know the whole story. Maxim does check every image. he spends ~ 2 hours prior to each group of deletions reviewing the images. Dbiel you have had 6 months to fix these older images, and very little has been done, so stop forum shopping and start following our policy. β^_command 14:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If that's the case then I recommend you (briefly) state your concern at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and ask for assistance to where the issue can be brought up as you feel images are wrongly being deleted without due process as the rules changed and the pre-change images should be treated with the rule change in mind. Benjiboi 12:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If there is a specific image you think you can fix so it will meet all the rules, just ask the deleting admin. Mr.Z-man 17:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, as to deletion speed, you are assuming that the admin started working immediately prior to the deletions. If I'm deleting a large batch of images, its much easier to check them all beforehand and then delete them all at once. Mr.Z-man 22:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I am so tired

So tired of fighting the IP editors. So tired of fighting the trolls, sockpuppets and the kiddies. I've been doing it for over 2 years now.

I only edit a few articles. Only passionate about one. Anyone who watches a cartoon article on Wikipedia is promised a lot of strife.

Do you really want an encyclopedia, or a virtual reality show? Sometimes, you have the former, but more often, you have the latter.

Do you have any idea how Wikipedia is perceived in the real world? It's not good.

I am very tired. Fighting the "fancruft/speculation/pure out and out lies" etc. Reporting vandals on the proper page, and nothing is done about them. Continuing strife among admins about what is policy and what isn't. Shouldn't policy be written in stone? Why are admins fighting about it?

The admins can't do everything. We low level editors do a lot, but we can't persevere without help from above. We need help to help maintain Wikipedia as described. We need admins who are quick to recognize vandalism and act against it. We need admins who are approachable and will listen to reason. Many admins pass but they are only robots, because the regimen they were put through favored robots. Some don't seem capable of making human decisions.

If you lose me, you lose a passionate editor. I may only edit a few pages, but I edit them passionately. I'm about to quit. I get little support from the community. I am also sick of BetaCommandBot, who is running wild deleting images left and right, and no real human has a say against it. It's creator does not respond. Why are users allowed to create bots who are immune from the normal discussion cycle? -- Elaich ^talk 07:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

My friend, it sound like you are in bad need of a Wikibreak or at the very least a change in scenery. Don't worry; we'll hold down the fort until you get back :) --jonny-mt 08:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I want o encourage you to also make use of the tools of protection and templates. Templates should be used to kindly and quickly to warn users you revert, essentially that vandalism, even that harmless stuff, is bad and makes wikipedia worse. This will help document problem vandals that can be blocked of they don't reform their ways. Article protection is good to block anon vandals if daily vandalism gets out of hand. It's a lot more work but the best way, IMHO, to curb vandalism is better articles, if they are distracted by a good read they seem to get sidetracked to another article and they might learn something as well. Benjiboi 10:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Keep up the good work! Thanks for being a Wikipedian. 63.3.15.129 (talk) 17:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Mzoli's

Do you still have those photos of Mzoli's you said you had in September? I haven't seen it but I'm not sure the current picture is the clearest of views. BigBlueFish (talk) 17:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Along the same line, have you come across any new sources we could use? (That is, sources about the restaurant, not stuff like this.) Zagalejo^^^ 23:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Reviving prematurely archived thread. BigBlueFish (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Television Episode Debate

I've hesitated to do so, but since this issue is so colossal and growing, I'm now bringing it here because we need wider input and more involvement from the community as well as you. The results from the discussion will impact a significant division of encyclopedic topics and is directly related to the kernel of Wikipedia: articles. As some of the readers of this page may be aware, over the past months, TV episodes have been redirected and/or deleted by (to name a couple) TTN, Eusebeus and other editors. No centralized discussion has taken place nor has community input been asked. The issue has grown from a small handful of edit wars to countless edit wars, numerous AfD's, numerous AfC's [22] and [23] (just to name two), An arbcom case taking place [24], another Arbcom case here [25] (this is the second one on this specific topic), a Mediation Cabal [26] an Administrator Noticeboard [27], an Administrator Noticeboard Watchlist [28], a watchlist discussion [29], and (some) discussions taking place at [30], [31], [32], [33] and [34], [35], and lastly [36], (see also a few RfC's [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42]). And, sadly, the issue has even made it to youtube (see centralized discussion). The centralized discussion will provide some an explanation, the views and current a discussion on the issue as well as this arbitration case. The outcome of this decides the inclusion or removal of thousands of articles on Wikipedia; it is believed to be the determinant factor in policy/guideline reestablishment and redefinition of notability concept. It is pertinent that you please provide your input in/on this matter. --Maniwar (talk) 16:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Please Allow Me to Edit My User Page

Dear Jimbo, your rogue admins continue their tyrannical notions of justice; as of late, despite not being banned, I am not even allowed to edit my own user page -- please lend your wise assistance. -- User:Lir —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.116.254.61 (talk) 16:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

This is an IP stating that they are Lir. I have twice asked them to log in once to confirm identity but so far they have failed to do so. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 16:26, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If they can't edit their user page, how can they prove that they have logged in? MilesAgain (talk) 20:14, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The page is semiprotected. If they log in the will be able to edit it. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 20:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Lir has provided proof by email that the IP is him so I unblocked the anon account. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 06:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Longest-running hoax on Wikipedia discovered: Brahmanical See

Brahmanical See claimed there is a Pope in Hinduism. The article existed for roughly 3½ years, about a full year longer than the last hoax. (See User:Shii/Hoaxes)

The user who initially noticed this was hesitant to delete nonsense, like a lot of Wikipedia editors, and he was going to wait a little while to put up the AfD tag. I saw this nonsense, said to myself, "No, this needs to be removed right now."

So, I slapped up the AfD tag and in a couple of days, it vanished. I hope WP:ARS isn't upset. There wasn't a full five days, so some Rouge admin invoking WP:IAR (which apparently never applies, see WP:WIARM and WP:WIARRM) must have violated Wikipedia policy! ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 20:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

There was no policy violation, the page was nonsense and it was deleted under the criteria for speedy deletion, it should have been tagged for CSD in the first place, AFD isn't supposed to be used in case of blantant hoaxes. - Caribbean~H.Q. 20:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The policy page you cite states, "nonsense ... does not include ... hoaxes of any sort...." However, I believe that WP:IAR would certainly apply to allow deletion of such a blatant hoax. MilesAgain (talk) 20:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, also WP:SNOW certainly applied to the AfD. MilesAgain (talk) 20:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, "blatant hoax," is an objective concept, but because users are free to not be objective and the existence of the Inclusionist Mafia, even if something is, in fact, a blatant hoax, unless it's "blatantly blatant," speedy deletion might not necessarily work and you occasionally may need to "build consensus" towards common sense. This can be seen from the list of hoaxes above: The ones at the bottom are more and more blatant. In fact, some of the hoaxes that are deleted on a regular basis are so blatant that they aren't even listed, because they're deleted in a matter of minutes or hours.

Miles: You're probably right about WP:SNOW, though. Still, I'm sure that sometime in the next few days, somebody at WP:ARS is going to be furious over this article being deleted. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 20:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

CSD G3, covers this, now how blantant was it? as blantant as creating a page for a fake religion can be, that seems pretty "obvious" wich is also covered in there. - Caribbean~H.Q. 20:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

(multiple e/c)Why would WP:ARS want to keep a hoax? I'm not a member of the group (and could even be described as a deletionist) - they try to save articles about notable topics that probably deserve an article but are about to be deleted due to lack of sources or poor writing. They don't try to save obvious policy violations and other things that don't deserve an article. The rules would have prevented the admin from improving Wikipedia (by removing false information) so the admin ignored the rules. That's exactly how IAR is supposed to work. (and blatant hoaxes fall under CSD G3). Mr.Z-man 20:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Why would they want to save Chris Crocker (Internet celebrity) and Bawls? (See Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Examples) Currently, they're trying to save List of LGBT couples.

I have absolutely no idea why they do what they do. They do some good work of saving articles, but they also stand in the way of appropriate deletions, because they are wild-eyed inclusionists. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 21:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Zenwhat, your ongoing campaign again WP:ARS is tiring and as is seen here has also resulted in what I consider an abuse of wikipedia's resources. The folks at WP:ARS, myself included, quickly sussed out your dubious efforts to disrupt and generally are ignoring you. If you persist in this manner of trying to, shall we say, stir up a bit of drama, I think your message that some systematic changes of wikipedia might be good will be utterly lost on your bad form. If you feel you can collaborate with others, you may want to find a like-minded project or the village pump to sort out what implemented change makes sense; if not, you may wish to start or modify a policy or guideline article in an effort to improve the encyclopedia. But targeting a project is likely to backfire and your disparaging comments likely seen as picking on a group of well-intentioned editors. Benjiboi 02:19, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Those actions don't violate WP:POINT because WP:POINT is not, "Don't edit Wikipedia to make a point," but rather "Don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point."

I believe, in good faith, that List of asteroids/7201–7300 should have been deleted. It still should be deleted. Nominating it for AfD was a good thing, because it was a step towards that improvement on Wikipedia and would save Wikipedia's resources, while also at the same time demonstrating the absurdity of the inclusionist mob at WP:ARS, which is currently very bad for Wikipedia.

It is true, though, that it demonstrated the fact that Wikipedia:ARS#So the ARS are wild-eyed inclusionists? is false. If they were not wild-eyed inclusionists, they would have:

1. Supported deletion of List of asteroids/7201–7300
2. Supported keeping it by somehow establishing its notability based on reason, not appeal to tradition, "I like it," etc..
3. Fleshed out the article with more sources and articles, to make it worth keeping

They did none of those three and they rarely do. I'm still waiting for them to clean up Bawls. 99% of what they do is just voting in polls in order to create a false localized consensus in each AfD discussion. And this hurts Wikipedia. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 03:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

We'll simply have to agree to disagree then. Benjiboi 03:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course, but it's not clear why you'd make such an obvious assertion since we probably could've done that from the very start. Had you asked me from the beginning, "I believe we disagree. Do you believe we disagree?" I would've replied, "Indeed we do." However, the assertion, "We'll simply have to agree to disagree," is often used as a disguise for a false compromise and that is something I will never agree to, because your argument does not logically follow and an appeal to the middle is simply another fallacy that undermines your point, if in fact that's what you are proposing.

I don't mean to be a dick here, just trying to make sure I understand what you're saying. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 05:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see where he accused you of violating WP:POINT, and WP:POINT is not an exclusive list of all things disruptive. You say that they should have supported deletion, but you didn't say why besides "it should have been deleted." Believe it or not, not everyone has the same opinion as you as to what is the best for Wikipedia. Mr.Z-man 18:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but not everybody's so logical and easy to follow. See WP:Zombies. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Arbcom

Compare [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Vanished user_Vanished user#Request_for_comment_on_Finding_of_Fact_.239_.28Vanished user_Vanished user.29]]

with [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Matthew_Hoffman/Proposed_decision#Vanished user_Vanished user.27s_use_of_administrative_tools]]

Note that there are new votes on the second one. New support votes

Question: Has the Arbcom even bothered to read this RfC that they ordered? Because I have been asking them for two months to explain that finding of fact, and brought it up in the RfC because it seemed so problematic, but they refuse to comment on it at all.

The arbcom, after this RfC have now added another, new way to desysop me to their list of proposals - one that says that I can't be trusted as an editor either. [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Matthew_Hoffman/Proposed_decision#Proposed_decision_-_Vanished user_Vanished user]]

Is there evidence for that new, bold assertion that I can't be trusted to follow community norms as an editor? If so, it's hard to see where, since, you know, they don't bother to say.

In short, I have no faith whatsoever in the arbcom, since they show no signs of reading what I e-mail them, whether through you (as was done two months ago), through Arbcom members, through mass mailings, or on an RfC. They simply are pushing forwards, and I grow to believe the arbcom is broken.

Please reply through e-mail, this whole thing is making it unlikely I'll be checking Wikipedia very often, if at all. [[User:Vanished user|Vanished user]] ^{[[User_talk:Vanished user|talk]]} 04:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Boy Scouts are for spanking?

Mr. Wales, it may be time for you to either pay more attention to what's happening with this Wikipedia/Wikia relationship, or begin setting down some rules at Wikia along the lines of, "Don't embarrass Wikia or the Wikipedia project with your actions on Wikia or Wikipedia." You'll wonder what I'm talking about? I'm delighted to see that Wikipedia has a GFDL image of some boys involved in the Boy Scouts mission. I'm not so delighted to see that photo copied into a Wikia called "Spanking Art", to enhance an article about Boy Scouts that reads:

While nowadays the Scouting movement prohibits the use of corporal punishment as part of its activities, this was not always so, and in spanking stories they often go hand in hand, especially with Beaver and Cub Scouts. There are also some spanking drawings that show young scouts, e.g. by Comixpank.

Because of the connotations of discipline that comes with scouting, some adult spankophiles like to roleplay/ageplay a boy or girl scout (similar to playing schoolboys).

Exactly what kind of perverts are Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation enabling, by allowing them free and unfettered access to simple pictures of boys, that are then twisted and exploited on your for-profit company's website, so that they are interwoven into adult perversions and roleplay?

I know I'm not supposed to link there, but you really ought to spend a minute or two reviewing this analysis of what's going on, before you unwittingly spawn a worldwide boycott of Amazon.com, the primary investor in Wikia "Spanking Art", for being a pro-pedophilia corporation. - John Russ Finley (talk) 02:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You're missing a detail here. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. When that photos was uploaded under free use, it became property of anyone and everyone. Uploading it as a free image says "I don't care who uses this and how they use this, as long as we're credited under the GFDL. So, every photo on Wikipedia can be "twisted and exploited" in the long run. Metros (talk) 03:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. In fact, Wikipedia users *are not* fully informed and thus cannot be assumed to have forfeited their intellectual property rights. Furthermore, the fact that an image is in the public domain does not mean that anyone may use it for any purpose; there are other legal restrictions (for example, libel). But beyond any legal considerations this kind of unrestricted license is unethical, as the example of the misuse of the boy scouts image demonstrates. In my opinion, Wikipedia should find or develop a different kind of license that does not give rise to these problems.Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

If that's true, then it's kinda important to TELL people that. I mean, we encourage people to release their images under a free license. Do we tell them that Wikia can then take their images and use them for spanking art? -Amarkov moo! 03:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Metros' top two article-space activities center around the lead singer of Fall Out Boy on the one hand, and Jamie Lynn Spears on the other. Thank you for your insight into the GFDL, property law, and photography. How about we get a discourse now about public relations disasters? - John Russ Finley (talk) 04:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

A. Yeah, note that all my edits there are vandalism reverts because those are two high targets. B. Also note that I'm an admin on Wikipedia, so clearly some people trust me. I would appreciate it if you'd take your ad hominem attacks elsewhere. Thanks, Metros (talk) 04:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

In response to Amarkov: the closest equivalent we have is the statement on every edit page that says "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it." and the mention (and link to) the GFDL policy on Wikipedia. There is no explicit "here are some examples of how your submission might be used," just those general statements. Metros (talk) 04:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there a reason that you are complaining on Wikipedia when the problem you have is with Wikia? Another site is using our image (or rather the Wikimedia Commons' image) in accordance with copyright in a way that you find inappropriate. There is nothing that Wikipedia can do. Mr.Z-man 04:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I saw above that this is the place to praise Mr. Wales for his development of Wikia, Inc. I assumed that it would also be the place to bring criticisms of Wikia to light. - John Russ Finley (talk) 04:21, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

There is no scandal here. It is allegorical. WAS 4.250 (talk) 11:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Like most people, Jimbo has an email address and he even lists it on his userpage and like most websites, Wikia has an easy to find "Contact Us" page. I would suggest you use one of those if you want someone to actually deal with this issue. Mr.Z-man 21:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like Metros to clarify whether the five boys whose faces are shown in that picture were told, "If you don't want your image to be perverted mercilessly or redistributed for profit by 'spankophiles', do not pose for it." Also, does Metros believe that User:Rlevse (the photographer) explained the GFDL to these 11- or 12-year-olds, and did they comprehend it? Does Rlevse have the authority to release the photo without permission from the 5 boys' parents? I suppose he does, just as Wikia Spanking Art has the authority to reprint the photo in a perverted context. I've notified the three regional chapters of the Boy Scouts in the San Francisco / San Jose area (headquarters of Wikimedia and Wikia). If they don't respond to this themselves, then I suppose there is no scandal, and we should applaud the triumph of free knowledge. -- -- Where I chillax (talk) 20:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Since the image is not being used commercially, and the boys are not recognizable celebrities, there can not be any personality rights issues involved in the U.S., where the First Amendment unequivocally permits all non-commercial publications of photographs that don't infringe on statutes, as protected speech. However, IANAL. MilesAgain (talk) 21:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo, in his capacity with Wikia, certainly has the power to get rid of the image even if the use is legally permissible. I am not a lawyer either so I don't know if the use is permissible, but I'm certainly concerned about the possibilities. What do you think the odds are that any person involved in Scouting is going to contribute any Scouting-related photo if a company owned by Jimbo Wales is going to misuse those photos? I can tell you that if this photo stays up, I have contributed my last photo to Wikimedia projects. If this were a third party using it, ok, there isn't much that can be done, or at least whining about it here isn't going to accomplish anything. But it's a company founded/owned/run/whatever by Jimbo and he certainly has the power to do something about it. It's a question of moral obligations. I cannot speak to the legal obligations of personality rights - I am not a lawyer. --B (talk) 22:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely right. Jimbo had a moral obligation to remove this photograph.Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The potential for abuse of images, making wiki look bad, condoning child porn here is huge. Please act, Jimbo. If such use is condoned, I will no longer submit images of children to wiki. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You guys are arguing against freedom. Against free speech. Against free culture. Against the free reuse of media. Against WikiMedia and Wikipedia. Go sell your love of slavery elsewhere. WAS 4.250 (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

This is an abusive, ad hominem, response to a serious concern.Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

You're joking, right? You have no freedom of speech on somebody else's internet site. Jimbo Wales is well within his rights to restrict in any way what content he will or will not publish on his own website. Your hysterics are ludicrous. --B (talk) 22:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

True as far is it goes. But I think WAS 4.250 was referring to the reason for the call of removal. but it should be noted Jim does not own the website, Wikia, Inc. does. (Not to Say Jim is not a Big player in Wikia, Inc. --Roguebfl (talk) 23:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Now except its usage nowhere come close condoning child porn, and the admins of the wiki in question keep a close eye out to make sure it does not. --Roguebfl (talk) 00:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Provide link to their rules please. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Spanking_Art:Legal_terms and Spanking_Art:Image_use_policy#Pornography --Roguebfl (talk) 01:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Because it can be legally done doesn't mean it should be done. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we are going to get a resolution here and I don't think we can fix what is already out there. This particular usage is odious, but innocuous; it does drive home a point we never considered. We should discuss this within the Scouting project. We have editors in the project from many countries with many different laws and the different national Scouting organizations will have varying rules on youth protection. We can't ban anyone from releasing photos in this manner, but everyone should be aware of the potential issues and each editor is going to have to make their own decisions on this. Personally, I have a camera full of photos from this past weekend that I was processing, but I think they are staying on my PC for now until I think on this some more. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:25, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are three different avenues of resolution - (1) appeal to the editors involved, (2) appeal to the website owner, (3) legal cease & desist from the Scout council (tortious interference with Rlevse's youth protection obligations?). This discussion here is #2. Regardless of whether or not Rlevse is legally permitted by the council to license photos he takes at Scouting functions under the GFDL and regardless of whether or not photos of those Scouts can legally be used in this manner, we are asking Jimbo, as a reasonable person, to voluntarily refrain from using the kids in this way. It's not an innocuous use if you are one of the kids or the parent of one of the kids depicted on this website and it's a very reasonable, informal, request that Rlevse's moral rights as the photographer be respected. --B (talk) 00:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I stand corrected. I dug into the site (more than I wanted to) and I find some of the context quite disturbing. [43] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The real question is what was whoever approved this Wikia thinking? Prodego ^talk 02:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I see 2 issues here. One is concerning the copyright on the photos and the other is over wikia cities (or sub-projects). There are pro-pedophile wikis out there, I won't say where, and if images are free that means that as long as those wikis are legal that the images are freely available. We cannot have a GFDL copyright or copyleft that only excludes pro-pedophile sites (if those sites are deemed legal and if they do not contain pornography they generally are considered legal). This is an issue for lawyers not for Jimbo, or at the very least for the whole community. The wikia issue is different, I have heard the pic has been removed and the page locked. Jimbo has a good record of opposing pedophilia activism on wikipedia IMHO, doubtless a mistake was made here and its great if it is being resolved but I don't think we can conclude from this that Jimbo is anything other than offering the kind of leadership we expect on this issue, including ensuring that wikipedia is a a safe place for children to edit. Thanks, SqueakBox 05:26, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

There is no good reason not to exclude proponents of pedophilia from any civilized venue. I've known victims of pedophiles and they've been scarred for life.Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

said lock is only temporary till the issue is resolved, it has not yet been decided --Roguebfl (talk) 05:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Freedom is the right for people to be free to act the way they want to act. The free culture movement is about enabling people to create, modify, and distribute information as text, sounds, images, or video by providing copyleft software tools and content for modification and redistribution. It is not free if the uses are legally restricted to the original content creator's desired purposes. For that, you need to use a non-free copyright license. Wikipedia and WikiMedia have a mission of maximum worldwide free distribution of freely re-editable educational content. If one does not want content that they create to be legally free to be modified and redistributed for causes one does not personally endorse, then they should not contribute them to a free culture site such as wikipedia. WAS 4.250 (talk) 15:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no objection to anyone trying to get Wikia to only promote good things. What I objected to is attacks on the legal tool of copyleft copyrights which is needed in the fight for freedom. WAS 4.250 (talk) 15:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

You have my support, WAS, I totally agree. Badly using copyleft images is the responsibility of the people who use them, not of wikipedia for releasing the images with a copyleft copyright. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:26, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand how copyright and honoring the ethics of personal privacy, especially of pre-pubescent minors, are somehow antithetical to "freedom". People are also "free" to organize boycotts of Amazon.com (#1 investor in Wikia) and to organize boycotts of donating to Wikimedia Foundation. Let's take a poll -- which do you think would win out in the court of public opinion? The fight for copyleft freedom, or the fight against online sites that promote a pro-pedophilia and pro-child-abuse agenda? Choose your sides, people. This is going to be a quick, decisive battle. - Where I chillax (talk) 17:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you making threats? EconomicsGuy (talk) 17:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I see no threats above, I see cold hard facts and a healthy dose of reality. Here's a frightening idea: let's say one of these kids or one of their parents happens to come across this photo. What is going to happen is the children in question will probably be quite upset, possibly affected psychologically, and the parents will be infuriated and go on the warpath. That's when lawsuits, phone calls to the press, and massive "what about the children?" drives begin. If anyone thinks Wikia can protect themselves by hiding behind the GFDL and copyleft they're sadly mistaken. Can they do so legally? Perhaps. But the ensuing massive bad publicity has the potential to bring the entire project (and any related projects) to its knees. It doesn't matter what is right under the law, it only matters how the public sees you. Nobody of Consequence (talk) 17:26, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If anyone wants to sue Wikia, boycott their business partners or whatever it is this thread is being used to plan then take it off-wiki to Wikia directly. This is the encyclopedia, not Wikia. Do you have any complaints directed at Wikipedia? EconomicsGuy (talk) 17:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that the complaints are directed toward the owner of this talk page, who has a stake in Wikia and Wikipedia. This incident, which has a potential of bringing disrepute to the founder of Wikipedia, has the potential to bring the entire Wikipedia project into disrepute, hence, it is not out of place to have this discussion here. "Donations keep this site running." Anything that has the potential to effect donations negatively has the potential of effecting Wikipedia negatively. daveh4h 19:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

There are several issues involved. *I* was solely talking about people badmouthing the GFDL because it is able to be used to promote bad things. My interest was to defend the GFDL in spite of its ability to be used to promote bad things. Like some people defend gun ownership even tho guns can be used to do bad things. Defending the right to own a gun is not advocating murder. Defending copy left is not advocating bad things that can be done with copy left content. Advocating freedom to speak is not advocating that Wikipedia or Wikia allow anyone to say anything on either of those sites. I am for the right of people to legally advocate bad things on their own site (not Wikia or Wikimedia sites) using copyleft content. I am for people protesting the advocacy of bad things. I am against making either the advocacy or the protest illegal. I believe that freedom of expression is the best way to identify what in fact is a good thing versus what in fact is a bad thing; and in laws that outlaw doing bad things while retaining the freedom to advocate a change to those laws. WAS 4.250 (talk) 17:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Could someone explain how this page is inherently different than the "indecent images" discussed here? I'm not seeing a gigantic difference. You say that defending the right to own a gun is not advocating murder. Likewise, defending the privacy rights of innocent children (who don't know a GFDL license from a proprietary watermark system for secure digital media) is not advocating censorship, or slavery, or abolition of the copyleft license, or whatever the heck would be the opposite of the "freedom" that you spoke of above. Continued debate on the legal intricacies of this problem while denying the moral magnitude of the situation is going to backfire on this project. -- -- Where I chillax (talk) 19:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying that an image on WikiMedia servers breaks the law? If so, which image breaks which law? WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you daft? Do you not know the difference between the words "moral" and "legal"? How could you possibly respond to what I wrote with what you wrote, unless you are utterly trying to deflect this discussion to some arcane aspect of the situation that you can "win"? I'm done with trying to engage in finding a solution here. Let the authorities and the lawyers figure it out. I'm sure that perverted individuals who are exploiting youngsters will win the day. - - Where I chillax (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

At what point are we ready to say this thread constitutes a legal threat and deal with it accordingly? EconomicsGuy (talk) 19:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Very nice - you want to ban us because we don't want pictures of Boy Scouts to be used to promote pedophilia? Nobody is threatening to sue or anything remotely like that - we are asking Jimbo to do the honorable thing and not allow a photo that Rlevse provided in good faith to be used in that manner. That isn't a threat - it's a polite request. --B (talk) 20:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't. The thread is an appeal to Jimbo because it isn't illegal, thus can't be removed through normal methods. But Wales could remove it if he so wishes, though that might create a bad image for him. That might be one reason he is leaving this alone, there is no good answer here. Prodego ^talk 20:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think at any point - I'd like you to point to any part of this thread where anyone has said, explicitly, or implied (even as far as "innocent queries about editing Wikipedia from a Department of Defense computer"), the involvement of any law enforcement authority. Or are you angling for the "chilling effect" of ensuring people don't rock the boat too much? Because I can't see a single point at which you could say "this thread needs to be shut down as a legal threat". Quite simply, it ain't there. Achromatic (talk) 22:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

So now you assume that I'm playing games like it was some natural thing to do on Wikipedia because I was concerned about the tone and general language and purpose of the latter comments before I posted that question. Sweet. So now the natural assumption when someone is concerned about a debate that he must be trying to chill the debate and silence the critics. I think that says more about Wikipedia these days and WR and the trolls who inhabit it than we needed to be reminded of. I'm gone anyway now but I do wonder what the DoD have to do with anything I've said. EconomicsGuy (talk) 22:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, one ad hominem begets another, is that it? I'm still curious, though, I'm wondering what comments prompted you to run off down the "let's call this thread a legal threat and act accordingly". That's more than just "concern about tone and general language" of comments. Achromatic (talk) 23:25, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

EconomicsGuy: you need to chill the hell out with your claims of legal threats. You're CLEARLY trying to silence the critics because as far as I can tell, two of your posts here have been baldfaced implications that we're here making legal threats. What the hell would I or any of the other people here sue for? You're trying to draw this into a circular logic trap and an ad hominem mudslinging contest and it won't work. Frankly, I'm here because I'm concerned ABOUT the project. If you'd taken the time to read what I wrote above and think about it before going into internet argument mode and automatically dismissing it as "legal threats", you'd see how something of this magnitude can affect not just Wikia, but everything else associated with it. As I said before, nobody cares about the legality of things, free media, etc. when children and borderline pedophilia are involved. And if you think anyone will be fair in their attacks, think again. So, we can all look forward to the news media screaming headlines like "Wikipedia associated website sued for kiddie porn." Which I guarantee will be the effective end of Wikipedia, as it's a considerably more high-profile target than Wikia itself is. But go right ahead- tell me I'm making legal threats and try to hush up people with real concerns regarding the project. Nobody of Consequence (talk) 23:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If you think I'm going to grab the bait just because you repeat the accusations of bad faith and type in caps you're wrong. If you want Jimbo to act I suggest you send him a calm e-mail. He is far more co-operative and responsive than he is generally given credit for. I'm done here. Geez... EconomicsGuy (talk) 07:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I have seen what could be considered kiddie porn on WMF and Wikia wikis, and a bunch of boy scouts, even on a wiki about spanking, doesn't come close. MilesAgain (talk) 00:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Please give examples to back up what you say. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually please don't. Let's not start posting more objectionable material when it's not needed. This discussion was about should wikipedia be held responsible for anyone taking a perfectly innocent image from this website and using it elsewhere (for anything) and the simply answer is "no". Content is freely available to anyone and that includes people who would use the content for fetishistic and porn purposes. If you feel they are doing something wrong then take it up with them and their IP hosts. Benjiboi 02:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Benjiboi that further examples are not required. I also believe that every editor who has posted a photograph of a person or persons under the age of 16 should give serious consideration to taking whatever steps they are able to have those photographs deleted, barring written permission of the parent(s) of said child(ren) authorizing the posting of the photographs here on Wikipedia, complete with acknowledgement of the implications of the applicable license. Writing as the parent, I would not hesitate for a minute to demand takedown of any unauthorized photographs of my child that I happen to find anywhere on the web, but most particularly in a site such as Wikipedia, where the photographs can be (and no doubt are) taken by individuals of questionable intent. Indeed, Wikipedia and Commons should give serious consideration to refusing to host such photographic images without parental authorization. Risker (talk) 02:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

SqueakBox, I know you know what I am talking about because I saw you on this very page discussing some possibly-underage non-nude girls in sexualized poses. MilesAgain (talk) 08:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

A final recap: After much discussion here, the Boy Scout page on Spanking Arts was chopped, Wales deleted the image from their site and the SA folks created a new policy on images. The Scouting WikiProject is drafting a project guideline that notes the potentials for reuse of images in ways the photographer may not have intended. As there is no way to control reuse of images, we are recommending that editors do not upload images of youth. This reverses a personal push for more active images with Scouts to replace a lot of the boring images we currently have of buildings and empty waterfront areas.

There was an awful lot of discussion here about freedom, guns and other tangent subjects. Please understand that the Scouting WikiProject has no desire to attempt censorship; most of our editors are volunteer members of one of the myriads of national Scouting organizations around the world. We must answer to local and national laws, the rules and regulations of our organizations and each editor's moral compass. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

These are good and sensible moves. WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to throw this out here for discussion. First off, thank you Jimbo for deleting the image. Your willingness to step in is appreciated. I'd like to suggest as a project, we reexamine our licensing policy concerning identifiable images of persons under 18. (Identifiable means that it is zoomed in enough on a person's face that you could recognize that person if you saw them on the street.) We really ought to either permit these images to be licensed under a more restrictive licensing scheme that prohibits sexually explicit reuse OR we need to require parental informed consent to be logged with OTRS. I recognize that the former probably isn't going to happen, but the latter definitely should. --B (talk) 19:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I, too, appreciate Jimbo's action on this subject. I agree that more thought needs to be given to the licensing question.Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

This is the sort of nonsense that WR was trying to create in the first place. Child actors, faces in a crowd, etc. Don't contribute if you don't want your contribution to be under a free license that can be used by anybody for anything. WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

This is total nonsense. Do you want images of you to be posted with the caption "child molester"? "Anybody for anything," my ass!Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

At issue is NOT the rights of the contributor. In every case, Scouters who have contributed these photos are doing so with the willingness that their contributions be used or adapted, commercial or otherwise, etc. The rights of the contributor aren't an issue. It's about the rights of the children depicted in the photo. Either (a) we need to protect their rights or (b) we need to make sure that their parents have given informed consent to the use of the photo. Neither the photographer nor Wikipedia has the authority to permit you to use a photo of someone else's child for sexually explicit purposes. That's a legal fact of life and we need to spell that out somewhere. Informed parental consent is the direction I'm leaning. --B (talk) 20:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Every comment you have made in this thread, WAS 4.250, seems to be an effort in making people appear draconian for demanding curtailing of contributor rights. You have invoked spurious appeals to emotion, "Go sell your love of slavery elsewhere." and such, in an effort to derail the discussion from what it was about - that there are, ethically, morally and legally, more peoples rights involved than that of the contributor. Personality and likeness rights - even if, from all interpretations of your comments - you have decided that such rights are inherently trumped by your rights - certainly an interesting approach to take. Even when it has been repeatedly explained that the issue is the right of an unintended/potentially unwilling subject to be depicted in a manner of their choosing, your responses have been predominantly along the lines of "ZOMG, the WR trolls are hounding down the GFDL! Slavers!", seemingly deciding instead that it's not the message that's important (or not), but the messenger. Achromatic (talk) 03:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the Spanking Art site at Wikia has been shut down until they can sort out whether its administrators can restrain themselves from making it a site that focuses prurient attention of the abuse of children. Let's hope they get it right. - John Russ Finley (talk) 22:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Trinitarian Biased Impedance of Nontrinitarian Article improvement

{{help}} I'm sure you have higher priority things on your plate, but my distress has motivated me to contact you, as one of the more senior administrators of this Encyclopedia, to request that you review/create policy that will more fairly and effectively detect and deal with the hidden biases put into action via impedance of article improvements that conflict with said biases. ie, there is enough evidence now I think at the Nontrinitarian Article that the influence of Trinitarian Administrators and editors is becoming harmful. GabrielVelasquez (talk) 17:49, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't see that ever happening, even if Jimbo agreed with you.

Headline: "Jimbo edits article on Trinitarianism, blocks Christian admins -- his anti-Christian bias shows!" etc, etc..

Conservapedia would have a field day with it and he'd be thrown in with "the leftist conspiracy" on the O'Reilly Factor, though it would probably be funny to see what jokes Stephen Colbert would make about it.

If the users there are regularly violating a certain policy, like WP:V, WP:RS, or WP:NPOV, report them for it and help clarify that specific policy more explicitly rather than expecting Jim to step in where he obviously can't. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

"Gods! What a monster." - Jean-Luc Picard.
Thank you for the heads up on Conservapedia. GabrielVelasquez (talk) 19:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

You may wish to take a look at Countering systemic bias to see if there is anything there to help you interact with your colleagues on the article more fruitfully. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding this discussion from earlier this month

Dear Mr. Wales, I have edited Wikipedia since 2006 and have spent a lot of time lately (I now have over 10,000 edits) creating articles, welcoming new users, uploading photographs I took, etc. I am deeply worried about some issues concerning our project. Accordingly, I second Maniwar's request from 23 January 2008 and strongly urge you to consider providing guidance into that matter as I believe it deals with the fundamental nature of what Wikipedia is. For myself, my friends, my family, my students, and my colleagues, we all value Wikipedia as not necessarily the source for everything, but the fastest reference for just about as many obscure matters/topics/people that are hard to find elsewhere. As something that is not paper and considering your own quotation about imagining "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge," I believe we have an unprecedented opportunity to catalog as much of human knowledge as possible. Yet, too typically the same minority of editors who spend an overabundance of time using Twinkle to mass nominate articles for deletion or hovering around policy pages will call articles involving topics that they are not personally interested in as "crap" or "non-notable." Well, I hate potato salad, but others may enjoy it and while I have no interest in its history or influence, others do, so I don't say, in effect "delete, crap", as others do on topics they do not care about. What is notable to one person may not be notable to another, but that reality does not negate that the subject is notable to somebody. I am deeply concerned that the determined efforts of an incredibly small fraction of our community (thousands of good faith editors spend time writing articles that are redirected or prodded; only a handful participate in AfDs or Arbcom discussions, or writing increasingly restrictive policy/guideline pages for which the majority of the community apparently does not have consensus). My concern is that Wikipedia's value as a comprehensive source for many diverse topics is being undermined and as a further consequence our contributors are feeling insulted or are outright giving up on the project. As the founder of this project, your opinion would be of great help as I think we need better clarity about what the project is supposed to be, i.e. are we merely creating an online clone of Britannica or are we attempting to do what Britannica never could do. At present, we are instead left with editors making such insulting, deletionist posts as this in AfDs. Thank you for your time and understanding. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 01:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Pass the barnstars, please!

		The Surreal Barnstar
		I, Basketball110, award you this barnstar for "adding special flavor" to the community by... well... just to sum it up, creating Wikipedia. I think that's saying enough. Basketballone10 02:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Scientology article

Scientology definition page is constantly being vandalized and manipulated by the cult followers. Any time a word "cult" shows up there, it gets erased, Same with simple facts about the workings of this organization. I hope the founder of Wikipedia can somehow protect this article so that it is not misleading or manipulative. If Scientology is not a cult, than what is? Or should we get rid of that word entirely... Any educated person with information about Scientology - it's practices, its workings, manipulations etc know what this cult is about. Let's not kid ourselves here. And the encyclopedia should be about information, knowledge, transparency - not manipulation, deletion of certain facts and informations. Wikipedia is a very well known and popular online encyclopedia, lots of kids read it, it should be informative, not misleading and luring into some cults like Scientology. All the info on this cult is online, all the historical info on religions and cults as well, and in spite of that this particular entry here is constantly evolving into a nice little promo for this brainwashing racket. Some fact should be placed under the definition of Scientology - after all the encyclopedia is about informing, educating people not withholding information, isn't it? Just as this nice sentence on Jimmy's homepage states: "Free knowledge for free minds". Scientology is certainly not free, it keeps it's papers and procedures secretive and the same is going on on its definition page on Wikipedia. Gradually crucial info is being erased by some very active individuals. Kind regards --Pitdog (talk) 17:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

As pretty much the only Scientologist currently editing, I have to laugh. The only "very active individual" in the Scientology articles is a prolific critic that is interested in "constantly evolving" the series "into a nice" exposition of his POV and evolving WikiNews "into a nice little promo" for a bunch of Anon cyberterrorists (see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Prolific POV-pusher moving from Wikipedia to WikiNews). --JustaHulk (talk) 18:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Dear JustaHulk :) since you are obviously biased here, and as we all know the cults main point is to manipulate the minds of its members, I do not think you should be able to edit the article or being taken seriously. And do not meddle with the facts, you are pretending not to know what has been going on with this particular entry for years on end or you are very new to Wikipedia. Either way you seem to be kinda oblivious to some simple facts. I hope you can educate yourself a little bit, read about this organisation and stop being manipulated by the cult. I wish you the best. --Pitdog (talk) 10:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Pitdog, the self-imposed mind control of ill-informed bigotry is much more likely, more prevalent, and more damaging than any shifts in point-of-view that a Scientologist may experience by virtue of studying Scientology. --JustaHulk (talk) 14:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Please tell my why you are mentioning some ill-informed bigotry. What do you know about me and my knowledge, my experiences? You are biased, if you have an some sense of fair play and justice, you should see that you shouldn't take part in editing an article about something in which you participate, especially a cult which manipulates its members. Read some info I provided above, then discuss. From me: over and out. I am not fair game, I will not further waste time talking to someone, who perhaps is manipulating the public forum. Just have some respect for the readers here and admit: as someone involved in the cult you are not able to make clear judgments about the organization. Your views are certainly not neutral, because you are a Scientologist. Scientology through its primitive mind controlling practices is a very dangerous organization. The "lessons", or auditing those are very old, simple and potentially very harming exercises for a victims psyche. Repetitions, prolonged monotonous sessions, hatred towards sciences like psychiatry, medicine in general - now we an start talking about bigotry ad doing harm to societies, to individuals... Cheers --Pitdog (talk) 14:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I will not waste space here attempting to disabuse you of your ill-informed and bigoted (not to mention banal) misconceptions. Yes, people that know a subject may have a different opinion of it than those that do not and I guess you could call that "bias". --JustaHulk (talk) 14:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

You are being offensive, throwing names around. Another typical cult tactic (this particular cult) - attack, fair game. Please explain what is ill informed about simple very well known facts, pick one - secrecy of the cult, money grabbing, all the L,R.Hubbard "teachings" which are basically drunk man' blabberings (or am I mistaken, correct me and show the wisdom of that con man lol). And again lets get back to the main point - where is NPOV if an active member of the cult is editing the page?? Be fair, have some dignity and respect for the readers and do not involve yourself in creating a biased, misinforming Wikipedia entry on Scientology. Have you read the sources I provided? A simple question. Read and understood I mean. --Pitdog (talk) 15:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Trust me, I am extremely familiar with ALL sides of this issue. And it is your ill-informed, one-sided blatherings that are truly offensive. And readers here will be glad to hear that I am done rising to your trolling. --JustaHulk (talk) 16:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Scientology should be ridiculed in accordance with NPOV, because virtually everyone agrees it's ridiculous. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Please don't say things that are unnnecessarily inflammatory, and may offend other editors. --Deskana (talk) 02:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• as Cult is the total cultural aspects of a religion, as they are distinguished from others. In theory its can be applied to all religions equally, what the problem is that "cult" is perceived in the negative when added to a religion as such the use of "cult" should be exercised with caution where the term is used it use should be clearly inline with WP:NPOV. In general respect should be given to the wording of all religious articles and terms that have such extreme negative perceptions should be avoided in the general writing of articles and left to the quotes of experts on the subject. Gnangarra 03:17, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

It is not difficult to find operative definition of cults by those who have studied the cult phenomenon. In general, they focus on absolutism, deceptive recruiting practices, exorbitant charges, discouragement of thinking for oneself, demonization of critics and those who leave the cult, etc. This is the way the word "cult" is actually used by literate people. By these criteria, Scientology is a cult. All that would be necessary to satisfy the "neutral point of view" criterion would be to say that Scientology has been described by experts in new religious movements (who could be quoted)as a cult. Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

So can I put some expert quotes on the subject of this cult there? So that the article is not misleading and becomes a bit more informative? Cult implies manipulation, mind control- yes, it is a negative term, that is precisely why it applies to Scientology. If this is not a cult, than what is I ask? Kind regards --Pitdog (talk) 10:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Cult doesnt mean "manipulation" "mind control" to use the term to imply such violates WP:NPOV. Scientology is a religion if you have issues with it then editing an article to push your POV is doing exactly what you are complaining about. Something about "let he who is free of sin cast the stone"... Gnangarra 14:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

We must be talking about a different word with different definition. So what a cult means in your opinion? The saying about the stone and sin - what it has to do with facts? Being neutral means no manipulation, no withholding information. Pretending that Scientology is not a cult is like pretending that right now theres peace and democracy in Iraq. I see no point in further discussion on this level. Scientology is a cult if you have issues with it that its your right to be misinformed, but why misinform the general public? You mention being objective, and yet the page is being actively edited by a member or members of the cult. Where is objectivity in that? Please do not twist the facts, it is pointless. ". By "fact" we mean "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute." a quote form NPOV article. Regards --Pitdog (talk) 14:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

You're talking about a very loaded word, with multiple definitions and connotations. Cult can mean any religious sect you don't like. And it doesn't even need to be religious. You could all benefit by reading the Wikipedia article on cults, which is really quite excellent. And by the way, the proposed psychological definition fits the Navy SEALS or the Marine Corps a lot better than it does Scientology. Take people who are young or otherwise mentally vulnerable, then break-em-down, then build-em-up, and the finally use them for whatever purpose you like, is an old, old human process. SBHarris 20:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

The world cult can be used to mean "any religious sect you don't like." However, that's not the neutral or objective definition of cult, and Scientology is a cult that it is ridiculed by virtually all neutral parties. Supporting the treatment of Scientology as a potential "religion" that faces "prejudice" or "persecution" by "anti-Scientologist bigots" is a violation of WP:NPOV, WP:SOAP, and WP:FRINGE. The claim that the neutral definition of cult applies to religions and the Navy SEALS or USMC may be a perfectly logical inference, which may be true. However, it is also original research. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 08:00, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

May I respectfully submit that this is not the proper place to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of Scientology? Nor is the proper place anywhere on Wikipedia, or any of its sister projects. All users with strong points of view about a subject, be they approval or disapproval, are advised to be particularly cautious when editing articles about that subject, lest they unknowingly introduce bias. - Chardish (talk) 08:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

So do you think that an article on the Flat Earth Society should make no mention of the fact that it's a scientific consensus that they're completely wrong? Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

This is actually very very simple. Chardish is 100% correct. And anyone who says that NPOV demands that we call Scientology a cult has really completely, utterly and totally missed the point of NPOV as dramatically as possible. On any controversial issue, Wikipedia must not take a stand. It is certainly fine (and necessary for NPOV) to discuss that reputable sources have raised the question of whether Scientology is a cult. It may also be fine, depending on what the source says, to say that the source has "alleged" or "claimed" that it is. Or that many commentators have. Or whatever might be the case. But Wikipedia itself can have no opinion on the matter one way or the other.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

This is not so black-and-white as it may appear. Is O.J. Simpson a murderer? Common sense says he is. Are we not to be allowed to draw obvious conclusions? Clearly, the Scientology article needs to be protected from self-serving edits by Scientologists. Kevin Langdon (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Every article needs to be protected from self-serving edits by every and anyone. "Common sense" can only be included if it is referenced by a reliable third party source. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Jim agreed with Chardish's remarks above, which are pretty reasonable. The way Jim phrased it was a bit odd, but since he agreed with Chardish, I wouldn't try to read into it. Also, to clarify: My original comment above was facetious, lol. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Not oddly phrased at all. At the risk of, etc. Jimbo is agreeing with Chardish regarding the responsibilities of editors, esp. editors with strong POVs and Jimbo is also commenting on a different though related point of what Wikipedia articles should look like as regards appearing to take a position themselves as opposed to clearly setting out the positions of the various sides based on reputable sources. Now that is oddly worded! --JustaHulk (talk) 15:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Native Son

Since you are the second most famous native son of Alabama, Forest Gump being the first, are there any streets (buildings? state constitutional amendments?) named after you? Huntsville(Madison)? , Tuscaloosa?, that other school? --mitrebox (talk) 17:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this a joke? You're joking, right? KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Name somebody from Alabama more famous than Jimmy? There are no presidents. So that only leaves Ruben Studdard? He was born in Germany --mitrebox (talk) 18:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Possible candidates are Helen Keller, Hank Aaron, Harper Lee, Joe Lewis, Willie Mays, and Rosa Parks, for a start. And that's just off the top of my head. KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

And there's also George Wallace.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh and I'm more alarmed that you list Forest Gump as being the most famous than I am at your assertion that Jimmy is the second-most. At least Jimmy is real, and justly famous. KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

People KNOW Forrest Gump. Helen Keller? "Oh the blind chick on the quarter", Rosa Parks? You mean the OutKast song?, Hank Aaron? that dude whose record was broken by steroid BB, and people are more likely to know Attaicus Finch than Harper Lee.--mitrebox (talk) 18:57, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Forest Gump isn't even a native son of Alabama any more than Tom sawyer is a native son of Mississippi, and I find it extraordinary that anyone would think otherwise. Thanks, SqueakBox 19:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Tom sawyer is from Missouri. (hey whats this? why I think its some of that Extraordinary that going around)--mitrebox (talk) 19:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

La la la. --JustaHulk (talk) 19:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I, being born in Alabama, find the Forrest Gump sentiment prevalent. I usually tell such people about our "law" keeping women barefoot until they are 15, and am frequently met with, "really?"  :-) 63.3.15.129 (talk) 21:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

When I travel I always get the "but you don't have an accent" statement. I retort with "Well we only do that for the tourists..." Then breaking into the most exaggerated drawl ".. not so much for their entertainment, but to keep them from sticking around too long."--mitrebox (talk) 01:08, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Mitrebox, is that joke CC licensed? ...cause I shore do wanna use it... ;-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo, I think thats one of very few jokes I ever came up with on my own. And I tell you what... I'd sure be mighty proud if anyone ever used it to get a laugh.--mitrebox (talk) 19:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Well when I heard Jimbo on the radio he certainly sounded like he had a strong accent, but perhaps that is merely my British ears. Thanks, SqueakBox 07:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

My Midwestern ears hear no accent after listening to him speak for an hour. MilesAgain (talk) 08:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Hugo Black, most influential Alabamian of the 20th century. NoSeptember 05:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Request to Wikimedia Foundation

Recently, Korean Wikipedia comunity decide upon Fair use.

Korea Wikipedia approve to use "Fair use works".

According to Wikimedia Licensing policy Resolution Article 6,

"The Foundation resolves to assist all project communities who wish to develop an EDP with their process of developing it." (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy)

On the basis of Wikimedia Licensing policy Resolution Article 6, the Korean Wikipedia Comunity request Wikimedia Foundation to assist to make Korean Wikipedian EDP. -- WonYong^Talk 00:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It's wrong. Korean Wikipedia didn't approve fair use. It was polling without consensus. --Ficell (talk) 11:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I write other opinion at following. (See: Today, I am blocked) -- WonYong^Talk 04:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

NPOV, Objectivity, and Objectivism.

According to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ, NPOV says nothing of objectivity. "Rather, the policy is simply that we should describe disputes, not engage in them."

Yes, but shouldn't we describe disputes objectively? See here. [44]

You're an Objectivist and the idea of critical thinking and objectivity seems to be implied by Wikipedia policy, but it's hidden behind the euphemisms, "fair and equal assessment", "fairly and without bias" and "fair, analytical description." (See here)

Is Wikipedia policy or philosophy compatible with either factual relativism or nihilism?

I can't help but think that a lack of regard for reason and logic in policy encourages collectivism. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I've never thought of it as Wikipedia's job to prefer either individualism or collectivism, objectivity or subjectivity. My understanding is that the job is just to try to describe and explain, reliably, the different philosophies and the arguments that have been made for each, and let people decide for themselves what's best for them. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Tthere is no such thing as "Wikipedia" apart from individual editors. See M:Wikindividualism.

When you say "reliably," this again seems like a euphemism and begs the question Is it reliable to have a conscious disregard for individual critical thinking, reason, and objectivity when verifying neutral sources? Is gonzo journalism compatible with NPOV? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:58, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a problem with a specific article? Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 01:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

No. That seems like an accusation of bad-faith, so I was about to say, "Assume good faith." But for the moment I will assume the assumption of good faith and simply say, "Thank you for offering to help me." Since you're a helpful person, you could start by helping the person above with the problems they're facing on Trinitarianism. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Toolbar

I started developing a full-fledged toolbar for Wikipedia. I don't normally go for toolbars since they're so invasive, but this one isn't, and with all the time I spend on Wikipedia it's a nice convenience. I think this has the potential to be a good promotional arm of Wikipedia, if it's developed right -- the same way as the Yahoo and Google toolbars promote use of those sites. I was wondering about possibly getting the developers involved. I'm only a beginner at this and can't develop it to its full potential on my own. Please check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:40, 29 Jan 2008 (UTC)

Today, I am blocked.

I am korean wikipedian. I use it 4 years.

Today, I am recommaned to admin by other user. and I am bolcked permenatly.

I don't agree it. I don't break the rule.

How to solve this problem?

I've said to the Korean wiki admins dictatorship.

They recommand thier people to admin.

And, someone who said to admin's mistake is blocked. they have many supporters. all attack one user. one user fight soly. And finally, admin blocked him because major users want.

I am the MOST famous fair-use suppoter in kowiki.

All admins disagree fair use. All.

Recently, fair-use policy is passed. this is 3rd poll.

before 1st poll, many people discussed it.

I request 1st poll at 2006 year. disapprove.

I collact fiar use agree users. Finally, agree users are more than disgree users.

I request 2st poll at 2007 year. disapprove. agree number=disagree number. According to the korean constitutional spirit, yes=no is dissapproved.

other user request 3rd poll at 2007 year Dec. Finally, approved, recently.

And they disagree the 3rd poll's result.

And today, fianlly I am blocked permenatly. :(

I think that all korean admins are blocked. Their power miss use are too much.

But, I think that this opinion is not approved. no admins? oops. They have many fans.

I understand. :(

GOODBYE. -- WonYong^Talk 04:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Please don't be trolling anymore. you never can be helped out of ko.wp. i am really sorry to owner of this talk page but Jimbo Wales is your god but not wikimedia's --ToePeu퇴프 14:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

POV article about Jehovah's Witnesses

Hello, Jimbo. I run my eyes through the articles about Jehovah's Witnesses, but some articles report as biased manner of critics. Especially Controversies regarding Jehovah's Witnesses is taken over biased opinions of critics and Watchtower publications is quated conviniently by critcs. I think this article was formed to smare JW. How do you think of this? 125.193.23.145 (talk) 09:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

WikiNews is a crack "harlot" (someone didn't like my term)

TMZ has the latest on Wikinews and its 'News' flashes.(Wikinews left, Lindsy Lonhan right)

WikiNews is for sale to any POV-pusher with a dime and the time. The admins and editors over there pimp her out for the lulz. They have allowed our own “woefully ignorant of the subject area” (not my words) Anti-Scientologist User:Cirt to turn her into the “official voice of Anonymous”; our own little Anti-Scientology News. We get an article a day, usually a “Featured Story”, on the latest YouTube posting and the latest who’s pwning who of this barely notable effort.

You know, I could really care less if some group of /l/osers (i.e. Anonymous) wants to go after the Church of Scientology. The Church of Scientology is a big boy and can take care of itself. I don’t even really care much about what degree of success they may have in making trouble for the Church of Scientology. Scientology is just a bunch of people doing something they believe in to better themselves and others and no amount of DDoS attacks or “Honk If You Hate Scientology” signs is going to change that or even impact it one whit.

Nah, what frosts my ass is that this group, this one right here; a group that I respect, a group that really really should know better, allows a propagandist (and, at 5000-6000 edits per month, likely a full-time paid propagandist) to take over one of their projects. Now you know how I really feel. Oh, and if someone would be so kind as to inform Cirt that he is mentioned here, it would be nice. He has expressly asked me to not post to his page. --JustaHulk (talk) 15:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

For Sale! I'm going to search my couch cushions for change, gotta outbid that one Ron Paul supporter out there.--mitrebox (talk) 16:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo: This has been discussed at length. Please see multiple comments from Admins and editors that weighed in on this and found no fault with my editing/article writing, both Admins from Wikipedia, and Admins from Wikinews. I think no matter if 100 Admins weigh in and say that my actions are appropriate, JustaHulk (talk · contribs) may simply continue to disruptively push the issue in any location that he can. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 16:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo, please also note that I did not write the second Wikinews article cited above by User:Justanother/User:JustaHulk. That was actually started by a new user to Wikinews, and then worked on by DragonFire1024 (talk · contribs), an Admin on Wikinews. Cirt (talk) 16:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

"First of all, let's get one thing straight, crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack." - Whitney Houston to Diane Sawyer. Also David Shankbone to JustaHulk. --David Shankbone 17:03, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

We're talkin' cheap here. --JustaHulk (talk) 17:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Getting back to the Crack whore statement, as long as we're going to be using coarse language, might I ask if Wikinews is a recreational drug user? My question is: does wikinews use drugs specifically to enable certain sex acts, namely anal sex [45]? Is there a godwins law for crack whores?--mitrebox (talk) 17:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, so that's what Fair Game looks like in our little wikiworld. Thanks for the demonstration! >;-o) RichardF (talk) 17:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Nah. This is what a fair-minded but pissed-off editor looks like in our little wikiworld. Thanks for the bigotry. --JustaHulk (talk) 17:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

RichardF (talk) 17:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you think this is "Fair Game", then you can waddle over and join the "woefully ignorant of the subject area". --JustaHulk (talk) 17:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

"I'm getting angry... You don't want to see what I look like... when I'm angry."
-Bruce Banner

See WP:No angry mastodons. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, well. I was given this name for a reason. But I am fine now, thank you. --JustaHulk (talk) 19:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Colorful [46] but on a serious note, there was a AN/I thread about a known pov pusher migrating to WikiNews a few days ago, so there is some basis to the argument. - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I cannot tell a lie. T'was I started that thread. It has gotten worse. --JustaHulk (talk) 21:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

In fairness, Cirt has contributed 5 featured articles, 4 featured portals, 17 good articles, and 17 Did you know? entries. I would be glad to pitch in by creating a new article on a subject where Scientologists take pride, and submitting it for DYK. Please contact me at my user talk to provide sources. Let's keep this a positive atmosphere: if an editor is making outstanding contributions that earn community accolades as neutral and balanced, then please make that an incentive to raise the bar on your own contributions. With respect, Durova^Charge! 21:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Durova, we shouldn't react to anti-Scientology POV pushing by supporting pro-Scientology POV pushing to "balance" it. That's not WP:NPOV. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Except that, whatever else I may have been accused of, rightly or wrongly, "pro-Scientology POV pushing" is generally not one of them. I am one fair-minded S.O.B. --JustaHulk (talk) 23:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Zenwhat, it isn't appropriate to cast aspersions upon the neutrality of work that consistently passes FAC and GAC. Nor is it appropriate to characterize my offer as POV-pushing. Please assume good faith and bear in mind that every religion has strong points and weak points. Durova^Charge! 23:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

By flaming and shouting expletives about a rampant anti-Scientology cabal that secretly controls Wikinews behind the scenes, I think JustaHulk has pretty firmly established his own bad faith. In response to his remarks, you suggested that we publish and feature an article on Wikinews on "a subject where Scientologists take pride" in order to "keep this a positive atmosphere". ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

If JustaHulk wants to create a WikiNews article, he's entirely free to do so, and Durova is free to help him - that is the point of WikiNews, after all. As long as the resulting article complies with WikiNews' policies, then it could be used. I personally don't agree with JustaHulk's accusations (I don't see anything wrong with Cirt's editing in this area), but if he thinks there's some systemic imbalance that he can correct by creating an article for WikiNews, well, more power to him. Terraxos (talk) 00:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

At about the same time Zenwhat posted this here I posted to Zenwhat's user talk. To summarize, someday an editor may become active who consistently writes featured articles and good articles about Catholic sex scandals. If each of those articles meets community approval as treating its subject with fair and neutral balance, then the editor really can't be labeled a POV-pusher. The effect I hope that would have would be to inspire other editors to improve material on topics where fair and balanced coverage would shed a better light on the organization. There's a wikiproject for saints' biographies, for instance, and I don't see anything inherently objectionable about that. The difference from a netural editing perspective is that one religion is older and more established than the other. The spirit of my offer is to focus on content, not the contributor. Durova^Charge! 00:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyone that claims that anti-Scientology sentiment is not rampant on the 'net, on Wikipedia, and on WikiNews, is either unbelievably misinformed or delusional. I make the same point over and over again but it continues to be misunderstood. The point is that, on Wikipedia, despite rampant anti-Scientology sentiment, we also have a vast number of influential and fair-minded editors that can hold someone like the editor I mention in check. And let me make this very clear. This editor is by no means your run-of-the-mill POV-pusher. This is a very professional effort, averaging at least 5000-6000 edits per month, paying his dues, and trying like mad to stay out of the spotlight - the spotlight I have a tendency to wield. Yes, Durova, he pays his dues, and I have no problem with his efforts in FAC and GAC where everything he does is scrutinized and he toes the line. I can point at plenty of examples in less-travelled articles where his "freedom of expression" is more evident. But you know, I can take care of those myself when I find them. So he and I had a pretty easy peace there for quite a while. What blew that peace out of the water was this WikiNews thing. The problem there is, to put it in the kindest terms, simply not enough eyes, not enough editors, and no-one that seems able to say. "err Cirt, we have had an article a day on this for almost a week now, I think we may be overdoing it just a bit." Let's take a look at my predictive abilities:

Wilhelm (i.e. Cirt) will most happily write you a new article every time the "group" makes another YouTube announcement and/or every time another two or three media outlets make a brief mention, ignoring the fact that the media outlets are different each time and are not each one overplaying this and ignoring the fact that each media outlet is pretty much repeating the same info you have already covered. Let's see if Xenu is guiding my ouija board. --JustaHulk 12:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yup, that looks about right. Am I really the only one that thinks that WikiNews might want to exert some editorial self-control??? That maybe it is not in the best interests of anyone but critics of Scientology to give so much coverage, in what would like to be an influential medium, to a bunch of troublemakers? Am I really the only one? Or is it just because it is Scientology that the trouble-makers are targeting and who really likes Scientology anyway. Is that it? --JustaHulk (talk) 00:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

No. NPOV reporting on a controversial topic is not POV pushing. It's reporting. What I find objectionable is your systematic attempts to stifle freedom of the press. Does anyone else here concur with JustaHulk's accusations and tactics? I haven't noticed any support for this diatribe. RichardF (talk) 00:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

99% of all human existence doesn't care about Scientology or anti-Scientology. Looking at the Anymouse vs Regime game it looks like the same guy is playing everybody. Reminiscent of an old 2000 video game Deus Ex Invisible war, some of the language I saw is identical to ingame propaganda videos. Hilarious really--mitrebox (talk) 01:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

99%? What you mean there are 60 million followers? Methinks not. Thanks, SqueakBox 01:21, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

JustaHulk, twice now you've proposed that Cirt is a "paid propagandist". Do you have anything more than an edit count to support that very serious accusation? Durova^Charge! 01:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Cirt is a brilliant contributer on Wikinews. And because of his help, Wikinews saw the biggest ratings ever. He follows policy and as stated before, anyone can write anything, if it follows policy. More than one article one a subject or whatever is not POV. Its called reporting. And whatever someone sees as news, and again, follows policy, then its published. So whether you like Scientology or not makes no difference to me, but its not going to stop articles unless you can prove to us your accusations. You have harassed me, Wikinews, Wikipedia, and now Mr. Wales. If you have no proof, then stop the harassment. period. DragonFire1024 (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

DragonFire1024, you sure "harass" easy. I would wager that Jimbo is made of sterner stuff and I sure as hell don't think my posting my concerns could possibly "harass" Wikipedia or WikiNews - that would take, IDK, maybe lawyers? Anywho, I am done tilting at this particular windmill and have posted my final comment on the matter here (not a rickroll, though that would be in keeping with the topic). Cheers. --JustaHulk (talk) 14:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)