Wikipedia talk:Surveillance awareness day

Redirect: Mass Surveillance WikiProject

Various proposals and discussion of exceptional special events for February 11 are available in the page histories and archives of this talk page and the parent page. However, most if not all ongoing activities are part of WP:WikiProject Mass Surveillance and should be discussed there. Wnt (talk) 17:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Why was the proposal scrapped?

I have not been following the discussion closely, but I'm aware that it generated a great amount of controversy and I was under the impression that the proposal got scrapped because we failed to push a few of our featured articles onto the main page. I notice there's also a significant amount of opposition coming from users who claimed that the proposal amounted to political activism. Taking a second look at things, I'm assuming that's the real reason why it failed.

In any case, I strongly recommend adding a brief and concise summary of why the proposal failed, so that future editors would be aware of what exactly went wrong. -A1candidate (talk) 17:44, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Technically speaking, it's not a failed proposal, it was basically a sandbox that never managed to turn into any proposal There were a bunch of ideas discussed here, but nothing ever got beyond brainstorming. Instead, people focused their efforts on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mass surveillance. --HectorMoffet (talk) 17:52, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

That's such a pity, because I saw a lot of potentially brilliant ideas being brought up. I would have gladly helped to consolidate them, but unforunately, I'm relatively new here and I don't have much experience in doing these things. Anyway, thank you for putting in so much time and effort into this, Hector. Even if it ultimately failed, at least now we have WikiProject Mass surveillance up and running. -A1candidate (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

You keep drawing a nonexistent distinction. When a proposal is finalized and rejected by the community, it's a failed proposal. When a proposal is shelved before the exact details of its implementation can be worked out, it's a failed proposal.

This was explicitly presented as a proposal until you removed such language. More importantly, it was treated as a proposal by those of us who took part in the discussions. Yes, brainstorming occurred (as is typical of Wikipedia's proposals), but much of the conversation related to the desirability of proceeding with the general idea. Ultimately, this was rejected.

I'm struggling to understand why you insist on claiming that this wasn't a proposal. Is it because you believe that it reflects poorly on the WikiProject? On the contrary, that a tangible asset to the encyclopedia emerged from a failed proposal is a testament to the dedication and tenacity of those involved.

As I explained to Wnt on my talk page, a proposal's failure doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bad idea or that nothing good has (or will) come of it. The community can learn a great deal from its failed attempts, provided that they aren't swept under the rug. —David Levy 19:04, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe HectorMoffet closed the RfC after the first oppose (I agree with the failed tag by the way). The mistake was not going straight from the productive discussion on JW's page to an RfC; we had almost a month to make a decision as a community, but it was never brought forward for a proper discussion. Instead HM and a couple of others discussed it amongst themselves and on various dispersed talk pages. A summary reflecting that may be useful for future time-sensitive proposals. benmoore 18:49, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

You're wrong, lol, but I don't blame you, the timeline is confusing.  :) This page was already abandoned[1] for the Mass Surveillance wikiproject by the time Rybec started his discussion. I agree, in retrospect, that we needed prominent community members to lead an immediate site-wide discussion. Being prominent nor a leader, I worked on the content side and got a lot done at the WikiProject, but without a parallel process of on-going consensus generation, it wasn't enough. ---HectorMoffet (talk) 19:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

How is Ben Moore wrong? In this edit, you removed the RfC after one response (opposition) was received. —David Levy 19:22, 12 February 2014 (UTC)