User talk:Edivorce

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Welcome!

Hello, Edivorce, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  --Bachrach44 22:28, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Hi!

You show a great background in dispute resolution on your ArbCom statement; if your candidacy isn't successful this time around, please consider lending your help to the (currently leaderless) Wikipedia:Mediation Committee, and build up your wiki-experience for next election. Thanks! — Catherine\talk 05:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to second Catherine's suggestion. Even though I reluctantly voted against your ArbCom candidacy, I'm sure that your real-world experience would be immensely useful to Wikipedia's various dispute resolution processes. The only reason I voted against you is that with such a limited edit history it's not possible to judge how you would apply your real-world experience to the oddities of Wikipedia. I hope you stay and continue to contribute to the project! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
As above, I hestiated before voting in your favor, and am not surprised at the outcome, but hope you will continue on here (glad to have you as a fellow member of the game theory project). -Cheers, Pete.Hurd 23:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arbcom candidate userbox

Greetings. I've made a new userbox for arbcom candidates to show on their userpages so that visiters will know they're running.

{{User arbcom nom}}

If you'd like to place it on your userpage, feel free. Regards, – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 02:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Edivorce - Welcome to Wikipedia:WikiProject Game theory! We're glad you've joined us. Feel free to add or remove things from any of the lists on the project page. If you need any help, just let me or any of the other participants know. Again, welcome. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 20:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Investigating

You say " A process that uses “experts” who “investigate” and render decisions from information not placed on the record by the parties (who may not even have access to the information) can be disempowering, it may even take on “star chamber” qualities." I am the one who usually does this. I do it because the parties are often not that good at gathering evidence or expressing the issues adequately. Often I find things that have not been expressed in the evidence, including the involvement of others. However, it is diffs that I go on, rarely anything that is not in the record of edits. You are certainly right that it causes dismay from time to time. I don't think failure to adequately present evidence on the part of users should prevent us from going out and investigating to find out what is going on. Fred Bauder 22:44, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You take the common law position. I take the civil law position which I consider more likely to do justice, remembering that we do not do justice, per se, but attempt to craft whatever decision advances the progress of the project. Fred Bauder 01:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
A gracious concession speech, it does you credit. Please do find an outlet somewhere for your skills and enthusiasm. Perhaps mediator or member advocate might be a place to go for now. --Doc ask? 23:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You had a fantastic showing, considering your newness to WP. Your skills and background are a valuable contribution to the community, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of you using it all here soon. You can currently still have a great effect on things by getting involved on the arbcom workshop pages. Anyone is able to suggest solutions to any of the cases (in fact, I hear the salary is even the same :P ). --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 03:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I can only agree with all that's been said above. It was a pretty bold move to run for ArbCom given your inexperience with the Wiki and yet you got more support than a few candidates that have been around for longer. Do use your skills elsewhere in the wiki, there are plenty of places (and conflicts!) to keep you busy for a while if so you wish. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 11:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vote Outcome

Sorry to hear you lost, I was really hoping you would win. Also sorry about the lighthearted jibe to your profession - really I think you are much more qualified than many people in positions of power on Wikipedia. I admit I'm curious to find out how you view Wikipedia - what do you think it is? I think it's a collaborative hobby project that is a very very useful tool, but should be used with great caution, like eBay. I find that the best thing in any wikipedia article are the references/external links, for two reasons - #1 they tend to make the article more accurate, but more importantly #2 you can find out information from people who are more likely to actually know what they are talking about in the links/references. I'm pretty suspicious of egalatarianism, most especially in the "infosphere" - some people actually know what they are talking about, others do not, and even those who do are prone to significant error. I believe that truth is not a democracy and that facts should not be determined by giving everyone an equal say, but rather a say proportionate to their trustworthiness.

It is my sincere hope to see some kind of *ACTUAL* peer review mechanism put into Wikipedia at some point in the next five years so that individual facts/assertions can be tagged, organized, and reviewed by individuals according to their knowlege/reputation.

Just curious about your take on all of this - JustinWick 00:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I view WP in similar, though perhaps a little warmer way. It is, I think, a unique Open Source project in which the collaborators possess not technical skills but a general knowledge base and a high level of fluency and literacy. This opens the doors very wide. The end product of an encyclopedia is a worthy end. I hope it really is about the kid in the developing world accessing the sum of all human knowledge from her One Hundred Dollar Laptop. I am not yet completely convinced.
Mediawiki is wonderful tool for the development of the project. It only mildly burdens the collaborator with technical overhead.
I have read the press on the accuracy of WP articles that indicate that the information is found, upon review by credible experts, to be as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica or other peer reviewed academic encyclopedias. This is bourn out by my experience when turning to WP articles for highly detailed information concerning programming. The fact that such information works the vast majority of times is the proof in the pudding. Still, a grain of salt is always a very good thing.
The issue of peer review is interesting. I would not want to close the door on the lay editors. Are you familiar with Larry Sanger’s early role in the WP and Nupedia? The peer reviewed encyclopedia was just not sufficiently productive in terms of article output. I think much could be accomplished, as you suggest, with the use of tags that evidence content vetting by experts. Readers of the articles could have the “meta information” about how much confidence experts would place in the content. Users could develop entire forks that would contain only such vetted articles. Lay development of WP need not be impeded by this process.--Edivorce 17:13, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I've seen the articles comparing to Brittanica... I think part of that is that Brittanica just isn't that great - most non-field resources get deep details of a field wrong... Popular Science, New Scientist, Discover Magazine, etc are great examples of this, as they are usually well written but often contain scientific errors of such utter atrocity that I have wanted to vomit - everything from a microwave oven's "rays" stopping wireless internet carrier waves dead in empty space (?!?!), to explainations of quantum theory that completely contradict cause and effect (thus creating a time paradox). That article didn't really convince me because I do not believe that "average number of errors" is really the best measurement, I think that more detailed statistical information, like standard deviation, etc, and the precise methodology they used for their analysis should have been published.
I agree with you that shutting out lay editors is probably not the best idea. Honestly I think just tagging "this statement has been reviewed by someone who knows" is a great start - imperfect information is often quite useful as long as its degree of imperfection can be assessed. I do think, however, that some subjects really lend themselves better to lay editors than others... a lot of scientific articles deal with issues involving mathematics at or above the graduate level, and I've seen the damage a single person could do when they took some freshman introductory class and decided to "correct" things that they obviously didn't understand.
Most importantly, I think there should be some way to discourage large amounts of change on things that are already "good" and encourage change on things that are not yet of high quality... Plenty of wikipedia articles are as good or better than those on other encyclopedias, but they are the vast minority.
I've been leading a "crusade" to mark scientific (at this point, mostly physics) articles that are not referenced with the "unsourced" template, hoping that this will get people's attention and get decent references into the articles. Lay editors are usually reasonably good when they are getting their information from a good source (unless it is way out of their league).
I doubt Wikipedia will ever encompass the "sum of human knowlege," however I believe it will serve to hilight many of the most important parts, and be a valuable start on the long road of education. I really do hope some of what I've written on here helps someone who is too poor or geographically isolated (or busy) to attend a university to learn something that enriches their life. It will be interesting to see where the project is at in 10 years. - JustinWick 22:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing Question - Be Bold

The answer to your question is (somewhat simplistically) to be bold! In general, I *ONLY* put things up for discussion before I make an edit if:

  • I making a major structural change to an article that will involve a lot of work - in this case it is good to propose a new structure on the talk page for a subject. I think you will find that many articles have "caretakers" that have become attached to the page and are usually very happy to see someone working to make the page better, but rather upset when someone makes massive changes with no apparent reason.
  • I'm making a large, nonstructural change but am unsure if it is the best idea - occasionally I work on wikipedia pages that are outside my areas of expertise, and therefore I am a little more cautious about my editing.
  • I see something that needs done, but am sure that I cannot do it own my own - a comment works wonders to organize people for some articles, others seem orphined and no one cares.

If you don't hit one of those conditions, I'd say just perform your edits on the page, and expect them to be reviewed and corrected if necessary by others. Feel free to be somewhat insistant if you believe you are really in the right - sometimes explaining your actions will cause a revert to be revoked...

I saw you were editing the article on Mediation, and as you have expertise in real life, this should be an instance where you are likely to have no problem making good edits that everyone will like. If you have made changes that make the article pretty unrecognizable, it might be better to do it in a temp page, as was suggested on the Mediation article, rewrites can be done in "temp" pages before being phased in... I personally believe that some pages really can't be done piecemeal (this may be one of them) so that looks like a viable option.

Anyways let me know if you're encountering resistance on making great, sweeping changes to crappy wikipedia articles. So many WP articles feel like they were written by individuals that could not write, and didn't know much about the subject... What we really need is Wikipedia:Brilliant_prose. In fact, I encourage you to adopt a few articles that you particularly like and see if you can get them to featured article status... That's one of the most rewarding activities on wikipedia (I have yet to do this, I'm still looking for the perfect article).

All in all, it's better to ruffle a few feathers and make too many changes to too many things than to get nothing done, so do be bold. - JustinWick 15:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

After writing this giant speech, I realized I didn't actually answer your actual question about how long to wait for comments... a few days is fine. Honestly I think you should just start working on a temp version, and explain what kinds of changes you are making in the discussion page, that way people know what to expect and can raise objections before you put too much work into it. Waiting more than a week would be ridiculous... do expect a few people to disagree, but as long as you have enough people "on your side" that should not be a problem - most articles of wide interest are governed by a consensus of interested individuals minus a few outliers. - JustinWick 15:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revert

Easy there buddy...that was not meant to be sarcasm. The message was a standard message as part of a procedure we follow with regards to dealing with vandalism. You edited your user page from an anonymous IP address - that usually means 99% of the time that a vandal has hit because the only one that should be editing a user page is the user themselves. When an anon IP removes something from a user page, that is easy to mistake as vandalism. Jamyskis Whisper, Contribs Germany 22:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

See follow-up comments. --Edivorce 00:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we got this sorted. The template itself is in wider use by just about anyone who deals with vandalism on here. The templates available to inform potential vandals are test2, test3 and test4, as well as bv for a first edit from a user that is quite clearly vandalism. The test1 template is used at first when it looks like the user is genuinely "testing the waters" or if the nature of the vandalism is unclear, but we move on to test2 etc. if they continue.
I'm involved with the Counter-Vandalism Unit (see WP:CVU) - we generally scan through the recent changes to see if any articles have been vandalised, which, I'm afraid to say, is far more common than you may realise. The article on Wikipedia itself is vandalised around at least once a minute at peak times, then you have articles on controversial topics such as Abortion, George W. Bush etc. which frequently get vandalised. Unfortunately, some vandals are just plain mean-spirited, and user pages do get vandalised a lot - mine's been vandalised 11 times in a month.
Some of the tools for this are available to everyone. If you click on the [[diff]] under Special:RecentChanges in an article's history you can see the changes made by a specific user, and opening a specific version, opening that for editing and then saving it will revert it back to that version - see WP:RV for more details. Of course, there are a number of tools and tricks that you can apply to speed this process up. For example, there's a Java program available by CryptoDerk that lets you scan a list of recent changes that are constantly updated, and lets you highlight suspicious changes - for example, changes to user pages not carried out by the user. There's also a popups tool which allows for quick reversions.
Admins have more powers - they have a link which reverts even more quickly, and they also have the power the block user names and IP addresses. They can also delete pages, although there is a standard procedure to follow before they can do this.
I hope this clears things up. If you have any more questions, just let me know. Jamyskis Whisper, Contribs Germany 08:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] my rfa

thanks for your support vot on my rfa :)Benon 16:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thanks for voting!
Although this is a bit late in coming, I want to thank you for voting (no matter what your vote was) in my recent request for adminship. You might be aware that it did not pass due to a lack of consensus. The final tally was 21/9/10. I think I will try again this spring or summer after I have gained a bit more experience and met a few more fellow editors. Thanks again!

--MatthewUND(talk) 05:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

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