User:Fabartus/Policy01

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I was going to post this to the Talk on Foundation_Issues, which is a empty page:

I'm trying to keep the debate and anything involving User:Mr Tan off my normal public pages,
  inasmuch as I have had some success in dealing with him and gotten him to abandon arguements
 (where others failed) on several occasions, and hence am trying to maintain influence,
  which is less than likely if he figures I'm against him personally. Which, I AM NOT, but
  instead FOR a policy that will handle disruptive editors with similar limitations or perhaps
 mental conditions, including some of which are POV/cultural biases to be sure! 
 FrankB 7 July 2005 16:12 (UTC)

Hi! If you care to post comments below, that's the prefered place:

  • In an ideal world we would all have unlimited time to devote to policing vandals and ill-informed good faith editors. However, in the real world, things grow and change, adapt or die, thusly, even Wiki-foundation issues must meet the test: Do these policies make as much sense today as they did yesterday. So a crack begins. Thus even a foundation might crumble or slide and adjust itself in the soil, thus adapt, or crumble. I don't think the idea of leaving all content unprotected will meet the test of time... for the cost will be the disgust and alienation of Wiki's key strength— it's devoted editors. This is a renewable resource to some extent, but not an infinite one, nor wise policy in the long run; experience (quality) counts far more than quantity— most of the time, this is after all a technical art.
    • Another cost looms threatening darkly, if the funding is to survive the increase in Wikipedias fame and quality (success), the charges of vandalism and unreliability will slow that stream, choking its reliability, threatening the under pinnings, even as the increased visibility creates more buzz, demanding even more physical resources. In the end, letting every article have unlimited edits by uncommitted editors must mature into a more rationale policy suitable to maintaining high standards.
  • Many articles ought to be locked already today— the numbers will only grow tomarrow. AM I suggesting that such articles are inviolate? No. I'm saying that today there are quality articles that should be protected from unsupervised reedits. Mature, well established articles where alteration should require a different process. So too are there articles of varying states of maturity that are unpopular or controversial to certain cultures and peoples unused to the openness of Western discourse, or in actual opposition to such foundations as freedom of dissent, freedom of speech, freedom of religious beliefs.
Or those article's under attack by cultures that cannot agree— an old versus young, or a Korean Vs. Japan, a Pakistan Vs. Indian POV and many other culture/POV based contentions cannot be and never will resolved satisfactorily to all parties. Spending human assets day in and day out to protect such articles from the ill intended makes no sense on efficency grounds alone— those human assets that protect such can be better utilized, for it is demoralizing to do the same ineffective action day after weary day. So many articles Need another modus, not to be immutable, but one to be stablized or protected.

(It is my view, that this demoralization is the likely cause behind the loss of 4 of 5 Admins as noted in ArbCom RFC last month.)

  • As an opening discussion point for one possible evolution, consider useless flamewars e.g. Talk:Tsushima Islands ('TI'), where literally hundreds of edits, reverts, and nothing much in increasing article length was accomplish May 30th to June 30th, 2005. If the length of that article changed 10% in that interval (excluding my own contribution of historic background), I'll buy you a bottle of your favorite beverage. On a media based in computer technology, wouldn't it make sense to have a software autolock feature that limits the number of edits in a given interval? A simple word count algorithm or CRC filter program could compare the several history files (transparently and immediately) to detect senseless reversion and counter-reversions, and automatically halt editing therein. As an adjunct to the 3RR, such would be over-rideable by a suitable Admin or group of Admins each time the auto-triggered lock engaged. Moreover, it's interval before allowing changes should be incremented lengthening the amount of 'cool down' time and unburdening over worked administrators. More to the point, it would make the warring parties work at least as hard to disguise an reversion creatively and some actual good text might come out of it. Simple paragraph swapping can easily be detected by CRC or other hashcoding of individual paragraphs.
Perhaps most importantly, the feature could be selectively targeted specifically to the 'offending editors' (i.e. Those who have demonstrated bad practices or POV track record without 'good' supporting sources) on that project alone, leaving them free to use their time else where, while suitably issuing an measured rebuke while maintaining some usefulness to the article history. (Note in the 'TI' example how that record became all but useless— save as a guide perhaps to who was warring and which version to rerererererererevert the article back to.) See: TI History (Look before June 27th, and note the ten day block!)
One refinement of the proposed software autogate might be to then gate such edits through a new kind of mediation committee, three of seven 'admins' (strategically picked as a team to cover many timezones, any three together empowered to enable the edit to be posted or denied.) I am aware that the old mediation teams on Wikipedia are all but dead, but perhaps this suggested model can resuscitate the concept somewhat. (re: ArbCom RFC last month.)
  • As an example take Tsushima Islands and Talk:Tsushima Islands. By my count there were well over 300 edits including around 70 in one three day stretch, and a rough comparison with the state a month earlier had exactly one significant change in length— a paragraph or so that I added ignorant of the ongoing war between several juveniles of differing and opposed ethnic backgrounds. Despite an RfC, nothing was done to ease the situation, in which I joined Mel Etitis, JMBell as NPOV parties trying to mediate and minimize the dispute. That's dozens of manhours by myself, and probably hundreds on Mel and James parts for effectively zero results. User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 2 July 2005 01:00 (UTC)
  • I want to belatedly highlight the concept of Admins Teams— as mediators, edit—gatekeepers, on 'Binding Arbitrators' of NPOV issues as well as issues of 'Proper Sources'. If policy allowed such three person(s) of seven to act as 'Summary courts' to jump into an immature flamewar at the first cry of foul, and that team has the (binding) powers to gate content which adequate discussion and consensus has approved, and block that on which such consensus has not been forthcoming, the endless reverts of a flamewar will be instantly choked off, without prejudicing the ideal of free content editing, by satisfying its' SPIRIT.
    • Article development can still go forth in an orderly way, provided the expansion or change is one outside the disputed facts. More rancorous and destructive arguements occured in the Tsushima Islands case over Korea Vs. Japan POV, than the mere question of whether the article title should have an 'S' or not; that was a second order debate, not the principle cause of the feud within the editing parties. (Some seem to have gotten this erroneous impression) FrankB 7 July 2005 16:12 (UTC)

Your comments are welcome!

[edit] Strange Coincidences abound, but I'm not quite your twin...

Hello, User:Fabartus. I saw your suggestion to protect some pages User:Fabartus/Policy01 after I saw your request for help on Uncle Ed's talk page. User_talk:Ed_Poor#Invitations He is helping mediate a Schiavo page dispute, and doing good under the circumstances, I think.

I do agree with you on the point of protecting some pages on a limited basis, or as you call it, protection from "unsupervised edits." I think that I had thought of this in the past, and maybe even proposed it. I don't recall, but anyhow, my idea would be to let users on certain high-interest or controversial pages edit only if they register using their true name, get verified, and like post their picture, contact information (name, address, phone number, and email) and profile on their user page. Then, as editors are screened, they can be allowed to edit. If a non-accepted editor wants to contribute, he/she can submit a proposed edit, and it can get looked at, and so on. Well, I sure agree with you that constant monitoring for vandalism is a MAJOR WASTE OF financial and human RESOURCE$$$!@ So, do you think my proposal to register editors and screen them is a good idea? Also, what do you think about the coincidences in courses of study here? --GordonWattsDotCom 2 July 2005 05:52 (UTC)

[edit] Fabartus's rants

By User:BlankVerse, w/interleaved comments by User:Fabartus

Here's some rather randomly ordered responses to your message:

  • I would file much of the Tsushima Islands/Tsushima Island naming controversy, as well as of the other arguments on that page under "Tribal conflicts" (and maybe personality conflicts as well). Although I do believe the primary name of Wikipedia articles has some importance, there is always the mitigating factor that redirects are cheap and you can have redirects from as many alternative names, alternative transliterations, redirects for misspellings, etc. as you'd like. In particular, the Tsushima naming "war" was a tremendous waste of everybody's time that I refused to get sucked into.
I had no honorable choice, my late-night fogged out misinterptretation kicked it into high gear, and unfortunately, I'd also taken on the task of trying to counsel Mr Tan on acceptable perspectives: of sources, of research, of dispassion, et al. FrankB
Oh, I only check in to it now every three or four days, as I have no dog in that hunt. I certainly have no lack of projects on Wiki, I've tagged a few of those and others for eventual attention on my User page cum TODO list. The problem is feeling a (decreasing) need to 'Baby-Sit' Mr Tan, per the RfC when I discoverd his age. I've had some success too, but the large number of manhours require me to get political and address shortsighted policy ideals and abuse of editors. Someone needs a wakeup call. FrankB
  • I don't think that age is the problem as much as obsession. Look at the edit wars over Circumcision for just one example of apparently adult Wikipedia editors misbehaving. Besides, there are many editors on the Wikipedia that are teenagers who are doing wonderful work and you wouldn't know their age except by looking at clues on their User Page, or looking at their edit histories (and sometimes not even then). And then there are numerous older editors who have their own idiosyncrasies, obsessions, and inflexibilities.
Some others have suggested an older person of limited faculties (a dementia of sorts) in emails, I'm familiar with my own teens (advanced) skillsets, but the maturity level speaks even louder. So 'Obsession' is certainly the symptom, pinning down the cause is the problem along with institutionally figuring how to handle these individuals going forward. FrankB
  • I don't know how you got the impression that I was one of the "old guard" of the Wikipedia. I only have a little over 2K edits and only registered on 14 January 2005. And I certainly don't qualify as "high ranking". I am not an administrator, and would refuse a nomination if someone nominated me. Being an impression, nothing more needs said other than 'Activity' must have been a factor, to your credit. FrankB
Three comments ungermane to policy on Flamewars were 'SNIPPED' into my archive01 page, as was a follow up sequence I didn't also transfer to here, where the original post came from. (See: User_talk:Fabartus/Archive01#Fabartus.27s_rants, Similarly, the full discourse (most of which was off point and personal background/bio stuff can be seen under the same title in that archive.

Sincerely,

BlankVerse ∅ 3 July 2005 09:18 (UTC)