User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 1

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Problem on :sl WP

Hi! I'm sysop on Slovene Wikipedia and we have a problem regarding deletion on images, which don't have stated source and/or copyright tag. I'm trying to sort this problem for several months and with your new criterion (warning, 7 days, then deletion) on this would be everything easier. But several users on :sl (including some admins and bureaucrats) are opposing deletion of such activity, inspite that several pictures are almost 2 years old and uploader didn't nothing. 3 moths ago I started to work on this problem and immediatly I hit a wall. Several users stated that they have uploaded many photos and they couldn't check them all. So I went through all material and propaly taged them (if missing source, description, copyright tag). They they stated that this isn't good because there were only 3 large categories, so I asked Andre Engels to write a bot script to clear this. So the bot had sorted photos according to uploader to personal categories (this was completed almost 2 weeks ago). Some users used this to sort out (add missing info), but most didn't. So today I started with deletion of problem photos and immediatly they apposed this (even threated with de-sysoping). During this deleting today (I went through about 100 photos) I accidently delete also one properly taged photos because of bug problems on :sl WP. So I'm asking you if you could visit Slovene Village pump and add your comment on this (current discussion is here). Some of the opposers want another extend time-limit for deletion from some days or to 3 months. When I started with sorting of this problem almost half of all uploaded photos were missing some sort on info, so this could be a big legal problem. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 15:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

More Fair Use: A "representative" problem

Here, we find one hard-working editor using foul language because his uploads (without attribution) were deleted by another hard-working editor. Conflict.

Who was right here?

  • Did ZScout rightly delete per policy?
  • Or, instead, was Revolución, the other editor, not notified and given "appropriate time" to fix the problem?

This problem will recur if not addressed properly and publicly by you, Jimbo, the "voice of Fair Use policy."

--GordonWatts 04:45, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Hey, everybody: Jimbo's probably quite busy; so, could someone tell me: Am I correct to assume that my good friend, ZScout370, should have informed the user and waited at least seven (7) days, per this policy?? Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#Instructions: "If you list a page or image here which you believe to be a copyright infringement, follow the instructions below. Page titles should stay listed for a minimum of 7 days before a decision is made."

Thx in advance for the "community feedback."--GordonWatts 01:49, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Update: Thanks to User:BrokenSegue, who posted a note to my page, I leanred that WP:CSD now allows ZScout370 under this delete policy to do this: "Copyrighted images uploaded without permission of the copyright holder, or under a license which does not permit commercial use, which are not currently used in any article, if more than seven days old (so-called "orphaned fair use images"). Reasonable exceptions may be made for images uploaded for an upcoming article." (Additionally, I notice that at the top of this page, Jimbo just updated this policy. Oops! I had missed Jimbo's update before posting this; We all make mistakes.)--GordonWatts 03:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

This did not fall under the unsourced image deletion policy. Outside of Wikipedia, I contribute to the Flags of the World website. From there, many of "our" images on Wikipedia came from the FOTW website. (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flags/message/97681, if you cannot see it, I will give you the gist of it.) We, at FOTW, have a rule stating that our flag drawings can only be used for non-commercial purposes, [1] which has been illegal since May of this year. The images that Revolucion uploaded came from FOTW and did not credit FOTW for the images. Because of that, and based on the ear-ful messages I got at FOTW, I had to delete all of their images (I am in the process of doing that now) from here and also redrew some myself. And, really, because of the abuse of the flag images from FOTW and Flags.net (who I asked for permission before but I was not replied to), I had to change {{PD-Flag}} to {{Flagimage}}. While I know that this image use policy from FOTW was brought to Wikipedia by surprise, but if my guys over there are complaining about the images and want them gone, I have to get rid of it to honor their requests. FYI, another admin, Grutness, is also a FOTW member. I hope this answers everything Gordon, Jimbo and Revolucion. Zach (Sound Off) 05:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Clarification sought re.: Citing my sources to ensure Wikipedia:Verifiability vs Wikipedia:Vanity_page links.

Jimbo,

I saw your post here, in which you tell BigDaddy777 that Indy media is not a reliable source for Karl Rove since they are biased against Rove. However, we have reported on some court hearings in the Terri Schiavo article, and, back on the 24th, I gave notice here that I was removing all "vanity" links -to pages where I was the editor -even though they seemed appropriate -because I didn't want to give the appearance of impropriety or "vanity promotion" -and since there were many other links that could be used in these categories.

Indeed, Wikipedia:Vanity_page makes it quite clear that "The insertion of links that appear to promote otherwise obscure individuals by pointing to their personal pages...[are examples of] edits within non-Vanity articles that may be deemed as vanity edits." (Emphasis added for clarity) Wikipedia:Vanity_page#Vanity_edits:_examples

However, since the court hearings are relevant to the article and are included without objection thus far, I felt that I should follow Wikipedia:Cite_sources to ensure Wikipedia:Verifiability, which do not use "may" or "might" language.

I asked one of the admins about it, and he said that ""The only link of yours that is proper is one that covers important legal information covered nowhere else. I'll let other editors decide if that article is important enough, but the others have to go..." [2]

So, I removed the others but kept the one where no other reporters showed up for that hearing except myself. (Also, one of my reporters covered another hearing, but I am not counting that as a "vanity" link because,, although the story rests on my newspaper website, I myself did not write that story.)

I realize that I will not be popular for this question and stance to cite my sources to ensure Wikipedia:Verifiability, but I feel that we must verify our claims in the article, and, I would be glad if anyone could find a news source other than from the paper where I am editor -I only want what's best for the article.

However, a choice must be made: Either cite my sources -or don't -and be in the wrong. (The only other alternative suggested is to simply not report on that "Terri's Law" Oral Argument hearing, but it was one of the events in the time-line.)

I am not getting paid for this, and the links to my paper benefit me none. Our reporters are not biased against Terri even as Indymedia might be against Karl Rove; additionally, I have no conflict of interest. I seek your decision here as to what's appropriate.

PS: A lot of people want to push me down and use "vanity links" as an excuse, but am I not right in assuming there is no 100% prohibition against links that "appear" to be vanity -when they are necessary to cite sources for verifiability?

Thx.--GordonWatts 01:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

  • In the interests of accuracy, I should point out that the URL for Gordon's "paper" is http://www.geocities.com/gordon_watts32313. Judge for yourself whether that's not a priori vanity. --Calton | Talk 13:03, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
    • That is correct, Calton, but it is a "newspaper" web site; my "personal" web address is http://GordonWatts.com -and they are quite different, FYI --You should not judge a book (or a web URL) by its cover.--GordonWatts 01:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
      • One-hundred percent complete and utter bilge, and your attempt at hair-splitting is laughable. It is not a "newspaper" or a news site, and trying to pass it off as such shows either delusions of grandeur or major-league levels of chutzpah. --Calton | Talk 05:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Given that Gordon's site gives out "legal information" about the Schiavo case and given that a lot of that information is biased and quite possibly wrong, it would seem risky to use Gordon's site (posing as an online newspaper called "The Register") as a source in an already controversial article. (I say "possibly wrong" with regards to legal information because (1) Gordon isn't a lawyer and (2) Gordon's involvement with the courts around the Terri Schiavo case reflect a lack of legal training.) (I say biased because of (1) the legal case he attempted to bring to the courts and (2) because his website advocates for the impeachment of the judges involved in the Terri Schiavo case, among other reasons). FuelWagon 02:28, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

So, if that's the criteria, then any newspaper that has an editorial section and opines its own opinion is automatically out. Now, I'm not saying that this web paper should be used as the sole source of info, but it does offer balance, and, in one instance, was the only media to be at the recent Oral Arg, hearing for Terri's Law when it was at the Fla 2nd DCA here in Lakeland, a "neighborhood beat" for the reporter, who lived 1 block from the place Terri's Law was argued, lol.--GordonWatts 03:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
No, any personal page presenting itself as a newspaper when said page is both biased and often wrong should be excluded. I thought I was fairly clear on this. FuelWagon 03:12, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

images from OS maps

What is your opinion regarding Wikipedia:Maps_from_Ordnance_Survey?

  • 10 images maximum. Is this restriction a problem?
  • Non-commercial. Problem if it applies, but what is your reading of the T+Cs? Does it sound like their "non-commercial" restriction applies just to hard-copy or to electronic copy also?

Shame if we have to lose them. TerraGreen 15:45, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Well we are breaking the Ts+Cs already as the usages dont have the required blurb underneath (this could be fixed but it would look hideous and be very anti free). Also we cant stop our users printing out more than 10 copies (any users at any time) of a page that contains one of them. So they should go. Justinc 21:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Plus, Jimbo disallowed non-commercial images since May of this year, so no matter which way you slice it, they should go. Zach (Sound Off) 18:02, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

A note on image deletion

By the way the image deletion issue (which I called a 'debacle', which might have been a bit strong) is not because of its necessity, which on the whole I understand, but due to its implementation, which caused a lot of unnecessary anger, and more to the point, damage to the encyclopedia, which is what really matters. However it did throw some light on the power structures of the system, and the most disturbing aspect of this to my mind is not the power vested in Jimbo, but in those who take it upon themselves to carry out ill-considered orders unquestioningly, invoking their presumed mandate from Jimbo whenever they are challenged.

Now that some time has passed, I think it is clear from experience that the orders were not ill-considered and that, in fact, if anything we have been proceeding too carefully and mildly. Unless the process finishes pretty soon, I'm going to give a one month warning and then simply delete all the rest of them myself with a script working directly on the database.
Somebody else here called them 'brownshirts' and I really understand where that person is coming from - I think it's a very apt analogy. And while the issue has more or less blown over at least for me (and now seems a bit of a storm in a teacup), one of the things I felt initially is that the arbitration and other systems that have evolved here to resolve problems are quite tricky to negotiate if you don't have any experience of it. If you're an ordinary contributor that has generally avoided conflict and confrontation, then when it arises the system can appear quite impenetrable. The feeling one is left with is helplessness. If the Wikipedia 'state' is to function, I wonder if some analog to lawyers and barristers is needed - to help ordinary users when they get into trouble work through the system. In other words a voluntary group of advocates one can call on to put one's case in the proper channels (and of course keeping their own views out of it). What do others think? Or is it a case of figure it out yourself or put up with it? As WP grows I do feel this would help keep things civilised. Graham 00:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Endowment fund?

When donating to Wikipedia, is it possible to specify that the donation can be set aside into say, a special account where only the interest and not the principal will be used to further the foundation's projects? --HappyCamper 21:27, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

That would be great... +sj + 14:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Indeed it would be great. We do not have such a thing at the present time, but it is certainly something we should consider setting up. --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Greetings from another Randolph alum

I had no idea until I ran across the Randolph School wiki entry. Just saying hello! (class of 1992) --Korvac about 20:00, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

providers

is that place the wikimedia servers are located a single provider colo and if not have you ever considered using multiple providers to reduce downtime and/or possiblly get a better deal. Plugwash 21:27, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

We currently have servers in 4 datacenters: Tampa (Florida, US), Amsterdam, Paris, and Seoul (South Korea). --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Licensing for userpage images

Hi! I am a somewhat experienced admin here on en who are licensing my edits in the PD, and have uploaded a good deal of my own images for the project with a PD license.

I have an image of myself on my userpage, but would prefer to not allow anyone to use it for any purpose, ie not to use a free license for it. I don't see how that is detrimental to the project or its goals of building a free encyclopedia in any way.

However, citing your recent proclamations in regard to image copyright, people have been insisting that I either license my userpage image under the GFDL or that it be deleted. I find your declarations for speedy deletion of copyvio and non-free images very reasonable, and have deleted a number of images under them myself, but it seems to me to be completely pointless following the rules for their own sake to use those rules to delete my userpage image. I have also created a template template:userpage-image intended for non-free userpage images, but it has been put on templates for deletion.

So I am asking you to weight in, and perhaps issue a new declaration in support of non-free userpage images. Thue | talk 19:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Also see WP:VPP#License for userpage images. I support Thue here. As I understand, the point of the "no non-free images" declaration is to make life easier for content reusers and mirrors; however, there's no reason reusers should need to copy the user space. In fact, they should probably be discouraged from doing so. (In fact, I hardly see why I should need to GFDL everything I write in my user space... but I digress.) ~~ N (t/c) 20:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Having recieved similiar comments regarding both my userpage picture and the pictures I took at meetups (and bearing in mind the incident involving Sollog and the picture I took of Jimbo's daughter) I think I'd like to hear Jimbo's opinion on this. →Raul654 21:36, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. This needs to be straightened out. I'd rather not see the entire collection of Wikipedia Meetup photos deleted, or other photos that users have uploaded but that haven't been put into articles yet (though they very well could be). — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-11 22:48
The spirit of Wikipedia is free content and that should be done on every page Wikimedia hosts. --Nv8200p (talk) 01:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
It was not a "recent" proclamation that images for which the uploader has copyright must be GFDL. That has been true for a long time, and should remain true. Wikimedia believes all its media should be as free as possible. If you have a problem with that, link to an offsite image. By the way, Thue, there is no such thing as a PD license. Perhaps you should read up a little more on copyright before you start making more tags. Superm401 | Talk 18:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
There is no reason for content used outside the encyclopedia to be free, dependency on other servers is a bad thing, people want to inline images, and there is a {{pd}} tag that works just fine. ~~ N (t/c) 18:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
The GFDL requirement may have been there for a long time, but Jimbo's permission to speedy non-free images is new, and people are citing it as an argument for deleting my image (Actually my photo was not taken by me, so the GFDL uploader rule doesn't even apply in this case). In any case, as argued above, the GFDL requirement makes no sense when applied to userpage images. Thue | talk 20:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Some of the images tagged with this template were created before May 19, 2005. These are currently allowed to remain on Wikipedia. Therefore, the template should remain. --Mm35173 20:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Modified Wikipedia 1.0 Rating Proposal

I don't know if it's against the rules to post this here, but here goes. I just posted a modified version of Jimbo's rating proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Pushing_to_1.0#Modified_Rating_Proposal and I thought I'd let people know so they can pick it apart.the1physicist 02:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Explicit image legal issues

Please check out Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images of Sexually Explicit Activity. ~~ N (t/c) 00:21, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

If you think Bill Gates and Jane Fonda were bad...

...then you've never ventured into some of the pop music articles, loaded with fancruft and guarded by watchdog editors who insist upon retaining their article their way and their way only unless their hand is forced. These article number in the hundreds, but Mariah Carey and the articles for the related songs and albums. Not sure really what to do with the issue (it gets only intermitten attention from moderators, and no substantive action has been taken yet). Perhaps it just stads to reason that Wikipedia articles about pop stars just can't be of decent quality or fixed to become such. --FuriousFreddy 08:04, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Bounty Board

Jimmy Wales,

I've been thinking for a while about starting a Wikipedia:Bounty Board, where people put up monetary bounties for articles to become featured, but where the money all goes to the Wikimedia Foundation if the conditions are met. I have a draft at User:Quadell/bounty.

It seems to me that the positives would be that it would encourage donations and encourage the creation of featured articles, and it would fill a gap - that people tend to look for a psychological "reward" when they've worked hard for Wikipedia. But my questions are: 1, Do you think there are any legal problems with this? 2, Do you think this goes against the Wiki philosophy? And 3, Do you see any other problems? (I'm asking several long-term and knowlegeable Wikipedian about this.)

Thanks for your input, – Quadell (talk) 17:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Che

Besides the two Jimbo Che images, on your user and talk pages, here are the other variants I've made:

Jimbo che red.jpg
Jimbo che red yellow.jpg
Jimbo che red white.jpg
Jimbo che red white name 2.jpg

Feel free to use them throughout your CV. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-25 00:36

Lists of slang sexual terms standards

I recently closed an AfD as DELETEWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Body_parts_slang_2. However, a similar(some of it is redemable as it is common knowledge and the terms are used in numerous maintream books) article Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of sexual slang had KEEP. The intro to sexual slang article is better, but the rest drifts off into O.R. just like the "article" that I just deleted.

We really need to get a standard for these, are they OK or not? And how should they be done? WP:NOR and the fact that Wikipedia is not a random assortment of info(also policy) present huge problems for such articles. I could say 656 means "sex using X and Y and position Z" and there is nothing to back it up. I just don't think this stuff belongs at Wikipedia. If one wants to search for such things, then use Google.

Hopefully, my decision will be a landmark one, so we can get all this O.R. nonsense off Wikipedia.

Any thoughs from our lovely Stewardess?(no puns impied)...this is a serious matter though.Voice of All@|Esperanza|E M 15:15, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

:I think Inherently funny word is (usually) a model article for this sort of thing. Once upon a time the page had degenerated into a random assortment of anything that anyone felt was funny, and then some helpful and brave person came along and said "Look here, everything has to have a reference, period, and that's that." This was so obviously sensible that the page was immediately much improved and now (usually) is a wonderful article.

I'd say the exact same standard should apply here. Some terms are so commonly known that people may not feel that they need a reference, but then again, these are so common that finding references is trivial. Maybe you could set an arbitrary rule that any term with at least 100,000 hits in google doesn't actually need a cite, but anything less than that has to be backed up.
I hope this is a helpful idea.--Jimbo Wales 06:49, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Am I the only one who is uncomfortable with User:Voice of All(MTG)'s activism in this matter? Surely the process of closing an AFD should be simply one of weighing up the valid votes as fairly as possible? Regardless of the merit of the arguments, and of the page in question (and frankly, I would have voted "delete" on this page myself), comments like "[lets] get all this ... nonsense off Wikipedia" do not convey the level of impartiality that one would expect from an admin going about his or her duties. GeorgeStepanek\talk 20:50, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps Jimbo is on to something here. I already cleaned up Sexual slang after its AfD(which I also closed) before I noticed that you responded. It looks MUCH better know. And 60%+ with policy vio is not "activisim"; besides consensus=/=strict vote tallying.Voice of All(MTG) 06:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

one laptop per child project synergy with wiki?

Heard of the one laptop per child project yet?

How best to synergize? Be a great way to bootstrap a language's wikipedia, to be sure, though surely much more could be realized.

Each one of them there laptops'll have a passable digital camera. Could be a neat part wikifying peace and equality in our time.

Anyhoo, betcha the folks at the OLPC project would receive well some official interest from the folks at Wikipedia.

-:)Ozzyslovechild 00:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Nicholas Negroponte is a big fan of Wikipedia and often mentions us in conjunction with his talks about one laptop per child. He quite properly regards Wikipedia as a great use for such devices. :-) --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Nicholas, and others, might think otherwise after making a minimal effort to truly assess Wikipedia, e.g., content such as is exhibited by Team America. Parents, particularly, might not agree with Wikipedia's sometimes bizarre ideas re. truth and appropriate content. --AustinKnight 17:35, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

NOR policy update needed

I think that photos, which are intended to make a specific point, should not be uploaded to Wikipedia unless they have been previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party.

Flikr.com, weblogs, partisan political web sites (dailykos, freerepublic, etc) and such are not acceptable, but commercial news organizations and commericial publishers and to a lesser extent, non-profits would be ok. There is simply too much opportunity out there to stage photos, for example:

Supporters of Candidate A take Candidate B's signs and make a big mess in a parking lot with them and leave also a lot of trash like water bottles and sandwich wrappers.... the Wiki caption for this reads, "trash left behind after local rally for B".

Clearly it's a staged photo intended to make a point. If the control parameter of "intended to make a point" is not enforced, the excuse regarding the above scenario would be "I found the trash & signs in the parking lot and merely snapped the photo". Such assertions could not be disproved, opening a pandora's box of scheming opporunities.

Rex071404 216.153.214.94 06:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The list of examples of this problem is not long, surely? Pcb21| Pete

Why does that matter? This is a loophole which should be closed - see talk on this subject at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and Talk:John Kerry. Rex071404 216.153.214.94 13:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Y'all are trying to create a new policy where one isn't needed. All of this falls under Wikipedia:Verifiability. If a credible source hasn't identified or reported on the subject of the photograph, then any caption beyond, "This is a pile of trash someone took a picture of" is unverifiable. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:44, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I think that's exactly right. It is a legitimate thing to think about, but we have a longstanding tradition of not making up new policies to solve hypothetical problems. If this gets to be a real problem, we can address it then. :-) --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

(I deleted a few other thoughtful comments just because I'm in a major housecleaning mode.)

Fair-use images in templates

Adam Carr has informed me that you've approved the use of certain non-free images in templates. Is this correct? --Carnildo 20:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. I don't remember ever thinking about it. :-) --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Enough already...

Yo, dude. We get it. You're a popular fellow. Everyone likes you. People like to talk to you about "important" stuff. But hows about you clean up your talk page some? :-) Being a wiki, I would do it, but didn't know whether you kept an archive of any kind or if you simply blanked old discussion. It is getting rather long and starting to get slow to load for some of us slower users. Well, users with slower connections, not necessarily "slower users". Thanks. --LV (Dark Mark) 20:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Finally I'm doing it now. :-) Your comment provoked me actually. I'm going to be home in December and January (no travel!) and plan to spend a ton of time camping out on the Wiki.

Wiki-meta associations

Some have stated that an Association known as the Association of "Moral" Wikipedians is valid for deletion. Can a Wiki-association, even with some beliefs against the NPOV, be valid for Deletion?

Canadianism 02:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Popularity

How popular are you as a person? Wikipedia has been increasing in popularity. By the way, I saw you on Attack of the Show on G4.

I would highly doubt Jimmy is a celebrity, getting strangers saying hi to him on the streets of St. Petersburg. -- user:zanimum
I'm almost completely unknown to the general public. To my knowledge, no one has ever recognized me randomly. I do get recognized at tech conferences at which I am a speaker and in which my picture is in the program, but I don't think this means much. :-) --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Watch

An article posted at Wikipedia Watch declares itself to be an open letter to you. So I have moved it to User talk:Jimbo Wales/Wikipedia Watch. -- RHaworth 09:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#DreamGuy

Hi. This week I raised an objection to the Arbitration Committee's closure of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DreamGuy without attempting to form a decision; at this point the objection has been removed once by Raul654, who made the original motion to close. It seems there is no recourse for users involved in a request that has simply been ignored by the arbitrators, and I currently have no confidence in the arbitration process. A problem exists, it has not been addressed, and there is a strong indication it will continue. Could you please comment on this? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 15:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Ivan Gundulić

Administrator help: Ivan Gundulić article. Whether he should be concidered Serbian or not. This: [3] (in English) and these[4], which writes perfectly about his entire Serbian ancestry and this: [5] which states his life's works and Serbian commemoration. However, the newer version of Britannica (the upper-mentioned is older) claims that he is Croatian; although, it has been proven unreliable as it claims that Rudjer Boskovic was also a Croat, yet he was a Serb. What should we do? HolyRomanEmperor 18:20, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

State the facts, as you did above. Let the reader judge the reliability/validity of the sources. If conclusive evidence emerges, future editors can update the article accordingly. My 2 c. — David Remahl 21:08, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
That's exactly the answer I would have given. On any point of legitimate controversy, Wikipedia ought not to take a stand. Now, having said this, I would begin to wonder what caused Britannica to change their minds during the intervening decades. Quite possibly, there is some definitive research in this area which ought to be cited as well? I know nothing about it of course. --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikisource, copyrights, guidance?

At Wikisource, we could really use some help from Wikimedia on copyright. The most urgent question is whether we can archive United Nations Security Council Resolutions under "fair use", see the debate here. However, the impact goes far beyond UNSRC. The same logic disallowing those would also apply to U.S. state laws, the Iraqi constitution, international treaties, etc. So, we very much need some guidance on fair use, which is very complicated. While "fair use" is mostly determined under U.S. common law, Section 107 of the copyright code codifies (quite unclearly) a part of this, but 107 is neither mandatory nor exclusive nor limiting on common law. Does Wikimedia have access to an attorney competent in this area who could provide some guidance?

Thanks very much,

Wolfman 15:40, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom ruling

Jimbo, have you taken the time to look over Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Everyking 3 and consider the issues surrounding it? Basically, the case concluded with a decision to ban an administrator from communicating on the administrators' noticeboard, and also restricted my communication elsewhere by limiting what I can say about other admins. Mainly I criticize the decision for two reasons: 1) I was not given proper time to present evidence (I had a month, and admittedly did not use it, but I feel there should've been no rush, and I shouldn't be blamed for using my Wikipedia time primarily for actual editing instead of litigation—note that the ArbCom is always careful to acknowledge that my editing is good even if they think I have a horrible personality. I feel a temporary injunction could have alleviated any concerns about my allegedly problematic behavior while giving me time to gather evidence and discuss matters in detail with the arbitrators.) 2) I was contrite about my incivility on the AN pages, and I had clearly stopped making the kinds of comments the ArbCom objected to (partially for several months, completely for the most recent few weeks). I do maintain that the things I was complaining about were worse than my reactions to them (deeds being more harmful than words), but I fully acknowledge that I was excessive in the criticism and it would've been more constructive if it had been toned down. Part of the reason why I often reacted so bitterly was because I saw in the mistreatment of others the same mistreatment that was done to me early in the year, and wanted them to be treated fairly by our more aggressive admins. But this contrition was disregarded entirely by the arbitrators. I'm not sure why. Possibly they thought I was being insincere; possibly they felt that a case that had progressed so far had to reach the normal conclusion (a punitive ruling); possibly other reasons.

As far as other reasons go, one of them was stated by Raul in an IRC conversation I had with him: basically, my views are illogical and crazy and therefore aren't acceptable even if I am perfectly civil about them. So it's irrelevant if I apologize for the incivility; the views still need to be kept quiet. How do you, personally, feel about this notion? Another reason was more overt: they said that my comments were "ignorant" and I needed to research situations before commenting on them. I deny that they were uninformed in general, and could have offered a mountain of proof of my comments being obviously informed by the evidence of the cases I was considering; furthermore, the ArbCom is itself guilty of ignoring the evidence in three cases against me (there are numerous comments on the cases' various talk pages illustrating blatant ignorance of the matters they were arbitrating), so even if I was guilty here they'd be in no position to judge me.

I would like to hear your thoughts about the situation? This is something short of an outright appeal, just a request for an opinion from someone whose opinion counts. Everyking 07:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I think you need to delegate or something, Jimbo. I mean, you don't respond, no matter how long I wait. I understand if you're busy, but maybe your role on the project needs to be filled by multiple people. Everyking 14:02, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry to butt-in, but this must be the most hilarious thing I've seen all month.
James F. (talk) 15:09, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm confused, but didn't Jimbo already delegate his dispute resolution role in this project? Kelly Martin (talk) 15:12, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
That's my understanding. Jimbo already has delegated the handling of user conduct disputes—to the Arbitration Committee. To be fair, I also understand that Jimbo retains an ultimate authority (backed in principle by the support of the Board) over Wikipedia. He serves as a final avenue for appeal with the authority to overturn ArbCom decisions. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh no, arbitrators are beating up on me. Fortunately I'm used to it. Everyking 19:15, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Per the note I made above, I suspect that Jimbo may be reluctant to comment on this request–'something short of an outright appeal'though it may be–because his words do carry a significant weight. A casual statement by Jimbo on the issue would be taken by many to be a firm and direct endorsement or rejection of the ArbCom's decision; such a statement shouldn't be made lightly.
As an aside, Jimbo has only made 11 edits so far this month on the English Wikipedia. Out of 34 sections added to his talk page in the month of November, he has responded to only two. One was a direct response to a question about an admin action taken by Jimbo, the other dealt with a project that could spread Wikipedia to a new and broader audience. Unless Everyking does want to lodge a formal appeal, Jimbo seems to be taking a pretty light hand at en:. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
OK, I changed my mind; yes I do want to lodge a formal appeal. I want the whole ruling thrown out and the ArbCom formally reprimanded for so blatantly abusing the trust the community has placed in it. Let's see if that gets me a response any quicker. Everyking 05:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I accept your formal appeal. This didn't actually cause my quicker response, it's just that I've finally gotten around to cleaning up my user talk page. It will take me 'at least 1 week, and likely 3 weeks, to be able to respond properly to you though. I am still in extreme travel mode until December 3, and after that I will not be travelling at all (if I can help it) until February.
Good, I will try to keep my mouth shut and not complain anymore, then. Everyking 18:55, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Health of Mice

Hello, this is my first time contacting you. User:103749 attempted to create the article mouse health, not as vandalism, but as a forum page where people can come and ask other users questions about the specific topic (in this case, the health of mice). After I deleted the article, the user asked me if there is a way to create an article that can be dedicated just for the purpose of asking a question and having anyone answer it, similar to a forum but on Wikipedia. I told him that Wikipedia isn't that sort of project, but was wondering if there was a project like that on Wikimedia so I could give him a definite answer. Thanks! -- PRueda29 Ptalk29 23:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo rarely shows up, so I'd recommend asking these questions elsewhere. That forum is at Wikipedia:Reference Desk, it's one of the best parts about wikipdia. Redwolf24 (talk) 00:10, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I would imagine that 'mouse health' might make for a great Wikicities site, actually. It's a legitimate topic for discussion and community knowledge-base building, but that isn't the same thing as an encyclopedia article. --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Can this .............

Can the article "Contact Consequences" be looked at to determine if this article should be terminated, if time permits ? Just found out that you're THE Boss of Wikipedia. The article is being cleaned up by the Clean-up Task Force. I'm new to Wikipedia, looking for a guide, so that I do'nt end up in trouble unwittingly.Martial Law 06:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Me again...

What is the deal with Wikibooks? You said only textbooks should be there, but currently most of WB is not textbooks. What about self-help, how-to-do-whatever, books? There are a lot of issues surrounding the new enforcement of policy there. Should we just start tagging modules with the speedy tag? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. --LV (Dark Mark) 16:49, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo please provide some input. Wikipedia Fiction states that:
Wikibooks, Wikipedia's sibling project, contains instructional and educational texts. These include annotated works of fiction (on the Wikibooks:annotated texts bookshelf) for classroom or private study use.
So works of fiction are allowed at Wikibooks? Even the Wikipedia Wikibooks article states:
The project is a collection of free textbooks, manuals, and other texts, with supporting book-based texts, that is written collaboratively on this website.
Quite a bit of stuff is in line to be transwikied from WP to WB that does not fit under the "textbook provision". Either there is a ton of misinformation about what Wikibooks is and it has strayed from it's original intention, or you are vastly trying to change Wikibooks a long time into the development. Please let us know what we should do. Should we go around changing all the Wikibooks information, or should we go around changing all the Wikibooks? Thanks. --LV (Dark Mark) 18:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to keep pestering you, and appearing impatient, but we over at WB are awaiting an answer to know what direction to go. --LV (Dark Mark) 18:50, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

$100 computer

I suspect you're already aware of this project. I wasn't, until reading they'd rejected Steve Jobs' offer of free OS X in favor of open source software. I imagine it would be good for Wikipedia to see whether there is a role for us in this initiative. - Nunh-huh 03:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've met Nicholas Negroponte, and he's a big fan of Wikipedia. He's on record stating that he'd like to see Wikipedia on the $100 laptop. My own opinion is that Wikipedia is one of the 'killer apps' for this device. --Jimbo Wales 06:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Glad you're on top of it. I can't figure out how that would work (memory and storage-wise), but as long as someone can! - Nunh-huh 06:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is abysmal at covering the places that this fabled laptop is aimed at — see here. All the other major encyclopedias have better coverage. - Xed 00:17, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Given every Wikipedia user is a potential contributor, an influx of new users from these underserved regions will probably improve Wikipedia's coverage of them. - Counterpoint, 19 November 2005
I agree with Xed on this point -- our coverage of the less developed world could be a lot better. On the other hand, take just about any article in this area, and compare it to what it looked like a year ago, and significant progress has already been made. This is no reason for complacency, of course. --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Personal opinion and concern

Hello Jimbo I am sorry to disturb you, as I know that you are busy and I am not a registered user. But since a while I look how an article about the Salvation Army develops. After writing in the "talk" without receiving an answer please let me tell you, that I regret deeply, that the quality in parts of the article is not very good. It's also a question what is needed in an encyclopedia article about the Salvation Army. If you like to write everything they do or have done, you can scan libraries! Less quantity but more quality would be asked in such an article. Would it not be possible that you try to get experts on such a theme? (I am not paied by the Salvation Army but have a private museum about it therefore I believe that I am allowed to give a comment.) Perhaps you wonder why I do not make the changes which are needed? Because I fear the "edit-war" from people, who think that their opinion is more important. If I do correct and try to improve the article then.... What could be done, that someone who knows a lot about such a theme does not need to fear an edit war and perhaps endless discussions? I know it will never be possible to write such an article in way, that everybody is satisfied but it should be possible to really improve an article. kindest regards C.F. PS the quality of the German version is better, this I have checked

GFDL and deleted content

Hello Jimbo, how does the GFDL handle deleted content? It seems to me that all GFDL contributions to wikipedia that aren't copyright violations themselves (or obvious vandalism too perhaps) would have to be saved and delivered by wikipedia somehow? What happens if an article exists for a few months and then for one reason or another it is deleted, doesn't the GFDL require wikipedia to in some way deliver that content to users? Just wondering. zen master T 19:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The basic answer is no. The GFDL does not impose an obligation to continue distributing any material. It simply requires that whatever content is distributed must comply with the terms of the license. --Michael Snow 20:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Are you prepared?

Greetings, Jimbo, its Master Jay. I was wondering if you, or perhaps the core of sysops, have a plan in the event of a fresh wave of attacks. In other words, is there a troll-prevention plan, or something along the lines of that. Thanks for your time.

This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. (You must be thinking "it must be a bad joke.) - Don't block me.--Master Jay 00:23, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Malware

The Willy on Wheels stole the password of my previous account. I think he has trojan malware to fish out passwords with.

Suspiciously, WoW is trying to use legitimate accounts to circumvent the security against his Willy-style usernames. My old username is SuperDude115. --Nintendude 02:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Have you emailed this to wikitech-l? They would be well placed to look into it. --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Polygamy "Decision" was a "Summary Judgment & Execution" made without ever hearing all the facts

On 02:52, 15 November 2005, the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Polygamy "decision" was made to push out a rare proven topic expert on polygamy, while giving free reign to a hostile proven anti-polygamy editor to misinform Wikipedia readers with propaganda POV. Unfortunately, their anti-expert "Decision" was made completely without any consideraton of the facts or fairness whatsoever. Truly, the evidence testifies (to any honest observer) against the making of this "Summary Judgment and Execution" where considering the facts had never been allowed or performed.

Could you please take a look?

Sure, I'll take a look sometime in the next 3 weeks. I deleted the rest of what you posted here, but I'll read that too. --Jimbo Wales 16:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Poll regarding ArbComm member selection process

Jim:

Hello! I hope you're well. I want to inform you of a 'straw' poll currently underway regarding possible alternatives to selecting arbitrators (The Strawman Cometh :)). There appears to be a clear majority – a consensus, if you will – for electing ArbComm members. Let me know if you've any questions. Anyhow, enjoy, and thanks for your consideration! E Pluribus Anthony 17:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I will be very surprised—pleasantly surprised, of course—if Jimbo pays any attention to this. He must have a good reason to have decided to override the community's wishes and established practice—I suppose he finds the idea of the community expressing its wishes on this matter worrying for some reason. For my part, I find it worrying that he would find that worrying. Everyking 10:31, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Polls are evil. Given the pathetic state of RfA, I do not think its wise to "elect arbcom" at this point. Even if there is a vote, I think it should have a jimbo approval. --Cool CatTalk|@ 17:45, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I for one would at least like to hear what Jimbo's reasoning actually is - especially as the previously elected ArbCom turned out very well (even if the elections were unpleasant, but that unpleasantness can be resolved in other ways than by not having elections). Radiant_>|< 18:39, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo, please...

There is a lot of turmoil over at Wikibooks. Please see the above post of mine if it got passed over. If not you, some other member of the Board. Thanks. --LV (Dark Mark) 19:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Señor Wales

Hey, I'm looking forward to meeting you in January down in St. Pete. So what else do you guys do when you go to these places? Molotov (talk) 23:52, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello, Jimbo, from Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111)

Spinoza1111 05:43, 25 November 2005 (UTC)For my further comments on your phenomenon, Mr. Wales, see my blogs at http://www.developerdotstar.com/community/node/295 or at www.apress.com. Thanks for the space to introduce myself and say hello.

Spinoza1111 04:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)I learned of wikipedia a year ago and have made some contributions, most of which survived: see the Adorno page. I find your essay on NPOV one of the most moving and intelligent things I have ever read.

I am no "libertarian". Instead, my explanation for your success is that it confirms Marx's view that the source of knowledge is the people. In a dialectic, what seemed initially to be the worst idea in the world becomes the best idea in the world.

I have long learned to look for knowledge in ignorance and love in hate for that is the way the world works in my experience. At the level of human affairs, the dialectic may work because you're talking not about atoms in a gas but intelligent and emotive agents whose mathematics is not yet fully explored or known. Thus your discovery of the wisdom of the crowd can logically coexist with our knowledge of its madness and is itself redemptive.

As a published computer author (Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler) I suppose that I should resent and fear this form of Adorno's "Nightmare of Childhood": for my fat and it must be admitted, prolix pal Theodore Adorno, the Nazi mob was the crystallization of all the old fears of the Parzival, the upper middle class child protected from birth by Herzelied against what Wagner called "the clangor" and the mob.

I have to remind myself. These were my father's fears, from the era of WWII. I need to sort out what I fear and do not fear.

I have learned through experiences which cannot be shared when ladies are present that there are moments when the nightmare has to be taken to the crisis and Wikipedia is the crisis I have been searching for all my life, one with a theme in a major key (NPOV).

It has the nightmare potential of slavery at some future date in which people are forced to maintain wikipedia as slaves. But of course one joins today from freedom of the will.

So keep up the work you do.

I find it rather difficult to imagine a future scenario in which "people are forced to maintain wikipedia as slaves". Do you mean that you expect the Wikimedia Foundation to one day become part of a world government that conscripts workers to maintain its sites? I guess one could come up with a dystopian science-fiction story with such a plotline, but it seems rather unlikely for the real world. Anyway, a Wikipedia maintained by slaves would likely be extremely poor in quality, as it's better to have the work be done by a small group who cares about what they do than a large group who's forced to do it.
Looking at your other contributions and comments, I see that you're prone to writing lengthy essays stemming from some sort of leftist/Marxist/deconstructionist sociopolitical agenda of yours, which hasn't gone over very well especially when you try to apply it to everything from comic strips to programming languages. You'll do better here if you tone down your attitude a bit. *Dan T.* 19:50, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Spinoza1111 10:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)I find it useful and have no plan to chill. And, having an agenda is part of being a grownup with beliefs and goals so you bet your sweet patootie, assuming you have some sort of a sweet patootie, I have an agenda. I read computer programs "deconstructively" since there is no other way to read them. As to comic strips which manufacture consent to unacceptable lives, it's high time.

Gee, I hope this place is not some fucking cult...in which new entrants are supposed to be some sort of *tabula rasa* and in which we're all supposed to be worried about making a good impression on the Maximum Leader.

The fact is that Jimbo is on to something which is going to be fucked up bigtime if it becomes "reified" in the sense of stopping thought. I'm a person and not a POV and thus I have no need to be N.

For example, the Dilbert article is today not an ad for Dilbert junk as it was before I moseyed in, and it contains a well-balancing section today, with references, which shows that there are people, like Norman Solomon, who find the Dilbert sends a conformist message. This makes the article more truly NPOV, but I had the energy to do the homework demanded by other participants because I have a POV about Dilbert.

That old stinker Marx actually believed that capitalism is one big fat POV which as a POV systematically erases any other POV, such as the POV of indigneous tribes eradicated in primitive accumulation, or the POV of the working stiff. He believed that we'd only be "objective" after the Revolution.

He may have been wrong, but basically he was interested in NPOV same as anyone else. If he had believed in the POV of the stronger, he would not have been able to criticise capitalism at all.

What Jimbo is on to is that NPOV exists and we need it. However, it is easily confused with being a dull fellow or a tabula rasa.

However, you may have a rational fear that I might be The Great Soviet Encyclopedia type of person. All I can say is that Wales' essay seems to distinguish between people and views.

As to my science fiction story, the potential for slavery exists all over the entire open source movement. As I said, the potential is in a dialectic relationship with freedom as regards wikipedia and open source.

I'm not saying "Freedom is Slavery" in Orwell's sense, or, if I am, it depends on what the meaning of "is", is, as it did for Clinton.

I am saying that information isn't "produced", it is something that comes to be known. A society in which information production is no longer a matter of paid authorship is one that has relieved itself of one more onerous task, and that's a good thing. The devil is in the details and in the treatment of people who did not contract to work for free.

Protection Tool Update

I really like the idea of multiple layers of protection. We could have:

Open(no protection)
  1. No Moves
  2. Logged in Only
  3. Logged in with edit count 25+
  4. Logged in with edit count 100+(pretty much like protection, but non-admins can edit)
  5. Protected

Numbers 2-4 are "semiprotection". This would VASTLY cut down on vandalism and would be no where NEAR as restrictive and anti-wiki as page protection. Can you get this implemented somehow? What developers could do this? Thank you.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 05:25, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Even if a time-limited protection of an article could be imposed to stop IP editing of an individual article or page, where a vandal is jumping between IPs to target a page for continuous vandalism, it would cut vandalism while avoiding full protection which stops genuine users editing an article. Most articles are not being continually edited by IPs. Often the vandal is the only one. So an ability to say protect this page for four hours from IP edits when this page was being targeted by one vandal jumping between IPs would not inconvenience many users (in that four hour spell no other IPs might want to edit this page) but it would close off the opportunity for the vandal. (While they could create user accounts to dodge the ban, I suspect most wouldn't, because they'd be afraid that 'going public' with a name would mean that they could be caught and dealt with more easily than when hiding under an anonymous IP. FearÉIREANN 21:26, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Request for Semi-Protection, Vandalism, Future of Wikipedia discussion on IRC

What's up Jimbo, I just wanted to ask if you could arrange and meet on IRC sometime with as many users from the mailing list, hopefully some developers, and many editors who have become involved in the discussion about what to do to combat rising vandalism. Several options have been discussed in both the Village Pump, Bugzilla, and highly vandalized pages such as George W. Bush, but it seems always to hit a wall. Let me know if you're available for such a meeting and I will spread the word to the extensive amount of editors currently involved in the discussion. --kizzle 01:39, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Did you get my previous note about semi-protect? I left it on this talk page...and it vanished with everyhing else. I agree with Kizzle here...its time to semi-protect.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 14:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it should be considered but may I suggest on-site. Marskell 14:17, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
If I may, I would like to join Voice of All in favor of a semi-protection function. The overwhelming amount of vandalism that the George W. Bush article receives needs to be preventable, and rolling back using traditional methods is no longer viable. Hall Monitor 19:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I'm not sure where I stand on the semi-protection feature, but I do want to have a discussion over what options we have to limit vandalism, especially to such pages as George W. Bush, and to have a serious debate as to balancing what is considered "wiki" versus realistic consequences of massive upscaling. --kizzle 23:36, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
I reckon it would be helpful to publish some data on how vandalism is rising (seems easy enough - just publish the total amount of time that a popular article such as GWB has spent in a vandalized state this week, and for the past N weeks). We assume that this amount is rising, and if it is, we pick a threshold (which we may well have already past) and say look we are going to have to have extra protection for this page. Data is really useful here. People have requested semi-protection of one kind of another for years, so it will meet resistance on this round too. Provide data to show what you think is happening and the status quoers will not be able to fiddle whilst our Rome burns. Pcb21 Pete 09:47, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
This has been informally done at GWB Talk a few times. I recall, for instance, checking last 250 and concluding 87% was vandalism or reversions a month ago. At times it will be vandalized 6 to 10 times an hour. Beyond question something must be done about the page and indeed, semi-protection may only really be needed there. Marskell 10:01, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
While the absolute number of reversions is important too, the most important statistics is the proportion of time an article spends vandalized (if the number of vandals increases, it stands to reason that the number of good guys increases too, thus decreasing the amount of time to revert). I haven't seen this statistic around, but maybe I missed it. 10 times an hour, with let's see a mean time to revert of 1min means that the article is vandalized 16% of the time. To me, this is way over the threshold I mentioned above. But you are right GWB is a special case, perhaps even a unique special case, so we need to be careful to avoid a slippery slope (our previous experience shows that on WP if something can be a slippery slope, it will be!) Pcb21 Pete 10:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think a vandalism magnet like GWB would give a particularly good statistical sample. Raul654 19:59, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Of course not, but that does not negate the fact that some additional measures must be taken on these highly vandalized pages. You can put it to an admin vote, run it through arbcom instead of admin discretion, whatever is decided, but something must be done. I think if we had this discussion on IRC it would be much better, as I'm tired of banging my head against a wall talking about this with huge popular support and no consideration even by those who can do something about it. --kizzle 20:26, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
People can provide data for whatever pages they see fit as far as I am concerned. My suggestion was more about finding a way of kizzle stopping having to "bang his/her against a wall". People have been talking about long-term protection for years, so its not surprising that old lags don't jump to attention on this occasion. I am suggesting a way that would convince me to change my otherwise entrenched "wiki-way" views (depending on the results)... I am sure it would others too. Pcb21 Pete 22:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting GWB gives a good statististical sample. Just the opposite--literally, there is no other page you can compare it to. And I want to emphasize my comment here: George Bush needs semi-protection regardless of activity on other pages. I watch WWIII, Bill Clinton, Hitler, and a gaggle of others--there is no comparison. GWB is an enormous drain on time for those who watch it and "hey, just revert like you normally do" isn't sufficient. Click 500 and you'll see a given admin (or not necessarily an admin--some good faith contributor) who will spend an hour reverting the same vandalism. Why the hell are we wasting that time? Marskell 22:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

So. What proportion of the time is the GWB page vandalised? Pcb21 Pete 08:07, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, I remember seeing a comment a day or so ago that every one of the last 270+ edits was a vandalism or a revert of a vandalism. Raul654 08:12, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Funny how three times in a row I ask one question and people answer another. I don't care (so much) about number of vandalisms and reverts - that increases over time is an obvious consequence of increasing number of editors and vandals. The relevant metric is the proportion of time the GWB page is vandalized. If people who want to restrict our wiki freedoms, they should at least have the courtesy to give some data that it is necessary. Pcb21 Pete 09:00, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Whoa there. People are attempting to answer--but necessarily indirectly as it isn't a stat you can generate just like that. You yourself extrapolated 16% of an hour if there are ten. Granted, that would be an exceptional hour but I have seen it. There were apx. 30 reverts yesterday, with two or three admins reverting eachother over the protect tag. Apx. 50 on the 22nd and just over 40 on the 21st. Again, assuming a minute per, say half an hour to an hour vandalized daily. Durin is probably the guy who could get us a more accurate stat. Marskell 10:42, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Let us suppose that a edit that gets reverted is vandalism. Then simply add up the the total time a reverted edit is visible on the site divided by the length of the obervation period... voila, a percentage. Possible problems: i) admins abuse their rollback button by reverting stuff that isn't vandalism, ii) data is rounded to the nearest minute - will quantization errors average out quickly enough. Might do this myself, probably better than me just talking about it :) ... Pcb21 Pete 11:02, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Data

Ok, I did what I should have done before and wrote a script myself.

Arbitarily picking revisions 501-1000 of the George W. Bush article: There were 7988 minutes of time when the GWB was visible in a state that was not later reverted using the rollback button, and 253 minutes of time when it was visible in a state when it was later reverted. Thus, in this period, we estimate that we have 3.1% vandalism. Sounds unacceptably high to me.... Pcb21 Pete 12:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

By comparison, Sperm Whale, which I would describe as a typical good article (i.e. featured, been on main page, fairly mainstream topic, some minor differences on which people are likely to take POVs but not too many) has spent 0.7% of its time vandalized. Pcb21 Pete 12:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
That's almost exactly 45 minutes in any 24 hour period which checks out with the rougher estimates above. It also does not include non-rollback reverts which would increase the % somewhat.
It is too high. But where to force the issue? This conversation has occured numerous times and then gets dropped because nothing is done about it. The best idea I've heard is to allow editing there with the same limitations we apply to page moves. Marskell 16:54, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Whatever the answer is, it requires developer or Wales' participation in this discussion to actually reach a productive conclusion. --kizzle 07:04, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we (the community) should introduce a kludge solution - GWB gets protected, and all edits are made to GWB (editable). Our ever-industrious admins transfer all non-vandal edits to the main page manually. Yes it's a kludge but it also solves the problem. Historically the existence of kludges has offended the sensibilities of developers and they are coerced into creating better solutions ;) Pcb21 Pete 08:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I guess that's the best we can do until either Wales or a developer steps in to the discussion. We're definetely going to get a lot of "anti-wiki" comments, but oh well. --kizzle 19:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I absolutely do not think that a "decision" about this perceived problem must come by decree from Jimbo... I think 3 % downtime isn't a bad price to pay for the incredible dynamism that has made Wikipedia the most popular encyclopedia on the web. Besides, the article is usually completely readable in its "vandalized" state, especially when the "vandalism" stays for longer than a couple of minutes. If the whole article is rendered useless (the whole page is replaced with "he sux!!!1!" practically the first person who visits the article will revert it. If less blatant vandalism such as "He is stupid." being added to the end of his bio persists for a couple of hours, that isn't much of a problem.
Expanding the availability of the rollback facility to everyone (but revoking it liberally) would be a wiki-like improvement. — David Remahl 19:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Of course it doesn't need to come by decree from Jimbo, but like I said, I've been a part of these discussions for some time, which always receive heavy support for either semi-protection by levels as proposed above, or to a lesser extent the "wedge" solution by Pcb above. Every time, it gets dropped because Village pump has no authority to make such changes, and no developer on Bugzilla wants to get involved. One of the hallmarks of Wikipedia is developing a collaborative concensus, and in my experience, there is significantly more of a concensus for some sort of additional measures to be implemented only on certain pages such as GWB. It is irrelevant how "readable" the article is in its vandalized state, it makes us look like fools and validates every naysayer's knee-jerk reaction to the aims of this project. Both the way things are right now and the proposed leveled semi-protection have advantages and disadvantages. I personally can't see how anyone could justify only on GWB maintaining an 87% vandalism rate on 50-100 edits a day is better than letting the one anonymous editor who comes in and correct a spelling error. It's not like they're going to be turned off the project if they can't edit one page for special reasons. --kizzle 20:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd like Jimbo to give us his opinion, though, for the following reason: GWB is an article that is difficult, if not impossible, to improve. As a result, the article can only go down, it cannot become better. This was bound to happen at one point or another in Wikipedia; as economists say, we've reached the point where diminishing marginal returns become negative marginal returns, and leaving the article open for editing can only hurt us. It might be the time to have a discussion on Wikipedia's basic principles, and how to adapt them in the future. Titoxd(?!?) 05:19, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jimbo. Several people have requested your input regarding Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy. Will you please provide a response at your earliest convenience? Best regards, Hall Monitor 19:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Jimbo Wales

Hmm.. there currently is somewhat a disagreement between User:Cool Cat (me) and User:Voice of All(MTG). The actual change isnt much.

what I propose, his proposal. Since it is your userpage, I feel you should like it and hence decide how it should look. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

FYI, these last two wiki-links are not working. Or more specifically, they aren't pointing to any type of proposals. Are these semi-protection proposals? If so, I would love to read them. Hall Monitor 23:47, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, no we are "fighting" over how Jimbos user page should look like :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 12:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
This would be the best lamest edit war ever :)!
BTW, I modified the semi-protect tag too...muhahaha!!!Voice of AllT|@|ESP 13:01, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
ok... you seem to be hyper active... Tonikaku, there is no revert war that I am aware of on jimbos user page. I find revert wars disruptive and I make a great effort to steer clear of them. --Cool CatTalk|@ 17:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Che

Whats up with that? Communism vandal would be delighted :P, maybe we need an elaboration of the symbolism. :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 17:40, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Does telling someone to "fuck off" qualify as a personal attack?

Hello Mr. Wales. I am contacting you regarding a recently filed RFC, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Duncharris, which was established for the purpose of resolving serious incivility issues between one Dunc Harris and a number of different editors on Wikipedia, including other administrators. User:Duncharris, a wiki-en administrator, has been making frequent use of vulgarities in edit summaries as well as profane personal attacks directed at other editors. During the course of the RFC, an argument was made that responding to someone who requests civility during discussion by telling them to "fuck off" is permittable under certain circumstances. Would you agree with this? Please review the discussion as I would greatly value your insight into the matter. Thank you, Silensor 20:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I think for an administrator to behave in such a fashion is a terrific disgrace and that he should be desysopped. I'm sure the ArbCom will take care of the matter in due course, of course.--Jimbo Wales 17:23, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

So do you think that those you have personally appointed to the ArbCom should hold themselves to similar standards?
  • [6] "Just what the hell are you doing?" "I don't know what shit you're trying to pull here" "GET IT THE HELL OFF THE INTERNET"
  • [7] (as justification for the above): "I'm not a diplomat; I'm a sysadmin. You wanted a diplomat, you hired the wrong BOFH."
Under the circumstances, I think the irony of assigning the ArbCom to be the bearer of such standards is evident. --Tabor 16:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Not that this is relevant to the actual subject, but, the evidence provided by Tabor above is not convicing: None of the three quotes are personal attacks(although they do use strong language), the third is not even a command - the full quote is: "Either your computer has been compromised, in which case GET IT THE HELL OFF THE INTERNET, or you're feeding us a line of BS.", and the person in question was not acting as an a member of the ArbCom. If that's the best you can find, that's a sign that things are working, not broken. JesseW, the juggling janitor 20:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I didn't say they were personal attacks, but I did find them highly uncivil and vulgar. It's not the worst I could find, it's just something I happened to notice because it was quite recent. If these are the standards for civility for the most trusted members of the community, I find that troubling. If "I don't know what shit you're trying to pull here" is an acceptable way to address contributors, I'm thinking it's time to find another project. (BTW, it was in relation to the use of CheckUser investigation -- how is that not acting as a member of the ArbCom? Isn't that how the priveleges are granted now?) --Tabor 19:51, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Clarification Sought

Please advise where I can find official policies on WikiBOOKS as to what is appropriate and not and the policies regarding deletions and speedy deletions. Also, in Wikibooks, who has final authority, you or the board. This is simply a request for clarification that does not imply any kind of protest or expression of preference. Best place for response is User discussion on WikiBOOKS: Frog One (note caps) Thank you. Frog one 20:31, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

$100 laptop comment

Hi jimmy, I've referenced your talk page on a comment you made regarding the $100 laptop. Specifically, this is the text: "Negroponte has also said he'd like to see Wikipedia on the $100 laptop. Jimmy Wales himself feels that Wikipedia is one of the 'killer apps' for this device.[8]". I'm not sure whether using your talk page as a reference is ok, if it's not somebody should change this. Jacoplane 16:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

The spec for the over-hyped machine states that it has 1GB of Flash memory. To include all of Wikipedia and an OS on the laptop would be impossible (without severely pruning Wikipedia). Wikipedia on the $100 laptop seems to be an illusion. I can't find any source where Negroponte states it's going to be on it. Indeed, one of the designers of the laptop, Alan Kay, has criticized Wikipedia [9]. - Xed 17:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not debating the facts, I was just asking whether it was allright to use this talk page as a reference in the article. Earlier in this page, Jimmy said "Yes, I've met Nicholas Negroponte, and he's a big fan of Wikipedia. He's on record stating that he'd like to see Wikipedia on the $100 laptop. My own opinion is that Wikipedia is one of the 'killer apps' for this device.", and this is what I was using as a reference. Also, in the very article you link to there is this: "It seemed like an odd swipe to take at Wikipedia, ... , and given the extent to which Negroponte has indicated that Wikipedia will likely be core to what’s distributed with the machine.". Jacoplane 17:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but I can't find a quote from Negroponte saying it's going to be on there - which is not surprising given the lack of room on the laptop. I can just find other peoples opinions. - Xed
Via [10]: "He mentioned Wikipedia as an example of a major source of content for the initiative, and asked how many people in the audience use it - about 50%. "It's by far the best encyclopedia on the planet," he said. "It's so fresh, so current, if you go look up yourself, you're probably in it." "It's the Wikipedia equivalent (of hardware)," he said, describing the spirit of the laptop initiative. " ("He"==Negroponte). Jacoplane 23:07, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
"He mentioned Wikipedia as an example of a major source of content for the initiative" - that's very vague - is it going to be on the laptop or not? It doesn't explain how he's going to fit Wikipedia (maybe 18GB for text only, over 100 GB for graphics too) onto the laptop (only 1GB), leaving me to think that the idea is at best wishful thinking, and at worst a hoax. - Xed 23:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

complete failure of wikipedia NPOV policy

This article Talk:Palestinian_exodus is a complete failure of wikipedia NPOV policy. Nearly 3 years ago it was anti-Palestinian. Now not a shred of that POV remain and it is completely biased to the other side. I have edited this article for a week, yet every single word i changed there got reverted by a coordinated revert gang which is able to circumvent in this way the 3RR rule. It seems that unless I am able to get a "gang" of my own:-) there is no point trying to get this article to be NPOV. slim and jayjg are involved yet they too do not make any contribution toward NPOV. This is not what Wikipedia is all about but it is what wikipedia has become.

I don't have the time or the organized manpower as the other side to go through the usual Wikipedia mechanism. These mechanisms have failed in this article. In 3 years not a single Wikipedia admin was able to make significant contribution to make this article NPOV. This is a symptom to other anti-Israel systematic bias that is spread all over wikipedia and I suggest you find a way to address it as I can't. Zeq 18:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I am still waiting for an action that would either enforce Wikipedai NPOV policy on this article or will change the policy so that this article could become balance. This article is looked upon by several people in Israel. 9or who care about israel) From your recent visit to the country I know this area is important to you and I am sure that if Wikipedia will continue to be a platform for anti-Israel one sided propeganda (instead of the neutral independent thought that it is supose tobe) this would refelct badly on your efforts in this area. Please take the time to address the systematic anti_israel bias that have cripped into Wikipedia. Zeq 07:23, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia S&M bylaws

The first draft of the translation for the bylaws for Wikimedia Serbia & Montenegro is done. Delphine told me to tell Angela to look at them and make a comment, so I did it. She's going to do so too and Florence already did. The english version is here. You could take a look too. Thanks :) --Dungo (talk) 20:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Hehe, you said S&M ;-) the wub "?!" 22:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC) (with his mind in the gutter)

Jimbo

Do you agree with semi-protection or not? Do you have an opinion on the matter, is it not better than full protection?Voice of AllT|@|ESP 22:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. Sorry, but in this case we need a bit of monarchical rule. You should say yay or nay to the general idea of semi-protection. Marskell 22:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

A new picture?

Hi Jimbo. You're probably not in the habit of reading Talk:Aetherometry so may have missed http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia/awp_index.html which I think features you, somewhat photoshopped, off on the right hand side. William M. Connolley 12:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC).

Anti-Wikipedia rants seem to be a dime a dozen these days... usually coming from people who get in a huff because this site won't uncritically accept their own (often nutty) viewpoint without challenge. *Dan T.* 15:54, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
But this one is, I must say, particularly entertaining. :-) --Jimbo Wales 19:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Americans are funny!

Here's a good reason why people, especially Americans, should read your site!

http://media.putfile.com/On-The-Streets-Of-America-3

--Anittas 13:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Deleting Wikibooks

Please, just as a courtesy to the other admins and people who are trying to make Wikibooks a better place, let the admins on Wikibooks know if you want a Wikibook deleted. Removing an enitre Wikibook is more than simply deleting the first page, as it leaves a lot of "crumbs" behind that currently is not dealt with by Media Wiki software.

If you want b:Jokebook to be deleted, for example, just ask us (the admins) and we will do it for you.

Otherwise, please make sure that all of the sub-modules are also deleted. That is a huge task and can take quite a bit of time just to push through all of the pages on a large Wikibook. Leaving behind the other modules is just going to clutter up Wikibooks and perhaps even recreate the nightmare you are trying to get rid of. Orphaned modules are already a huge problem on Wikibooks that I for one don't want to see the problem get any worse. --Robert Horning 14:49, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

  • nod* I understand. I only did it that way to make sure that I wasn't doing anything too non-reversible in case it was in error. I do understand that the full deletion will be more complicated.--Jimbo Wales 18:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Arbcom recusals

Hello - I wanted to alert you to a situation on a current Arbcom case that I feel is very inappropriate. The case was filed by User:Cberlet naming 5 other editors. User:Jayjg, an Arbcom member, has a lengthy personal history with Cberlet on wikipedia and has directly participated in many of the disputes that are involved in Cberlet's case. I posted these with a request that Jayjg recuse himself as the Arbitration policy requires, but he adamantly refuses.[11] I fear as a result of his participation that this case could be skewed to favor Cberlet, who has engaged in many policy violations of his own. Could you please review this matter and advise? Thanks. Rangerdude 20:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Images with unknown source count updated

I have updated the count of images in Category:Images with unknown source; it's down to 6576. Thanks for reminding me to do it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 20:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for publication

Hello Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia:Requests for publication is a proposal that will help implement Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0. It basically involves putting up a protected version of an article, but most importantly the main editable version is there nonetheless. The premise is to give an article the Published status that entails quality - good quality that schools would have no hesitation to use Wikipedia rather than Encarta or Britannica. -- Zondor 18:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom elections

Given that December is near, would you please inform the community about the process to be used for the upcoming ArbCom formation, and would you please inform the community what your reasons are for not wanting to hold an open election? You may want to look at this page, on which many editors have expressed their preference for open elections. Radiant_>|< 00:22, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

P.S. We need more bandwidth! El_C 11:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Hellloooooo founder :) There's a discussion at WP:ANI and I think a relevant discussion (well perhaps not highly relavant, but a little relavant) at Wikipedia:Consensus. I kindly (on behalf of myself) request some clarifications about this. Take care! (Hasta la wikitoria siempre :D ) +MATIA ☎ 18:45, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

When was the last time one of those British monarchs whose constitutional role you say you model your Wikipedia role on exercised this kind of power? It's been a while. Quit making that comparison if you want to override consensus and convention. That's a highly autocratic thing to do, and to top it off the community hasn't even gotten an explanation about it so far, much less a dialogue. Everyking 06:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

For those interested in possible struggles between heads of state and government, there's an interesting article regarding the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975. Enjoy! E Pluribus Anthony 06:28, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

We must know...POLL

What is your opinion on semiprotect. Please stop avoiding discussion :-(. We just want to know what you think. Many other users want Semi-Protection too. We have yet to have a serious place of discussion for this new tool to actually get implemented.

All in favor/against the semiprotection proposal listed above(Not necessarily the exact numbers 25 and 100):

Support:

  1. Voice of AllT|@|ESP 05:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  2. Personally, I think Jimbo is just busy. But I support the creation of a semi-protect proposal of some sort. Titoxd(?!?) 05:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  3. Support either full-protection akin to how we protect the Main Page or this "semi-protect" idea. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  4. --kizzle 06:23, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  5. Support in some form. E Pluribus Anthony 07:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Comment: This doesn't belong on Jimbo's talk page. He is not the king of wikipedia. These things must be decided by community consensus.--Ewok Slayer 21:32, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Oppose:

  1. Wrong place... --Cool CatTalk|@ 13:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

How to create policy

Might I suggest a more productive option? Wikipedia:How to create policy has some helpful suggestions, and Jimbo's input doesn't have much to do with it, particularly in the beginning phases—though he might offer his opinion all the same. This is really a community issue. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 07:26, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Yikes...doesn't look like a very good chance that a semiprotection or similar policy proposal has much hope of success. Thanks for the link though!--MONGO 19:20, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Yet I don't think there will be a problem reaching a supermajority on the matter. All it takes is enough advertising and for someone to create a proposal page. --kizzle 19:22, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Mindspillage, this is just to get the ball rolling. There has been substantial discussion already, and we want Jimbo's opinion now so we can do a full-fledged policy proposal. Titoxd(?!?) 21:34, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Shall we create a proposal page at Wikipedia:Semi-protection or a meta page, perhaps? I'd love to contribute. -Mysekurity 02:17, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Do it. Flesh out a section for arguments both for and against then setup a vote tally. --kizzle 03:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
No voting! Kim Bruning 04:20, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Uhh, the page says we need to reach a supermajority of 70%, so I don't know how we're going to accomplish that if we can't vote. --kizzle 08:40, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, that's worked just about ... twice... it's not so handy. I put a comment up about that on the talk page. Y'know: Just write it down, talk about it for a while, edit some more, and when it looks like no one will object to this final perfect product you've got, stick a policy tag on there. and cross fingers and hold your breath ;-) Kim Bruning 10:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Someone might want to update that policy page then and take out the supermajority section. There will always be arguments against semi-protection, as it has both its advantages and disadvantages, just like the way things are now. It's just a question of which advantages and disadvantages outweigh the other, thus we need the vote. And informally, with the level of support I've seen in the discussions I've been a part of, I don't think 70% is an unreachable goal.
One person is editwarring about that and constantly reinserting. Kim Bruning 22:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Or not. Hallelujah. :) Kim Bruning 16:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Come on Jimbo, give these guys some helpful comment and then they'll be able to get on with making articles better ;) Pcb21 Pete 08:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Historically Black College and University recruitment

Hi Jimbo, Jmabel and myself have been discussing the merits of actively recruiting students and faculty from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. We have identified Wiley College as an ideal candidate for several reasons: they are the oldest HBCU west of the Mississippi, they have been a pioneer in the usage of computer technology in college education in Texas, and their location allows the outreach to send a representative in person, me. However, I have been putting it off because I realized that it would be odd to walk into Wiley to recruit on behalf of Wikipedia just because Joe and I think its a good idea. I thought it would be best if I consulted Anthere, Angela, and you and see what ya'll think before running off and making an appointment to discuss an outreach. Please respond as soon as you can. Thanks. -JCarriker 08:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello

Goodness....I can't believe I'm talking to the founder of wikipedia itself...! However, introductions are in order; my name is Megaman Zero, and I've been a part of your excellent community for almost a year now. I was wondering as a aspiring administrator, could you give me tips and some tidbits of advice...? Like I discussed with Mr. Sidaway, its been occupying my mindspace for awhile now... Also, could you take a look at my projects ( at the bottom of my userpage) and contributions and give me your humble opinion on my work..? I'd really like to know how helpful I'm being to my favorite site. Thanks for your time, and....nice to meet you..!-MegamanZero 12:37 28,November 2005 (UTC)

  • Umm...okay..I take it you don't want to talk with me.. Sorry for wasting your time then...-MegamanZero 14:37 29,November 2005 (UTC)
It's not that he doesn't want to talk to you, it is just that he might not have had the chance. Jimbo doesn't always respond to everything, especially little things like your request. Instead of asking Jimbo, who is busy with Foundation things, try asking other current Admins. I see you've asked Tony, and that's a good first step. Check out the RfA page to see how you stack up against current nominees. Look at some recent successes and failures as well. --LV (Dark Mark) 14:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee elections, 2005.

Hi Jimbo,

It's been one month since you edited the Arbitration Committee elections page for this December (now just a few days away) to change the procedure, adding some brainstormed thoughts. Those thoughts are still all the information we have on the procedure, and we're almost in December.

A number of potential candidates have said they don't wish to put their name forwards if they don't know the election procedure, yet recently a member of the current Arbitration Committee said that all Wikipedians wishing to become arbitrators should put their name forwards immediately.

Yes, they all should. It would be good to put forward an indication of interest right away, and if anyone chooses afterwards to not participate of course their offer to participate can be withdrawn without any troubles. It will be quite helpful to us in deciding the best way forward to have accurate information about who is interested.--Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

This is really a terrible state of affairs for a number of reasons:

Firstly, we have no idea how the new Arbitration Committee is going to become the new Arbitration Committee at all. Not even the current arbitrators say they know how it's going to be done.

Yes, I am still talking to a lot of different people and gathering ideas to try to have the best possible go at it.--Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Are there reasons why these discussions are being held privately, and not openly on Wikipedia? Talrias (t | e | c) 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean? There are public discussions and private discussions. Sometimes people want to email me opinions privately, sometimes people want to talk in public.--Jimbo Wales 18:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Is it possible to provide some kind of "general opinion" based on private discussions you've had (without any specifics). Just so we're kept in the loop! :) Talrias (t | e | c) 19:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Secondly, it has been almost a year since the last elections, and there has been plenty of community discussion about what was good and bad about the procedure, and action has been taken on this by the community (for example, the deletion of the endorsements/disendorsements page).

The deletion of the endorsements/disendorsements page is a fine concept, but only addresses some of the problems. One problem is best highlighted, in my view, by the non-election of JamesF, despite being to my knowledge universally acknowledged as an excellent arbitrator, tending to the thoughtful and helpful middle ground on matters of importance, and hard working. The reason for him not being elected was not, as far as I can see, any dissatisfaction with his work in the arbcom, but rather a lack of political fame due in part to his quiet way of getting the job done in arbcom while (mostly, and perhaps unfortunately) giving up most editing.
Arbcom is a judicial position, not a popularity contest, and so elections are only a very rough stab at trying to get the right qualities and broad community support. Useful, of course, but by no means dispositive. --Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
makeing policy based on single cases is a really really bad idea.Geni 13:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, of course. But on the other hand, we've only ever had one case of an ArbCom election, and it went rather poorly in some ways, and I see no reason not to strive for a sensible improvement promptly. :-) --Jimbo Wales 17:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
You're right that good candidates who aren't as prominent as others are less likely to become elected, but the counter-argument is easily made that selection could miss plenty of candidates who would be equally as good, and possibly better, who you haven't heard of. A solution to both of these problems would be to encourage people to put their names forward but not have a seat limit so preventing tactical voting. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thirdly, you've been deathly quiet. These are probably the most important positions in the Wikipedia community and the process deserves to be discussed openly. Yet all we've seen are some brief thoughts! You haven't responded to other suggestions or to criticism of his thinking.

I apologize for that. My period of extensive travel is finished as of this Saturday and I intend to spend 2 months simply working.--Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
That's good news. I hope you understand why I have made this comment. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Come on Jimbo, sort it out! It's been almost a year since the last elections, there has been plenty of discussion from the community (including the current arbitrators) on reform of the system, but all we've heard from you is a "current line of thinking". Yes, we know you have other things to do, such as the incredibly important role of getting funding. However, the encyclopaedia project relies on its community to exist and we have to get this right. Please join in the discussion and make your thoughts clear.

Talrias (t | e | c) 18:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! Oh and for the record, there has been quite some discussion about this at Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2005/Straw_poll. Radiant_>|< 18:24, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Small note of thanks

I know this may not be as important as ArbCom elections or other pressing matters at hand, but thank you for your input over at Wikibooks. I am sorry to have missed you over there, but look forward to helping keep WB serious. Now if we could just get some of those policies passed we could move ahead. I have started a list of missing policies that you might want to have a look at. (It's on my Wikibooks user page, and not nearly complete). Thanks again. --LV (Dark Mark) 19:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Classic Rock

Hello. I was wondering if you would like to participate in my classic rock survey. I'm trying to find the most like classic rock song. There is more information on my user page. If you participate people would actually really want to be apart of it. Thanks a lot! RENTASTRAWBERRY FOR LET? röck 02:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Just letting you know

I'm one of your hard workin' admins. Just letting you know that both Essjay and User:Doc_glasgow left us today...2 very helpful admins. Doc in particular was a good vandalism stopped. Doc makes some good points on his userpage...just thought you'd like to know. We have to find a better way to stop vandalism. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 12:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

It's true that many Wikipedians don't stick around. There's a frustration factor that easily breaks many people here, it seems. But the sources of the frustration vary so much, and sometimes they contradict, so if you fixed one source you'd create another (to compare here, I fight vandalism quite a bit, but it is a very minimal annoyance for me, not something I would ever consider leaving over—but there are other things that make me truly furious, which others passionately support, and would leave if they were ever changed)...I've come to feel like the tendency of Wikipedians to come and go is not due to any big error we have as a project, but simply due to the temperaments of the people we tend to attract (magnified by the decreased emphathy and effective communication that comes with the Internet), and the high level of frustration that is, for most people, naturally going to come with intense involvement in something like this. In practical terms, I'm not really sure we could do anything to make it better. I can think of minor things that could possibly improve the situation, but nothing fundamental. Regardless, we keep thriving even though people are always leaving, so it shouldn't concern us too much. I remember last December when I came very close to leaving, I think I even announced it on my user page...and another time a few months later I did something similar...but for me, it just didn't stick. I never really even decreased my rate of editing, much less left the project. And after all that terrible stuff, I feel like I've kind of crossed some barrier of frustration where my negative frustration has transformed and given me a renewed energy for the project, and become almost constructive and helpful for me, and I haven't thought about leaving in a long time. Everyking 12:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Cabal ?

I didn't believe in such a stupid thing. Then I witnessed a VfA being closed out early after Brian asked Raul to personally take charge of Hamster's nomination. At first I thought it a joke but no, Hamster was plucked out early in a marginal election that could have gone either way if left for the required time. I've been totally disillusioned by the blatant and seemingly open and prejudicial influence with this promotion. Hamster may indeed be well qualified to be an admin, that's not the point. It's the discussion between Brian and Raul with Brian asking Raul to "personally" deal with the nomination and Raul gleefully responding "I did it (I'll leave out the smiley)" that I don't understand. The nomination was pulled early and before others had a chance to Oppose. That stinks of cabal. If you're allowed to read this then take a peek. I deliberately left out the diffs so that you can go through what we all have to do.
I also realize that I will be Persona non grata after this posting and with all my heart I wish that it wouldn't be so but, realistically I know that I will be marginalized after this; the price I pay for this expression. I'm not a wonderful contributor anyway so no great loss to the project, just a disillusioned one. (Heidi and Joe) -- hydnjo talk 02:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Hamster_Sandwich_RFA. If you have good reason to think the promotion was unfair, please post there.-gadfium 03:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
hydnjo - regardless of this posting I think you are (collectively) a great editor. Thanks for your contributions and for speaking your mind(s). Cheers, -Willmcw 04:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations

What you have made here is great. That some of human knowledge thing occured to me before i found out about that qoute. I atribute it 49% to google, 50% to wikipedia and its sister projects. About a third of googles share of that is because it auto corrects spellings on searches so lots of people use it to search wiki.Dolive21 22:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Semi-protection taken off your page

Just letting you know there is an important discussion ongoing at Wikipedia_talk:Semi-protection_policy, that you are invited to. It is clearly a major change in the way Wikipedia operates, so while you are not obligated to voice your opinion, it certainly would be helpful. Also, any other developers reading Jimbo's page are extremely encouraged to join the discussion. --kizzle 01:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I saw that!

That was nice how you editted your own page [12]. Ha ha! Poor Larry Sanger. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 22:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a minor point, but important to get the history right.--Jimbo Wales 22:44, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

  • That was somewhat cruel... Shoudn't Larry get at least some credit..?-MegamanZero 0:59 2,December 2005 (UTC)
    • Of course! He deserves a lot of credit. Simply point out that he did not "set up" the site is in no way intended to take away from his legitimate contributions. He was, like many many many other people, very important to the early days of Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales 00:09, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Very understandle, see you in January at the Tampa meetup! If it is true that you live in St. Pete, I am minutes away. Don't want to sound weird, but that is the truth. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Jimmy_Wales#Larry_Sanger_and_the_creation_of_Wikipedia. — David Remahl 00:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Seigenthaler Sr. issue

Perhaps it's a good idea for the Wikimedia Foundation to make a public statement regarding the USA Today article. Not an apology, mind you, but rather a statement of regret. Also, this could be used to publicise the new article validation tools and the so-called Wikipedia 1.0 we are working towards. The statement should state that except for featured articles, no article on wikipedia has really been vetted for authenticity, but that we're working on changing this. I feel this would go a long way to silencing many of Wikipedia's critics. Jacoplane 23:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll be going on CNN on Monday to talk about it. --Jimbo Wales 00:07, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey Jimbo, what do you think about Talk:John_Seigenthaler_Sr.#Undeletion? Melchoir 02:16, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, thanks! Melchoir 18:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I see you are a extremely busy person Mr. Jimbo. My apologies for my post above, I see why you hadn't time to do what I requested. Anyway, good luck. -MegamanZero 8:10 1,December 2005 (UTC)
Is it possible for us to have the transcript of this? Will this be on CNN international or CNN.com ? --Cool CatTalk|@ 20:23, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Me again on arbcom ;)

Hey Jimbo,

I've added my own thoughts on how it should be done to the straw poll, and I've asked you a couple of questions on the talk page. Cheers, Talrias (t | e | c) 12:34, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom

Hi

I hate to disturb you, but I really would like clarification of "Hybrid approach: Jimbo can put forward candidates for community approval, 50% majority is enough. And also the community can put forward candidates for Jimbo's approval, with the same 50% majority being enough."

Do you mean that you will only consider approving community-proposed candidates if they have gained 50% approval in a poll to select them? If so, how would this poll work? Would there be a single poll, covering both your candidates and the community's? No hurry answering, as I'll be leaving for the weekend in a few minutes. Thanks for reading this. Filiocht | The kettle's on 15:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

FYI

Essjay's departure from the project in my view requires your interference. After all he was admited in medcom showing he is fair and he was an administrator showing he is more than trusted. Please assist us in our quest to guide him to his senses. I do not believe he is expendable and I feel you would agree.

Thats all I got for now.--Cool CatTalk|@ 20:21, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I concur. Voyager640 07:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree, although I didn't know him that well. — Rickyrab | Talk 01:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank You, Jimmy

I am crazy about encyclopedias and read them almost exclusively. I only discovered Wikipedia the past summer. If I had known about it earlier I would have been here earlier. So, since its the holidays coming up, I thought I would write you a thank you note for the wonderful, exciting gift you have given to me this year. Wikipedia. Its always nice when you get exactly what you want. So from my heart, Jimmy Wales, all the best to you and your loved ones, I wish you all happy holidays and that we all get exactly what we deserve in the new year. See you 'round the wiki! Hamster Sandwich 17:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Your very own Magic: The Gathering card

Jimbo's MTG card

Hello Mr. Wales. I don't know if you've ever played, but I hope you will find your very own collectible card amusing all the same. If not, I hope someone reading this will find it funny. Thanks for this great encyclopedia. (Feedback from any user appreciated!) --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 22:35, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I remember this card! I heard they banned it from tournaments for its overwhelming destrctive capabilities and cheapness. Furthurmore, its very hard to find- they can only be found in MTG: Wikipedia Edition booster packs, which don't exist. -MegamanZero 1:38 4,December 2005 (UTC)
  • Ah! Excellent! --Topaz♪ 23:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Ahh...another cheap legend, like Isamura!Voice of AllT|@|ESP 05:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Problem with Editing Expired Versions of Current Pages

When I log in, I find a problem with expired versions of current pages. If a page gets vandalized, and I try to revert, when I go to the old version, the current version still appears in the edit blank! But this doesn't happen when I'm not logged in! What's going on? — Rickyrab | Talk 00:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I found the problem. I use a Nostalgia style interface. Sometime in the past few weeks, the "Edit this page" link somehow dropped the ability to display the oldid number in the URL on old edits in the Nostalgia style of interface. I don't know how it came about, but it DID, and THAT change ought to be reverted. — Rickyrab | Talk 01:00, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Appeal of Arbcom case

Hello. I'm appealing for your intervention and input into an arbcom case here. I feel very strongly that this case has been handled inappropriately from the beginning, and that the main Arbcom participants are not reviewing this case in an impartial or balanced manner. This case originally began at my request when I filed Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Willmcw and SlimVirgin. Several days later, Willmcw - one of the users I named in my case - responded by filing a second case against me Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rangerdude. The Arbcom originally voted to accept my case and merge Willmcw's complaints into it, but when Fred Bauder opened the case he did the exact opposite. Ever since then Fred's attention has been almost entirely on Willmcw's complaints against me. Fred is the only Arbcom member who has put forth voting principles at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rangerdude/Proposed_decision and as a result virtually none of the items in my original complaint are even being considered except for a single minor warning against Willmcw, and nothing from the dispute with SlimVirgin is being considered. I've raised a few of Willmcw's policy violations on the workshop and talk pages and Fred seems to agree that they happened, yet he won't consider them in the formal part of the case and words the current findings on Willmcw in ways that intentionally downplay their severity. Meanwhile, Fred has accomodated nearly all of Willmcw's accusations against me and is currently proposing a one year probation against me for charges that neither transparent nor properly evidenced with diffs.

In addition to my concern that this case has been handled unfairly from my own perspective, I am very concerned about the precedent it may be setting and the incidents it is ignoring. One of the things Willmcw did that caused me to request this case is using white supremacist and other bigotted sources and terminology to insert guilt-by-association smears and other POV attacks on conservative and libertarian groups in political articles (see [13]). He has also behaved in an extremely harassing manner toward me and has wikistalked my edits since the day I signed up here, largely based on his now-admitted mistaken identification of another anon IP user with me last December (see [14]). Both of these charges have been documented and discussed thoroughly, yet they've been virtually ignored and excluded from the case by Fred Bauder. Since Fred is the only one proposing votes on this case the other Arbcom members are simply voting on whatever he puts up there and so far none of the major issues in my original case have even been addressed. Your help, advice, or impartial review of this case would be much appreciated. Rangerdude 20:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to fix Wikipedias most serious issues

Jimbo, I have come to conclusion that Wikipedia has a serious quality problem as you know, as I devoted Wikipedian I have been trying to improve the most important topics to featured article standard since I got here a year ago. The process is slow, and the truth is that there are not enough devoted Wikipedians who are actually working to get articles to a state in which they can be used as sources of research and valuable information. The Wikimedia foundation often do fund raises to raise money for new servers and equipment to help run Wikipedia, but with the new recent image server installed, and most of Wikipedia's speed problems solved, there are better uses of the profit made from these donations.

I propose a system where the Wikimedia foundation pays journalists, copy-editors and writers to work for Wikipedia for a pay per article. This would ensure that we have hundreds of articles becoming featured every month, not 30 or 40. What the encyclopedia really needs at the moment is lots of motivation, because at the moment the devoted Wikipedians are wasting their times wikifying articles or fixing disambiguation links. By doing this, not only would you fix the article quality issue, but also the references/verifiable sources issuse, and the Wikipedia reputation issue. Most recently the site has been attacked dozens of times by magazines, newspaper articles and journalists who are unhappy about the way Wikipedia is run, the way it works, and the quality and uses of it.

Wikipedia doesn't need time to make every article great, it needs the motivation to do so.

I hope you consider what I've said, thanks for reading!

— Wackymacs 07:07, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is this idea of paying people undermines the volunteer basis of the whole thing. And I think the motivation is there. I'm not convinced you'd get substantially more work out of people for a salary, and you risk turning off everybody who's not getting paid. The press criticism ought to just be ignored. It's simply foolish, or possibly malicious. Our system works, and it works brilliantly, as anybody can see by looking at the product. I think the encyclopedia is much better than it was a year ago—maybe twice as good, quite truthfully. And a year is actually not very long—look forward to a day five or ten years down the road. Moreover, the growth accelerates with fame. Wikipedia has its problems, but they aren't fundamental ones that need to be fixed with a fundamental change in the system—this is going after the wrong problem with the wrong solution. What we are doing in this respect is working. Everyking 08:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ummm...

... is ZDNet correct? Are you planning on stopping anons from creating new articles? If so, I'm not against it, though:

  1. Were you planning on telling us somewhere?!
  2. What the reasoning behind this? The number of new users is going to shoot up, and we won't be able to track them by IP addresses anymore. After all, it's trivial to create a new account - as I'm fairly sure you know as I suspect you may have a sockpuppet.

If the news report is wrong, well, my apologies! And please be aware that even if it's correct, I'm not attacking you. It must have been a tough week :(

Ta bu shi da yu 13:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You can read about it here: post on wikien-l

I agree. This dude should interact with his community a lot more. Wiki is becoming an institution, with an over-sized admin section that enforce the Wiki policy to the letter. In fact, why not reform the Wiki policy to a more liberal one? I'm tired of these forum fascists! A bit off-topic, but it spared me from making a new topic. --Anittas 13:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I spend all day every day interacting with the community. :-) --Jimbo Wales 14:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, I love what you and the Wikimedia board do: but I really feel that there is not enough notice given about these things. It's not good to hear about these things from ZDNet (for chrissake!) before we at least get a chance to see it on WP:VP or an anouncements page. The whole sponsored links debacle - which by the way, once Angela explained it to me made me feel much better about everything - shows me that a lot of really good things are being done, they are just not being communicated clearly to the Wikipedia community. I spend a great deal of time on the site, and I gotta be honest: though I had no problem with the announcement, I was a bit miffed to have to have sent you a message! - Ta bu shi da yu 14:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. I'm bloody tired (1:20AM in the morning here in Australia!) so if some of this is incoherent, sorry. One more thing, I only mentioned the USA PATRIOT Act on IRC because there was actually some changes made to the provisions of gathering records from cable providers. See USA PATRIOT Act, Title II#Scope of subpoenas for records of electronic communications - section 211 to allow the U.S. government to have access to the records of cable customers, with the notable exclusion of records revealing cable subscriber selection of video programming from a cable operator. Before you think I'm crazy, consider that a) I'm trying to do something about the parlous state of affairs the USA PATRIOT Act is in, b) as a consequence I've got PATRIOT Act on the brain (argh!), and c) it may or may not have some bearing on gaining access to the IP addresses of contributors on this website. I really hope you don't think I'm some crazed nut! - Ta bu shi da yu 14:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that announcing it to us is announcing it to the media, in an uncontrolled manner. That's a tough line to walk. - brenneman(t)(c) 14:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I know that. My comments still stand however. Had we been informed a little better about the whole sponsored link thing, I think that whole project against it wouldn't have been created. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. I also don't trust the media. They often get it wrong. I'd rather here about this sort of thing straight from the board and Jimbo unexpurgated. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Wow, I was monitoring recent changes for awhile and did not find a single new article to tag. Didn't know why at first. Pretty impressive! InvictaHOG 14:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think the feature has been turned on yet. Looking at Special:Newpages, an anon has created a page as recently as one minute ago. Carbonite | Talk 14:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Wow, what a neat link! It's a lot easier than just clicking refresh on the recent changes button like I've been doing! InvictaHOG 17:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm... interesting. I agree with the move, there are so many junk pages created by anons it is hard to believe sometimes. New pages patrol is probably the toughest job on Wikipedia. But I think this should have been discussed more beforehand, and announced to the community properly. It just seems like a kneejerk reaction to the Seigenthaler article. One article written by someone who knows little about Wikipedia, and a chat down the pub with 9 other Wikipedians does not equal consensus for a major change in policy. the wub "?!" 14:42, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I am sure it will be discussed extensively. I don't see any reason why such a discussion should proceed _beforehand_, though. We have had many many such discussions in the past, and the big obstacle is that we have no empirical data by which to explore the results. We can now have a discussion grounded in actual experience. There are absolutely pros and cons to preventing anons from making new pages, but we don't know the exact balance until we try it for a bit.--Jimbo Wales 15:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have to chime in here to agree with Jimbo. The amount of times I've seen nothing get done because of too much discussion is outrageous! Just imagine I'd discussed WP:AN on the VP? Exactly how far do you think I would have got?! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


Something else, will it still be possible for anons to create new pages in the talk space for commenting on articles? the wub "?!" 14:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

About Everyking's Comment

I'm stunned that Jimbo has deleted my comment. I restored it and he went and deleted it again, so it couldn't have been a mistake. Could he please explain himself? Everyking 14:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That is strange. I mean, it's his talkpage and it's his site, but still. Jimbo, dude, what's up? Oh, and are you a commie, Jimbo? I'm asking this because I noticed the "Hasta la Wiki" image of you. Commies are prepared to share everything, except free speech and free choice. ;) --Anittas 14:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
He can delete my comments if he wants, but I think I ought to get an explanation. Also, I think it reflects really badly on him. Everyking 14:51, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
On this occassion, I'd like to defend Everyking. I read the comment he wrote, and it wasn't anything more or less than what I'd said. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I think Jimbo should write a new Wiki policy based on the philosophy of Voltaire, not these redneck housewives who cry abuse everytime someone tells them what's on his mind. If you need my help in writing a new constitution, Jimbo, let me know. --Anittas 14:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Excuse me? I am a redneck housewife? - Ta bu shi da yu 14:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't know, but I was refering to my own problems here on Wiki, with other moderators. --Anittas 15:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Everyone please give each other a hug. I deleted Everyking's comment because I find he has a tendency to turn what would otherwise be a useful discussion into a negative debate. I did not delete Ta bu shi da yu's comment because Ta bu shi da you has a tendency to engage in productive positive dialogue. I have no interest in debating nonsense with Everyking, and I'm still hopeful that this discussion can be about the experiment, not about Everyking's carping.--Jimbo Wales 14:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
It really makes me nervous when Jimbo is deleting my comments. Not a sign of the king's favor. Not a good position to be in. Any hope still for that appeal, Jimbo? Everyking 15:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Let's see, Ta bu shi da yu, understandably confused by the situation, asks some very good if mildly pointed questions while acknowledging that he may not have the whole story, and makes a point of assuming good faith on Jimbo's part. Everyking, on the other hand, speculates about Jimbo's conduct and criticizes his priorities on the basis of this speculation, falling rather short of assuming good faith. Jimbo replaces Everyking's comment with a link to the place where he actually announced this experiment to the community. Even leaving aside the reputations earned by Ta bu shi da yu and Everyking, the difference in their approach is palpable and Jimbo's differing treatment of their comments understandable.

Everyking, there's hope for your appeal if you can figure out, from situations like this one, why your comments about other Wikipedia editors are so often damaging to the atmosphere of trust on which the Wikipedia community operates. Otherwise, no, I don't have much hope for you. --Michael Snow 23:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah well, you don't have to hope for me. This stuff about damaging an atmosphere of trust is silly, because if you knew anything about the issues I've been involved in, you'd know I've been pushing hard for the promotion of good faith and trust. In fact, that has been one of my primary goals on the project for a good while now, promotion of a friendlier and more tolerant atmosphere. So I don't take it very seriously when someone accuses me of doing one thing, if I know full well that my record and my whole purpose says the exact opposite.
Anyway, it is very depressing that Jimbo has a low enough opinion of me to go removing my comments. I would like to have the opportunity to seriously talk with him, in e-mail, IRC, or here...since he says above he doesn't want to "debate nonsense" with me, I don't know how realistic that is, but I'm pretty sure I could get him to look at some things a little differently. Everyking 04:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Can an anon still create their own user page?

Hi. With this new experiment to restrict anonymous users from creating pages, will this affect their ability to create their own user page? - Tεxτurε 16:14, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. Ask Brion? We could do it either way.--Jimbo Wales 17:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to have to plead ignorance... who's Brion? - Tεxτurε 17:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
The Chief Technical Officer User:Brion Vibber. Nice guy, from the very limited discussions I've had with him. Carbonite | Talk 17:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

CNN appearance today?

A bunch of us in the #wikipedia IRC channel are gagging for details on your CNN appearance--exact CNN station, show, and time today. Can you please oblige on the talk page or on IRC? Thanks! Demi T/C 17:27, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

2:45PM East coast US time.--Jimbo Wales 18:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I just saw this appearance online. My God. Did that guy really say "The market will take care of Wikipedia?" What market? Is anyone buying the Wikipedia product? Doesn't all the revenue come from t-shirt sales and donations? I mean..wha?..huh?..muh? Did that fossil really claim to know anything about how the internet works? "I'm afraid if Wikipedia keeps this up, the government will step in and start regulating online information." Didn't he say something to that effect? Regulate the internet??? What, and spend 90% of our national budget on admins? The internet isn't going to be nice to you. Tough cookies, my friend. I'm sure Jimmy Wales has his own hate sites out there, but that's the First Amendment for you. Is this guy Barney Rubble's neighbor? Can I possibly ask more rhetorical questions? JHMM13 (T | C) 00:54, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
That's not what he meant. He meant that the market for information—the visitors to come to Wikipedia for the encyclopedic aspect of the site—will go look at other sources if the accountability problem (which is more of a verifiability issue) is not corrected. The lack of visitors is what will "take care of Wikipedia," at least in that context. That said, to say that we're not doing anything to address the problem is not correct. We have Recent Changes Patrol, New Page Patrol filtering new entries on the "front end"; there is an organized volunteer group, the Counter Vandalism Unit, which meets over an IRC channel, as well as "lone wolfs" using Crypto-Derk's Vandal Fighter; they are monitoring constantly monitoring suspicious changes. Also, for pages under attack, there's page protection. There are also a plethora of proposals to curtail this problem: from a semi-protection policy that is gaining steam for the most prominent pages (perhaps those politician pages in the next election?), to the often-advertised article validation, which is going to be implemented soon too. We still can do a lot more, but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 01:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo, check this out (about Nazism and Wiki)

A Romanian dude made the nickname "Nazismisntcool". That is, nazism, the ideology. You know, kill Jews, etc. To my great surprise, two 'people' went to his talkpage and asked him to change his nickname. Their argument was that Nazis might be offended by the nickname; furthermore, they linked to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username#Inappropriate_usernames to support their argument. Yeah, the last thing we want is to offend Nazis.

Anyhow, their argument was weak, because they tried to draw an analogy to Satanism, but Satanism doesn't necesarily involve evil or the desctruction of others. Satanism involves theology, or, a philosophy, of say, to not submit yourself (Non Serviam); and this was even raised in a book called Paradise Lost. My questions are: are these people sane, and, could they enforce such stupidity by the help of the Wiki policy?

I went and flamed those people, and one of them came to my talkpage and asked me to be civil. I asked him to go to hell. If I'm blocked, I won't be able to reply to any messages from you. However, these two people seem to be veterans of Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Spade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Private_Butcher

The argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:NazismIsntCool#Please_change_your_user_name

I wouldn't be surprised if those people are moderators of Wiki, which is what bothers me most. I mean, even the most politically-correct pussy would say that Nazism isn't cool, right? So what's the problem here? Dude, my offer still stands: I can help you reshape the Wiki policy and get rid of these necromancers once and for all! --Anittas 21:43, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, clearly Nazism isn't cool. But neither is using slang like "most politically-correct pussy" and neither is going around with a provocative username. I think people should tend to avoid such names not just because it "might offend Nazis" but because it invites others to create POV-pushing names. I recommend people choose very ordinary names. :-) --Jimbo Wales 22:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not a very concrete answer, Jimbo. I understand what you're saying; such names can create controversy, but this is Wiki - everything here feeds on controversy. This, however, should be clear as water. Also, I would like to argue that a pseudonym is a part of one's identity, therefore, people might choose a so-called POV-nickname; and they should, as long as that nickname doesn't despict an evil act. At the end of the day, I hope your Wiki and their moderators wouldn't judge against such nicknames.
I speak from experience. Microsoft Zone tried to censor people and their nicknames; they even tried to censor sexual talk and nicknames that described a political stand, alcohol, etc., and their methods made certain groups of people leave. GameSpy, however, was a bit more tolerant and they did better. I think that for being a southern guy, you're pretty liberal, but you can always do better. :) --Anittas 22:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Well once you've been around for awhile, you'll know that concrete answers don't often come from me. I talk about kindness and general principles and creating a healthy and positive work environment for everyone. I don't censor people, I persuade people. We've had our nickname policy for a long time, it has been interpreted by the community for a long time, and I am quite sure it'll all work out fine without me doing anything about it. :-)--Jimbo Wales 22:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

A random comment

Jimbo, I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to say it, but I just wanted to say thanks for all you do here. I've been a contributor for nearly a year now, but I've only been doing it hard core for a few weeks. I'm hooked and I can't overstate how important and useful this site is and will become. But you already knew that :) --YHoshua 22:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The Announcement

Hi God (of Wikipedia),

Just chiming in with several others on your userpage to add my expression of surprise that I learned about the anon page-creation policy change from the news. I understand not discussing it (since it is just an experiment), but -- as of now -- there is no link on the main page, no blurb on Wikinews... if I weren't enough of veteran to know your talk page is a hub in this universe, I wouldn't have found anything about it here. I'm sure many casual users will visit in the news' aftermath, and they should have some place to go. Ideally, maybe there could be a system to release such news very visibly on site at the same time it is released to the media generally. Thanks from a mere mortal, Xoloz 23:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote to the mailing list within minutes of finding out from Brion that the feature could go live. Before this, it was only an idea of something we could do. The idea that I made some official announcement to the press before the community is not really accurate actually.

I don't even regard it as a very big change, just a minor tweak, something to test. --Jimbo Wales 01:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A tweak? Making anons second class citizens? Isn't this a direct violation of everything Wikipedia stands for? And why wasn't it discussed before implementation, or at the very minimum, giving those of us who are long-time users the courtesy of letting us know ahead of time. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
While I also read about it in the news rather than here first, I wholeheartedly welcome this move. Personally, I'd go further and prevent edits too, but one step at a time. I don't suppose it will eliminate problems at a stroke, but it will make them much easier to track. I firmly believe that most petty vandalism is a result of anon users without any axe to grind changing things "just because they can", and are surprised that they are allowed to. More persistent vandals have other reasons and they will probably remain. Preventing edits would eliminate a lot of casual mutation of articles that occurs because it is just too easy. Graham 04:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A side benefit of this experiment is that anonymous editors have to provide a source for the registered Wikipedian to create the page they want. That helps us with our verifiability problems. :) Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 04:18, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A Thanks

Thank you for putting something entertaining on the internet. You are, in my eyes, one of the greatest inventors of all time. Please respond. Pax Christi.--Anti-Anonymex2Come to my page! I've gone caliente loco! 23:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You rock.

Yeah. Go Jimbo! ☺

Excellent Job

With the CNN appearance, Jimbo. You made a reasonable presentation of how Wikipedia works, and it looked quite reasonable. --Xinoph 00:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are appreciated for having to catch all the public flak for Wikipedia. Yours was not an enviable position, having to defend Wikipedia from people who don't really understand the point of Wikipedia. "Hired people", indeed. They might want to look at Nupedia, and as far as the election goes: they've clearly not read up on our articles on the 2004 presidential election, have they? What this does highlight is that Wikipedia is just not compatible with the public view of it, and maybe it'll still be a long time before it is. JRM · Talk 01:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Who are these "hired" people? We ought to give them their own articles. ;) --Anittas 02:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

With all due respect

With all due respect of someone who has not been quite in your position before, that is, being grilled by two people on national television, I must say that I was slightly disappoined by how the nature of the discussion on CNN was allowed to go. I feel that more could have been done to shape the conversation instead of trying to parry comment for comment. I wish that I had heard some more about how Wikipedia has indeed gotten it right, for example Wikipedia was recently sourced in an obituary in the New York Times this Sunday as having the correct date of death four years before every other media source. But all criticism aside, thanks for standing up for Wikipedia, yet again. Páll (Die pienk olifant) 02:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It was an interesting experience. In the studio I was completely unable to see the other two -- they did not have a monitor for me to be able to observe the others. With no facial expression cues, but being on camera myself, it was hard to shape or control the conversation in any way. I was reluctant to be one of those jerks who interrupts everyone, but perhaps I should have done at least a little of that. If I was in a studio with live humans, or if I had more experience with this format, I think I would have been happier with the outcome.
Having said that, I am happy with the outcome, overall. But it was a rather stressful experience.
One of the things that I wished afterwards is that I had printed out and brought with me the disclaimer from CNN.com, so that when the host read our disclaimer to me on the air in a snotty tone, I could have read her disclaimer right back to her. (Their disclaimer and ours say essentially the same sorts of things about there being no guarantees on the content. So Ha!) --Jimbo Wales 12:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I figured that something similar to that happened. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. All I can say is next time, don't be afraid to go for the kill! No-one ever got anywhere in network TV by holding doors, as they say. Páll (Die pienk olifant) 03:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You sucked on CNN

Hey Jimbo, I saw you lying through your teeth on CNN and thought you looked like a despicable hack, despite the plaudits you are hearing from your sycophantic butt-kissing yes-men admin/editors here. Wikipedia has increasingly become a hodge-podge of slanted political crap, biased lies, character assassination, and bigoted chauvinistic excrement that passes itself off as precious metal. Your editors and administrators band together in their little cliques to play their petty schoolboy games and grind their political axes while you fiddle away happy in your ignorance. You suggested that Kyra Phillips edit the nasty article that purports to be her biography when you know full well that your gang of whores would attack her like a pack of rabid hyenas if she ever attenpted to edit an article about herself. You and your "volunteer administrators" are a bunch of arrogant self-righteous pricks that suck as much as your crap "encyclopedia". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.211.197.156 (talk • contribs)

You, on the other hand, absolutely rocked on CNN! Thanks so much for all your work in what must be an increasingly stressful unpaid job. </tease> ;-) --Jimbo Wales 12:27, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I feel for you

I am sorry that you have been put under unforgiving amounts of stress here; I understand that you are busy here and that the Seigenthaler incident was not your fault holistically. I accept, as I think all editors should, part of the blame, and in part, a fatal flaw and a failure on the part of Wikipedia to keep pure articles. However, we must remember that this unfortunate incident does not hardly erase the several GOOD things done by Wikipedia, such as opening a free knowledge base to the world - you are among the pioneers of knowledge, credible to fame as the founders of the library at Alexandria. However, truths cannot be negated as I have seen here: Seigenthaler was not making a mountain out of a mole hill as other editors have implied; biased and unverifiable information is not acceptable, as to a strong degree such bad info is usually myth created by the author. I come here to tell you this, if you know me (which you will in January, but probably not know) you know I am not one of your most fanatic applauders out there (as I have seen in this place), but I am definately going to say that you deserve much credit. We all love you, remember that. You have created an excellent thing here, a tremendous amount of talent has been fused into one to create such a wonderful product. Your dream has come true. Now is the time to make sure that vandals, spams and trollers do not do the same thing as this now infamous IP! I just want to let you know that I am here to help, do not listen to the crazy message above that "you sucked on CNN." Disrespect like that is not tolerable. Keep up the good work, Jimbo. All of us Wikipedians can work through this mess.

Image:Barnstar of Diligence.png

You take care, εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 03:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


CNN Interview

Jimmy Wales - I have just watched your interview with on cnn.com with Kyra Phillips and John Seigenthaler(Click on ‘Concerns raised about bogus info on Wikipedia'). In this interview, in response to a question from Kyra Phillips about the accuracy of information on Wikipedia, you respond by saying that “people can write whatever they like on the Internet on message boards, mailing lists, etc” (paraphrased by me). In essence, you compare Wikipedia to message boards and mailings lists. Now, take a look at the top of the page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and read the words 'Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit'. Notice the word 'encyclopedia'. How can you claim that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and at the same time compare it with message boards? Isn't this hypocritical?

Sunny --xpanderin December 5 2005

I don't think it is hypocritical at all, because he says "that anyone can edit" that allows for all the baggage that comes with it, but especially considering there are "message boards" in the Talk pages for every article. Nobody in their right minds can expect Wikipedia to ever be 100% accurate because of the nature of it, but if you know how to read it, it is a tremendous resource that is hindered by one thing: it's on the internet. The claims Siegenthaler made about him only worrying for the safety of the First Amendment were absolutely bogus and unrealistic, but extremely typical of someone with his understanding of the internet to assert. In no way can any government adequately control the content of "the internet" unless they block access entirely to it, and that is something that will just not fly. Either that or we spend billions of dollars paying Admins to fix everything just so Kyra Phillips doesn't have people "seeing her like that." That's just too bad, Kyra, it's called free speech, and since it isn't hurting your career and nobody is really gaining anything from it aside from the vandal and whatever his motivations are, you can't do anything about it. JHMM13 (T | C) 06:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
The thing to remember is that while the final version of an article is often encyclopedia-worthy in wikipedia, the road to getting there is a conversation between many different kinds of people. Including trolls and vandals. This is a fact of the internet, and only the most draconian measures will stop them, but then we'll probably have something more akin to Nupedia than Wikipedia. Now I'm sure CNN won't mind (See, here I am blasting CNN :) to see such a Free new media experiment fail. I noticed that in the attitude of the interviewer a litle, something like "oow we have paid editors, so we must be better than you commies". Jacoplane 12:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes. The point I wanted to make is that Wikipedia is not like messageboards on the Internet in some ways, but that it is like messageboards in some other ways. As long as we allow broad public participation, there are bound to be some bad people and some bad things will happen. That's in the nature of broad public participation. But unlike messageboards, there is a community here which cares passionately about getting it right and that community has the power to {sofixit}. --Jimbo Wales 12:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Mr. Wales, how many other message boards license a co-branded version of their posts with a for-profit public company? Won't the Answers deal make this partial-"message board" legal comparison more tenuous? Tfine80 23:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

ZDNet gave you a good rap

Have a look at [15] - Ta bu shi da yu 04:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


Hey man, love you, love all you wikipedians!!! And in the midst of the onslaught, yo, let's keep growing and show the world what dignified patience can bring. Yeah ... the darkness recedes. Cypa 05:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Editing page histories is a tad... brrr

I'm a bit worried about editing a page history, that just seems ... wrong ... to me, like alexandria library wrong. When will we stop doing this? Kim Bruning 06:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

What are you referring to? — David Remahl 06:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I think she's referring to what they asserted in the CNN interview. Siegenthaler said something to the effect of "Well it's still in the history," and Jimmy said something about it being deleted from the history, whatever "it" was. I agree with Kim Bruning entirely and would like to know exactly what right Mr. Siegenthaler has to lambast Jimmy Wales about something that was done to his organization's website, and why he insists on implying that his organization was the one making the "libelous" comments (by the way, I don't know why he should be so distraught about conspiracy theories, as they are often encyclopedic [even though I often despise them]...just look at the September 11, 2001 attacks page. JHMM13 (T | C) 07:03, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Page history is what protects whatever integrity Wikipedia has. Seeing how an article has evolved is a very important tool. It is dangerous if the people of the future can't find any reference to the kennedy assassination in the Siegenthaler article. This is the same reason why article deletion (as opposed to blanking) is harmful. — David Remahl 07:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
It is not possible for us to keep revisions public which are libelous. It is not possible for us to keep revisions public which have been the subject of a proper DMCA (copyright) complaint. I think fretting over the historical implications of this is somewhat confused, since deleted revisions are still in the database (but not publicly accessible) so that in 100 years time, historians can have a peek. It's really FUD to say that people of the future "can't find any reference to the kennedy assassination in the Siegenthaler article" -- who has suggested any such rule?--Jimbo Wales 12:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
But when the (possibly) libelous edits are made into a public controversy by the subject himself, as has happened in the recent case -- he has now clearly spread the defamatory piece of text about himself much more widely than it ever was on Wikipedia -- does it remain necessary to suppress the history ourselves? I understand deleting libel and defamation in response to a private request from the subject to squelch it before it gets out widely, but that doesn't really apply when the person himself is making a public issue of it. *Dan T.* 13:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, I agree we can't always keep certain pages public. I wonder though, does the deletions table actually get backed up and maintained, so that it'll be around in 100 years? I'll go find brion and ask. Kim Bruning 03:27, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
In the mean time, I just checked page history, and there's nothing there that would suggest that certain edits have been removed. I guess the combination of marking removed edits so that people know that it's been done, and making sure we do keep them archived would probably solve a lot of the concerns that people have indicated above. Kim Bruning 03:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Ok, Brion confirms that those deletions will vanish at some random moment in time, due to that table not being backed up at all. I talked with you on irc, and I'll leave things to you. :-) Kim Bruning 01:03, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia as a big collection of trash?

Hi, i have some 1,200 article edits in the en:WP, some 12,000 in the de:WP, some 600 in the pl:WP. I think, the qualify of the WP ist very, very bad. How can such a piece of trash stay alive for many days? - i saw it because i wrote the german article about the same film.
I have read, the IP's can save new articles no more in the en:WP - it's very good! I think, the other Wikipedias should make the same.
Sorry for my not perfect english... ;) AN 08:17, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Doch doch! Ihr English ist sehr gut, mein freund. I think the quality of Wikipedia is not so bad, but I agree with you that we need to constantly play with our rules to try to find improvements, especially as we grow.--Jimbo Wales 12:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I proposed this kind of improvement you are testing now in the german wp some time ago and it was rejected for reasons like "we never did this before" (my favorite! *grmbl*), "this is not in Jimbos faith" (you made some very big impression on many people!), "no, wiki has to be open to everybody" and "we will lose great contibutions" (I guess they meant contributions like AN mentioned above...). Now, since the english WP made this usefull step, I think of proposing this procedure in the german WP and would ask you to throw in your vote if the proposal is installed. Sorry for my weird english, since your german is pretty good! =;o) Dickbauch 12:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Doch doch! Mein English ist nicht sehr gut. Ich verstehe nur ein bisschen Deutsch. Mostly a handful of phrases. If I need to find a hotel I can manage. If I need to talk philosophical matters relating to Wikipedia editing, I better stick to English for now.

What I think is that we should watch the English experiment for a few months, with whatever changes we make to it in English, before doing something similar in other languages. The issue, as I see it, is that new pages was a "firehose of shite" (in David Gerard's eloquent expression), and the point is to turn down the volume of that firehose a bit so that new pages patrollers can have enough time to properly deal with each item. --Jimbo Wales 13:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, that sounds smart. ;)
Since we have the same problem ("firehose of shit" is a nice expression for this) in the :de I thought it was a good idea to copy your procedures.
Thanks for your help and we will sit and watch you "Englishmen" very carefully. Dickbauch 13:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
it might be worth to try a different approach in the german wikipedia but address the same problems. Like for example regular "cleanup weeks" when anonymous editing is cut off in favour of cleaning up old stuff (with message on top "Please come back next week or log in"). German wikipedia could very well use such a time off occasionally. --Elian Talk 16:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Before you suggest that in the de.wp, I think it would be best to watch the English try - if it works, we can just adopt it for our wp. --Tolanor: QS - something interesting from de.wp 17:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Full agreement to Tolanor. Our QS-System is at the beginning to grow. And it seems to getting better and better every day. This is in my eyes much more better than destroying all, what the Wikipedia is. Kenwilliams 01:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • As a new page patroller, the new system does seem to be working. It's pleasant to be spending more time fixing useful articles, and less time getting rid of newbie tests. Kappa 15:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Learning Spanish

It'd be easy to learn Spanish : )

I plan to spend one more year studying German, at least, and then switch to Spanish to learn it with my daughter. I won't fully decide about the switch until the end of next year -- if I can read German wikipedia by then then I'll consider my German "good enough", otherwise I'll keep learning German until I can read or until I give up on the insanity of the project. ;-) --Jimbo Wales 14:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That would be very unfortunate if you give up on German. There is a flock out there that looks forward to hear the gospel of "The sum of all human knowledge accessible for every person on the planet" and the revelation "Ten things that should be free" in their own tongue. Greetings, Longbow4u 18:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Ha, I wrote that message with my IP (I edit a lot from my IP at times; mostly to edit my userpage). I can help you learn a little Spanish; si quieres aprender! But, I know I am getting a little woresome; you are a busy man - so I will stop bothering you! εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 20:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Hasenjagd

Have fun with this special kind of new (or old?) German bolshewik humour:

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Vandalensperrung&diff=prev&oldid=11367727#Unscheinbar

Version vom 01:23, 6. Dez 2005 Jesusfreund (Diskussion | Beiträge) PRUUUST - verschoben ins Humorarchiv, Überschrift "der ganz normale Wahnsinn im Adminalltag". Selten so gelacht...

cu 17:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


  • And now an anti bolshewik joke:
Ich sehe das nicht so, denn Hans Bugs Kritik hat eine wichtige Funktion. Sie stört einzelne, aber für das Wohlergehen des Projekts ist sie wichtig. -- Weiße Rose 15:46, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)
Ahja? Also mir hat seine "Kritik" bei der Erstellung einer Enzyklopaedie noch nie geholfen... --DaTroll 15:47, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)
dito. --GrummelJS8 15:48, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)
Nicht überraschend. Die Funktion ist die eines Kammerjägers. Ungemütlich für das Ungeziefer. --Frisch From Fröhlich Frei 16:26, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)

Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_Diskussion:Benutzersperrung/Hans_Bug&oldid=11421707#Meinungsfreiheit

Have fun 19:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


  • And now a real big bundle of German bolshewik humour. Follow the first link and have fun. Great! 14:12, 8 December 2005 (UTC)


Entadminisierungsanträge sind seit neuestem nicht mehr zulässig. (Vergleiche die Versionsliste der entsprechenden Seite). Botswana 13:38, 8. Dez 2005 (CET) = [16]

Source: [17]


  • Oops, a problem. Towarisch PeterLustig has started with communism in de, but bourgeois people like Hans Bug has caught him in flagranti and call that "copyright violation".

"What to do?"(Lenin).

Karl and Rosa have a classic de-idea:

No Hans Bug - no problems [18].

A reason? (sorry, that´s a silly bourgeois question!) "Belege: Statt aller zunächst pauschal Benutzer:Hans Bug, Benutzer Diskussion:Hans Bug" (Stechlin).

Live show: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Benutzersperrung/Hans_Bug&oldid=11470758

btw.: Some commies name reasons: "Hans Bug nervt" or "he´s boring".

Have fun 11:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


  • Trying to get prominent for 15 minutes (Andy Warhol).
Admin Anneke Wolf (aka "Rosa" or Rosa Luxemburg ) doesn´t like this current result: [19]
Der unheimlich starke Abgang der Anneke Wolf:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administratoren/Probleme&oldid=11561304
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_Diskussion:Administratoren/Probleme&oldid=11562262#Wieso_gibts_nicht_schon_l.C3.A4ngst_einen_Sperrantrag_gegen_Benutzer:Anneke_Wolf.3F
Have fun 13:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Newspeak warning

You are probably sick of hearing about the Seigenthaler affair, so I will be brief and get right to the point: removal of the offending versions from our history is a very dangerous precedent. We are not denying that they exist, but act in good faith (to make mr Seigenthaler feel better), but at the same time we are doing a much greater damage: for all our history, all edits were visible, but now we are revising (whitewashing) our very history, making it - in other words - false. Being an academic researcher planning to write my MA and possibly PhD about Wikipedia, I see this as a terrible danger: we are making some content selectively unaccessible to researchers. Sociologists like me are increasingly looking at Wiki and it's history as a great archive of human interactions - but if the archive becomes selective and whitewashed, it will become useless to the academia. Imagine I'd like to write an article about Seigenthaler affair - but now the primary source is deleted from our database! As time passes by I can imagine all still existing copies and backups containing the original version being erased (on purpose or not) - and then we arrive at the perfect real life newspeak removal of unfacts cases (perfect removal from Wiki, but of course we cannot touch the copies cited by the news articles, so really, what's the point?). As this precedent is set, aren't we paving way for the deletion of all vandalised revisions? Imagine if GWB asks us for the removal of all ofending content on his page (why not? we did it for Seigenthaler). Wiki opponents can paralyze us (or at least burden us with pointless work) by demanding all vandalized edits should be removed. Brrrr.... Please consider restoring the original article's history, Jimbo.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Update: having read Kim comments above I feel slightly better knowing that the original copies are retained. Nonetheless I think they should be available to public (researchers) easily - perhaps after some one-click disclaimer? Anything else would impose limits on knowledge (and likely burden both the researcher and some wiki admin with additional work of having to write a request and go find the info in some archoves).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry but you are simply wrong. It has always been our policy to delete libellous revisions and there is nothing about this case which is any different. The idea that we have to keep every single version of everything, whether legal or not, is simply preposterous. I'm sorry if you weren't aware of it, but specific versions of articles are routinely removed by admins when they contain libel, personal information, etc.--Jimbo Wales 18:27, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

There is a difference in this case, as the subject of the comments has gone public with the issue, and aired the possibly-libelous material himself (much more widespreadly than Wikipedia ever did), and made the issue of Wikipedia's publication of the material into a public controversy. This makes the situation qualitatively different from one in which somebody quietly and privately seeks to remove defamatory comments. *Dan T.* 19:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Mr. Wales. You state that "it has always been our policy to delete libellous revisions." Does this Wikipedia policy apply to statements made against deceased persons that were they alive would be libellous? Thank you. - Ted Wilkes 14:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


Board meeting

Jimmy, do you have an idea of when the next Board meeting will be? Are they open to the public, or limited to just the Board with minutes released? If you happen to know when the next Board meeting will be, do you know if there will be any discussion about the future of Wikibooks? Thanks for your help. --LV (Dark Mark) 18:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

CNN commentary and the Seigenthaler Sr. issue

It really pains me to see us being accountable of actions by vandals.

Granted I and other RC patrollers are making an effort in removing vandalism from wikipedia, we also have a real life we need to worry about. Vandalism can happen anytime on any of the 800,000+ articles by a misguided individual.

We need to cure the disease rather than purging the symptoms. ISPs where severe vandalism comes from (such as entire AOL ranges) should receive long term blocks so that customers can complain to their ISPs pointing out they are being very irresponsible. --Cool CatTalk|@ 20:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Vandals are using AOL as a safe haven to commit libel and other wrong doings. Perhaps it is time we push back? Hall Monitor 20:59, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
So you mean punish everyone on an ISP because a few Che types decide that it is more fun to tear things down than it is to build something that is useful, credible, organized, honest, productive, verifiable and just? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.22.197.95 (talk • contribs)
I hate to admit it, but I agree also. Just take a look at any AOL IP's talk page and you'll see the problem for yourself. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 21:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

This amounts to suggesting that we change a long-standing policy in an attempt to influence the business model of a mega-corporation. Sounds a bit rash to me. Zocky 21:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Another solution should be that where an account has received a certain number of final warnings, they remain on final warning alert for one month after the last one is issued. In other words, if they receive say five, then if at any stage within the next month they vandalise an article in any way they are immediately blocked without the need for any more warnings. That would deal with the AOL vandals. Genuine AOL users wouldn't be blocked. But the moment a vandal steps out of line they would be, rather than receive the latest in the long line of 'please stop' messages which they in invariably ignore anyway. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 01:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Blocking a spesific AOL IP is a waiste of time. The IP changes per edit. Hence we have to block large ranges to contain the vandals apathy. --Cool CatTalk|@ 01:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Jimbo I know you are busy but why not RC patrol for a while. Not that we are desperate but experiencing difficulties of RC patrolers to devise a strategy accordingly. I welcome you to #wikipedia-en-vandalism on the server you regularly tag along with us. --Cool CatTalk|@ 01:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It's in the New York Times, too. — Rickyrab | Talk 23:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC) Insisting on verifiable sources is already our policy, isn't it? If so, shouldn't we follow it? — Rickyrab | Talk 23:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Sugestion

Hi Jimmy:

I'm an sysop from pt.wikipedia. I Would like to give you a suggestion to improve the accountability of wikipedia articles:

I think it would be usefull a special page with a list of all the edits that were not verified by wikipedians in wich the community trusts (like the sysops). Only those trusted people, I will call it "verifiers" (choosed by voting by the community) were able to mark the edit as verified. In the recent changes, after that, we could be know how many "verifiers" have marked the article.

I think this change in wikimedia software is not difficult...

And may help against other John Seigenthaler Sr. case.

Thanks for all you have done! Manuel Anastácio 21:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A bunch of random thoughts on all of this

  • Wikipedia is under construction. We're a long way from being decently complete on even basic issues, let alone publishing 1.0. Adjusting the expectations of finished product to decades rather than years might be appropriate.
  • Logging of actions is central to our editorial processes.
  • History is just a useful tool, not a collection of articles. It's the current version that counts.
  • Fooling around too much with history can be painful, especially if the information that needs to be removed has stayed in the article through many good edits. Through GFDL, we have a legal obligation to authors of our articles to preserve the record of their authorship.
  • We're well known and we aren't secretive. A rational semi-famous person should check their biography on Wikipedia and use the existing methods to raise any concerns. Maybe these methods should be made more obvious.
  • Mirrors who copy our information are in a worse moral and possibly legal position on libel than we are, as they provide no method for misinformation to be remedied, and often no indication that the information hasn't been published as a finished text.
  • The recent trend for better identification of individual revisions (cite this article, various schemes to provide links to peer reviewed revisions, etc.) might be making many of these issues worse, rathen than helping. It takes the focus off the current version and the wiki process.
  • As Wikipedia becomes more well known, there will be many more readers than editors, and especially many more readers who won't instantly understand what it's all about. Maybe we need to make facts about Wikipedia more obvious to such readers.
  • WP:AN/I, WP:AFD, IRC, and conflict resolution tend to concentrate the discussion of maintenance issues and help create a sense of community amongs editors who frequent them. They're also the most rapidly developing processes on Wikipedia, producing thousands of edits each day. This gives the false sense that this community is the same as or central to Wikipedia community at large.
  • Maintenance can be controversial work, that's why we have all the workflow policies, to try to make it smoother. But it's also exhausting, and often takes many clicks for a single action, like nominating an article for deletion. It might be worth investigating integration of stabilized workflows into MediaWiki, to reduce wikistress.
  • Engaging exclusively in some aspects of Wikipedia (or Wikimedia) distorts one's view on the encyclopedia and its editorship. Random article patrol gives a much better view of what wikipedia is actually like, and it's a great cure for wikistress.
  • The IRC channel could use a more regular presence of "old-guard" respected editors with a good understanding of how community works, especially those that aren't primarily engaged in maintenance. I know that #wikimedia is much easier on the nerves, but #wikipedia is where the general feel for what's acceptable behaviour for members of the community, especially admins, is being created.
  • My completely unscientific random-article survey suggest that we have less than 20.000 articles where edit practices are problematic. Some of these are on current issues, and will eventually settle down when the issues stop being current. Others are articles on controversial issues, which are often solved by somebody writing a good article. Both kinds are the most closely watched articles and vandalism on them is reverted practically instantly.
  • We're progressing marvelously. We are much better than a year ago, and really really better than two years ago. We know that the current process works and we shouldn't be changing it without good data to suggest that changes would be beneficial.

And finally, the most important thing: What hooks people on wikipedia is that moment when you get the message that your test has been seen and removed, and an invitation to join the community and learn about its processes. That's when you make the leap of faith and decide that this weird concept might actually work. Please don't bite the newcomers. Zocky 21:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The current process is broken. Certain articles are so frequently vandalised that on any given day they remain in a vandalised state for 3.5% of the time regardless of how many administrators are watching the page. Hall Monitor 21:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
There's plenty of indication that our general quality is improving, so the current process seems to be working well for its purpose, writing an encyclopedia. Wheter it works well for consitently displying good versions of articles to readers is a different, and in IMHO, entirely secondary question, since we haven't published any finished version, nor should be having plans to do so in an immediate future. Zocky 22:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Agree with the stability issue of articles such as George W. Bush, I recomend semi-protection. Not the wikiest choice but better than protected and not-protected --Cool CatTalk|@ 08:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Some statistics

Before After
New pages 2050 1622
Article deletions 1309 929
New users 3241 6370 (!)

I was curious to see what impact the recent change has had on the wiki. It looks like the last new page created by an IP user was "19:00, 5 December 2005 Inehrm (280 bytes) . . 201.144.73.61". What I did was look at the 24-hour periods right before and right after that.

Someone with direct DB access could probably give other interesting stats, but all in all, it seems like things are better and not overly impacted in a negative way. The incredible number of new accounts is probably not explanable by IP users alone. Wikipedia got a lot of press, which likely contributed to the new user registrations. -- Netoholic @ 21:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Can you compare that with figures for the same period last week? It would also be great if someone could find out how many of the new pages were speedied or afd'd. Zocky 22:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Going back that far in the logs is not something I would look forward to doing... and is probably really bad for server performance. I'm sure one of the database/tech guys (Jamesday?) could gathering some numbers. I'm not sure of a non-manual way of counting how many new pages were speedied/AFD'd. -- Netoholic @ 22:16, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Vandals now create accounts hence complicates the RC patrols job. We used to treat new articles from anons with suspicion now we also have to suspect users as there are less anon vandals now (however overal vandalism has not decreased and since the CNN comentary we have an increase in vandalism (at a point it was out of control)) --Cool CatTalk|@ 01:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I know I'm interrupting, and I'm sure this has been hashed out elsewhere, but I'd like to say that, in my opinion, people should need an account to make any edits, and tying that to a verifiable email address would probably be a good idea as well. --DanielCD 01:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

That makes detection hard. People who dont bother to get accouns are more than likely one time vandals, long term users get an account without getting prompted. --Cool CatTalk|@ 01:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and slaved away for a couple of hours, and tried to collect some data. I looked at the new pages From friday, 3 December that still exist. I checked last ten pages created in each of the hours, that's 240 pages. Unfortunately, my Firefox died a noble death after I had 80 something tabs open, so I mostly didn't get to do anything about pages that need attention. I also looked at the delete log for Friday. Trying to find out anything meaningful from there would require even more work than this, so I came up with a shortcut: I looked only at the pages in article space that were deleted with the standard summary "Content was foo and the only contributor was bar", and counted IPs and logged users. I reckon that roughly as many articles were deleted friday through AfD as there were nominated for AfD, so I went and pretended that all deleted articles were new pages and added them to the pages that still exist. Here are the results, along with extrapolated values for all new pages from Friday (numbers in italics are calculated, normal numbers are data I gathered):

New pages checked all
IPs logged in total IPs logged in total
new pages, still existing 95 145 240 774 1181 1955
good edits, properly done 63 125 188 513 1018 1531
good edits, didn't get attention from experienced users 16 10 26 130 81 212
all good edits 79 135 214 643 1100 1743
on AFD 7 3 10 57 24 81
bad edits, should be deleted 8 3 11 65 24 90
mistakes, should be deleted 1 4 5 8 33 41
all bad still existing 16 10 26 130 81 212
deleted pages 211 87 298 843 348 1191
all bad edits 227 97 324 983 420 1403
all new pages 306 232 538 1789 1357 3146

It's bound to be off somewhat, but at least it's based on something. Maybe this should go to a more relevant page? Zocky 01:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism discussion should be moved to either a sub page or WP talk:VIP or even on WP:CVU this page is getting too large and it doesnt strictly concern Jimbo but the entier comunity. --Cool CatTalk|@ 01:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

If that was you on IRC tonight...

Someone using jwales came onto the wikipedia-en-vandalism room on freenode and asked us if we chat in the room. We do have an all chat version of that room at #wikipedia-en-cvu. If that was you tonight...when you come on again, just pop into the vandalism room and we can all meet in the cvu room. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 02:14, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes that was me. I'm interested in a suggestion that zocky made about programming certain workflow processes into mediawiki to make life easier for patrollers. I'm wanting to learn: what do you do which takes 3 clicks which could in theory be reduced to 1 click? Things like that.

Coolcat recommended that I drop by the channel and actually do some patrolling myself. Sounds a hell of a lot more fun than talking to the press all day, that's for sure.--Jimbo Wales 02:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

One of the more annoying things than 3-clicks-instead-of-1 is the duplication of effort atm. 5-10 people might check a diff, and even try to revert it, before it scrolls off. Other times, when no-one's there, they scroll by, and are lost forever. I'm working on a way to fix this problem ;] --негіднийлють (Reply|Spam Me!*|RfS) 02:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
If you would like a real world type example, Jimbo, take a simple vandal. When the "IP blanking a page" or "IP adding gibberish to a page" comes up in the wikipedia-en-vandalism room, we have to click on the diff first to see if it's vandalism. If it is, then us admins can click on the rollback button. Then we have to click back on our browser. And then click on "contribs" to see if this person is a persistant vandal and then back to the back button and then we have to click on the talk link to warn the person and then maybe the block user page to block the person. And again, this is if you're an admin. For non-admins, they have to go back to the history, click on an old version, etc, etc. So just for one piece of vandalism, it can take 2-3 minutes. I have no idea if it's even feasible, but it'd be great to be able to automate some part of the process. It's just like it'd be great if when we block a user, it could tell us if the user is blocked already. Right now, again, it's duplication of effort. When we go to block someone, we're given 0 indication as to whether some other admin got to it first, so we end up with people blocked 2-3-4 times, which is just a waste of effort and time.
Anyway, yeah, that'd be great. Come into the room for awhile and see what we do. There's other ways to RC Patrol but I really like the IRC room because the bot does do a good chunk of the work for us.
PS - Sorry for the wrong heading. Makes sense. I'm an admin. Over 14,000 edits. Been at this for almost a year and yet I often forget that darn second =. lol --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 03:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
You can use the intel function on my bot for ips, I am working on a way to make it work for usernames (given we now have magical increase in the hundereds of usernames created by the second just to vandalise a page... *sigh*). It is a tedious process.
Blocked usernames when diffs are loded should be identifyable, also wikimedia software should disallow multiple blocks on a user. it creates a number of problems. --Cool CatTalk|@ 21:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Maybe I should rephrase that - we shouldn't integrate workflows into MediaWiki, but into the website. MediaWiki needs to provide features that would allow us to create somewhat automated workflows for writing the encyclopedia. We should take care that the features don't influence how things get done, only how much work it takes to do them. I can't speak for RC patrol, I mostly do writing, random article patrol and general improvements. Here's a bunch of things that I would find helpful. Zocky 04:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Some things that would help:

More ways to create dynamic content
If we had an augmented version of dynamicpagelist that could be customised to different inclusion criteria (by categories, by parentpage for subpages, etc.), different ways to sort the listed pages, show the content of the listed pages, etc., we could make mass discussion pages like the AfD, RfD, Village pump, Administrator noticeboard, etc. fully automated, so that they show only subpages which have been recently edited, according to the criteria we choose. We could even reintegrate all VfD's and have pages show only the kind of request the editor wants to see. This would both reduce the workload and make those pages more accessable and useful.
Dynamic creation of pages from templates
An often repeated procedure on wikipedia is substing a template to a subpage somewhere and then editing it to enter the data you want. We do this for all kinds of processes and it is quite tedious, especially so for things like AfD, where the current procedure is such:
  1. put the tag into the article
  2. preview, save
  3. copy some code
  4. click the blue link
  5. paste in the copied code
  6. preview, save
  7. go back to the article
  8. copy some code
  9. click the red link
  10. paste in the copied code
  11. type an explanation
  12. preview, save
Now, if there was some way to tell MediaWiki what to put in the editbox when you click a certain red link, much of the above could be skipped. Combined with a dynamically generated AfD page, the process could be reduced to:
  1. put the tag into the article
  2. preview, save
  3. click the red link
  4. type an explanation
  5. preview, save
"customizable" edit pages
There are all kinds of things that a user should see before editing an article, but we keep those on talk pages, so the random reader never sees them. We could make the "edit this page" link accessable only through the talk page :) but that would be sort of unwiki. Another thing that we could do is allow editors to choose what to display above the edit box when a certain page is edited. That should in normal circumstances be things like todo lists and links to useful resources (like wikiprojects and relevant style manuals) but it may also include pointers to relevant discussions of controversial issues, setttled debates, etc. Limiting the length of this info in some way might be a good idea :) Hopefully, this would reduce the number of good faith bad edits and consequent discussions on several tangentially related talk pages.
Make categories not suck
  • Categories are one of the best ways to find articles to work on, yet maintaining them is difficult and I think that not being able to visualise them is a big part of the problem. There should be an explorer-like thingy for categories (see screenshot of my crappy JS substitute to see what I mean), which would greatly reduce the number of clicks and/or open tabs when searching for articles to recategorize and categories to put them in.
  • There is no easy way to watch category membership. There should be some kind of log for category membership.
  • There should also be a way for members of a category to give some more information about themselves to the category. We have plenty of maintenance categories, but they're really hard to use, because finding an article that you are able to help with generally involves clicking on a bunch of links and checking out what the top tagbox gives as the reason that the article was tagged, or even worse, going to the talk page to find out. If the article could influence how it is listed in the category, we could leave those explanations in the tag, and easily find them in the categories. I'd say that a link like Chernobil (needs help from a physicist) or Isle of Man (lacks proper intro) in the cleanup category is more likely to be clicked by the right kind of person. Alternatively, we can make categories for each imaginable reason why an article is put on cleanup, but that requires users to learn dozens of categories. The same feature would be brilliant for articles that need to be listed differently in different categories, like James I in category:English monarchs and James VI in category:Scottish monarchs.
Thoughts from a patroller
Every once in a while, for 45 mins or so I'll sit in #wikipedia-en-vandalism and watch as the edits go by. I used to sit in #wikipedia-en-suspectedits too but that bot went down, which is a shame because it was good. I think the biggest problem right now is we have so many people trying to keep track of vandalism that nobody has time to go through and work on articles anymore. Also, around 6-10AM PST there is a lot of vandalism that seems to slip through the cracks.
What would be really cool is some sort of interactive network, like computer2 in #wikipedia-en-vandalism, but where all admins and accepted users(ones known not to be vandals) can check of checked diffs and then they disappear from the page so other people patrolling know that it's been taken care of and we don't have 10 admins going for the same diff. I guess it would be more of a seperate program, which I've seen quite a few, but none that are networked (if I'm wrong, please point me in the right direction).
as for the categories. I agree with the above poster.
PS. higher Tim Starling to join with Brion ;)
--Appleboy Talk 04:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
edit, found User_talk:CryptoDerk/CDVF, and commented with my idea: User_talk:CryptoDerk/CDVF#what_would_be_really_cool
--Appleboy Talk 04:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Editor notes
I am not an admin, but to fight vandals; re:what woohookitty said about multiple clicks, the clicking that I find most annoying is that after a reversion having to go to the history to refind the vandal, then go to them, their talk page, and leave a message welcoming them or warning them depending on the level of vandalism. As most of these messages have been templated if a short user message box was somehow incorporated in to the process where as part of a rollback a message to person being reverted field was availible (even if only for admins) it could be used to populated the common personalized welcome or generalized {{test}}<> templates. xaosflux T/C 04:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Amen to that --Appleboy Talk 04:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Currently in order to revert a page

If done raw:
  1. You need to load the history by clicking to it
  2. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
  3. Click on the version you want (load eveything on the page #2)
  4. Click save
  5. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)
If done through a diff link (generated by a bot):
  1. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
  2. Click on the version you want (load eveything on the page #2)
  3. Click save
--Cool CatTalk|@ 09:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  1. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)

Rollback button (admin only)

If done raw with rollback:
  1. You need to load the history by clicking to it
  2. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
  3. Click on the version to rollback to (load eveything on the page #2)
  4. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)
If done through a diff link (generated by a bot):
  1. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
  2. Click on the version to rollback to (load eveything on the page #2)
  3. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)
--Cool CatTalk|@ 09:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Revert done through my bots IRC feed (using the revert link)

  1. Load the version to revert to (without checking for the actual change) and click save (load eveything on the page #1)
  2. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #2)
--Cool CatTalk|@ 09:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Just wanted to add here that it's more than just reverting. We also need to usually warn or block the user, depending on the history. So there are more steps than this. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 21:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

RC patrolers dream

When wikipedia is slow stuff like this would help

Option 1:
  1. Load the diff by clicking on it (without loading eveything on the page just the diff)
  2. Click on a revert button (without loading eveything on the page just one button to revert as user already knows what action to take)
  3. A message is displayed that revert has taken place but the page does not load.
Option 2:
  1. Click on a URL (generated by a bot) (without loading eveything on the page just one button to revert as user already knows what action to take)
  2. A message is displayed that revert has taken place but the page does not load.
--Cool CatTalk|@ 09:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Recomendations

  1. If we could load the diffs without the entier page (ie just the green and yellow boxes) dealing with small scale vandalism will be much easier. If diff was also avalible raw (machine readable not human friendly) it would be easier to seek for phrases like "hi mom" automaticaly. Currently the entier page needs to be loaded to check for an addition of 6 bytes (above example "hi mom"). RC patrolers are using 2,3 times the bandwith an annon uses inorder to revert them atm. --Cool CatTalk|@ 09:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  2. On cases of an anon removing 60000 bytes from an article without an edit summary, I do not believe it is neccesary to even load the diffs so we should have a way to revert this without loading the page.
--Cool CatTalk|@ 09:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Things to enhance detection grid

If the RC bots on irc.wikimediaog...
  1. ...diplsyaed the total page size it would be easier/possible to catch vandalism on smaller pages
  2. ...displayed an R for admin/user rollback it would be easier to identify real vandalism. The bot shows a M for "Minor edit" and an N for "New page"
  3. ...anons were allowed to create new pages. Almost every page created by an anon is something useless and allowing them to post them as anons makes it easy to detect.
  4. Semi protect for pages like George W. Bush
  5. Longer blocks on IPs even shared ones. On high schools kids just love to vandalise wikipedia during the lunch break for example so its guranteed daily vandalism with 24 hour blocks.
Thats all I got for now. All mentioned here will not help cases such as "Seigenthaler Sr." directly. However when RC patrolers spend less time on more obvious cases of vandalism, cases like "Seigenthaler Sr." would be easier to catch. --Cool CatTalk|@ 09:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Template

Wikipedia:Counter Vandalism Unit/Watched A suggestion. Feel free to improve the template (as I am not happy with the wording). All articles currently "watched" by the CVU should be labeled with this assuming there are no objections. --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

People like John Seigenthaler Sr. and CNN reporters dont know about our [RC Patrolers] existance and are rightfully stressed. --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm all for the idea, but where will the template be, and what would be the criteria to put it? We could put the template on the talk pages, (after all the template is "talk-page-yellow"), but vandals never go into talk pages. Should the template be on the bottom or the top of the article, or should it be applied to articles which are being currently vandalized, or very prone to vandalism, (similar to the spam template.)? --LBMixPro<Speak|on|it!> 22:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The template would go on talk, I dont think a formal criteria is necesary, everyone who RC patrols for a week knows which articles are just hammered with vandalism. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Hell, I don't see why we shouldn't put that on every article. Might discourage some of this blantant vandalising. Maybe upon looking at the notice, anons will think twice about their insolense and make constructive edits -MegamanZero 0:06 9,December 2005 (UTC)
The template would go on the talk page of articles such as George W. Bush. Should only be used for articles that suffer from heavy vandalism. Granted CVU and other RC patrolers watch wikipedia-wide but we give special attention to articles such as George W. Bush. So if for example the president visits wikipedia and notices that he is accused of the assasination of JFK he can then go to the discussion page and learn that this page is under attack by stupid vandals. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
More importantly it tells people we do care about vandalism and make an effort to remove it. And if people come screaming about inacurate info we can point out that we know about it. Its much easier for people to accept the "Vandal-RC patrol" war if they see a clear evidence of it. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I do not think this will be a vandal magnet though, such articles as George W. Bush already suffer from vandalism from multiple people. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
If it is ok to say a page is contraversial ({{contraversial}}) then it should be ok to say it is heavly vandalised and that nonsense may exist in the article although RC patrol will still revert it in a few seconds. Any future John Seigenthaler Sr. cases should be less of a deal if they see that the problem is regularly fixed. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Interviews

Just a thought I had when I was listening to your public radio interview yesterday. It might help if you could avoid using specialist terms like "RC patroller" or even "edit", because non-wikipedians don't really know what they mean. It's generally a good idea to avoid using specialist terminology. BTW, when someone asked about wiki allegations being repeated in the media, I liked your riposte of "Well, the allegations certainly got into USA Today"... a bit of humour goes a long way in these circumstances. The Land 13:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Constructive Criticism

Jimbo -- In my humble opinion, Wikipedia has all the potential in the world to become Nobel Prize material...and I sincerely mean that. It also has all the potential in the world to become completely irrelevant drivel and end up in the Internet dumpster...and I sincerely mean that, too. What will clearly make or break it is the improvement of its credibility & quality (or lack thereof) while maintaining its openness. Having said that, and perhaps surprisingly, I personally do not agree with the 'experiment' to block anons from creating new articles, as there is obviously a great deal of value in keeping a reasonably fully open door to Wikipedia. Rather, my suggestion would be to 'gate' anons in general -- and not just for the creation of an article -- by first (and in every instance of editing) politely offering that they register (preferred) or, if they insist on anonymity for some rationale perhaps not even explicable by themselves, then their contributions would be required to first pass a "Stop Sign" by way of an admin or some similar Wiki-entity that can briefly determine if it is not simply drivel. Call it a "Drivel Test", or "Content Stop Sign" or whatever....something akin to this is clearly needed to stop the Niagra Falls of drivel on Wikipedia. This would dramatically reduce the "impulse vandalism" that you refer to, while at the same time maintain the completely open door that is the hallmark of Wikipedia. It would also make Wikipedia a more user-friendly place, as I suspect that many, many users grow repulsed to Wikipedia because of the on-going "crap" (well spoken on your part) that many articles turn into over time, not to mention the massive abuse of their time that happens with on-going vandalism and/or gross lack of knowledge on the part of "contributors." An inevitable, but everything-in-its-due-time improvement would be to form small, fleet-of-foot 'expert' committees that oversee individual contributions to articles -- regardless of anon or registered sources -- to perform a similar gating function. Unlike the "Content Stop Sign," which could be enacted at this very moment, this "Expertise Gate" is obviously something for a later date, but could be created in any number of creative fashions (voting?), so as to stop persistent POV nonsense from people who clearly do not have current or valuable domain knowledge on what it is they are editing. This would need to be done only after giving it a great deal more thought, but the intent would be to allow for differing POVs while at the same time insisting on some basis of clear expertise. Cheers...and Godspeed. --AustinKnight 17:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Registered users

Because of the new policy, many valdals and flammers and etc. that were unregistered are now registered users, there is an increasing need for the monitoring of edits made by registered users thus making a function in the recent changes page to be able to see only registered users as I intend to work on that from now on and because trying to catch people from doing vandalism on the special:newuser is painstacking, the idea forementionned would be a nice implement to MediaWiki. Lincher 21:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It would also be interesting to see which articles are unwatched so that these can be added to people's watch list and monitor everything on a day-to-day basis, if possible. Lincher 21:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Another idea, could registered user that haven't done any edits in the next hour after the creation should be deleted to assure that the vandal progress be monitored better. Lincher 00:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes the new policy is having the opposite effect. I can understand why you are hesitant to go back to the old ways (of anons being able to create accounts) as yes they are annoying but we were able to suspect anons now we also have to suspect registered users and its making RC patrolers day more miserable. However if new users were flaged for a week on the IRC RC bots that would compensate (although people would then create sleepers which can be compensated by deleting accounts created and not used for a week). --Cool CatTalk|@ 14:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
This is an excellent idea. We have an existing calculation for (dis)allowing page moves, which I believe disables moves for the top 1% of all registered accounts — perhaps we can use this same algorithm to track recent changes by the newest N% of users as well? Hall Monitor 20:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Good thinking 'cause there's been 50'000 new registered users since the paper on J. Siegenthaler Sr. was published. Lincher 00:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Mr. Wales, or Jimbo, which ever you prefer.

I'm just inquiring about a recent change in the edit thingy. When you enter into "History" of an article & then click on the "Compare Selected Changes" button, the changes were shown in dark red. But now they are hardly visible, & for an editor with colourblindness, it is quite hard to see what changes people have made to the article. Could you please supply me with an answer if this will be changed or remedied or if it will stay the same.

I would have posted this on the appropiate page, but I do not know of one, so selected you because you are the "Main Man" on Wikipedia I suppose.

Regards, Spawn Man 23:15, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can see nothing's changed; can you specify what user options you're using? If you log out, is it the same? --Brion 00:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It's definitely nothing to do with what I've done. My options have not changed since starting my account & logging off does nothing. Spawn Man 00:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible to provide the URL to a diff page showing this problem, and to upload a screen shot? I'm digging through the files, but I don't see any indication that the color of the text has changed in months. It's marked as the CSS color "red", in bold. The background colors look the same, too. --Brion 02:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
How did it appear before? It is supposed to be bold as well as red. Is it bold on your screen? If so, doesn't that help distinguish changes? --teb728 10:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It appeared bold red. Now it only appears dull grey or (sorry, I'm colour blind) red, without being bolded. It is really annoying. How will I be able to revert edits, etc if I can't even see the changes? Please, someone help... Spawn Man 21:33, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
For me it appears bold red, now as always; so it looks like Wikipedia has not changed. Are you still using the same computer and browser? Have you changed your browser settings, like perhaps the accessibility settings? (I'm not referring particularly to Wikipedia settings.) --teb728 06:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Changed nothing, zero, nadda, zip, zippo, nought, o, 00000000000. It's still really bugging me. It's not bolded!!! Arghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!1

It looks like this is not a systemic problem, but rather something specific to you. So maybe the thing to do is for you to create a personal css, in which you could define class:diffchange to look as distinctive as you want. I have not done it for myself; so I am no expert. But I think the explanation of how to do it is at Help:User style. That page tells you where to create the css file, depending on your user 'skin'. I think putting something like "span.diffchange { text-decoration:underline; }" in it would underline the differences. --teb728 03:48, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is NOT irresponsible!

After your appearance on CNN I got so mad at that Seigenthaler guy that I wanted to tell him how ignorant he is about Wikipedia. I figured that the best way to contact him would be through his organization, the First Amendment Center. I sent them a strongly worded yet reasonably polite email saying that Seigenthaler shouldn't try and defame Wikipedia by calling it "irresponsible", among other things, and writing a negative OP/ED in USA Today. Here's a bit of the email I sent:

...I am an avid user and editor of Wikipedia, and I also contribute financially to the project. I strongly take offence at Mr. Seigenthaler's comments in USA Today. I as much as anyone else will tell you that innacuracy and vandalism is a serious problem, but it does not require that Mr. Seigenthaler launch his own "character assasination" against Wikipedia. He could have just gone and edited the article himself and removed the offending material...No need for such a big deal. I would personally not have made such a big deal so as not to draw attention to myself and to the allegations which could have been quietly removed...

I have never, in my life, received a more unprofessional response. Here is the entire response I received from Mr. Brian Buchanan who works as Managing Editor (Online) at the Center:

"But the way it’s set up, any moron can go in to any article and falsify it – as keeps happening with the Seigenthaler bio. The whole thing is totally unreliable as an information source because there’s no way to know if somebody has futzed with any given article, whether out of mischief or ignorance."

I couldn't believe his response. I, very quickly and angrily, wrote back:

"Well, go onto the website and see for yourself. It's a great learning resource, and I have spent countless hours editing and improving it. And no one is going to convince me that it's irresponsible in any way. As for your comments, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks.""

He then writes me back:

"Your attitude reinforces the fact that no reputable researcher would ever use it for anything."

That got me so mad that I just exploded! I wrote back the following as my final correspondance with the --- -- - -----:

"At least I don't use words like "moron", and at least I know that ignorance is a disease. I'm starting to think that Siegenthaler might have had something to do with the JFK/RFK assassinations."

I know, I know, that last part was a bit "not nice" but at least I got it off my chest!

Anyways, Wikipedia ROCKS!, keep up the good work! --Mb1000 03:47, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Dershowitz article

I am strenuously opposed to your experiment with admin-only editing on Alan Dershowitz. It violates the basic principles of Wikipedia, principles that you yourself set out. There are hundreds of controversial articles in Wikipedia, many of them our most popular and heavily edited. If all of them were altered so that only admins could edit them, then this would mean that a majority of Wikipedians would be effectively disenfranchised in terms of editing article content. Furthermore, it would politicize the position of admin even more than it already is, which is a disaster. Vandals should be blocked, POV-pushers should be RFC'd and taken to arbitration if necessary, and legitimate users should be able to edit as they always have. Firebug 06:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

To elaborate - I would not have a serious problem with a semi-protection policy in which unregistered users were prevented from editing certain pages. Registration is a very low barrier to clear, and anyone can do it; such a policy might prevent vandalism while not deterring legitimate edits. However, admins are not supposed to act in a content control role. Firebug 06:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It's a short term experiment. We'll see how it goes. It is wrong to be too inflexible and not engage in experiments from time to time. I would anticipate that the article will be unprotected in a couple more days.--Jimbo Wales 15:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Giving in to a vandal and legal threats. And I thought concerns about quality were taken seriously. A sad precedent. - Xed 00:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Carping

All right, Jimbo, so you accused me of "carping", and while I didn't really like that too much, I figured I'd try a test on my user page. [20] This, I hope, will encourage me to be more civil and constructive, whether I have or haven't been in the past.

The second thing I want to mention is my ArbCom appeal. Could you please have a look at the matter? I know you said it might be a while, but Dec. 3rd has passed now, and in January I'm planning on making an appeal to the ArbCom itself, so I think this option should be pursued before then. What I'd really like, more than you just looking at it and making a decision, is to have a discussion with you about it. Would this be possible? Everyking 06:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo? You responded to the post above mine, but not mine. I'd appreciate a response, even a negative one, rather than being left in limbo. Everyking 20:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Disputed articles

Would you or one of your colleagues be able to look at the continuous edit warring over articles on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Palestinian exodus and Jewish Settlement Police? All of the disputes involve the same editors and no one seems to be doing anything constructive. I have tried to explain exactly what it means to cite reliable sources, but without effect. I have been an editor since April, but I am now beginning to despair over the project. As far as I can see there's no way at all to make sure that reliable sources are used and cited. The content of an article is really determined by the person who is prepared to be (and has the time to be) the most disruptive. --Ian Pitchford 15:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't it what the Arbitration Committee is supposed to do? But, as one of the editors Ian Pitchford is currently at war with, I totally welcome your review, should you take the time. Here are changes I made to the article, and the talk page. I have to warn you however, that seeing the talk page can make your eyes bleed (I think Ian Pitchford misunderstood the idea of being bold a little). --Heptor 13:48, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Clay Shirky article

Hello,

This is an article from a few years ago by Clay Shirky entitled "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy". It may have some useful insights with regard to vandalism and disruption. He studied a number of online groups and social software that faced such problems and drew some universal conclusions. -- Curps 20:33, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

hey

how do you feel about Queen? do you like them? Night at the Opera 19:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Alan Dershowitz

Is this the future of Wikipedia? Scream loudly enough, and you, personally, will vandalize the article? User:Zoe|(talk) 03:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

With all due respect, Jimbo, I have to agree. The rule used to be that if you made legal threats on, or about, Wikipedia, you got banned. Now it seems the rule is that if you make legal threats, Wikipedia will do whatever you demand. Firebug 04:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Please. I contacted the user in question and made a clarification. It has never been the rule at wikipedia that good people can not be forgiven for past mistakes. I don't appreciate your tone here, nor your jumping to absurd conclusions.--Jimbo Wales 21:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
With similar respects, I must say that Wikipedia is about to implode IF it does not get its act together. Simply put, it has gotten too big, too fast and like an expanding balloon that has finally found its fate-inducing edge, it is about to blow -- and in no small part due to arrogance. Word to the wise -- but watch and see. A never-fail phenonmenon that I have observed in my nearly 50 years is that when "you" (anything or anyone) hit the national news in a majorly (and generally recognized...i.e., apolitically) bad way, it is the beginning of the end unless someone has the prescient ability to realize the magnitude of what's going on and takes brave, clear, responsible and firm action to fix whatever it was that got "you" under the kleig lights in the first place. "A problem cannot be fixed by the same mindset that created it." Albert Einstein (And, for the record, I would VASTLY prefer to see Wikipedia succeed.) --AustinKnight 05:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
I think you're missing an important point, Firebug. Wikipedia:No legal threats says that being an editor and making legal threats (or actually suiing) are incompatible; nowhere does it say we won't respond to legitimate grievances (whether accompanied by legal threats or not). You also don't have the same information Jimbo has, I would suspect. -- SCZenz 09:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
SCZenz, thank you.--Jimbo Wales 21:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Harlan Speaks

The following was entered on the article on Harlan Ellison and soon removed. I put it on the Talk:Harlan Ellison page. In case you are unaware, here it is. WCFrancis 04:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

HARLAN ELLISON

- Tuesday, December 6 2005 13:11:44

WIKIPEDIA PUSTULANT

Let me urge you to go to the link Mark O. has posted re Wikipedia, just previous to this. My fervent 2 cents (and with all this much-vaunted hossanah'ing of PCs, and how they'll make us a better species, how come the fuckin' things don't have a "cents" sign as did the cheesiest typewriter Back In The Day?), my two cents is entered YET AGAIN FOR THE ELEVENTH TIME, that the site, the idea, the concept, the execution, the content of the Wikipedia site is simply unadorned crap.

Let me stress thst. CRAP. Not just useless for reference if you give even the smallest shit about truth or accuracy or fairness or being courant, but DANGEROUS and HURTFUL CRAP that balms the egos of those whose idle hours compelled them to create this cesspool in the first place, in blind denial of the idiocy of the opening concept.

It is a stupid idea, deifying the urban myths and illogical personal twitches of anonymous know-nothings. It is the raising to the level of notice, the blathering and meanness of those who formerly had an adequate and appropriate soapbox on the corner, but who now have the aid and abettment of worldwide broadcasting. It is the enabling of half-witted and jejeune autodidacts who truly believe every paranoid conspiracy opinion they foam up in their brain-basin is worthy of dissemination, and is as "valuable" as real facts and Britannica-researched real information.

The Siegenthaler situation exactly parallels mine own, EVEN AFTER I played their silly little game and spoke to the several creators of the site personally, and then spent an hour or so revising and submitting an accurate (evenhanded, non-ax-honing) revision...which lasted for about an hour till the anonymous brigands formerly of Enemies of Ellison realized their long-posted scurrilous CRAP had been deleted...and they just punched in the previous CRAP all over again. And the Wizards of Wikipedia giggled, shrugged their shoulders and said, "Well, see, that's the idea of Wikipedia. Nothing is permanent."

NOTHING IS PERMANENT???!!!!!!???????

gEEZus bleedin' whatever, this flies in the face of every basic instinct of the human race. The Great Wall of China, the Tower of Babel, the Great Library of Alexandria, the World Trade Towers, the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, all of Shakespeare's and Faulkner's and Shirley Jackson's writings, the begetting of children ... TO LAST, TO BE PERMANENT (even in the face of the futility of "eternal" permanence)(to defy death and the eroding sands of time, to leave a mark, to have BEEN HERE), to create that which does not slip and slide and fall away beneath our feet. To be permanent, as best it can be so.

IMpermanence = chaos.

Don't talk to me, those of you who must need to be slammed in the forehead with a maul before you'll GET IT that Wikipedia is a time-wasting, totality of CRAP...don't talk to me, don't keep bleating like naifs, that we should somehow waste MORE of our lives writing a variorum text that would be put up on that site.

It is a WASTE OF TIME.

Those who are obsessed with disseminating "Chinese Whispers," who enjoy "Playing Telephone," who batten on creating gossip and rumor and the kind of paralogical CRAP that is as real as the "little fuck" anecdote allegedly about me, that Phil Klass cobbled up from a creaky old vaudeville-cum-Joe Miller Jokebook shtick, decades ago...that still lives on...

Those pus-bags will revel in using CRAP SITES like Wikipedia, and the even more egregious ancillary-sites that reproduce the CRAP without checking, thus spreading obscurantism and illiteracy further and further...

Those schmucks will not go away. But YOU PEOPLE have some very laudable degree of common sense. So stop blathering about "we should do this" and "we should do that" and lamenting what a nasty business this is. Because short of finding each and every one of these people (and who the hell knows how many that might be, on a million different topics) and putting a Glock to their head, and festooning the wall behind them with strawberry gliomas, even RUMINATING about buying into this set-up is no more than annoying and aggravating.

So unless you can hack your way in, to destroy Wikipedia from the tap root up, give it a pass, I beg you...give it a rest!

In sympathy with John Siegenthaler's father,

Yr. pal, Harlan

Well, we seem to be getting some big names on the growing list of Enemies of Wikipedia now... though the more hysteria people kick up about this site the more popular it gets. *Dan T.* 04:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. "how come the fuckin' things don't have a "cents" sign as did the cheesiest typewriter Back In The Day". Apparently Harlan (assuming this was actually him) doesn't know that you can get the ¢ symbol by holding down Alt and typing 0162 on the numeric keypad. Firebug 04:55, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


New frontiers in wikilawyering

For an...interesting...new angle on wikilawyering, check out the recent posting at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration#Motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. --Calton | Talk 05:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of "Unreadable Crap"...

I answered AustinKnight on his own talk page, because I don't see any reason to clutter my talk page with a dialogue with someone who is being insulting towards me. I accept all sincere questions, and even almost all insincere questions :-), but really, insulting me is not something I am fond of.--Jimbo Wales 21:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, to clarify, it was an insinuation, not an insult...but one which apparently hit a nerve. --AustinKnight 17:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

P.S. FearÉIREANN\(caint) refers to movements of talk page comments such as mine as "censorship of criticism." On this one point, he is arguably correct. --AustinKnight 19:18, 10 December 2005 (UTC)