Wikipediocracy

Osborne

tarantino wrote: ↑
Mon Sep 13, 2021 6:59 pm
This is related to Mainland Chinese editor threatens to report HK editors to national security police. Walter Grassroot and more than 40 other accounts were locked today.

Time-stamped for posterity: locked accounts on 13-14 Sept 2021, archive

Osborne

And, so it begins. Poor guy walked right into the buzz saw. Johnuniq exhibits the typical aggressive admin stereotype there. Looking back at its RFA the concerns about such behavior were aplenty: "draconian punishments and death penalties" Johnuniq should be the one invited to a session with ArbCom.

Osborne

The foundation has removed five users from the list at Access to nonpublic personal data policy/Noticeboard in the last week, two are Persian and three are Chinese. History links don't age well. These are the ones? https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic...

Osborne

The redacted oppose is a wee bit amusing... ... The Blablubbs account is a classic sleeper account, with less than 100 edit before 2020. The account was activated on June 2020... https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/Blablubbs#month-counts Blablubbs-edits.png Starting with reverts and warn...

Osborne

Osborne wrote: ↑
Sun May 23, 2021 6:48 pm
Delightful to see. One more adminsock to fill up the ranks. Which is so common that "the community" is not even concerned.

This account was SUS from the beginning till its disappearance.

Osborne

if you can make a case that the local community should be able to resolve it, but for whatever reason is not doing so, they may be more inclined to step in. Convincing them to do that will require quite a bit of patience on the part of the reporting party. On the "takes forever" scale they are in b...

Osborne

This is rather shocking, but actually that's what the Wikimedia Foundation representative told me. He said that "fighting ISIS" was more important than fixing the historical revisionism on Japanese Wikipedia... ISIS is know for its high-speed fiber internet access and high computer literacy editor ...

Osborne

So here is what happened. After my Slate article was published, I spoke to Global Head of Trust & Safety at the Wikimedia Foundation. He told me Japanese users should email their team to report problems, such as abusive admins and harassment. So I posted their email address on my blog, encouraging ...

Osborne

Unfortunately, Wikimedia Foundation cannot assist in handling these requests as we defer to community governance in most matters, Except when WMF affiliates complain. We would like to invite you to take a look at the range of actions that the Trust & Safety team may take, under our Office actions p...

Osborne

I just can't believe it. You know when I first posted here, I said to myself: this must be a blip on the radar. Surely they're more professional then I'm thinking. That's another confirmation that Wikimedia's marketing is very effective. I mean, here we have some of the smartest people maybe in the...

Osborne

Vigilant wrote: ↑
Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:12 am

AndyTheGrump wrote: ↑
Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:07 am
So, they are looking for a catchier title than 'Code Enforcement Officer'? How about just 'enforcer'?
I prefer 'Aunt Lydia'.

Nurse Ratched (T-H-L)

Osborne

"for the 1st time recently"

or was it the second...

Osborne

There are more than enough shitheads on en.wp, the prime recruiting venue for the WMF, that it's not at all clear that these are orthogonal issues and not entirely a problem of culture shared between the two conjoined entities. The employees recruited from enwp (usually with no previous work experi...

Osborne

Screenshots allegedly taken from a QQ chat group of mainland Wikipedia editors showed that a user under the handle Walter Grassroot threatened to report members of the Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong (WMHKG) to the Hong Kong national security police hotline. The group of around 30 avid Wik...

Osborne

Without Comfort wrote: ↑
Sat Jul 17, 2021 2:23 am

jack wrote: ↑
Sat Jul 17, 2021 1:22 am
I know some of the arbs are early 20s, but I'm pretty sure none of them are teens.
Don't they have to "prove" they're 18 or older by sending in an ID like a driver's license to the WMF?

That was a requirement for the NDA (for CU and OS), but a few months ago even that was dropped.

Osborne

No Ledge wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 28, 2021 11:40 pm
Recent departure(s) could possibly be related to this

Is that just a thought or a more substantial connection?

Osborne

Anyone know the reason for this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy/Noticeboard/Archives/2020#Revocation_of_access_to_non-public_information:_Bbb23 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice/Archives/2020 ? In the second link "evidence of a violat...

Osborne

Parabola wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:15 am
Incredible attempt at a recovery here

Sometimes truth is incredible. Or incredibly hard to see. Back to topic.

Osborne

This log hints at some specific internal knowledge that may reveal connections to another contributor. Huh? That's an account to test the block button with, as described at Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Blocking#How_to_block . Yes. Test blocks however are far and few between, so I assumed that ac...

Osborne

blocks | blocks until today After looking at a few of these: so far IPs and new accounts, legitimate block reasons. Only 4 with a user page: Specspidey1998 , STRONGbeMAN! , BattleBus , YearbookLife They seem to be on a quest to create the concept of "user deletionism", however these blocks do not r...

Osborne

I just find it amusing that there is a segment of the community here that think every admin is a sock or has a sock. We have discussed that there are admin socks, not that all admins have socks. With existential quantifier, not universal. I'm sorry to let you down on your amusement, but I think you...

Osborne

I guess in actual practice it is usually phrased as "SPI is thataway." It's fun how the airing of this issue has triggered you. For a policeman that's usually a sign of guilt. I appreciate that you found a less rude way to express your feelings. As one of the checkusers who failed to notice that on...

Osborne

Beeblebrox wrote: ↑
Sun May 23, 2021 9:10 pm
As we say on Wikipedia, present the evidence or STFU.

Yeah. Imagine what happened when I said that to an admin. Expect the same.

Osborne

He could file an UCoC report...

Osborne

Maybe she has reason to believe that further association with the WMF wouldn't necessarily enhance her CV. How many former senior WMF staff have gone on to significantly better things? Depends on how you define "significantly better". After the WMF experience spending a few years sunbathing on a be...

Osborne

Delightful to see. One more adminsock to fill up the ranks. Which is so common that "the community" is not even concerned.

Osborne

I guess she felt like the WMF wasn't giving her sufficient opportunity to be a World Changer ...? People who want to have a positive impact on the world and have the skills to achieve it don't stay for long in the Wikimedia world of acting like doing something. She stayed for 2 and a half years, th...

Osborne

The discussion about "surface"/"surfacing" was informative, but... where is that word in the original article? -edit- to address the orginal post, it shits over anything the WMF has done in the last ten years. The wmf has done a Visual Edsel and a few more failed projects in the last ten years, thos...

Osborne

Wikipedians sure do love their power trips. And that applies all the way to the top. That's the primary incentive of spending every day on WP instead of looking for a job. There are extreme examples like Bbb, but also exceptions. However, in most admin's behavior the signs of "enjoying" power and e...

Osborne

Everyone knows money buys power. You first need money to buy power. Actually, observant people as early as in their twenties realize it's the opposite way: you build power through connections and the power brings the money. Exceptions to this are those who were born into huge wealth (like Trump), b...

Osborne

Why is Xeno ( Xeno_(WMF) ), who is a wmf employee and the "Universal Code of Conduct Facilitator", allowed to remain anonymous? He was an enwiki bureaucrat and arbitrator Xeno . From the latter role he resigned to become a CoC facilitator before his WMF account was created. I haven't seen any menti...

Osborne

Blue Ocean Thinking - Wikipedia: the Overlooked Monopoly He's just scratching the surface, but he gets it. Only the very naive believe somebody would bother with 50,000 edits for no gain. A quick search for Wikipedia experts returns countless people who can help “ manage ” one’s Wikipedia presence ...

Osborne

As for having more granular blocking options, I guess it's easier for the devs to base them on actions instead of on topic areas or specific pages, but what they really need is the topic areas and specific pages. That way you'll (presumably) have fewer outright bans based on topic-ban violations th...

Osborne

Mel said: “There are certain people on Wikipedia, who shall remain nameless, but are known to us in the profession who’ve been sort of 41 for the last 15 years.” | birth_date = {{birth date and age|1969|09|22|df=y}} ... | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=yes|1968|06|05}} Age on wikipedia is cal...

Osborne

In my experience Maggie means it when she's talking about how to do these ongoing improvements. She is more in contact with the community. For Maher these were just fancy words to use in her PR speeches promoting Wikipedia. Empty words without any real, beneficial action behind them.

Osborne

In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. Bomis provided the initial funding for the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia, Nupedia (2000–2003), and its successor, Wikipedia. Kudos for the article mentioning that Wikipedia was funded by an "adult ...

Osborne

the "werewolves" reference is to the somewhat-popular party game "Werewolf," the online variant of which is sometimes called "mafia"; this appears to be a MMORPG, basically. Mafia (party game) , also known as Werewolf is the original offline game that predates the proliferation of the personal comp...

Osborne

founder of the online non-profit encyclopaedia Wikipedia and co-founder of the privately owned Wikia

Woops, Sanger has been denied again.

Osborne

If this will be the Okay API, then the previous was the Bad API? The WMF's choice for project names are from another world. ... will use AWS for this project. This won't sit well with a lot of people. For operational reliability that's a better choice than self-hosted. I'm getting the feeling that t...

Osborne

The FramBan became a huge drama not because the WMF banned an editor, but because the WMF banned an admin. I disagree - indeed, one of the first two bans the WMF handed out was on an admin. There was no uproar. The issue was the fact that Fram was banned from one site only - which took it away from...

Osborne

Over the last few years, Arb has definitely lowered the bar, a move in the right direction. Should we do more? Sure, but we have been sidetracked with the Foundation interfering, something that is a greater threat than bad admins. The Foundation interfering was a threat to admins' unchallenged reig...

Osborne

Axios - Exclusive: The end of the Maher era at Wikipedia Lightweight article with symbolic image invoking associations of Jesus. Savior of Wikipedia.jpg Katherine Maher, the Wikimedia Foundation's CEO, will step down as of April 15, she tells Axios, leaving the nonprofit in a vastly stronger positi...

Osborne

Well, I'm gonna try and start rebuilding some of my lost cred after the poor Arb Com election predictions I made last time and will call the way this ends: 1. WFM will unban Fram within two weeks and will start referring similar cases to ArbCom for action. It took rather longer than that to unban h...

Osborne

After I became admin, my first project was a community deysop process (see it at WP:RAS if you are really bored). Since then, I've learned why it won't work. While your assessment is very thoughtful, I see it's written exclusively from an administrator's perspective, failing to see the system is ga...

Osborne

The Foundation can't directly evaluate administrators' work as this could make them liable for the content, right? (Section 230 legal risk) What they can do is give the community a pot of money for "administration". And set the framework by which the community distributes it. Yes, I have a similar ...

Osborne

Moral Hazard wrote: ↑
Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:28 pm
Given her traveling, the WMF needed somebody to run operations.

Since COVID, not even that.
This made me wonder though: is she retiring cause there's nowhere to travel and the job became boring?

Osborne

Maher: Got paid, didn't get stained. (No mean feat over there!) It'll be hard for both of them to find the next job, WMF jobs are dead-ends for many. Those who have chances at other companies find their way out before the stain dries. The good-bye announcements try very hard to prove this is the ri...

Osborne

How about "fund the administrators"? There's a be a lot less admin backlog if it was a paying job. :evilgrin: I've advocated the idea. The issue is how to determine the compensation. The WMF with its infinitely deep wisdom would come up with a dumb, easily manipulated metric such as the number of a...

Osborne

Natural or not, one and a half years of employment won't look good on the resume. I think both of them planned for a longer stay, just like Valerie D'Costa. Their reason to leave wasn't another job offer.

Osborne

Ryan Merkley in 1.5 years made one official message to the community on 9 Jun 2020: https://www.mail-archive.com/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg34825.html,mail [...] Transition To make the transition from the publication of the recommendations to their implementation, we need to do some planning...

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