Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

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Moonage Daydream
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Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by Moonage Daydream » Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:13 am

The account MonmouthMuseumWales (T-C-L) was created by Mrjohncummings (T-C-L). Mrjohncummings is a clever alias of Mr John Cummings, who created Monmouthpedia (the project that shares its logo with this very site). MonmouthMuseumWales' first edit was creating a user page which declared it "The Official Wikipedian page for Monmouth Museum". So somebody softblocked them as a role account.

Along comes Victuallers (T-C-L) AKA Roger Bamkin, former chair of WMUK, who unblocks the account. For some reason this so annoys admin BWilkins that he starts a discussion on Jimbo's page about it. Then there is an RfC about whether or not the name should be blocked. And, of course, a discussion on Victuallers' talk age where he evades questions about using the tools in relation to Monmouthpedia. (You may recall that Bamkin stepped down because of a possible conflict of interest involving consulting for the Monmouthshire City Council.) The account is reblocked.

During the RfC, Victuallers identifies the user of the account as a woman named Rosoin who is a "nice girl" and "a full time Wikipedian in Residence for the Monmouthpedia project" at the Monmouth Museum. Turns out that she already had an account (Rmcurran (T-C-L)) well before the museum role account was created. The whole thing is puzzling and the reaction far stronger than I would have expected.

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Re: Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by EricBarbour » Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:47 am

Oh, I believe it all. Bamkin's probably "on the outs" at this time, or whatever lame metaphor one might wish to use for a "disgraced" "Wikipedian".
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Re: Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:49 am

I've poked the discussion in the right direction, to get them thinking about the issues sensibly rather than Policy! Policy! Policy! Let's see where that goes. Might winkle out who has brains and who is a Wikipedian.
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Re: Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:35 pm

dogbiscuit wrote:I've poked the discussion in the right direction, to get them thinking about the issues sensibly rather than Policy! Policy! Policy! Let's see where that goes. Might winkle out who has brains and who is a Wikipedian.
Hmm, for some reason my email is on moderation. Thought I'd emailed a reply in there before now without a problem, but that could be me mixing myself up with the Wiki.

Anyhow, there are signs of some thinking about the problem though most of the posts are of the form "Policy doesn't explain why it is a problem so I will therefore reverse-engineer a way of justifying it so we don't have to worry if policy is wrong." These reasons don't stand up to scrutiny, but I think that it is slowly dawning that it is pretty laughable trying to suggest that an account name that does not reveal anything about itself is somehow magically more accountable than one that does.

Foe example, we have a named account that uploaded pictures known to be of another person who has an account and a name that we do know that we are not even allowed to suggest are linked without being banned from the project, then we have an account which says "This account represents this organisation and it is being operated by this person". Which one is truely accountable. This is no different from any officer of a company, e.g. the Company Secretary of Wiki UK Ltd is the role that you deal with for serving notice on a company, and the fact that the person being that role may change is irrelevant to the accountability.

Sometimes Wikipedians are just so good at demonstrating how amateur they are. In many respects this is rather like the suggestion to the Charity Commission - "We have policy that says we are a well governed organisation therefore we don't need to consider the reality."
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Re: Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:38 pm

FYI, my attempted contribution to the mailing list from 4 hours ago.
Thought I might give you some thoughts on this wet day.

It depends what you mean by a role account.

An account name, even if an apparently real name, is just a pseudonym in Wikipedia terms - we are not allowed to consider the real person behind the account (I won't go there!) they are that person role-playing on Wikipedia.

If an individual is taking the role of "Private person editing Wikipedia" but also they have another role of "Person editing Wikipedia in their role at work" then there should not be an issue with one person operating two accounts - though I believe that link is meant to be revealed. That is no different from a Wikipedian deciding that they have two role accounts for different reasons (Bishzilla comes to mind).

Within a company it is standard operating practice for certain tasks to be invested in the job title, not the person, and therefore in a company environment it is highly appropriate that there are role accounts - it is stating that the responsibility for the edits lies with the company. In terms of password security, it is no different from the accountant at the firm holding the password for VAT submission and on moving on roles passing the password to another employee - in company terms it is the company who owns the password and they are not disclosing it to a third party.

In this case, it increases the accountability, because if there is a problem with the user editing, there is no issue going to the employers and getting problems sorted out - a private account (where you aren't even supposed to know who they are in real life) is a problem and gives the organisation deniability.

The only issue that Wikipedia might have is a shared account - but in this context, it wouldn't really be a problem if multiple people were editing in the name of the organisation - it is something that is done in the real world all the time.

With regard to the first comment in the thread - there should be no reason why it should be a problem disagreeing with policy, policy is there to be examined and tested as for it being fit for purpose. Wikipedia's biggest problem as I see it is that policy is used for the justification of doing the wrong thing, of which this is a simple example. To me this is using policy to stop doing something sensible - SOP for Wikipedia.

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Re: Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by HRIP7 » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:49 pm

dogbiscuit wrote:
dogbiscuit wrote:I've poked the discussion in the right direction, to get them thinking about the issues sensibly rather than Policy! Policy! Policy! Let's see where that goes. Might winkle out who has brains and who is a Wikipedian.
Hmm, for some reason my email is on moderation. Thought I'd emailed a reply in there before now without a problem, but that could be me mixing myself up with the Wiki.

Anyhow, there are signs of some thinking about the problem though most of the posts are of the form "Policy doesn't explain why it is a problem so I will therefore reverse-engineer a way of justifying it so we don't have to worry if policy is wrong." These reasons don't stand up to scrutiny, but I think that it is slowly dawning that it is pretty laughable trying to suggest that an account name that does not reveal anything about itself is somehow magically more accountable than one that does.
I hadn't actually seen this thread, but I made much the same point in a post to the Wikimedia UK list.

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Re: Former WMUK chair given a sound thrashing

Unread post by HRIP7 » Sun Apr 29, 2012 7:50 pm

dogbiscuit wrote: Hmm, for some reason my email is on moderation. Thought I'd emailed a reply in there before now without a problem, but that could be me mixing myself up with the Wiki.
Your mail did eventually make it through.

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