Wikipediocracy

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Review_of_Precautionary_principle&diff=121077718&oldid=121076590:

remove personal attack

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Nick&diff=121078940&oldid=121078740:

I'm not happy with Jkadavoor saying "Hmm; I'm thrilled by your knowledge on copyright". I consider it to be a personal attack, completely unnecessary and unwarranted in the situation. [[User:Nick|Nick]] ([[User talk:Nick#top|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 13:25, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Nick is a sysop on enwiki. It's amazing how enwiki sysops can be easily offended by even the smallest of things and respond to harmless comments with censorship rather than rebuttals.

Michaeldsuarez wrote:respond to harmless comments with censorship rather than rebuttals.

Censorship is so much easier. You hardly need to think.

Since Nick is an administrator, Jkadavoor should be concerned with losing his ability to edit on the preposterous assertion that Jkadavoor's "I'm thrilled by your knowledge on copyright" is covered by WP:NPA, which Nick is menacingly alluding to.

To be fair, it's ~kind of~ covered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _attack.3F -- nevertheless NPA, as with most policies, allows for "open interpretation".

"Nick" was discussed in a previous thread.

Yes, he deleted his LinkedIn. Yes, he's very stupid. Wiki-Luv, everyone!

Meepsheep wrote:To be fair, it's ~kind of~ covered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _attack.3F -- nevertheless NPA, as with most policies, allows for "open interpretation".

Even given the incredibly over-broad text that has been crammed over time into the WP:NPA policy there, it is difficult to make the case that "I'm thrilled by your copyright knowledge" is "personal attack." I also like where it says there ""you're a train spotter so what would you know about fashion?" is an example of a personal attack that "is NEVER acceptable."

The reason Wikipedia policies are so over-broad and bloated is, I believe, not because they were originally bad but rather that they've been iterated and expanded over time by administrative participants to accommodate their own own self interests as to their administrative actions. For example Nick is irritated by the "thrilled" comment so potentially he goes to WP:NPA and adds to it that "sarcasm is a personal attack." The end result is to give administrators more latitude to do whatever the heck they want to content creators based on whim and caprice and irritation. So by the time, for example, Jkadavoor manages to react with "huh, what?! that was not a personal attack!" he's been indefinitely blocked and Nick is walking on down the street with added spring in his step and satisfied grin on his face, because it's a done deal.

Triptych wrote:

Meepsheep wrote:To be fair, it's ~kind of~ covered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _attack.3F -- nevertheless NPA, as with most policies, allows for "open interpretation".

Even given the incredibly over-broad text that has been crammed over time into the WP:NPA policy there, it is difficult to make the case that "I'm thrilled by your copyright knowledge" is "personal attack." I also like where it says there ""you're a train spotter so what would you know about fashion?" is an example of a personal attack that "is NEVER acceptable."

The reason Wikipedia policies are so over-broad and bloated is, I believe, not because they were originally bad but rather that they've been iterated and expanded over time by administrative participants to accommodate their own own self interests as to their administrative actions. For example Nick is irritated by the "thrilled" comment so potentially he goes to WP:NPA and adds to it that "sarcasm is a personal attack." The end result is to give administrators more latitude to do whatever the heck they want to content creators based on whim and caprice and irritation. So by the time, for example, Jkadavoor manages to react with "huh, what?! that was not a personal attack!" he's been indefinitely blocked and Nick is walking on down the street with added spring in his step and satisfied grin on his face, because it's a done deal.

I think it's fairly obvious the system is set up in favor of administrative totalitarianism, otherwise there wouldn't be A. contradicting policies, and B. loosely defined policies.

Meepsheep wrote:I think it's fairly obvious the system is set up in favor of administrative totalitarianism, otherwise there wouldn't be A. contradicting policies, and B. loosely defined policies.

I suspect that to a large extent that's cock-up rather than conspiracy. There is no central guiding mind on the policies; each of them is crowdsourced, often by different people. In such an environment, contradictions are inevitable, and sloppy drafting highly likely.

Poetlister wrote:

Meepsheep wrote:I think it's fairly obvious the system is set up in favor of administrative totalitarianism, otherwise there wouldn't be A. contradicting policies, and B. loosely defined policies.

I suspect that to a large extent that's cock-up rather than conspiracy. There is no central guiding mind on the policies; each of them is crowdsourced, often by different people. In such an environment, contradictions are inevitable, and sloppy drafting highly likely.

Slimvirgin, especially, worked very hard to introduce and keep in place antinomies. I have no doubt that this was deliberate.

Poetlister wrote:

Meepsheep wrote:I think it's fairly obvious the system is set up in favor of administrative totalitarianism, otherwise there wouldn't be A. contradicting policies, and B. loosely defined policies.

I suspect that to a large extent that's cock-up rather than conspiracy. There is no central guiding mind on the policies; each of them is crowdsourced, often by different people. In such an environment, contradictions are inevitable, and sloppy drafting highly likely.

Yeah, I agree with Poetlister mainly, and of course Meepsheep opined on how the system is set up at this time, and not necessarily how it came to be so set up.

My sense, though I'd have to go do some big study to actually back this up, is that Wikipedia policies at their cores usually make sense, and probably did at their initial draft and early revisions, but that after that things were accreted on to them over time where to the point where they often are bloated, contradictory, messes. My sense is, and some of you will hear me sounding a typical refrain of mine in a different modulation, is that policy authors are typically content creators, but the policies are later and over years co-opted and mutated by administrative participants.

I'll caveat that that, yes, a few administrative participants also create significant content, and there is the rare content creator who also significantly administrates or even possibly ends up at Arbcom, and no-one is, necessarily, a bad or lesser person, but I find the administrative participant-content creator divide the distinguishing and pervasive fundamental of how Wikipedia today functions.

WP has one fundamental problem it refuses to even recognise, and it's this. "Anyone can edit" isn't the same as saying "anyone can edit anything".

From the transcript of the Al-Jazeera programme that featured Jimbo and others.

Oliver Kamm: Your model is one of arriving at conclusions by consensus and scholarship doesn’t work like that. It works by conflict. And it works by derision of ideas that are bad. You approach truth by a completely different avenue, which is getting the largest number of people to agree with a particular summary.

Sarcasm is sometimes needed when dismissing nonsense.

eppur si muove wrote:From the transcript of the Al-Jazeera programme that featured Jimbo and others.

Oliver Kamm: Your model is one of arriving at conclusions by consensus and scholarship doesn’t work like that. It works by conflict. And it works by derision of ideas that are bad. You approach truth by a completely different avenue, which is getting the largest number of people to agree with a particular summary.

Sarcasm is sometimes needed when dismissing nonsense.

Many thanks for that link. The force is strong with Mr. Kamm.

Oliver Kamm: My objection to Wikipedia, Mehdi used the phrase anti-elitist, you responded by saying it’s anti-credentialist. My objection to Wikipedia is that it’s anti-intellectual. I’ve never come across an academic enthused by the subject who's unwilling to discuss it or to debate the subject matter. The problem with Wikipedia is that you’re democratic, not in the sense of no one has the last word by credentials, but, anyone can join in. There is no way in which Wikipedia can filter genuine scholarship from amateur enthusiasm.

Oliver Kamm: Your model is one of arriving at conclusions by consensus and scholarship doesn’t work like that. It works by conflict. And it works by derision of ideas that are bad. You approach truth by a completely different avenue, which is getting the largest number of people to agree with a particular summary.

Jimmy Wales: You know, I think you could ask Thomas Edison about the candle... [LAUGHTER]

Oliver Kamm: You haven’t discovered Penicillin or electricity. You’ve set up a website. Your extraordinary self-grandiosity is one of the most revealing things I’ve heard this evening.

Oliver Kamm: Academics object to using Britannica because it’s a summary of primary and secondary sources. They reasonably object to Wikipedia because they’ve no idea if it’s true.

Peter Damian wrote:
Many thanks for that link. The force is strong with Mr. Kamm.

Jimmy Wales: You know, I think you could ask Thomas Edison about the candle... [LAUGHTER]

Oliver Kamm: You haven’t discovered Penicillin or electricity. You’ve set up a website. Your extraordinary self-grandiosity is one of the most revealing things I’ve heard this evening.

That's wonderful work by Mr. Kamm. How dare Wales liken himself to Edison? He's a nudie website opportunist that co-opted wiki technology for his own personal trademark and set up an encyclopedia-like wiki thing before anybody else did.

Triptych wrote:That's wonderful work by Mr. Kamm. How dare Wales liken himself to Edison? He's a nudie website opportunist that co-opted wiki technology for his own personal trademark and set up an encyclopedia-like wiki thing before anybody else did.

And tried to take sole credit for it, pushing Larry Sanger out the door, then trying to rewrite history to make Larry a "non-person".

And now Russavia believes that the easily offended Nick should become a Commons sysop again.