The dangers of knowing what you're doing

[rnu]

AnonymousJaguar777 (T-C-L) has come under suspicion for being a new editor who knows what he's doing. In particular he created a template for Venezuelan census data. Having "highly detailed knowledge of MediaWiki's syntax and Wikipedia's procedures"([diff]) seems to be a red flag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... imitations
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... account(s)?

I had a somewhat similar experience as a new editor. Before I started editing Wikipedia I spent several weeks reading and watching. The fact that I knew policies and knew what AfD is (gasp!) were treated as highly suspicious. And attracted the attention of the admin who eventually drove me off Wikipedia.

[eppur si muove]

It's the bullying admin's version of Morton's Fork. Either you're unusually competent for a new user in which case you should be blocked as a sockpuppet, or you're incompetent in which case you should be blocked under CIR. Either way they get to maltreat you.

[Giraffe Stapler]

To be fair, it usually is a sign of a returning user.

PROTIP: New users don't generally know about templates or things like formatting tables. If you want to look like a new user, don't edit templates. If you edit a table, make a mistake or two.

[Ming]

To be fair, it usually is a sign of a returning user.

PROTIP: New users don't generally know about templates or things like formatting tables. If you want to look like a new user, don't edit templates. If you edit a table, make a mistake or two.

Templates are generally tough unless there are no parameters, in which case they are trivial. Tables aren't hard, especially if one can find the documentation.

[Beeblebrox]

The whole "who's sock are you?" thing is just stupid in light of thr fact that clean starts are explicitly allowed for users not under any sanctions. I've wondered once or twice what happened to users who successfully appealed a sanction then never edited again. Did they just want the closure, or did they start a new account with the idea that they could maybe do better this time?

[Ryuichi]

I've wondered once or twice what happened to users who successfully appealed a sanction then never edited again. Did they just want the closure, or did they start a new account with the idea that they could maybe do better this time?

Speaking of my own experience, "wanting the closure" was a key factor. Not many of us appreciate being erroneously accused of something, and there's a strong desire for just outcomes.

After a successful appeal, I had a long think about whether Wikipedia was worth being involved in; and a long break in editing. With the low "dopamine to angst ratio" that an early sanction brings, it's not necessarily easy to convince oneself that it's a worthwhile hobby.

I'd be unsurprised if many don't.

[Emptyeye]

Templates are generally tough unless there are no parameters, in which case they are trivial. Tables aren't hard, especially if one can find the documentation.

I'll point out that thinking Wikipedia is hard presumes not only that the person has never edited Wikipedia before, but that they've never edited any Mediawiki based wiki before, such as A. a Fandom wiki or B. an internal work wiki. I actually wonder what that population truly is.

[jf1970]

Templates are generally tough unless there are no parameters, in which case they are trivial. Tables aren't hard, especially if one can find the documentation.

I'll point out that thinking Wikipedia is hard presumes not only that the person has never edited Wikipedia before, but that they've never edited any Mediawiki based wiki before, such as A. a Fandom wiki or B. an internal work wiki. I actually wonder what that population truly is.

Or any markup language, like phpBB, or HTML, or Python, which is taught to children in many schools these days. The people who think wiki markup is hard to learn only think that because they found it hard.

[Ryuichi]

I'll point out that thinking Wikipedia is hard presumes not only that the person has never edited Wikipedia before, but that they've never edited any Mediawiki based wiki before, such as A. a Fandom wiki or B. an internal work wiki. I actually wonder what that population truly is.

I'd go so far as to extend that to never edited any markup language before (e.g. HTML, XML), possibly as far as never encountered any machine interpreted text before.

And also add in never read any documentation before - all of the syntax, all of the policies & guidelines are published on Wikipedia!

And finally, incapable of using the "Preview" button instead of rushing to "Submit".

[kepchup]

The whole "who's sock are you?" thing is just stupid in light of thr fact that clean starts are explicitly allowed for users not under any sanctions. I've wondered once or twice what happened to users who successfully appealed a sanction then never edited again. Did they just want the closure, or did they start a new account with the idea that they could maybe do better this time?

It's a very "have you stopped beating your wife" flavored argument by smug fucks who think they can't be questioned by users with a low social credit score.

I would hope, weakly, that successful sanction appeals could lend themselves to being a case precedent or hard historical evidence preserved onwiki for the community to consider. either behavioral evidence on the appealers part, or the effectiveness of how certain sanctions are applied, or even if a sanction was applied in bad faith or with poorly established consensus (depending on the context) or just doesn't work for what the community was trying to accomplish. I figure that's what some people on ANI are trying to do if the pot stirrers and grudgebearers arent drowning them out.

But since having a sanction or block log leaves a mark on one's record that their detractors will always point a finger at when a dispute arises (and not always when its relevant) to poison the well against them, it's not worth the trouble of carrying it around.

If it was me, I would want to successfully appeal it just out of principle and making it a matter of onwiki public record so it might serve as some sort of purpose outside of an exercise in public contrition, but I'd probably just make an alt and keep my head down.

[Ming]

The whole "who's sock are you?" thing is just stupid abusive in light of the fact that clean starts are explicitly allowed for users not under any sanctions. I've wondered once or twice what happened to users who successfully appealed a sanction then never edited again. Did they just want the closure, or did they start a new account with the idea that they could maybe do better this time?

FTFY

[Giraffe Stapler]

To be fair, it usually is a sign of a returning user.

PROTIP: New users don't generally know about templates or things like formatting tables. If you want to look like a new user, don't edit templates. If you edit a table, make a mistake or two.

Templates are generally tough unless there are no parameters, in which case they are trivial. Tables aren't hard, especially if one can find the documentation.

It says something about Wikipedia that if you are a "new user" and you know where to find the documentation, that puts you under suspicion as a sockpuppet. Or posting on ANI (although experience suggests that this is a pretty good indicator).

[Beeblebrox]

It says something about Wikipedia that if you are a "new user" and you know where to find the documentation, that puts you under suspicion as a sockpuppet. Or posting on ANI (although experience suggests that this is a pretty good indicator).

Jumping straight into teh dramahz is for sure a different type of indicator than just knowing how format a table or whatever.

[Ming]

It says something about Wikipedia that if you are a "new user" and you know where to find the documentation, that puts you under suspicion as a sockpuppet. Or posting on ANI (although experience suggests that this is a pretty good indicator).

Jumping straight into teh dramahz is for sure a different type of indicator than just knowing how format a table or whatever.

Well, if nothing else it tends to show a love of the kind of behavior that in a disciplined site would get shown the door right off.

[Elinruby]

The whole "who's sock are you?" thing is just stupid in light of thr fact that clean starts are explicitly allowed for users not under any sanctions. I've wondered once or twice what happened to users who successfully appealed a sanction then never edited again. Did they just want the closure, or did they start a new account with the idea that they could maybe do better this time?

It's a very "have you stopped beating your wife" flavored argument by smug fucks who think they can't be questioned by users with a low social credit score.

I would hope, weakly, that successful sanction appeals could lend themselves to being a case precedent or hard historical evidence preserved onwiki for the community to consider. either behavioral evidence on the appealers part, or the effectiveness of how certain sanctions are applied, or even if a sanction was applied in bad faith or with poorly established consensus (depending on the context) or just doesn't work for what the community was trying to accomplish. I figure that's what some people on ANI are trying to do if the pot stirrers and grudgebearers arent drowning them out.

But since having a sanction or block log leaves a mark on one's record that their detractors will always point a finger at when a dispute arises (and not always when its relevant) to poison the well against them, it's not worth the trouble of carrying it around.

If it was me, I would want to successfully appeal it just out of principle and making it a matter of onwiki public record so it might serve as some sort of purpose outside of an exercise in public contrition, but I'd probably just make an alt and keep my head down.

not just that. The band of merry jesters at ANi has been known to decide that the people who are most outraged by ridiculous sanctions do indeed have ownership issues and/or an intention to retaliate or whatever. I have in my lurking seen people get their sanctions extended for appealing rather than asking for a review.

And to be fair, for a lot of the people who wind up at the drama boards, the perception of hopeless stupidity may be completely correct. Or not. We're bleeding editors* but we still indef newbies for being newbies, when a lot of them simply need things explained to them, or possibly to team up with someone who can spell. This is why I declined to be nominated back when. Admins seem to get a weird PTSD that makes them see fuckery that isn't necessarily there. The ones that aren't corrupt or simply there to strike terror into lesser beings, that is. I plan to quietly disappear, myself. People pay me well for what I do on Wikipedia. Why should I keep having conversations about what a nice account i have there, shame if something were to happen to it, just to clean up some other ridiculous mess for free? That's my thinking anyway, Since someone asked.

I may not even appeal, because that would require an act of contrition, as someone said, and I am not sorry that I expected sanity from Wikipedia, just kind of nostalgic for the days when I gave a shit.

*I once worked for an early dot,com that churned through users that way. They were positive that they could scale to sustain their growth curve . But they didn't and they discovered that neither customers nor employees were in fact infinitely replaceable, and even they couldn't change that by moving fast and breaking things

[Beeblebrox]

Admins seem to get a weird PTSD that makes them see fuckery that isn't necessarily there.

You're not wrong there, it is for sure an observable trend. It is also an easy trap to fall into when you may be in a position where people are directly targeting you for reasons you may not even be aware of. I have at least two personal trolls. I don't know who they are or why they are mad at me, they never say, they just say weird shit like "may god punish you for what you have done" which does fuck all to intimidate me but might really freak out some other folks.

Something that I think is useful about having other avenues of communication such as email lists, Discord, etc, is admins can go there for a sanity check before taking a rash action, and can usually get usable feedback. I'm going with secondhand info on Dischord, which I don't use for WP stuff, but being on so many email lists, while at times exasperating, lets one see how often possibly stupid things get prevented by asking if they might be stupid first. Of course a malicious person or a person incapable of imagining they may have had a stupid idea won't do it, so it's not perfect.

[Ron Lybonly]

It says something about Wikipedia that if you are a "new user" and you know where to find the documentation, that puts you under suspicion as a sockpuppet. Or posting on ANI (although experience suggests that this is a pretty good indicator).

Jumping straight into teh dramahz is for sure a different type of indicator than just knowing how format a table or whatever.

At ANI today. Their 3rd edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... orrections

[Elinruby]

Admins seem to get a weird PTSD that makes them see fuckery that isn't necessarily there.

You're not wrong there, it is for sure an observable trend. It is also an easy trap to fall into when you may be in a position where people are directly targeting you for reasons you may not even be aware of. I have at least two personal trolls. I don't know who they are or why they are mad at me, they never say, they just say weird shit like "may god punish you for what you have done" which does fuck all to intimidate me but might really freak out some other folks.

Something that I think is useful about having other avenues of communication such as email lists, Discord, etc, is admins can go there for a sanity check before taking a rash action, and can usually get usable feedback. I'm going with secondhand info on Discord, which I don't use for WP stuff, but being on so many email lists, while at times exasperating, lets one see how often possibly stupid things get prevented by asking if they might be stupid first. Of course a malicious person or a person incapable of imagining they may have had a stupid idea won't do it, so it's not perfect.

I agree with almost all of that. However, you don't have to be an admin to have random trolls and psychos, take it from me, and the average content creator gets zero support with this, so I dunno, I'm finding it difficult to be sympathetic.

Not saying this content creator doesn't have something like PTSD; I know that I do. What I am saying is that the business model assumes that I'm writing.about celebrity divorces and can easily be replaced. And that it is right and proper for Wikipedia to be in the business of writing about celebrity divorces.

And therefore, clearly anyone who gets hounded falls in the category of "editors known for bickering"* and the way to solve this is to shut everyone up. Case in point: Sexual violence in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (T-H-L), where the strenuous opposition to including for example the rapes in Bucha wound up attracting admin attention, and the solution was to redirect the page to War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (T-H-L), where the discourse was all about how obvious it was that civilians at a nursing home and a maternity hospital only got hurt because the Ukrainians were using them as human shields. The Russian trolls laughed themselves sick of course, but that was ok because nothing said on Wikipedia talk pages suggested any unpleasant truths.

Hilariously, a researcher asked me once what Wikipedia was having to do to ensure content integrity in its coverage of that . Where to even begin to address that kind of cognitive dissonance?

Silly researcher. Wikipedia isn't even slightly concerned about information integrity in its coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

*Actual quote from an admin who will remain nameless because I protect my sources. The context was not that I was one of them, but that I should just go edit something else, lest I become seen one of them. Articles about cute kittens maybe. Probably good advice, actually, if the frame of reference is my own well-being on Wikipedia

Subsequent append: A lot of "Russian trolls" are probably in fact useful idiots (used here as a term of art) or UPEs from obscure think tanks who are there for the SEO, I think, but the subtypes are difficult to distinguish from one another so "Russian trolls* is useful shorthand not intended to accuse the defunct St Petersburg IRA or whatever replaced it

[FelinaLavandula]

At ANI today. Their 3rd edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... orrections

A couple days later, this odd edit summary goes unnoticed: diff

[rnu]

At ANI today. Their 3rd edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... orrections

A couple days later, this odd edit summary goes unnoticed: diff

Not entirely.

[eppur si muove]

But that diff postdates the comment here about the edit going unnoticed.

[Ron Lybonly]

At ANI today. Their 3rd edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... orrections

A couple days later, this odd edit summary goes unnoticed: diff

I do not want to know the basis on which that editor makes his (or her?) assertion.

[Anroth]

I do not want to know the basis on which that editor makes his (or her?) assertion.

Rigourous analysis.