Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:29, 22 September 2005

(Old stuff cleared out.)

Wikicities.com | My Website

Did you come here looking for something fun to do? Ok, now would be a good time to go speedy delete some images from "Images with unknown source" and "Images with unknown copyright status". According to the new speedy deletion criterion (I just changed it), these can be deleted on sight when they have been on the site for at least 7 days. (7 days to allow the opportunity for the uploaders to provide proper data, although in most cases, I see no particular reason to contact them: more often, people who do this should be blocked from editing, as they represent a legal risk to the project and are not behaving in an intellectually responsible manner.)

I am hopeful that a major push to sort through these two categories with an aim of eliminating everything in them can be completed in two weeks. If this policy change isn't enough to change the direction on these issues dramatically, we'll have to take some further steps to disallow uploads except to people who have somehow earned the right.--Jimbo Wales 14:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Is this a reaction to actual legal threats agains the project or just an attempt at a long overdue cleanup? Plugwash 01:48, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

May I suggest that your instructions above be placed on the en.wikipedia Front Page so that more people can be made aware that this is happening? I might give folks a chance to properly tag some of their images before they disappear. Some users, particularly newbies, may be simply unaware of the importance of proper tags, etc.. Alternately, maybe something can be added to the Upload File page. Cheers. 23skidoo 04:55, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

This seems a little excessive and prone to causing conflicts, especially without it giving any chance for people to update the descriptions or clarify issues (as a proper copyvio procedure allows). Perhaps a speedy isn't the right way to remove these? As to "... disallow uploads except to people who have somehow earned the right," that can only hurt wikipedia by reducing the number of good images people take and provide. Many new users create an account when they take an excellent photo for an article, then find they can't upload it, even though they have been making other edits already... making them jump through hoops or otherwise not be able to upload easily is going to make them not bother. Bushytails 06:35, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I do agree that it is preferable to allow new users to continue to be able to upload images, if those images are consistent with policy. However, it is absolutely not excessive to move this category into 'speedy deletion'.--Jimbo Wales 06:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Would it, therefore, be sensible to make a technical change so that all images uploaded must have a licence noted? ] 10:52, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

The sort of users that upload copyvio in good faith are just lost in the instructions... If we make it mandatory, we'll just get license lottery: They'll pick one at random and we won't know if the selection has any meaning... The simple fact that a user expended the extra energy to stick on a well formed tag is strong evidence that they had some idea of what they were doing. The real solution is to catch these images as they are uploaded, and catch the user on their talk page during the few-day window that they still might be logged into their account. We are currently so far behind that it's hard to get people to partrol new images, perhaps thats now being corrected... I would strongly oppose making a license take mandatory, but I suspect you were looking for Jimbo's view. :) --Gmaxwell 11:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

We're already seeing your license lottery scenario playing out with the new form-based license choice at Special:Upload. Take a look at the recent influx into Category:GPL images; {{GPL}} was the default choice for the first two weeks. —Cryptic (talk) 12:02, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, good point. Well, in that case, how about a new images log? Oh, yes, we already have one: Special:Log/upload. It would be nice to be able to filter users, but you can't have everything... ] 11:21, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

There is also the new Special:Newimages that displays the images as thumbnails. You still can't filter on users, but you might find it useful. --GraemeL 11:36, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Gmaxwell. Using myself as an example of copyvio in good faith, I uploaded images and just put the generic "fair use" tag on them, because I didn't know it was wrong, I saw other people doing it, I knew nothing about copyrights, and I didn't even know I should be looking for more info regarding policy. I'm wiser now, but how many images have I uploaded? I don't even know. There are numerous images under the generic "fair use" tag, that should really be moved to "Images with unknown source" or "Images with unknown copyright status" (especially any uploaded by me during my early times) I think if it's easy to accidentally "hide" an image behind a generic "fair use" tag, it will be equally easy to do it deliberately. Keeping track of them as they're being loaded might be better, and perhaps something could be put in the image description page to say the image has been looked at and is acceptable, to help prevent image deletion pages being clogged up with nominations for deletion of images that are actually ok. Rossrs 11:35, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

If you look at the bottom of Jimbo's talk page, you'll see I'm proposing some new fairuse templates. I thought I'd give Jimbo a chance to object before I start selling it to everone, since he's demonstrated a pronounced hands-on interested in these maters recently. I think you'll find my proposed fair use templates address your concerns (you must specify why it's fair use, and where it can be used). Per the discussion above, I almost think it would be wise to remove all direct mention of templates from the screen and only direct people to the page with instructions (as well as provide the short short guidelines). I'd rather run the risk of a user who didn't get the license right on the first pass being unavailable to answer a question and having to delete the image than have them put in incorrect information and be unavailable, leading to a long drawn out battle over the image. Though I think the new CSD criteria helps us a *lot* here. --Gmaxwell 12:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I noticed your proposal after I added my comment above. I think it's a step in the right direction. Anything that makes the rules less ambiguous or less open to personal interpretation can only make things easier. Rossrs 21:24, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

.

There are two issues i can see with doing that.

1. It makes it more burocratic to introduce finer grained license categorisations as needed.
2. It leaves the very real possibility that people will choose to mismark an image so the software will let them upload it. Unmarked images are a lot less trouble to find and deal with than mismarked ones.

--Plugwash 11:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I was just wondering, do these new changes mean we longer have a need for WP:PUI? Craigy File:Uk flag large.png (talk) 18:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

No, as invalid fair use claims still need to be taken through there. I hope that is Jimbo's next topic to address! ] 18:14, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah yes, of course (*nudge, nudge* Jimbo :-P). Craigy File:Uk flag large.png (talk) 18:19, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Repeating DELETED Request

Howabout, CesarB, Firestar, Katefano, All those e-mails I sent you BEGGING for page protection and this is how you address the issue? By pretending it wasn't me? Just consider the illogic of that! Who would want to be me? And who would ask for nothing except a little common consideration? Here I am again, doing what you ask, trying to play by your rules, coming to your talk page to give you more attention. But, no matter what I do or say, you refuse to protect my page so my friends cannot be stalked. You and your ilk are all just trolls who have no decency whatsoever. You just want to play games hiding behind your silly "policies." I hope someone does this to you someday and you get to enjoy the frustration you inflict on me and others. I pray that all who come to your sick site will see that you are just another bunch of trash and bash liars who have never done anything of value and are so jealous of anyone who has that you would rather believe and publish lies about them than speak the truth. I ask you for the fifth time, as politely and respectfully as I can in light of your tacky behavior, to protect my page or remove it.

I remain, Ashida Kim For a complete listing of Ashida Kim books and tapes go to DOJO Press

Your Own Rules

What a load of cheats and liars you are. There is no more User Page for Ashida Kim, proving that, as I said before, YOU closed it. Every time one of my friends comes here to cast a vote for deletion they are blocked and their vote deleted. You say that if a page comes under an edit war you will close it, but whenever anyone tries to edit, it you revert and block their IP. See boys, this is a rigged game. Just like I said it was. You refuse to play by your own rules. So stop pretending you are on some "noble mission" to save the world from mean old Ashida. There is an old Gaelic saying, "Them that don't like us, may God turn their hearts, and if he can't turn their hearts may he turn thier ankles so we will know them by their limping." That is why you boys are lame ass trolls, LOL

Ashida Kim

Without knowing anything else about the issues, there is one thing I do know for sure. "Every time one of my friends comes here to cast a vote for deletion they are blocked and their vote deleted." I don't know about the blocking, but their vote doesn't count per the Meatpuppet Policy. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 13:55, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're whining about... User:Ashida Kim seems to be right where it always was. *Dan T.* 14:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Unified wiki namespace?

Hello Jimbo, I have been wondering why the different wiki sites are rather separate: wikipedia, wikibooks, wikisource, wikiquote etc? It seems to me it would be easier on multiple levels if there was one unified namespace for everything under one site with one login, call it the wikiuniverse perhaps. Doesn't the concept of "wiki" trump even the seemingly arbitrarily imposed distinctions of "encyclopedia" and "books" and "quotations" etc? zen master T 14:21, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the current division is completely sensible. An encyclopedia is a specific kind of reference work, not a massive random compilation of everything.--Jimbo Wales 14:02, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Oopsla in October

Hello Jimbo - I would like to schedule a San Diego meet-up to coincide with your trip to San Diego in October. Please let me know what would work best with your schedule and I will arrange accordingly. Thanks! Johntex 00:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jimbo, I know you are terribly busy, but I wonder if you will have time while in San Diego this October to attend an event if I put one together? Please let me know. Thanks! (PS - best of luck with the funding presentations) Johntex 02:05, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I would be very interested in that. Please email me?--Jimbo Wales 14:07, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Ten things that will be free

On Wikimania you announced ten things that will be free, and blogged about two on Larry Lessig's blog. Then you wrote that the next will be announced on your blog, but there is no mention of it. I wonder, is this "project" dead or something? I am just curious. Samohyl Jan 17:50, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

No, it is an ongoing project of mine. I'll be presenting the current list at the Fellow's Hour at Harvard's Berkman Center Tuesday a week from now.--Jimbo Wales 14:02, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Mutual fund

Hi Jimbo, I was just wondering if, when you get the chance, you could look over the mutual fund article for accuracy? ALso I'm wondering whether the "advice" section of the "United States" section would be better on WIkibooks? Thanks. Pakaran 17:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

A suggested change to your statement of principles

Jimbo: Regarding your statement of principles, I think you know very well that #6 bit the dust a long time ago. (It is no longer open, nor is it the principle discussion forum). I think you should update it accordingly. →Raul654 19:06, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

Barbara Schwarz

May I direct you to observe the currently-locked article Barbara Schwarz (a conspiracy theorist and accused "FOIA abuser", well known in certain circles), and especially the accompanying talk page? When people start slinging libel accusations at the drop of a hat, you know there's a full-blown flamewar going on. I'd refactor the whole thing and have done with it, but they'd accuse me of censorship - and since I value my anonymity, I really have no way of defending myself. I would also advise you to not enter the conversation yourself, as you lack credibility with certain of the participants (it's related to Bomis, but I can't comprehend the reason for their hatred myself). I have NO idea which administrative channels we should take this through, and I need a true guru's advice... 206.114.20.121 19:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

It's actually just Barbara Schwarz, who posts from three public access IP Blocks in Salt Lake City. She does a lot of copy & paste, each libel by her is repeated for several days all around wikipedia. Tilman 16:12, 11 September 2005 (UTC)Tilman

Barbara Schwarz was one of the Scientologists in Germany who was prosecuted by the German government just for being a Scientologist, she was illegally admitted to a psychiatric institution and "treated" against her will with drugs and electric shock treatment. As a new user to Misplaced Pages, she only came here to correct the bias in the new article about her being composed by Tilman, Vivaldi and a couple other contributors. They have used biased sources and selectively extracted portions of Barbara's USENET postings to use against her. Barbara has vandalized the page several time out of anger, but even when she tried to follow correct format Tilman or Vivaldi reverts her changes. Basically she is up against a cabal composed of Scientology critics. --AI 04:20, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

your web page

Just to let you know, there seem to be some broken images on http://www.jimmywales.com/. Main Page 20:02, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Quote

Recently User:PigSwill (an Irate sock?) posted on your article an IRC conversation with User:Irate which led to Irate's ban. Of course I've complained vociferously about that ban before, since it was done 100% outside of process, but in the actual text I found this concluding exchange which I found extremely troubling:

Irate says, "I'll stick to the riles but I won;t like them is not enough for you?" To this you reply: "not at all", "not even close". This was a devastating thing for me to read because it is extremely important to me that a project I invest so much time in be founded on basically just principles, and what Irate was saying seems so obviously to be the just argument that I am astonished that any reasonable person would disagree. Irate, and presumably by extension all contributors, are required to like all of our rules, as opposed to simply following them? And for the founder of the project to say that? I'm hoping I misinterpreted or got something out of context, or maybe the text as given isn't even accurate, so I request clarification. Everyking 11:35, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Everyking, I took a look at the diff in question (which was quickly reverted by SlimVirgin.) It is here. While I agree that this may be a little harsh, remember that intentions eventually lead to actions, and Jimbo probably thought that his attitude was bad. "Insubordination" can get a person fired -even from a "nonpaying" volunteer job, such as wiki-editor. Now, if you don't agree with the Bible, then my following arguments won't be valid, but even still, let me just share with you some things I have found on the web (and I'm guessing they are correct quotes, because I don't feel like looking in my Bible for ALL these quotes).

• Proverbs 5:12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
• Leviticus 19:17 ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.
• Mark 7:21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
• Matthew 15:19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
• 1st John 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
• Zechariah 8:17 And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD.

Remember, also, Everyking: Jimbo does have the all-powerful authority -at least for a time. (I hear there are plans to reduce his authority, but that is out of my hands.)

If you read all that I wrote -both my thoughts and those of the various Biblical writers, and combine that with your studied analysis of how you might act if someone starts tinkering with, say, your homepage -or home -or car, or whatever you own --then you might see a bigger picture. --Again, I am not saying Jimbo is right (assuming he was quoted correctly from some private chat or something) --I am just saying there are several sides to a story.--GordonWattsDotCom 12:09, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

It's fine if he got angry and went overboard. The question, to me, is whether he stands by it. It has to make anybody a little nervous when he's saying he'll judge people by what they think and not what they do. If what Irate's done is worth a ban, I don't have problem with a ban, although I strongly feel it should go through the ArbCom process...but here you had Irate saying he would obey the rules, even though he didn't like them, and that wasn't good enough for Jimbo. I think this is something worth bringing up for clarification. Everyking 12:36, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

If I'm reading it right, this user has created problems before, and Jimbo feels that any ArbCom would go in favor of booting the guy, so maybe, Jimbo's simply being "efficient" (and saving time/energy), but I could be missing something.--GordonWattsDotCom 12:45, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

The ban of Irate was not "out of process" in any way at all. The transcript that he posted was highly edited, and omitted significant parts of the discussion, including a discussion of his inability to spell. (I was prepared to cut him some slack if he's dyslexic, but he assured me that he isn't. Ok, well, then, he should learn to spell before trying to write an encyclopedia.)

The overall point is that his position was that he would not change anything, that he would continue to follow the rules as he saw fit, and as he always had. His defense of himself was grounded in "well, other people do bad things, so I will do bad things too". I found that attitude to be competely unacceptable, and that settled the issue for me.

Everyking, you appear to be willing to believe the worst of me, and the best of this illiterate troll. I urge you to reconsider this attitude.

But there is one core point of policy here which is worth repeating: our goal is to write a complete, comprehensive, free, high quality encyclopedia. An illiterate troublemaker is not helpful to that. Therefore, he is barred from participation. This is not a democracy. We do have policies and we do follow those policies, and we have an incredible amount of tolerance for bad behavior. But never mistake those rules and policies as being fundamental: what is fundmental is our shared goals and values. The rules are a means to that, not a suicide pact.

We don't allow administrators to ban people on the grounds of being illiterate. But that's not because we think illiterates are good candidates in writing the encyclopedia, but because banning people for illiteracy opens up a huge can of worms. The other rules are the same. --Jimbo Wales 15:56, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The point, which you didn't address, was the banning of someone based on whether he'll support the rules as opposed to merely following them. I have no interest in hearing this business about building an encyclopedia, because I assure you I am quite concerned with building an encyclopedia, but also quite unconvinced that banning Irate gets us any closer to that goal. Moreover I happen to feel that observing rules and processes (and changing them when necessary through community agreement) is a better way to build this encyclopedia than administrative fiat, so I have never had much patience for the "suicide pact" line. Everyking 18:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The point, which you didn't address, was the banning of someone based on whether he'll support the rules as opposed to merely following them - actually, you seem to be missing (or ignoring) the not-so-subtle point that Irate said (quite explicitely) that he had no intention of following our rules (the ones with which he disagreed). This is why Jimbo banned him. →Raul654 19:01, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

As I read the conversation it said the exact opposite. Could you identify a quote? Everyking 19:11, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

He indicated to me that he would continue to follow our rules as he always had before, which means "not at all". He did not accept that he had broken the rules, and announced his intention to continue behaving as always. That was absolutely not enough.

Let me clarify something. People are not required to support all the rules in detail, of course. Polite dissent from the rules is welcome. But in this case, we have an illiterate contributor with a long history of rules breaking telling me point blank that he doesn't think he's done anything wrong, and has no intention of changing. I see no way to defend that sort of behavior.--Jimbo Wales 19:21, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, I disagree about your interpretation of the conversation. Since you were involved in it maybe you're more entitled to judge, but Irate's words seems pretty straightforward. Secondly, I'm happy to see you disavow the notion that contributors are not required to support the rules, although this leaves the question of why this was required of Irate in particular. Thirdly, I think your repeated assertion that Irate is "illiterate" is bordering on a personal attack, or is already one (not to mention calling him a troll earlier). You know what people would have said if Irate had gone around calling someone "illiterate". Everyking 00:22, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Everyking has a decent point on the last point on the last part anyway. User's edits seem odd though - filing RfAr against an arbitrator, "vandalizing" user pages (removing himself from a user's people to watch etc.). Some contributions seem good though. That edit on Jimbo's user page shows an unusually snappy Jimbo, eh? Reeks of being edited and cherry-picked though. Sounds like a year-old thing of mutual distrust going on here though. Ryan Norton 01:26, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd be happy if Jimbo just deferred the matter to the ArbCom. They already banned him for a few months before, so the outcome is not in doubt, of course, but the important thing to me is that there's process. Also, the ArbCom can only ban for a year, whereas Jimbo banned him for life. RN has it right that Irate was a problematic user but also one who made some genuine contributions. Therefore he ought to get to go through the standard disciplinary process that any other user who had made valid contributions would be entitled to. The fact that Irate was also promising to "abide by" the rules in the future should also, in my opinion, be grounds for giving him another chance, perhaps under probation—certainly not a lifetime ban. Everyking 01:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Calling someone illiterate is probably not the sort of insult that we should be dishing out here. It is highly politically incorrect, and, I could be wrong, but it seems the aim of giving a 💕 to every human being on the planet is in part to improve literacy - a basic right. Literacy:Figures of 1998 show that 16% of the world population is illiterate (by the UN definition). In the United States alone, 5% of the population is illiterate by the US Government definition, according to the 1990 Census. Seven million UK residents are functionally illiterate according to Government figures. Another problem in the developed countries is the rise of secondary and tertiary illiteracy in recent years, i.e. the complete or partial loss of previously existing reading and writing skills due to lack of practice. Among the Arab states, more than 25% of men and 50% of women were not literate as of 2000. The most likely reason for low levels of literacy is lack of education. There are spell checkers, grammar checkers, and most importantly, lots of other editors on Misplaced Pages. If we are going to start displaying prejudice against the illiterate then probably we have lost sight of our vision here and are meandering down a slippery slope. I don't think that's the case, but I also don't think that Irate's ability to type his thoughts at the pace of an IRC chat is relevant to his case. He seemed to have a conceptually large vocabulary. --Alterego 03:17, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

The Long Now Foundation - Rosetta Disk Project

Hello Jimbo,

It has struck me that Misplaced Pages could be an absolute goldmine for future generations, as it is such a good record of current culture. It might be a good idea to investigate what it would take to have a snapshot of Misplaced Pages inscribed in the same way as the Rosetta Project Disks - see and - that way, Misplaced Pages could even survive the fall of civilisations and help future generations (I know it sounds a bit melodramatic - but it could be true). As each disk holds about 30,000 pages, you need (at a rough estimate) 30 disks for the English Misplaced Pages alone. They might be merchandisable to (rich) patrons. Perhaps a good respository for Version 1.0

Anyway - just an idea!

WLD 11:06, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Timshell admin account

Hi - I recently updated WP:LA to reflect administrator activity using a script and noticed an anomaly. user:Timshell is a sysop account, but has never edited. I assume this is intended to be user:TimShell. I left him a message about this a while ago that I presume he simply hasn't followed up on. If you could either simply straighten this out or contact him in some way I'd appreciate it (it looks distinctly peculiar to have a sysop account with no edits, seems to take anti-editcountitis a little far :) ). -- Rick Block (talk) 13:57, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo's beard debate

Just wanted to note the fact that I've moved the Jimbo's beard debate to a subpage at User:Jimbo Wales/beard since even though it's a funny discussion it isn't entirely appropriate for long term use on his main userpage. Jtkiefer ----- 23:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Concerning Jeff Merkey

If he had any comments about my actions with him, please see here - and especially here

to see that he is causing much more trouble than warranted.  Take care, Molotov  (talk)  21:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I had to do it!Molotov (talk)

Marsden etc

Sure, I haven't been paying much attention to those articles recently anyway. I don't think I've edited Canada Free Press or Judi McLeod at all for a few weeks and I've only edited Marsden once in the last ten days.

If you got a lawyer's letter on behalf of Rachel Marsden, I suggest you actually call the lawyer and see if he actually wrote the letter. Allegedly, there was an incident a while back where she sent a letter on a lawyer's letterhead to an online discussion board (I think it was Frank online) without her lawyer's permission. Homey 23:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

BTW, if you're at liberty to email me a copy of the complaint, I'd appreciate seeing it. Homey 23:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I've just emptied out my inbox (just realised it's been bouncing) so if you've already sent me the complaint, please resend. Thanks. Homey 23:38, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

RfA Policy: Approx 3-17-3 concensus says your policy is stupid?

Jimbo,

I have posted a few more than average questions of recent, but this one breaks the bank.

A lot of people have warned me not to "appeal to Jimbo" because you don't become involved in a dispute over one user, but I think you will want to look at this, because this attitude has been responsible for alienating and offending many users, who have left in disgust:

You see here my RfA. OK, no big deal.

However, what has happened to me (and I have remained cool but firm in most of my replies and rebuttals) happens to MANY users, so this is a wiki-wide problem. Just like you want the site to be open-editing for anybody, you also want there to be a fair hearing of all complaints, concerns, right?

I admit that I don't have as many edits as some "veterans," but this should not be a big deal: Admins says, in salient part: "Current Misplaced Pages policy is to grant this access liberally to anyone who has been an active Misplaced Pages contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community...."This should be no big deal," according to Jimmy Wales."

While I have walked into the middle of many contentious edit wars on divisive page (Schiavo, Jesus, Abortion, Christianity, etc.), I have never been disciplined, blocked, etc. See e.g.,

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:GordonWattsDotCom (old)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:GordonWatts (new)

So, while I am impressed an many who have more experience (and more time on their hands) to help Misplaced Pages, the policy you laid out above is apparently opposed by a 3-17-3 concensus (Uncle Ed is one of those who voted "for" me) -and they largely criticize my lack of experience and concentration on one small area of editing (in spite of the fact I have edited over 200 distinct pages).

Either you are right or you are wrong in your policy above:

• If you are right, then I ask you to enforce the rules so any editor in good standing (who has acted responsibly with the great powers he/she has), to be granted adminship.

• If you were wrong about that policy, then I simply ask you (or one of your bueaucrats, etc.) to change it to reflect the "changing standards.

I think you were initially right: The admin tools only confer slightly more "powers" to me, and granting them would not be any bigger deal than, say, letting me have a map, flashlight, and cell phone, for -say, a business trip, eh? "Adminship" as I understand it is not something with powers that a bureaucrat or steward has, so I think you were right on this policy. Am I right in all my assertions above and in the RfA in question? Seeing the apparently 3-17-3 concensus that says your policy is stupid: Is that true?

Thx.--GordonWatts 06:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

AFAICS, that sentence from Misplaced Pages:Administrators is not official policy; it just describes how RFA usually goes. Official policy is that people are promoted if they receive consensus on RFA. That sentence should be changed. ~~ N (t/c) 18:56, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Not necessary - Gordon's known, but from the remarks and comments, he's obviously not trusted by those that voted on his request. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 23:04, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

He's probably right that the RfA page should be edited though. RfA has become a popularity contest and should be scrapped. It's getting ridiculous. People oppose editors' having powers that are "no big deal" because they don't talk on policy pages! Well, why should they? People with admin powers don't have to get involved in sorting out disputes, blocking or other "admin" type activities. They don't have to join in the IRC, sign up for the cabal or get involved in any other way than editing the encyclopaedia. The admin powers are powers withheld to newbies, conceptually. A wiki hierarchy is determinedly not a good thing. -- Grace Note (apologies for not logging in)

I don't entirely disagree. It bears further discussion, and perhaps we should take this to Talk:RFA --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:32, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

3-17-3 means nothing and just demonstrates the basic flaw with Misplaced Pages. 3+17+3=23 users. Misplaced Pages is not composed of only 23 editors and there is a high probability that some or maybe most of the 17 have been informed or organized to vote against. 3 idiots builds enough consensus to shut out 1 scholar. And this is Jimbo Wales' Misplaced Pages formula? --AI 03:24, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Adminship might have been "no big deal" a couple of years ago, but administrators can do more now than they could before. Administrators can delete, undelete, merge page histories, block, unblock, do range blocks, protect pages from editing or just being moved, and delete images forever. About half of these abilities have been added since you could truly say that adminship was handed out liberally to anyone who asked for it. Adminship candidates must be trusted by the community (or significant pockets thereof) for them to receive sufficient support on RfA. Now that administrators can make lasting damage to the Wiki (at least going back to its last backup), more emphasis is placed on the "trust" part. - Mark 06:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

The only "lasting damage" an admin can do is delete an image. That's exactly the same situation as three years ago. The truth is that admin process has changed from a cosy little mailing list activity (easy when there was only about one admin a fortnight!) to a very tough trial on RfAdminship where every little detail of activity is analysed and used as a possible means to oppose. This is a bit of a shame because it has led to the homogenization of the adminship pool, when ideally more people should bring more diversity. Editcountitis is particularly bad. There was a case recently where someone had been around for two years, made lots of good (and lengthy) contributions, never caused any trouble, had helped people out, but was blindly rejected because he had only made 1,000 edits or so

In short, adminship should still be no big deal. We should work at loosing the RfAd culture up. Pcb21| Pete 09:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I don't know anything about Gordon's particular case. Pcb21| Pete 09:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I think both sides have good points. We probably at this point need extended user rights capabilities so we can keep the adminship process "no big deal" and simple. Each admin could request a subset of rights based on the chores they wanted to perform. If that's not the case, we should just make the process simpler overall. I think another question that is relevant now that wasn't relevant then is, how many admins do we want? We have ~23,500,000 edits, ~2,300,000 pages, ~440,000 users and ~580 admins. That means each admin is effectively responsible for 40,500 edits, 4,000 pages and 750 users. That sounds like 580 full time jobs to me~ --Alterego 15:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

But it is not a job. They are just powers. Originally, they were conceived as powers withheld, which you would be granted if you kept your nose reasonably clean. Now people are opposed because they don't vote on deletions, because they have made enemies, because they aren't "trusted" (but not "trusted" not to delete pages, "trusted" in a sense defined by whoever is using that as their reason), because you once bickered with somebody over something stupid, because someone once called you a troll and his mates piled on. Gordon should be an admin if it's no big deal. He wouldn't do any harm with it. He just blathers and tries to push his POV. If that was a crime, we'd be locking up half the editorship. Grace Note 02:00, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages in Belgium: BELNET

Dear Jimbo: I don't know if you remember, but in february 2005 you were invited by the Belgian Secretary of State (Staatssecretaris voor Informatisering van de Staat) Peter Vanvelthoven. He liked the project very much, and declared on tv that he wanted to help Misplaced Pages, by caching parts of Misplaced Pages on the Belgian University Network BELNET. We are now almost 7 months later, and that still hasn't happened. So I mailed our secretary of state, and he replied that the contract had been sent out tot Misplaced Pages, but did not yet return to his department (or to some other place). So, my question is: do you know how this subject is evolving? Is this cache still coming, or is it on permanent hold? I would like it very much if it would go online very soon, because the Dutch Misplaced Pages is going in slow-motion right now. And the French also, off course. --Tuvic 20:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Afaict the belnet offer was hosting only not servers. Given that wikimedia has other offers and colocation is a relatively small part of the budget one has to ask if its worth buying servers to fill the belnet rack. Also it would be the third cluster in that part of europe. Whilst i'm not involved in the process myself this offer just doesn't seem very attractive to wikimedia in its current situation. Plugwash 20:47, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Identity theft in Misplaced Pages

<personally identifiable information removed>

How in the world do we know it's not just two people with different names? Or that this person didn't just hit upon this user name as a random combination of popular names that sprang to mind? How does Mr. Carlson know it's identity theft, and was it mere coincidence that he saw the name at work on the Sollog article, or did he find out some other way? I'm not trying to be overly skeptical, it just strikes me as odd that someone would deliberately and falsely use a 12 year old girl's name to edit a Misplaced Pages article. I mean, how would one expect to benefit from that? Everyking 05:58, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Everyking, please stop raising silly objections to absolutely everything. It's an obvious troll or Sollog puppet account, and so therefore _who cares_ if it is a random coincidence on the name or not.--Jimbo Wales 19:13, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

What? I didn't even think about the quality of the edits being made. I didn't realize that was even an issue. Anyway I think you should apologize for the "silly" remark. Everyking 04:13, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

The point is that you should have looked into it more before popping off with a silly opinion. Please try.--Jimbo Wales 14:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

You've got the black spot, man. Anything you say can more or less be disregarded and you can be insulted by any mucky-muck who chooses. GWTP. -- Grace Note

I don't agree about any black spot. Everyking is a respected admin in many cases. In my opinion, he hurts his own credibility by being contrary all the time, without even (as in this case) properly investigating the facts.--Jimbo Wales 14:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, I just don't agree that I am contrary "all the time", or even all that often. In fact I often hold my tongue and disagree in silence, but the large majority of what goes on I agree with (would I stick around and devote my time and energy to a project if I thought it was on the wrong course?) In my response to the text you deleted, I wasn't being "contrary", I was just pointing out something that seemed absent from the claim/request. It seemed to present a logical problem if that wasn't addressed. I understood the Sollog issue that has been going on (roughly), but what was in question, it seemed, was the name, not behavior or anything like that. So Sollog trolling/sockpuppeting/POV pushing seemed irrelevant. I suppose Jimbo did not see it that way and saw fit to give me a harsh rebuke, which was promptly exploited by User:SlimVirgin on WP:AN/I in an attempt to gain the upper hand in an unrelated argument. I'm going to have to agree with Grace Note; this "contrary", "objecting to everything" line strikes me as an attempt to discredit my arguments. (I disagree with a handful of decisions and practices by a few admins which are very iffy in terms of policy, and that means I disagree with everything! The logic astounds.) Everyking 04:22, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Everyking, I think Jimbo was being "figurative," not literal when he said "by being contrary all the time" (and also, by extension, figurative here too, when he said "raising silly objections to absolutely everything.") (Slight emphasis added for clarity.) As an admin, you have it easy: Let me illustrate this: Admins get into revert wars on occasion (sometimes, even revert wars on the Misplaced Pages main page, no less) and are not demoted, but things like that are used as excuses against editors in good standing, like myself, re RfA denials -even if/when I was not the initiator of the revert war -and did not get disciplined.

Please note: I am not saying these are bad admins (we all make mistakes from time to time), but merely illustrating a follow-up point: Double Standard grand mal.--GordonWatts 12:04, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Harassment

Hi, I think the ideas have settled. The primary concern I see is Trolls abusing the policy (such as something like willy on wheels claiming he is beeing harrased by admins). Aside from that I do not see objections to the proposed policy. I feel your views on the matter or even an apearance would prove to be useful. Thats all I got for now. --Cool Cat 04:16, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

John Byrne

What, exactly, are we allowed to do there right now? If we took your comments literally, we'd need a copy of his birth certificate to prove he was a human being. It seems... unnecessarily restrictive at best, and effectively appears to give Byrne a veto on the inclusion of any content from the fact that you supported his near-blanking of the article - SoM 19:51, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that the article was previously filled with innuendo and rumor without any sourcing at all. I don't mean to insist that we get his birth certificate of course, just that we adhere very strictly to standards of sourcing. We need to find legitimate sources for everything (magazine articles, reputable websites, etc.) and avoid speculation beyond what we actually know. This is just the same standards that we should be applying everywhere, but even more carefully than normal because the article has been problematic.--Jimbo Wales 01:15, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Jeff Merkey#2

I noticed that you had responded to Jeff Merkey on that talk page, so you already know of the incident at hand. Mr. Wales, please help me. I have tried several times to keep garbage of this site, and I have done what I think is a good job as a WikiEditor. This user has caused edit wars and has provoked nonsense ever since he has been on here. Worse, he has falsely accused me of profane messages directed toward him...and that will become true if this idiot runs loose any further.

P.S. I can decorate your page if you want. Tell me how you like my user page's decoration. (and please respond to this comment, I understand that you are a busy person, but I am livid at this point) Thanks, Molotov (talk) 20:12, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Jimbo, thanks for the welcome back. Yes, I noticed that the IP address he was using was deleting content, including other people's comments on Talk pages. When I went to the IP's talk page I noticed the legal threat. I also saw that he had been blocked before for the same thing, so I blocked him for a month. In checking his edits, I noticed he had deleted comments from a Talk page, so I reverted, then I saw that what he was deleting was a personal attack (in fact, the same information you deleted from the Merkey article), so I reverted myself. User:Zoe| 05:04, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I think that Merkey is User:Gadugi. User:Zoe| 19:25, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Edit war between bureaucrats.

(This post had been deleted by the original poster (me), acting in good faith that the issue had been resolved and no longer needed to bother the very busy Jimbo. However, one person who wrote a comment in it, felt I should not have deleted her post: Revision as of 00:32, 21 September 2005 Deleting other user's posts, so I replacing this thread, and showing where (here) that the original post existed. I consider my particular complaint "case closed," in favor of looking at the more broad picture. (See my post at the bottom of this page about 1,2,3, & 4 -comparisons of following policy.)--GordonWatts 09:00, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

About A wiki-break

I've decided to take a wiki-break, because of things going on in my life and choices I have to make. So would it be okay if my brother takes over my account for the time I'm gone? If its not okay then thats fine, I'm sure he'd just create his own account and use wikipedia, but for now I'm done, for reasons that are my own. The Fascist Chicken 21:43, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion

While I understand the theory behind deleting images that don't list a source or copyright status, it would be a great help to inform your minions to PLEASE leave a message on the talk page of the original uploader informing them that they have 1/3/7 days to edit the image's status or it will be removed. Words cannot describe how frustrating it is to have hunted down little-known images that are very much public domain, and then wake up to find out they've been not only removed, but deleted. There are thousands of man-hours of work being destroyed, including my own, simply because somebody didn't include a Template:-fairuse- tag or something. I would *definitely* go update the source/copyright of any images I was warned to, but I'm not going to go spend 40 minutes hunting down the ancient little-known copy of some file I originally found the image attached to. Sherurcij 00:56, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Images should not have been uploaded in the first place with the proper tag. The instructions on the upload page are quite clear. --Nv8200p (talk) 04:10, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Never the less. Users should be warned first. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 07:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

In general I agree that users should be warned first, this is why there's a 7 day rule on these. But the simple sad fact is that many of these images are months or years old and nothing has ever been done about them.--Jimbo Wales 07:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but they haven't been sitting there for years with warnings on their originator's talk page - it's only one extra step for the Brownshirts to put a 3-day warning on my talk page, they can even put the image in some kind of Category:ImagesPendingDeletionMay17th or whatever, to keep on top of things. It just seems to me a wealth of article illustration, and public domain material, is being deleted wantonly. It would have been very easy for one of the Brownshirts to slap a {{Logo}} or {{fuus}} onto some of the images I've seen deleted from articles. Please do try to rein them in, and encourage them to show restraint in what gets deleted and what doesn't. It takes no more time to copy/paste {{fuus}} onto an image that seems logical, than it does to delete it. Sherurcij 07:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

{{fuus}} is just as bad as {{nosource}}. You can't have fair use without knowing the source. If nobody has any objections, I'll switch the category on {{fuus}} from Category:Fair use images to Category:Images with unknown source. --Carnildo 04:57, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I thought that we agreed to do that when Jimbo yelled at me for this. :) Go ahead, no objections here. Titoxd 05:15, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry but it is very hard for me to listen to you when you're using language like 'brownshirts'.--Jimbo Wales 07:34, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Check my user submissions or userpage and you'll notice I spend a fair amount of time on Nazis...it's meant as a generic non-offensive term for stooges, minions, brownshirts, whatever politically-correct nomenclature you want to use...the guys who answer to you, the ones carrying out your pogrom on images *shrugs*. Sherurcij 07:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

• boggle* A generic non-offensive insult?--Jimbo Wales 07:54, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't feel offended, and I'm one of the folks who were doing these deletions (and have been taken to task about some of them). I think, inevitably, some stuff has been deleted that shouldn't have been. That said, the huge backlog of {{unknown}} images was a Bad Thing, and had to be taken care of. And pretty much everything I deleted I was fairly sure wasn't fair use, or I skipped over it. Pakaran 07:36, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I added a note to the category page (images with no source) advising a little bit of caution, but I wouldn't like for this to slow the project down by much. And yes, the backlog was getting to be a Very Bad Thing.--Jimbo Wales 07:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

• {{fuus}} was depopulated (not by me, though) and all the images linking to it were tagged with {{nosource}}. I don't know if it was intended this way or not, I'm just notifying what happened. Titoxd 01:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

A "Request for Release of Information"

Jimbo, I would like to direct your attention to a legal matter over at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Thank_You_.26_Request_for_Release_of_Information. Thanks, Func( t, c, @, ) 04:34, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Fair use images

The {{nosource}} deletes have also sparked a lot of discussion about fair use. As a result of discussion with a number of wikipedians I've created {{fairusenoalternative}} and {{Fairusereplace}}. Both make it clear that fair use depends on context and that all fair use should have a reason. One claims that we do not believe there is an alternative to the work for our needs, the other suggests that a free replacement is possible. The replace tag puts the images in a wanted replacement category. I'm going to move forward and suggest that these tags completely replace the generic {{fairuse}} and that we create similar fairuse tags to replace our other special area fairuse tags where it makes sense. Although this doesn't create the broad prohibition on replaceable fair use works which some would favor in a new fair use policy, it does provide us with a good approach to reduce the amount of unneeded fairuse in Misplaced Pages. I believe this will be broadly supported, so I'm not concerned about that. What I would like to know, however, is if this fits into your vision of increasing the clarity of license and freedom of the content in Misplaced Pages going forward? --Gmaxwell 10:33, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm broadly supportive of fair use tagging improvements, and this sounds like a move in the right direction. I believe that you and I see eye to eye on these issues, certainly in the broad outlines, and so nearly as I can tell in the particulars as well.

I think that 'fairusenoalternative' is pretty much the _only_ fair use we should allow on the site, period. This is not current policy, and even I hesitate to push too far too fast in that direction. But my very good friend Terry spends a lot of his spare time going to baseball games to take photos of baseball players for us, and he finds it disheartening that many of the photos he is taking aren't adding to wikipedia except in the narrow sense of improving things from a "fair use" to "GFDL" standpoint. He's prefer to be known as the hero who went to baseball games year in and year out to get hundreds of photos for Misplaced Pages for article which would have otherwise been bare.

On the related issue of the image upload form, and the options people are given, I think perfectly valid options which should be on the list is "I do not know the source of this photo" and "I found it on another website". Those will be CSD'd in a week if someone doesn't find a proper source and a proper fair use rationale. I think we should be extremely (extremely!) paranoid about giving newcomers to the community any kind of incentive to lie to us about where they got a photo. Better to encourage them to tell the truth, and then clean up after them (and use the opportunity to welcome them with a big WikiHelloHug and education about scholarly standards!). --Jimbo Wales 14:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I would like to raise the standards a little bit to protect you from being sued silly re Fair Use / copyrvio:

I recently took some photos of Terri Schiavo's grave and released them under GNU so they would replace the Fair Use photos already on the site (some of my photos are being used in Terri Schiavo's article), but the problem I imagined (it never materialized) was that since my photos looked so much like those that they were replacing (I took photos from the same angle and such), that people might accuse me of stealing them from a website or something. But, I found a solution, that I would like to share with you.

I took several photos which depicted me standing in front of the grave. (This was to prove that I was there at the grave site and the hospice and that I really took the photos; Taking a picture of yourself is real hard, but I stretched my arms out "long.")

Q: Will this prevent Wiki from being sued, as I suppose?

Q: If the "proof" photos are a good idea, as I think, how will we deal with them? Upload them, and provide a link to them in the "description" of the photos used for the articles?--GordonWatts 15:24, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

IANAL, but because of the action Jimbo has taken above, it shows that we know we have issues of copyright violations, but we are taking very active steps to get rid of them as much as possible. Because of that, I think we will not get sued. Zach (Sound Off) 17:47, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Emailing them (maybe a scaled down or low-res version to reduce file size) to permissions@wikimedia.org might be useful: stuff sent there gets archived and pulled out in case of copyright questions. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Good idea, Minspillage, but http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=permissions%40wikipedia.org&spell=1 only shows one good listing for this idea: I'm going to chill out and wait for Jimbo or one of his specialists to weigh in on this; Zach's post above your is on the right track.--GordonWatts 10:49, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind but i just removed "yet" from the new fair use templates, with many fiar use images there is little to no hope of getting them under a free license. Plugwash 12:03, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not my template, it's Misplaced Pages's template and I applaud your boldness. :) The word yet wasn't in my initial version of the template, but I added it later due to a recommendation by Jamesday. I thought it was a terrific recommendation because it is indeed *possible* to obtain almost any fair use work under a free license. Doing so would require an act by the copyright holder, and may not be likely in many cases, but it is still possible. It is also what we hope to achieve. As Misplaced Pages grows and becomes more recognized the ease of getting such things to happen will increase and it's important to note that it's happened already: there have been many cases of people asking for license grants for material we'd otherwise have to use via fair use or not at all. An important part of this is that we are unlikely to get a grant unless we ask. ... So I do think the yet was good, but I don't think it hurts to have it gone either. I'll leave it up to the community to hash out the wording. --Gmaxwell 13:18, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Gordon, I was writing on the assumption that if you were concerned enough to bring it up you would be concerned enough to take action. I don't know if it beats a word from "Jimbo's specialists", but this is, if you have read the text of Misplaced Pages:Confirmation_of_permission, accepted procedure; the email address has been obscured so as to avoid spam so it does not google well. If you did wish to do something with the "proof' photographs, that is what you would do. (If it counts for anything, Angela added that address to the page herself.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:18, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

"Gordon, I was writing on the assumption..." Your assumption was correct, Mindspillage: I emailed them the proof photos and posted the related note atop the talk page for the photos involved.--GordonWatts 15:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

We see yet another reason why "spam-obscured" addresses are problematic... personally, I find that any obscured, obfuscated, or otherwise intentionally-screwed-up addresses offend my aesthetic sense and I can't stand to have to read web pages that have them, and absolutely refuse to manually demunge them to actually send mail to them; people who do stuff like that just won't get any mail from me. *Dan T.* 17:54, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean the images with the websites on them? Watermarks? Usually, I assume that watermarked images are copyvios. But if we could save the image since it fell under a different license, then I could learn how to erase watermarks. Zach (Sound Off) 19:39, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Gmaxwell, I'd recommend checking out Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Fair use. We're already undertaking a rewrite of all of our fair use tags there. JYolkowski // talk 22:01, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, several people on the list of those involved in that project provided me with input on the tags I created, though none pointed me to the page. I found it a bit before making the public announcement, and saw that it didn't do anything with the generic tags, so I didn't see my changes as overlaping as we still need a generic tag and {{fairuse}} isn't enough (doesn't say where and doesn't say why). One of the things missed in the current new tags is the distinction I've provided for replacable images verses ones which likely can't be. For some catagories of fair use it's only going to be one way or the other, but in many cases it's not so. I think this is a critically important piece of information we need to tag up front and which should be a part of any dicussion about the fair use of an image. And if a list of images to be replaced isn't one of the outputs of our fair use endeavors, well, we might was well just go home. :) In any case, the tags to a great job of giving clear justifications (although I did have a problem with a user who assumed a strained reading of the magcover one), but they don't make it clear *where*.. As they've already been put to use I don't know what we'll be able to do to improve that... In any case, thanks! --Gmaxwell 22:58, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Photos

I see you are still on warpath over photos of Australian politicians (Simon Crean). Is this formula acceptable to you? If not, why not? I have gone to some lengths to find a way of meeting what I understand to be your new rules, but I don't want to waste my time uploading photos if you are going to delete them. Adam 10:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Adam. That particular deletion had nothing to do with Austrialian politicians. The photo was completely lacking in source information. As far as I can tell, the formula you've put forward here is eminently sensible. It makes completely clear to everyone where the photo came from, what permission we have to use it, in what way that permission is less than ideal, etc. The problem, again, with the Simon Crean photo that I deleted was that it had no source information at all.

And it really was chosen at random from a list of literally thousands of photos that are in the process of being deleted. I have been pitching in to help with that project, and the way I've been doing it is randomly clicking on a letter heading and randomly clicking on images within the resulting page. --Jimbo Wales 15:30, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Do you agree with this edit, removing a link?

I removed a commercial spam site link from the Autofellatio page; trust me...I even loaded it, told them I was 18+(which I am), and there is very little imformative there. It is quite disturbing.Voice of All (talk) 05:47, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Photos

Jim, thanks for your comment above. I am not disputing the deletion of the Crean photo. I am seeking clearance for my formula as used on the Costello photo. I now have a comment from fvw* who says: "It's very laudable source reporting indeed, but still a speedy candidate: Used-with-permission images uploaded after may this year are speedy candidates in an effort to get proper free images to go with our proper free encyclopaedia. Sorry about that."

What is the status of fvw's comment? Who is in charge of this process? Can I get a clear, definitive and enforceable ruling from you that photos I upload using the formula I have used on the Costello photo will not be deleted? Adam 00:09, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

It has a fair use rationale on top of the permission. I think that makes it not-a-speedy-candidate. Of course as with any image, it could be vulnerable to deletion if the community eventually deems the fair use rationale to be thin (unlikely in this case) and it could be replaced someday with a properly licensed image (likely in this case), so of course there can be no iron-clad guarantees given. But I am happy to say that the fair use rationale, done well, is still reason enough to keep.

We will be having a significant tightening of "fair use" on the site in the near future... but the direction of that is going to be the outcome of a lot of very admirable work going on to refine the fair use tags.--Jimbo Wales 01:54, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

and I will

I don't call that a clear and definitive ruling. However I guess it is the best I am going to get. I will give some thought to whether I want to spend time scanning and uploading these photos in the absence of a guarantee that they will not be deleted. Adam 03:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Fvw has now taken it upon himself to delete the Costello photo. Who exactly is in charge around here? Adam 07:26, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Some other matter

I apologize to Mr. Wales for posting content on his talk page. I have removed the content and wish to express my thanks for his gracious and kind treatement, which I probably didn't return in the best of ways. I hope I can make it up to him in the future. Sincerely Gadugi 01:27, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Gadugi 01:27, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

thanks for your work on merkey related stuff I wanted to thank you for what is probably otherwise a very thankless task. Here's my reading on the case. This is a fight that's spilled over from somewhere else on the Internet. None of the participants have much of a clue about Misplaced Pages's culture of kindness. There are people who love trolling Jeff Merkey because he's easily excited. We should do our best to encourage all of them to take their fight elsewhere, before their poisonous attitudes start to make us irritated with each other. Anyway, it's good to see you in there. Jimbo Wales 01:31, 21 September 2005 (UTC) At any rate,

Thank you...

...for your thoughts about impartial sources on Talk:Karl Rove. paul klenk 12:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The mess at John Byrne

A belated thanks for your kind words on my talk page. Between trying to play wikiambassador with the trolls on Byrne's message board and dealing with the people on Talk:John Byrne who'd rather argue than edit, it seems like a thankless task. Ugh. I think, though, I can steer this through with some patience and persistence, though I wouldn't mind a few more eyes to factcheck things. Anyway, thanks for stopping by the article talk page, I think your presence muted the worst of the troublemakers. Gamaliel 17:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Photo policy: last comment

I now advise that I will not be uploading any photos other than those I have taken myself, since there is no clear and comprehensible policy about what is acceptable and what is not, since no-one seems willing to take responsibility for stating a policy, and since it is not possible to get a guarantee that photos which are in order one day will not be arbitrarily deleted the next day, as is apparently happening frequently. I might tell you that a lot of long-time contributors are very angry at the arrogant and incompetent way in which this matter has been handled. And it appears that in this case the buck stops with you, Jimbo. Adam 03:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

image deletion

Hi - Can you please read Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(assistance)#User_talk:Zscout370.23Photos? Do you think the process the user describes might be viable? I'm sure user:Beland would be happy to put together lists sorted by contributing user. We could then go through the lists user by user, rather than image by image, and give the users a chance to add copyright info. This might take several weeks to complete. Do you think that would be a timely enough response to whatever is causing the concern? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC) BTW - if you think the process might work I suspect the suggesting user would appreciate a word from you.

That's me, thanks Rick. I came here to repost the suggestion, but it reads better in context and also in a different form on the user's talk page under discussion. This is definitely causing problems, no matter how honourable the intentions. I also have a problem with users who seem to think a word from Jimbo gives them carte blanche to throw their weight around in his name, which again I would THINK is not Jimbo's intention, though maybe he could avoid speculation by simply telling us. If the proposed idea is not practical then we have got to come up with something - perfectly acceptable images which have been freely given to wikipedia in good faith have now vanished - possibly forever since in a couple of cases I woud have to rescan them from the originals and I'm pretty disinclined to do it if their fate is to be simply chucked out by inconsiderate hooligans. Graham 04:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

WP:NPA. Zach (Sound Off) 13:11, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I have posted some sample lists of the type requested; see the above-referenced Village Pump discussion. -- Beland 05:00, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo on "Keeping our Promises" theme: 1,2,3, & 4 examples.

1 When asked if Misplaced Pages was "Freezing "stable" pages in perpetuity," Jimbo answered that "We are constantly :reviewing our policies and looking for ways to :improve, but we have not "announced" anything."

Jimbo wants us to keep our word when we say "Misplaced Pages is 'wiki' and open-editing."

2 When asked if we allow lots of Fair Use, which is indeed legal, Jimbo said that "All images which are for non commercial only use and by permission only are not acceptable for Misplaced Pages and _will be deleted_. We have tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged."

Jimbo wants us to keep our word when we say that our photos can be recopied with no problem."

3 Template:FACfailed quite clearly says that "Once the objections have been addressed, you may resubmit the article for featured article status."

Jimbo would want us to keep our word on that too, right?

Here, an Aug. 26, 2005 nomination for Terri Schiavo, a stable article, was narrowly defeated by what looks to be a 6-11 or 7-10 margin, and it had problems, but Mark, the FA-editor says here that we fixed most of them, and suggest renominating in a few weeks. However, here, when it was renominated on Sept. 05, 2005, a few weeks later, after all his concerns were addressed, and then re-nominated, as Mark had suggested, it was rejected by Mark, who has the authority to make decisions: He went with concensus, instead of policy. Conclusion: It's not important to keep our word to our editors. (Update: I've asked Mark Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#Featured_article_comments to keep his word, and I think he seems reasonable, so we might be making progress.)

4 Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_adminship, which is current Misplaced Pages policy, says that "adminship should be no big deal. Admin actions are reversible; being an admin is primarily an extra responsibility, as there are rules and policies that apply only to admins." In addition, Misplaced Pages:Administrators states that "Current (de facto) Misplaced Pages policy is to grant this access liberally to anyone who has been an active Misplaced Pages contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community..."This should be no big deal," according to Jimmy Wales...In the early days of Misplaced Pages all users acted as administrators and in principle they still should."

• That is the policy, and I am a user in good standing:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:GordonWattsDotCom
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:GordonWatts
• Neither my old user name, not my current one were ever blocked (except that my "old" name was permanently "blocked" when I switched user names, but that was not for disciplinary reasons, just to switch names).

So, how was I treated? Here, the final vote was (4/29/5), and much of the criticism was centered around the fact that I have spent much of my time in the Terri Schiavo pages, and that I had insisted that the rules be followed in my Featured Article nomination. For being too "concentrated" on the Schiavo article and for speaking up to seek that I be allowed to renominate a qualified article, I didn't "fit in," and then when I protested the use of guidelines not authorized by Jimbo, I was soundly ganged up on and expelled from the clique. However, as my numbers show, I have almost 3,000 edits and have edited on over 250 article; Only about 10-15 max could be Schiavo article, so I'm sufficiently diverse. Conclusion: It's not important to keep our word to RfA candidates about what policy or standards will be used; It is a clique instead. (Note: Many editors were polite and well-meaning, but I don't see why they can't either follow policy or change it.)

With about 23,500,000 edits, 2,300,000 pages, 440,000 users, and only580 admins, each admin is effectively responsible for about 40,500 edits, 4,000 pages and 750 users. That sounds like we need more Admins.

"Editcountitis is particularly bad. There was a case recently where someone had been around for two years, made lots of good (and lengthy) contributions, never caused any trouble, had helped people out, but was blindly rejected because he had only made 1,000 edits or so...In short, adminship should still be no big deal. We should work at loosing the RfAd culture up. Pcb21| Pete 09:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)"

There is even a "double standard," whereby a current Admin can do all kinds of questionable things, but an RfA applicant is scrutinized like a freshman who is hazed for admission into a fraternity. Is there a double standard?

Jimbo's Response to all this: He has the authority, and he may:

(1) Tell me that he will discipline anyone who violates #3 and #4 above just as quick as he will for #1 freezing pages, and #2, Fair Use.

(2) He may tell me that if I don’t like Misplaced Pages, I can leave -and do something different.

(3) He may choose to both (and get down on all parties involved)

(4) He may choose to neither (and ignore this), but I don't think this is likely.

I'm not perfect, but I may have a point. I submit this, along with User_talk:GordonWatts/RfA for clarification, seeking either enforcement of policy if no one is willing to change it to suit their allegedly rising standards.--GordonWatts 16:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• PS: I've asked the community to clarify what the current concensus is on some policy that they seem to think needs to be changed: Featured Article policy and RfA policy, but people just want to run their mouths -instead of helping define what exactly the current concensus is, so I can know what policy is supported, and what policy is ignored as "outdated."--GordonWatts 17:15, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Gordon, once again you do the lawyerly gloss over the very important adjective in "...known and trusted member of the community..." Getting a 90% "oppose" vote should tell you, loud and clear, that you fail that criteria. Since you fail that criteria, you're not getting the job. Whining about it is not going to get you that job: in fact, it's pretty much guaranteeing you will never get that job.

Remember the first law of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. --Calton | Talk 02:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

diplomatic honesty

Jimbo Wales:

There was a recent arbitration committee case on Ed Poor

I submitted a statement regarding the original complaint. I think it gives a decent account of the reason for my complaint. It can be read here: I submitted evidence to the case here.

The entire basis for the arbcom case against Ed Poor is that he acted unilaterally on the presumption that he had been around long enough to get away with it. Arbcom's reaction has been clearly unlike any other arbitration case to date, and appears to reflect that he is getting special treatment. The case was opened and closed in a single week. Arbcom has avoided making any comments regarding Ed's specific behaviour. There has been no official determination as to whether Ed broke any policies at all. The final decision simply says this

Ed Poor (talk • contribs) has offered to resign as a Misplaced Pages Bureaucrat. He remains a Misplaced Pages Administrator in good standing and a valued member of the Misplaced Pages community. The case is closed without further comment.

Several editors raised issues with arbcom closing the arbitration before they had finished submitting evidence and closing it with a "final decision" that said nothing about what, if any, policies were violated to explain why arbcom accepted Ed's resignation, but managed to give Ed a "good standing" comment.

I have spoken with the arbitration committee to get more information.

Raul says Ed plead gulity . But that was only something that Ed offered on a talk page, and arbcom never officially accepted it. Raul hasn't answered my questions about "pleading guilty".

Theresa knott states here that arbcom accepted Ed's offer to resign, but she avoids making any comments on policy violation.

Fred Bauder states here that "it is implied that Ed broke policy in a number of instances. ... We simply don't want to paint him as a disreputable scoundrel". No answer to why the implied violation cannot be mentioned in the final decision section. Also attempted to point out difference between saying someone broke policy and "painting them as a disreputable scoundrel".

Raul states here that "if you are saying that we shouldn't take them (good actions) into account as mitigating factors when passing judgement, that's just asinine". I keep trying to explain to arbcom that Ed's behaviour is one thing, and whatever measures taken is another. Whether he violated policy should be independent of his time at wikipedia. Any measure taken against him should take his good contributions into account.

Fred Bauder states here "We are not in the habit of running off people who have contributed substantially to Misplaced Pages over a period of years." This also seems to collapse the idea of makign a determination on Ed's behaviour and what measures, if any, should be taken.

There are three questions I would like arbcom to make a determination on:

(1) Was Ed Poor's block against me justified based on my talk page?

(2) Was Ed Poor's comment a violation of NPA or justifiable as a way to explain a point?

I happen to think you're an asshole and a shit head, and that you're fucking everything up, you stupd, time-wasting bully!!! (This is inserted as an example of a forbidden comment, go ahead and complain about me if you want, but I was illustrating a point.

(3) Was Ed Poor's behaviour as mediator on the Terri Schiavo article appropriate?

Ed seemed to work closely with and generally favor one editor, SlimVirgin, who happens to be an administrator he works with a lot.

Ed Poor was mediating the Terri Schiavo article, which was also marked as a controversial topic. SlimVirgin who had no history with the Terri Schiavo article, and with no discussion on the talk page, made a massive edit to the article (9 edits over the course of 3 hours, putting the "in use" tag up during that time). Several editors complained that such an edit was inappropriate for an article that was in mediation and marked as contoversial (and an experienced editor and admin should have known that), and that her edit contained numerous factual errors and contained biases violating NPOV. Ed remained silent on SlimVirgin's edit. However, when Neuroscientist posted an exceedingly detailed and neutral 5,000 word criticism of SlimVirgin's edit , Ed Poor made a rare appearance on the talk page warning Neuroscientist about No Personal Attacks.

Ed's second block against me appears to come after coordinating with SlimVirgin: less than two hours later, I'm blocked . When I asked Ed, what remarks on my talk page got me blocked , he ignored the question and mentions that he's gettting away with it, basically, because he's been around a long time. . The content that Ed says got me blocked is visible here .

Ed initially gave partial/hesitant endorsement of an Rfc I filed against SlimVirgin , then quickly withdraws his support and turns around and attacks the RfC as building a case, gaming the system, and bullying.

According to your "statement of principles" , "Anyone with a beef should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. They should be encouraged constantly to present their problems in a constructive way". I've been trying to do that, and have reached the end of the dispute resolution process. Arbcom refuses to address any specifics around the Ed Poor case, and there is no step after arbitration for me to take. It also says "Anyone who just bitches without foundation ... I must simply reject and ignore". I think the evidence I've submitted is sufficient foundation that Ed Poor broke some specific policies. It would seem to be a legitimate foundation, and I was asking arbcom to make the final decision as to whether policy was actually violated or not.

Your "principles" page also mentions "a culture of thoughtful diplomatic honesty", "There must be no cabal, there must be no elites". I think that Ed Poor has acted as an elite, going so far as admitting he gets away with stuff because he's been around a long time. And arbcom's response appears to reinforce the image of a cabal, given that their handling of the Ed Poor case is unlike any other arbitration case I've seen, given that it was opened and closed in a single week before editors had submitted all evidence, given nothing in the case acknowledges even a single policy violation, and given how the members of arbcom have different explanations as to whether Ed plead guilty, whether guilt was simply "implied", or whether any violations were officially recognized at all.

I've tried to be as diplomatic as I can around this issue, with no resolution. Could I get an honest answer (and perhaps a bit of thoughtful explanation for the answer) to the three questions above? FuelWagon 19:31, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

My 2¢ worth, since I know all the players here

1) Wagon is a long time editor, who is probably the only active editor to have contributed more on Terri Schiavo than myself.

2) While we sometimes disagree on how much emphasis to place on certain things we are reporting, FuelWagon is a reliable editor, and I sleep well at night knowing he is watching this page.

3) It is true that Uncle Ed used some cuss words in an "example" of inappropriate posts an attempt to explain to Wagon what he had done wrong, but I think he did not mean to offend him. Uncle Ed was merely demonstrating an "example" of a "bad" post to get Wagon's attention.

4) As I recall, Uncle Ed accidentally blocked Wagon, and then accidentally blamed Wagon for not addressing the issue, when he was unable to address it -he was blocked.

5) I myself was the person who started all the controversy here: DuckEcho, an inactive editor, insisted on making the text size in one section too small for readers, and he did not discuss it or seek concensus; I engaged him in conversation to try and resolve it.

6) When diplomacy failed, I engaged in Revert World War III, and reported him for violating the "spirit" of the 3RR (although he technically made some edits, but made them as reverts).

7) SlimVirgin became involved, attempted to do a large copy edit on the Schiavo page, and was harshly criticized for it.

8) She in all likelihood made only a few substantive edits, was mostly justified, but, not unlike myself, strongly argued her case and admitted no wrong. That was her only fault, but it was minor.

9) Wagon engaged her in argument, rightly pointing out a few of her oversights and mistakes; She refused to admit them; He then used cuss words galore, and Uncle Ed eventually blocked him. Wagon has become a much better editor since that, I think, but Uncle Ed may have made a few minor mistakes.

10) And this is the big one: I think the ArbCom was either too harsh or close to right in Uncle Ed's case; however, in most cases, as you well know, Admins can do all kinds of things, and ArbCom doesn't lift an eyebrow. My own situation is a perfect example of "double standards," (User_talk:GordonWatts/RfA#Double_Standard) so please listen to FuelWagon here. Although he would never make Admin, he is an example of someone who is responsible and qualified but not acceptable due to his "concentration" in one area and his desire to speak up for "what he believes in."--GordonWatts 10:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, Gordon presents a fairly decent rendition of the facts, but his list should in no way be taken to reflect chronological order. It would probably be something like 1,2,5,6,7,8,9,4,3. i.e. I was working on Terri Schiavo in mediation when (5,6,7) SlimVirgin made a massive edit out of the blue. I violated NPA. (8,9) I cleaned up my comments. Ed blocked me anyway. I accepted the block and didn't protest. I began creating a list of issues on my talk page in preparation for an RfC against SlimVirgin. SlimVirign complained to Ed, and Ed blocked (4) me saying my talk page contained NPA violations. Ed moved the "offending" content to /block. After that block expired, I filed an RfC against SlimVirgin. Ed hesitantly endorsed then turned around and attacked the RfC. Ed "illustrated a point" (3). FuelWagon 03:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

More on images

Further to the my earlier remarks: User:Craigy144, who is 19, has now taken it on himself to delete a piece of my original artwork, a map at History of Thailand, clearly tagged as my work, without informing me, let alone consulting me about its status. Jimbo, if you wanted a policy that would piss off regular contributors and drive people away from Misplaced Pages, you have certainly found one. Adam 05:10, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

If you're referring to Image:Thailand.gif, I just checked the edit history, and can't see anything other than a {{nosource}} template. If you're referring to some other image, could you link to it so someone can check the history? --Carnildo 06:42, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

It was tagged "map by me" or something to that effect. And I am clearly the person who uploaded it. Adam 07:12, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Image:Thailand.gif shows exactly two edits: You uploaded it on 20 August 2004, providing no information of any sort, and User:Solitude tagged it with {{nosource}} on 14 December 2004, as part of the first round of "untagged images" project. --Carnildo 07:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I have never uploaded anything without tagging it in some way. But even if I did, I should have been consulted about the deletion. Adam 07:35, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

First of all, I am very sorry about the loss of the image you made. That is a shame, and I hope and intend to try to get it back from a mirror or other source. However, I am still confused by the specifics of the case. What map at History of Thailand? Looking (partially) through the history, I can't see any map. Besides Image:Thailand.gif, I did find Image:Ac.watarun.jpg, which was uploaded by Adam Carr (with no tags in the edit summary or the image description page) on 12:45, 10 September 2004, but that was captioned as "Siamese warrior figures at the 18th century Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) in Bangkok, erected by King Taksin the Great in 1769", which doesn't sound like a map. I looked through the various sub articles of History of Thailand, thinking it might be there, but, I found no map in the current versions. (Maybe it has been removed) It would be very helpful if you could provide us with a file name, or a revision where it was present. To make sure that no others of your uploaded images get deleted, I would suggest you review the log of your uploads. Just glancing over it, I notice Image:Skybush.jpg, Image:Foxsmall.jpg, Image:Portcullis black.gif, and Image:Rectitude.jpg(which is a really nice image) all have no source or license info. Thanks so much for all your work in Misplaced Pages. (Copied to User_talk:Adam Carr) JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:23, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I have replied at your Talk page. Adam 08:40, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

User:Markalexander100 helpfully told me which of the sub articles the map was in. The diff where the image was removed is here. So, it was Thailand.jpg; as has been said above, that image did not have any source information. Nevertheless, apparently, it was created by Adam Carr, and legal to use. Therefore, I have looked for, and found a copy of it; Adam, or someone else, ought to upload it, provide the sourcing, and readd it to the article. Even if we can't repair the frustration and anger that has been generated, we can at least get the image back. Yes? (Copied to User_talk:Adam Carr) JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:57, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I have discussed these issues with Adam Carr, and I found a backup copy on one of our mirrors of the image in question, so I'm going to reupload it(and provide a source and license, by linking to Adam Carr's statemtns above that he wanted it to be used. If anyone objects, let me know. JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikibreak

NOTICE: I am now taking a "Wiki-break," because I am spending too much time online currently and too little in "real-life" responsibilities and rights. However, before I go, if anybody is concerned whether I am mad at you for any recent disagreement or misunderstanding, let me assure you, I am not mad, and wish you the best. If you post a message to my page, I may or may not see it. If you really need to get in touch with me, then search the archives or history and see my contact information, which has the likes of my name, address, phone number, and email address. Thank you for all the feedback I have received of recent relating to my Featured Article and Requests for Admin nominations and related matters. (PS: I may hang around on a Wiki gnome basis to try and tweak things, including a last-minute FA-nomination I just submitted.)

PS: Since I've asked for Jimbo's help on a lot of things, this should be good news for a busy person: I have no more pressing concerns: The concerns I've raised should keep an army of soldiers busy for a while.--GordonWatts 14:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Mike Garcia RfAr

Heya, thanks for your kind words on my talk page, I must say I'm very pleasantly surprised by the good work Jeff has been putting in to the cherokee related articles today.

On a less happy note, in my view the Mike Garcia mentorship experiment isn't working very well any more, and I've requested arbitration on him here. Any views on the matter would be welcomed. --fvw* 01:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikicities

When I started my Wikicities/fork, I got a list that says you, Angela and Jasonr are admins on the Wiki. So, since it seems you have a user page there, do you feel like puting something at http://belarus.wikicities.com/User:Jimbo_Wales? Zach (Sound Off) 01:53, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Rudeness

It seems like civility is declining on Misplaced Pages these days, especially on AFD.

Yesterday, I found out about an interesting but obscure company and thought I'd help the Misplaced Pages community out by writing an article about it. After staying up most of last night scouring google for information and compiling the results of my research in an article, the next thing I see is an AFD notice and people referring to it as "Just crap" and "spam". I don't mind people questioning that it meets the criteria for belonging here, but they're insulting my work and assuming I had bad faith in writing the article. If I were a new user and got that response, I probably wouldn't come back. As it is, I'll be a lot more reluctant to write about anything that the majority of people haven't heard of, because chances are, they'll tag it "non-notable." 24.54.208.177 03:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)