Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:50, 26 February 2008

Misplaced Pages:Delegable proxy

This "proposal" is an unbelievably bad idea. Proxy voting works fine when you have a body with a finite, well-defined membership - e.g. the board of a corporation or a state legislature. In such a case, all or substantially all of the membership votes on every proposal. But on Misplaced Pages, a quorum is whoever happens to show up and having proxy voting would simply lead to !vote stacking. This proposal is being pushed by a ring of sockpuppets who want to move it forward even though nobody has actually agreed with it. There's no good reason to leave it here, even in its rejected state, as it is merely an invitation to vote stack under the guise of an "experiment". B (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

This MfD is founded upon multiple errors stated as fact. There were two main proponents of testing delegable proxy here. Contributions for the first user, who made the "proposal," and who changed account names but totally abandoned each account before editing with a new one, are at Contributions/Sarsaparilla, Contributions/Ron Duvall, Contributions/Absidy. While this is odd behavior (it has a reasonable explanation behind it), it violates no policy or guideline, and, when it came up, he was not even warned about it, though it was suggested that he link the accounts. There was no contentious editing, no action, in fact, prohibited even if he had operated the accounts simultaneously for some personal reason, which you can see from Contribs he did not do.

I also participated with the proposal, mostly in Talk. I'm an expert on delegable proxy, I've been working on it for about twenty years. However, I would not have made this proposal at this time, and I only participated because I was asked to do so. The groundwork had not been laid, and most people, coming across these ideas, will get them dead wrong at first, exactly as we see below.

Absidy can't participate in this MfD, even though he was the actual initiator of this proposal, because he has been indef blocked, contrary to blocking policy, with a block wildly out of proportion to the alleged offense (a prank, I've seen major disruption get less of a consequence). From this MfD, the simultaneous AfD for Delegable proxy (which may not be notable, and only the timing is significant, and the identity of the nominator, and the charges made with the AfD), from the immediate placement of a Rejected tag as if this proposal had actually been considered by the community, from the rapid closure of a request for comment on the Village Pump, from the harassment of Absidy with an SSP report and a Checkuser request, even though no editing had taken place that would be a violation of policy on socks, from all these it is pretty obvious that there are quite a few editors (almost all administrators) who really want to make sure that the community doesn't even consider this proposal, and that the details are concealed from view. From what was here, one would get an entirely incorrect view of what was being proposed. No part of the proposal changed Misplaced Pages practice or policy. It did not establish voting or encourage it. It is beyond me how it could have anything to do with vote stacking, which is irrelevant anyway, right? It was not binding on anyone. It did not establish any bureaucracy or burdensome structures. But ... it did open a door that, if the community were to walk through it, would more evenly distribute power among the editors, all of them, not just admins and very experienced ones. If the community walked through it. Would it have? Probably not now. Maybe next month. Or year. Or never. It really is up to the community, not to me, and not to a very energized cabal of administrators who believe that they are the voice of the community, that they can say that the community has "rejected" a proposal which hasn't actually been made to the community. If one looked at the nuts and bolts, the actual proposal here was only to create a file format for userspace proxy files and for a proxy table that shows the user proxy files transcluded into a single table for easy analysis, and to allow users to list proxies in this way. From my point of view, the proposal wasn'd done, insufficient work had been done on explaining that proxies were not voters on behalf of editors. (The rejected tag was placed almost instantly on the project page, before there had been any significant discussion. And it looks like some admins were willing to edit war to keep it there. A user, Absidy, has been blocked under circumstances that remind me of User:Psychim62, and then the other accounts in the series were blocked by User:Mangojuice even though he was clearly in a dispute with Absidy. Those are some pretty big chips to toss on the table. This is very, very important, obviously, to those participating in trying to crush it immediately. There is more than I've explained here, but it will all come out in the wash. I'll suggest immediate action here in my !vote below. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

This is the second time you've brought up those blocks as if there's anything improper about it. The user is blocked indefinitely, therefore all known accounts should be blocked indefinitely, this can be changed if the user is ever unblocked. Completely standard practice, and I explained on User talk:Absidy my reasons, and that this did not represent a judgment of my own. Mangojuice 03:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Delete AFD debates are NOT A VOTE. There is no possible benefit from having larger numbers of people who support your position. This entire idea is a fundementally BAD idea. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

That is correct. AfD debates are not a vote. However, something puzzles me. If they are not a vote, why is vote-stacking or canvassing a problem? What harm does it do? Shouldn't the "votes" generated simply be ignored? --Abd (talk) 02:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Delete - terrible idea, and given the circumstances under which this was created, nothing short of disruptive. Risker (talk) 19:54, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Who was disruptive? Any diffs involving the creation of this proposal? Is it disruptive to consider new ideas? What, exactly is the disruption? --Abd (talk) 02:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Delete - Completely mutually exclusive with Misplaced Pages policy.--WaltCip (talk) 19:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Given that about every assertion here about what the proposal involves is incorrect, a comparison with policy would seem to be impossible. --Abd (talk) 02:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Delete - per lots and lots of reasons I've given at Misplaced Pages talk:Delegable proxy, this is a very bad idea and completely against WP:NOT, and represents an experiment, in my opinion, carried out by the proponents of this type of system without the best interests of Misplaced Pages in mind. I would be okay with an Esperanza-like solution where the rejected page is kept around, but I prefer deletion because leaving this up implies that the idea had some level of support while this basically has none. Whether the page is rejected or deleted in the end, we should certainly delete Misplaced Pages:Delegable proxy/Table and Misplaced Pages:Delegable proxy/Table/Actual table as the existence of that page is pretty much akin to the end goal of the proposal. Mangojuice 20:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

While it turns out to be irrelevant here, Mangojuice did his part to ensure that the proposer isn't around to defend it. Maybe that's just fine, he was a little excitable anyway, and needs a wikirest. Mangojuice did his best, all through the few days this was considered, to let us know that it was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Why? Voting. Bad idea. But this isn't about voting. Bad idea, sock puppets. But sock puppets naming proxies is calling attention to the relationship. Bad idea, Esperanza. But Esperanza was rejected because of bureaucracy and closed meetings, this has neither. But it is a bad idea, it's been rejected, why are we even considering this? Good question, with Misplaced Pages security in hands like this, who needs any method for discovering broad community consensus? --Abd (talk)

• Delete I'm normally against MFD for proposals, but IMO this is a terrible idea for Misplaced Pages and the proponents of it (who are apparently mostly the same person as part of some massive WP:POINT experiment) seem to be dead set on pushing through as a proposal, brainstorming, or an experiment without any regard to the opposition, even to the point of calling good faith criticism disruptive as a way to ignore it. Mr.Z-man 20:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Look above, at the preface response I made, for contribution histories, showing the proposer, who did shift accounts, never using more than one, never returning to use an old one. And then there was me, and Mr.Z-man seems to have missed that I'm clearly not connected. That's two people, with some help, actually, from Mangojuice, which should be acknowledged with appreciation, in spite of the rest of his behavior, working on a very modest proposal to create some files and see if people use them. The diff above is for an edit of mine, where I noted that constant repititious criticism with no substance and specificity was, in fact, a kind of disruption. And I write everything that I write with the consciousness that ArbComm might be looking over my shoulder. Perhaps we will find out. Was there something offensive about my comment? Should I be warned? You know, I've never actually been warned for anything here, by anyone who knew what they were doing, except by sock puppets. Real ones. Actually disruptive, edit warring, etc.--Abd (talk) 02:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for proving my point. Despite the fact that no one has said something like "Keep, possibly a good idea" and only you have suggested something other than deletion or marking immediately as rejected, you are still pushing it. And (in reference to a below comment) yes, for this to have any real effect, it would need changes to policy. Mr.Z-man 17:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Guess this covers all of this? --81.104.39.63 (talk) 21:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Keep and mark as Essay. At the risk of being accused of trotting out the "Other stuff exists" argument... the precident for rejected proposals is to change them to Essay status, not to delete them whole cloth. I agree that the proposal was a spectacularly bad idea, but if slightly rewritten so as to be an essay reflecting the thoughts of its creator, I see nothing wrong with keeping it. That said, the associated table pages should go... or at least be merged into the essay. Blueboar (talk) 21:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Addendum - I would probably add Misplaced Pages:Experiment/Current experiments to the list of associated pages to be deleted. Blueboar (talk) 21:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

An essay is supposed to be helpful or neutral, even without having the enforceability of a policy or guideline. This is directly contrary to multiple policies and established consensuses and as some have said would actually be harmful to Misplaced Pages. Mr.Z-man 22:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Why bother with precedent when a whole series of precedents have already been disregarded here? Surely, if the proposal is contrary to policy, that should have been discussed and shown in Talk. Surely that should have come up on the Village Pump. In fact, though, all we saw were objections based on a complete misunderstanding of the proposal. You could possibly consider that Rejection, to be sure. People can reject based on ignorance, it is still rejection. However, what policy? This didn't change or violate any stated policy. But it does violate an apparent unstated one. The Policy Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken. You know. That one. Esperanza. AMA. Delegable proxy, all nefarious attempts to violate TPWNSNBS, under the sinister guise of courtesy and kindness, helping the clueless to navigate the arcane passages of Misplaced Pages, entangling everyone in mountains of red tape and needless bureaucracy..... oh? No red tape and bureaucracy with Delegable Proxy? Voting! That's it. This is about voting, that nefarious attempt to destroy all that is good and Wikipedian. Maybe I need a wikibreak, I'm starting to envy Absidy. --Abd (talk) 03:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Speedy delete as trolling and disruption per the last several contributions of User:Absidy before being blocked indefinitely for disruptive sockpuppetry and trolling. I would be glad to do the deletions myself but would want to get the views of some more admins before doing it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Ahem. Newyorkbrad. I'd suggest you take a deep breath. There was no sock puppetry. Trolling is not clear here. Have you actually looked at the record? We will, you know. There is a lot at stake here. For you, as well as for the whole community. You've worked hard to do what you have done, I've watched your work for quite a while. In this case, you've blown it. I'd be happy to communicate with you privately, but you have been very public here. It might not be possible to undo the damage, as the process proceeds. There are forces here bigger than both of us.--Abd (talk) 03:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• I would happily endorse a speedy delete per Newyorkbrad. Daniel (talk) 00:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete This would never have a WP:SNOW chance of ever being adopted in any remotely similar form. MBisanz 02:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete!; A proposal to take the worst thing about Misplaced Pages (blind voting in discussions), formalize it, enshrine it and increase its influence? Surely thou jestest! — Coren  04:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Nothing in this proposal involved anything like what Coren describes. I've talked with Absidy on the phone. He's really shaking his head. He's a long-time, very experienced Wikipedian, literally a serial accountant, vastly more experienced than I, and he's never seen anything like this come down. (And if he's been disruptive, it hasn't been in the last three years, the period for which I've reviewed his contributions. It's not rocket science to figure it out.)

• Delete This is a terrible proposal. I don't think the creators--who dismissed or even sneered at every attempt by a number of editors to tell them this--are going to get it unless this gets deleted. Consider deleting this proposal a sensible, prudent measure. Darkspots (talk) 05:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, the actual underlying concept doesn't require community consent; the nature of it is such that to actually stop it, if enough of the community wants to use the concepts -- which could be quite a small number --, would be fantastically disruptive. I did not approve of Absidy going ahead as he did, but he did demonstrate, with his trolling (if we think of it that way), that there are some very dark forces here. I told Absidy before the S hit the F that if serious attempts were made to stop this, it would spread it. The enemy of Free Association/Delegable Proxy technology is apathy, not attempts to crush it. It isn't crushable. Don't try it! I'm much prefer to see everything out in the open, with no hostility, and only cooperation and voluntary participation and AGF and all the rest, the best of Misplaced Pages. But I don't always get what I want. *People* don't like being crushed. They tend to resent it. And what Delegable Proxy is, is nothing other than people trusting people and working together. The linkages will be public and identifiable, with a public proxy table, or they won't be. That's the only choice being made here and in the months to come.--Abd (talk) 03:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Abd, what we have here is failure to communicate. Seriously. You don't understand what we're saying, and we don't understand what you're saying. The enormous blocks of text are impenetrable. All your abstraction is equally impenetrable. And, you do not understand what people are saying to you. I'm not an administrator, and I doubt most of the people in this discussion know who I am. But one look at your proposal, and I knew that you had fundamentally misunderstood Misplaced Pages. Everyone here who has looked at the proposal knows this.

Let me try again. It's not about do we vote or do we not vote. It's about stake. I have no stake in anything on Misplaced Pages that I do not personally participate in. As an example, I don't participate in Arbcom elections, so I have no stake, no vote, no interest in them whatsoever. Nothing to delegate, nothing to assign a proxy for. I am not a citizen or a shareholder of Misplaced Pages. Your system implies that I do have a stake, an interest that I would want to protect. I do not. The only things I have a stake in are the articles I edit and the discussions I personally participate in.

You feel like there is a procedure that has been violated in a rush to stifle your proposal. Not in the slightest. The {{rejected}} tag can be placed at any time. Edit war? Prodego, Kim Bruning (leaving aside the time she reverted herself), Mangojuice and I each placed the tag on the article once. You took it off twice, Abd. Did it occur to you that this was communication? That users in good standing, who knew that this was a serious decision and that they would (at least possibly) lose respect if they misunderstood the situation, were putting this tag on the proposal to tell you that there was no chance of this being accepted by the community? Darkspots (talk) 04:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

First of all, the user who created the proposal is a long-time Wikipedian with an extensive knowledge of policy and how this place works. It's tempting to write in detail, but this project page really isn't the important issue here, and what is important is going to be addressed in detail, step by step. Yes, long-time users were saying, "No way." And, given what they understood, which was very little, I'd agree with them. This MfD presents a highly distorted and blatantly inaccurate summary of the proposal, and someone reading it, and then reading the proposal itself, is highly likely to leave with the same distorted view. There are assumptions repeated by almost every voter here that are, quite simply, false. So is the community going to reject this proposal? Of course it is: but the proposal it is rejecting is not the proposal that was made. Enough. The real proposal doesn't require community consent, any more than it requires community consent to drop a note on a user's talk page. Post-facto, if the note is abusive, there can be consequences, but we don't ask for permission before doing it. So what is going to happen, when the smoke clears, is that those who want to do it will do it and those who don't, won't. In the beginning, only a few will participate. There are no known policy issues. And MfD won't touch this, it doesn't depend on central files. That was a flaw in Absidy's implementation, and it wasn't necessary. I told him that it would be a problem. As to what has happened that I've described, there is established process for dealing with the issues, and it will take time. I'm now communicating with Absidy off-wiki, but everything was open until he was blocked. The wheels of wikijustice may grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine. As for the actions of Prodego and Bruning, or yourself, I have no complaint -- at least as far as I've been able to see. But Mangojuice blocked user accounts where he was involved in a dispute, the block of Absidy was similarly a policy violation, and Newyorkbrad, a member of ArbComm, has apparently signed off on it all, yet shows here that he is seriously misinformed about what happened. There is no sock puppetry involved, for example. Absidy thinks that the blocks may be justified on the basis of trolling, but I know him fairly well, and have read WP:TROLL a few times over, and it doesn't match what he did, as to the core meaning of trolling. But the real issue here isn't whether or not the block was justified. There are four account blocks involved and all might have some justification. But an indef block, with specific request for no unblock without consultation, because a user responds to a warning administrator with a finger? It wasn't disruptive, there was no hazard of continued harm, there was an upset user who did what upset users often do, get angry. Getting angry isn't grounds for being blocked. Disruptive behavior is, but what he did that was allegedly disruptive was correctly answered with a warning. He did not disregard the warning. He did not continue to "canvass," the alleged offense. His behavior was certainly not ideal, and I've severely criticized his "stunts" before. But they always turned out to have some utility for the project, and none of them were mean-spirited or actually disruptive. It will all come out, that's one thing that happens around here with reasonable reliability.--Abd (talk) 06:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Why do you have to write a novel every time you want to make a point? It's very difficult to read.--WaltCip (talk) 19:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

In the past, Abd has said that he has ADHD and it's difficult for him to be concise. (See here for instance.) Mangojuice 19:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per reasons given by Newyorkbrad and Mangojuice. Midorihana 06:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Speedy delete I agree with the comments made by Newyorkbrad--VS 10:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Speedy delete An absurd idea, totally unworkable and unnecessary. Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 12:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and mark as extremely rejected. We generally don't delete policy proposals unless keeping them would be entirely meritless, but keeping this one has merit - it would document the community's (basically complete) rejection of the principles expressed here. If the objection to this is that the {{rejected}} tag isn't strong enough to convey this, then just cook up a stronger rejection tag. — Gavia immer (talk) 14:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I think the deletion log entry would serve the same purpose... Mr.Z-man 18:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. While I would normally suggest simply tagging a failed policy proposal as {rejected}, there are additional factors here that weigh against retaining any of this material on Misplaced Pages. One of this process' strongest proponents (Absidy et al.) was pushing it using a ring of sockpuppets, and there's no reason to leave a memorial to his trolling. The other key proponent (Abd) has been pushing this concept because of his own interest in the topic as his own personal experiment in democracy. He has spent a significant amount of time on- and off-wiki Misplaced Pages promoting this idea, and has identified himself as coining the term 'delegable proxy'. (His earlier attempts to create an article on this topic under the alternate name 'liquid democracy' were rebuffed.) Again, Misplaced Pages isn't the place to push his novel voting schemes. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and mark as rejected. Charles Stewart (talk) 15:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete pe rmany above, especially User:Newyorkbrad and User:TenOfAllTrades. Though, I must say I like the efficiency this would create in allowing one sockpuppeteer to !vote once in an XfD rather than several times... ;o) Resolute 15:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps Reso thinks this is a joke. He's actually onto something. If people here stopped to think for a bit about what DP would actually do, it's quite the opposite of all the expectations here. First of all, forget about sock puppets being used to amplify votes of the puppet master (or of some lead sock). One look at contributions, unless this was a very clever and very dedicated puppet master, and it would be checkuser time with all the usernames lined up for ready access. It already happened to me, based on the false suspicion mentioned above. Absidy had named me as his proxy, and I him. But one anticipated effect of DP would be some kind of shift in how AfDs, etc., are run. I'd expect to see fewer votes. Why add another vote if votes don't count anyway; instead, the DP process would actually discourage voting, i.e., additional comments that don't add anything. To the extent that votes count, they would be there through proxies. But, fundamentally, this is Misplaced Pages. Votes are not supposed to count. Really. They don't count. We don't vote, ever. Oh, okay, once in a while, RfAs, ArbComm elections. Those aren't votes? That's right, they aren't votes. They are just like everything else, community advice to a servant or bureaucrat, who uses independent judgement. Which may or may not consider vote counts. It's pretty obvious, though, that those counts do have some effect in some cases. Is there ever WP:SNOW with one dissenting argument? If votes don't count at all, how come?

• keep per Gavia. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and tag as rejected. The disadvantage of deletion might be that others, or maybe the same party, might come up with a similar idea or variation on same later. Keeping it and indicating that it was rejected, possibly with a link to this discussion, might help prevent anyone else coming up with a similar idea later. John Carter (talk) 20:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. It's not only a rejected Misplaced Pages policy. It's a rejected Misplaced Pages policy whose founders are trying to use it to promote the policy in general. If it comes up again, we can point to this page to show it's rejected. Superm401 - Talk 21:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Perhaps the page in question could redirect here? If that happens, I support deletion. Charles Stewart (talk) 22:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

• If it's deleted, the deletion log would point here. If there does end up being a problem with recreation or something, we could always create a "rejected" explanation. Mangojuice 01:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. There is no precedent for deleting this page this quickly. However, before this proposal is rejected, I'd suggest, there should actually be consideration of it, how about some discussion, maybe an actual RfC? The immediate placement of a tag (based on a some imagined similarity with Esperanza and AMA, the alleged basis for prior rejection), without discussion, without examination of what the proposal actually was, all this was astonishingly rapid. If someone wants a Rejected tag, though, fine, I certainly would not edit war over it. There was, in fact, no proposal here for the community to consider, nothing that actually required community approval. that's what I was claiming in Talk, and I asked on Village Pump/Policy what the policy issue was. There was no answer to this, and the discussion was closed abruptly. --Abd (talk) 02:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. This confusing policy is completely at odds with the way Misplaced Pages works. Best to delete it so that nobody comes up with the bright idea to revisit it. —Scott5114↗ 03:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't a policy, it wasn't a guideline, and it had no implications with respect to policy or guidelines, and any opinion that it does -- as far as I've seen -- is based on imagining that the proposal is something it isn't. No wonder its confusing. It will be much easier to understand when you see a demonstration. Oh. You don't want to see a demonstration? Fine. Keep your eyes closed. You aren't obligated to watch, and it's not going to take anything away from you, or from Misplaced Pages.--Abd (talk) 06:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Let it go now Abd please - you've made your point and then made your point and then .... - how about we leave it to all the other commentators and interested parties to see what sort of consensus arises?--VS 06:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete please and speedy preferably, per the reasons given by Brad and Mango. Sarah 12:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete or Speedy delete - the whole thing appears to be unnecessary self-promoting drama. See the diff at for just one example. Orderinchaos 14:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and mark as extremely rejected, very rejected, utterly rejected, whatever emphatic adverb you like. We don't delete policy suggestions when they are rejected, not least because the continued presence of the page (especially if there are a number of "rejected" boxes at the top in a panoply of pleasing shades) prevents anyone suggesting this absurd, remarkably un-wiki policy in the future. Sam Korn 14:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)