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Revision as of 05:02, 16 January 2022

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Rosiestep, Laurentius, Victoria and Pundit. The Wikimedia Foundation's Lead Manager of Trust and Safety is Jan Eissfeldt.

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This talkpage has been mentioned by a media organization: Matthew Gault (8 December 2021). "Misplaced Pages Editors Very Mad About Jimmy Wales' NFT of a Misplaced Pages Edit". Vice Media. The trouble began when Wales posted an announcement about the auction on his user talk page—a kind of message board where users communicate directly with each other.

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Misplaced Pages:Role of Jimmy Wales has an RFC

Misplaced Pages:Role of Jimmy Wales has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Colonestarrice (talk) 11:20, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

A little bit disappointed

Hi Jimmy. Hope this finds you well. This is long, so it's fine to skip it, but it has been on my mind a while... I don't have an action item here really, but just want to express that I'm somewhat disappointed in how much (or little) my colleagues are taking to heart to spirit of Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons. I think that you and I been on the same side of this since the Brian Peppers thing (Peppers is dead and hopefully at peace now and has been for a while, so I suppose I can use his name). If I recall, the purpose of WP:BLP was twofold: one, to make sure we don't expose the project to scorn, loss of reputation, and even possible legal trouble by having any more John Seigenthaler situations, but also, "We are not here to make people sad" as I believe you said once. It's the second purpose that people seem not to be getting, and IMO that kind of sucks.

So, over the last couple of years or so -- I'm going to avoid specific information as much as possible and not give diffs, you all can trust me or not, this will allow me to speak more freely since it'd be a job to dig u who I'm talking about -- I've been involved with some problematic situations:

1) An athlete, never made the top level but is notable anyway because he was a #1 draft pick, and more notable because he didn't make it which is really rare for a #1 pick. He was injured in an off-field incident, that's why his career didn't pan out. The details of the incident I'd prefer to have elided, because it was a bar fight in his bohunk Southern town. It's different than a getting T-boned or something, it's not a good look. We don't say "This _____ _____ fool got drunk and stupid and ruined his life", but you can kind of infer it. I suppose that's useful info when getting a handle on the person, but I mean is that the only factor here. Do we have to blare this poor schmuck's foibles to the world? Is that what we are, now?

Well that went nowhere fast. The info's in the article and is going to stay.

2) A... person... we can't really describe what he is and consequently we can't come up with a proper article title and lede, but people like to write about him, so he meets WP:GNG based on coverage, a lot of it pearl-clutching and look-at-THIS-terrible-person cluckery, but legit coverage in legit publications. He's a terrible, awful, person. Mentally ill to some degree in my view, altho that's hard to prove.

At any rate, fine. You've got a legit source saying he's been charged with , we can publish it, even if it's not why he's notable and is really more piling-on of "look here's ANOTHER way this person is horrible" and even tho he hadn't been actually convicted of anything (and after all WP:BLP does say "A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law"). Nothing to be done about that -- have to inform the public! Fine, whatever, but my point with this guy was that saying he was a outside the article -- the talk page, a WP:AFD page, notice boards, etc -- if you say someone is a you have to provide a proximate reference right there proving it. Because these pages can get separated from the article. Yes its extra work, but "fuck this guy, I'm busy" isn't really that great an attitude I don't think.

Anyway I tried redacting this stuff, got dragged to ANI twice and (even tho WP:BLP says "Contentious material about living persons... that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion" I did not make my point, meeting an indifferent-to-hostile reaction from the admin corps, and the unref'd material is still there.

3) Another person, marginally notable in his own right -- a private citizen, but article-worthy I suppose -- who was accused of a horrific crime. Convicted too, IIRC. The sources were the Daily Mail and one other not-much-better gossip source (I f'get which). And there were zero other sources -- none. Nobody could dig up any, and we looked. So fine, the material was removed from the article, as is proper.

The problem is, the phrase " did " is still floating around the Misplaced Pages, on the article talk page and the BLP board and maybe elsewere, with no usable refs whatsoever anywhere, and my point was that's not OK and needs to be fixed. I did not win my point, and had at least one administrator opposing me.

4) Singer, famous singer. She has a lot more resources than those others, but still. She liked to play cute with her birthdate, not a big deal (one year difference) but still, it's something she liked to do. Just a little game, something a magazine might comment on and try to pin her down and she could make cutesy little cryptic things and all. Harmless fun. Well anyway, an editor, in what would generally be a admirable demonstration of tenacity, tracked down with some effort the singer's real birthdate -- dug up some incontrovertible sources that People magazine etc had not bothered or been able to.

Excellent work, but do we have to ruin her game by publishing it and giving the sources? I said no, but did not win the point.

Losing streaks are no fun.

So the thing is, the arguments I make around these type of issues are of the nature

"We are one of the biggest websites in world, we are very powerful, and these guys are mostly hapless mooks. With power comes responsibility, and punching down is not a good look. We define these people's public face pretty much, for most of them -- the first result on a google search, and the source of much mirroring. And forever, or close enough. The Misplaced Pages won't last forever, but its database of material may last a long time. Can we not give these people a break."

It doesn't get thru. I feel like I'm staring into the void, sometimes. It's not so much that people don't care (they don't) as that they can't even get what I'm saying. Editors genuinely and truly seem to believe, most of them, that they are stepping outside the moral universe when they sit down at the keyboard. Our rules are everything, and everything else is nothing, and if the rules don't clearly prohibit grinding some random citizen into the dirt, well, it is what it is. If the admin corps was a little more supportive of us trying to be better about all this, that would help a lot. But they're not, and nobody can make them. And the Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard seems pretty much focused just on whether refs are good enough and not the other part.

And I mean Misplaced Pages is a hobby. It's not like you're a cog for North American Veeblefetzer and your livelihood depends on being heartless and amoral. Hobby. I like model trains, but if the rules of my model train club were causing actual grief to actual human strangers, I think I'd not follow them?

And you know, can even call on the text of WP:BLP to an extent, and I mean after all the first sentence is "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Misplaced Pages page" and elsewhere says "Biographies of living persons ('BLPs') must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy... the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment." (And further, this applies to "other pages, including talk pages".)

But it is true that that's just a few scattered sentences, and the main thrust of WP:BLP, the way it is written, is that your number one job is to make sure you have rock-solid sources and it's legit material (not original reasearch or POV etc). The stuff about "don't be a bully" is there, but more scattered around and dissipated, and not stated directly: "Don't publish this shit unless it's an absolute stone necessity to fulfill our core mission, which is very seldom. And that goes triple if the person is a private citizen or subject, defined broadly". Just because its not strongly and clearly stated in one place shouldn't matter. But it does. (FWIW we define "public figure" by the very inclusive definition used in American law to protect the 1st Amendment by limiting grounds for libel suits, rather than by actual common sense that most people would use, but that's not going to change.)

Oh well. I just wish the attitude was "can we find a way to justify not publishing this" rather than "can we interpret rules such that we can publish this". Nothing to be done I suppose. And, of course usually when it's you against the majority, you have to consider that it's you that's wrong. I do this often enough. I don't want to, here. I don't want to believe it. Herostratus (talk) 04:04, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages at 21

This is the 21 year old WikiPedia!

But seriously, Jimmy, how does it feel, being 21 years into this project?

They say that good things come to those who wait…

And that’s true! Misplaced Pages now has over 6,439,141 articles, over 42,884,645 users, and over 1,061,147,195 edits!

Give yourself a pat on the back, Jimmy! You took Misplaced Pages this far! — 3PPYB6 — TALK — CONTRIBS — 19:27, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@CaptainEek — The wiki-liquor has been unlocked! Hopefully, Misplaced Pages will continue for the next 21 years, possibly more! — 3PPYB6 — TALK — CONTRIBS — 02:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

January 2022

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Misplaced Pages's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

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Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 05:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

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