Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:04, 14 December 2005

User talk:Jimbo Wales/archivedecember14

(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.

Data

Ok, I did what I should have done before and wrote a script myself.

Arbitarily picking revisions 501-1000 of the George W. Bush article: There were 7988 minutes of time when the GWB was visible in a state that was not later reverted using the rollback button, and 253 minutes of time when it was visible in a state when it was later reverted. Thus, in this period, we estimate that we have 3.1% vandalism. Sounds unacceptably high to me.... Pcb21 Pete 12:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

By comparison, Sperm Whale, which I would describe as a typical good article (i.e. featured, been on main page, fairly mainstream topic, some minor differences on which people are likely to take POVs but not too many) has spent 0.7% of its time vandalized. Pcb21 Pete 12:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

That's almost exactly 45 minutes in any 24 hour period which checks out with the rougher estimates above. It also does not include non-rollback reverts which would increase the % somewhat.

It is too high. But where to force the issue? This conversation has occured numerous times and then gets dropped because nothing is done about it. The best idea I've heard is to allow editing there with the same limitations we apply to page moves. Marskell 16:54, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Whatever the answer is, it requires developer or Wales' participation in this discussion to actually reach a productive conclusion. --kizzle 07:04, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we (the community) should introduce a kludge solution - GWB gets protected, and all edits are made to GWB (editable). Our ever-industrious admins transfer all non-vandal edits to the main page manually. Yes it's a kludge but it also solves the problem. Historically the existence of kludges has offended the sensibilities of developers and they are coerced into creating better solutions ;) Pcb21 Pete 08:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I guess that's the best we can do until either Wales or a developer steps in to the discussion. We're definetely going to get a lot of "anti-wiki" comments, but oh well. --kizzle 19:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I absolutely do not think that a "decision" about this perceived problem must come by decree from Jimbo... I think 3 % downtime isn't a bad price to pay for the incredible dynamism that has made Misplaced Pages the most popular encyclopedia on the web. Besides, the article is usually completely readable in its "vandalized" state, especially when the "vandalism" stays for longer than a couple of minutes. If the whole article is rendered useless (the whole page is replaced with "he sux!!!1!" practically the first person who visits the article will revert it. If less blatant vandalism such as "He is stupid." being added to the end of his bio persists for a couple of hours, that isn't much of a problem.

Expanding the availability of the rollback facility to everyone (but revoking it liberally) would be a wiki-like improvement. — David Remahl 19:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Of course it doesn't need to come by decree from Jimbo, but like I said, I've been a part of these discussions for some time, which always receive heavy support for either semi-protection by levels as proposed above, or to a lesser extent the "wedge" solution by Pcb above. Every time, it gets dropped because Village pump has no authority to make such changes, and no developer on Bugzilla wants to get involved. One of the hallmarks of Misplaced Pages is developing a collaborative concensus, and in my experience, there is significantly more of a concensus for some sort of additional measures to be implemented only on certain pages such as GWB. It is irrelevant how "readable" the article is in its vandalized state, it makes us look like fools and validates every naysayer's knee-jerk reaction to the aims of this project. Both the way things are right now and the proposed leveled semi-protection have advantages and disadvantages. I personally can't see how anyone could justify only on GWB maintaining an 87% vandalism rate on 50-100 edits a day is better than letting the one anonymous editor who comes in and correct a spelling error. It's not like they're going to be turned off the project if they can't edit one page for special reasons. --kizzle 20:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd like Jimbo to give us his opinion, though, for the following reason: GWB is an article that is difficult, if not impossible, to improve. As a result, the article can only go down, it cannot become better. This was bound to happen at one point or another in Misplaced Pages; as economists say, we've reached the point where diminishing marginal returns become negative marginal returns, and leaving the article open for editing can only hurt us. It might be the time to have a discussion on Misplaced Pages's basic principles, and how to adapt them in the future. Titoxd 05:19, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jimbo. Several people have requested your input regarding Misplaced Pages:Semi-protection policy. Will you please provide a response at your earliest convenience? Best regards, Hall Monitor 19:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Jimbo Wales

Hmm.. there currently is somewhat a disagreement between User:Cool Cat (me) and User:Voice of All(MTG). The actual change isnt much.

what I propose, his proposal. Since it is your userpage, I feel you should like it and hence decide how it should look. --Cool Cat 22:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

FYI, these last two wiki-links are not working. Or more specifically, they aren't pointing to any type of proposals. Are these semi-protection proposals? If so, I would love to read them. Hall Monitor 23:47, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, no we are "fighting" over how Jimbos user page should look like :) --Cool Cat 12:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

This would be the best lamest edit war ever :)!

BTW, I modified the semi-protect tag too...muhahaha!!!Voice of All 13:01, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

ok... you seem to be hyper active... Tonikaku, there is no revert war that I am aware of on jimbos user page. I find revert wars disruptive and I make a great effort to steer clear of them. --Cool Cat 17:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Che

Whats up with that? Communism vandal would be delighted :P, maybe we need an elaboration of the symbolism. :) --Cool Cat 17:40, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Does telling someone to "fuck off" qualify as a personal attack?

Hello Mr. Wales. I am contacting you regarding a recently filed RFC, Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Duncharris, which was established for the purpose of resolving serious incivility issues between one Dunc Harris and a number of different editors on Misplaced Pages, including other administrators. User:Duncharris, a wiki-en administrator, has been making frequent use of vulgarities in edit summaries as well as profane personal attacks directed at other editors. During the course of the RFC, an argument was made that responding to someone who requests civility during discussion by telling them to "fuck off" is permittable under certain circumstances. Would you agree with this? Please review the discussion as I would greatly value your insight into the matter. Thank you, Silensor 20:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I think for an administrator to behave in such a fashion is a terrific disgrace and that he should be desysopped. I'm sure the ArbCom will take care of the matter in due course, of course.--Jimbo Wales 17:23, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

So do you think that those you have personally appointed to the ArbCom should hold themselves to similar standards?

• "Just what the hell are you doing?" "I don't know what shit you're trying to pull here" "GET IT THE HELL OFF THE INTERNET"
• (as justification for the above): "I'm not a diplomat; I'm a sysadmin. You wanted a diplomat, you hired the wrong BOFH."

Under the circumstances, I think the irony of assigning the ArbCom to be the bearer of such standards is evident. --Tabor 16:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Not that this is relevant to the actual subject, but, the evidence provided by Tabor above is not convicing: None of the three quotes are personal attacks(although they do use strong language), the third is not even a command - the full quote is: "Either your computer has been compromised, in which case GET IT THE HELL OFF THE INTERNET, or you're feeding us a line of BS.", and the person in question was not acting as an a member of the ArbCom. If that's the best you can find, that's a sign that things are working, not broken. JesseW, the juggling janitor 20:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I didn't say they were personal attacks, but I did find them highly uncivil and vulgar. It's not the worst I could find, it's just something I happened to notice because it was quite recent. If these are the standards for civility for the most trusted members of the community, I find that troubling. If "I don't know what shit you're trying to pull here" is an acceptable way to address contributors, I'm thinking it's time to find another project. (BTW, it was in relation to the use of CheckUser investigation -- how is that not acting as a member of the ArbCom? Isn't that how the priveleges are granted now?) --Tabor 19:51, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Clarification Sought

Please advise where I can find official policies on WikiBOOKS as to what is appropriate and not and the policies regarding deletions and speedy deletions. Also, in Wikibooks, who has final authority, you or the board. This is simply a request for clarification that does not imply any kind of protest or expression of preference. Best place for response is User discussion on WikiBOOKS: Frog One (note caps) Thank you. Frog one 20:31, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

$100 laptop comment

Hi jimmy, I've referenced your talk page on a comment you made regarding the $100 laptop. Specifically, this is the text: "Negroponte has also said he'd like to see Misplaced Pages on the $100 laptop. Jimmy Wales himself feels that Misplaced Pages is one of the 'killer apps' for this device.". I'm not sure whether using your talk page as a reference is ok, if it's not somebody should change this. Jacoplane 16:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

The spec for the over-hyped machine states that it has 1GB of Flash memory. To include all of Misplaced Pages and an OS on the laptop would be impossible (without severely pruning Misplaced Pages). Misplaced Pages on the $100 laptop seems to be an illusion. I can't find any source where Negroponte states it's going to be on it. Indeed, one of the designers of the laptop, Alan Kay, has criticized Misplaced Pages . - Xed 17:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not debating the facts, I was just asking whether it was allright to use this talk page as a reference in the article. Earlier in this page, Jimmy said "Yes, I've met Nicholas Negroponte, and he's a big fan of Misplaced Pages. He's on record stating that he'd like to see Misplaced Pages on the $100 laptop. My own opinion is that Misplaced Pages is one of the 'killer apps' for this device.", and this is what I was using as a reference. Also, in the very article you link to there is this: "It seemed like an odd swipe to take at Misplaced Pages, ... , and given the extent to which Negroponte has indicated that Misplaced Pages will likely be core to what’s distributed with the machine.". Jacoplane 17:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but I can't find a quote from Negroponte saying it's going to be on there - which is not surprising given the lack of room on the laptop. I can just find other peoples opinions. - Xed

Via : "He mentioned Misplaced Pages as an example of a major source of content for the initiative, and asked how many people in the audience use it - about 50%. "It's by far the best encyclopedia on the planet," he said. "It's so fresh, so current, if you go look up yourself, you're probably in it." "It's the Misplaced Pages equivalent (of hardware)," he said, describing the spirit of the laptop initiative. " ("He"==Negroponte). Jacoplane 23:07, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

"He mentioned Misplaced Pages as an example of a major source of content for the initiative" - that's very vague - is it going to be on the laptop or not? It doesn't explain how he's going to fit Misplaced Pages (maybe 18GB for text only, over 100 GB for graphics too) onto the laptop (only 1GB), leaving me to think that the idea is at best wishful thinking, and at worst a hoax. - Xed 23:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

complete failure of wikipedia NPOV policy

This article Talk:Palestinian_exodus is a complete failure of wikipedia NPOV policy. Nearly 3 years ago it was anti-Palestinian. Now not a shred of that POV remain and it is completely biased to the other side. I have edited this article for a week, yet every single word i changed there got reverted by a coordinated revert gang which is able to circumvent in this way the 3RR rule. It seems that unless I am able to get a "gang" of my own:-) there is no point trying to get this article to be NPOV. slim and jayjg are involved yet they too do not make any contribution toward NPOV. This is not what Misplaced Pages is all about but it is what wikipedia has become.

I don't have the time or the organized manpower as the other side to go through the usual Misplaced Pages mechanism. These mechanisms have failed in this article. In 3 years not a single Misplaced Pages admin was able to make significant contribution to make this article NPOV. This is a symptom to other anti-Israel systematic bias that is spread all over wikipedia and I suggest you find a way to address it as I can't. Zeq 18:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I am still waiting for an action that would either enforce Wikipedai NPOV policy on this article or will change the policy so that this article could become balance. This article is looked upon by several people in Israel. 9or who care about israel) From your recent visit to the country I know this area is important to you and I am sure that if Misplaced Pages will continue to be a platform for anti-Israel one sided propeganda (instead of the neutral independent thought that it is supose tobe) this would refelct badly on your efforts in this area. Please take the time to address the systematic anti_israel bias that have cripped into Misplaced Pages. Zeq 07:23, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia S&M bylaws

The first draft of the translation for the bylaws for Wikimedia Serbia & Montenegro is done. Delphine told me to tell Angela to look at them and make a comment, so I did it. She's going to do so too and Florence already did. The english version is here. You could take a look too. Thanks :) --Dungo (talk) 20:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

• Hehe, you said S&M ;-) the wub "?!" 22:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC) (with his mind in the gutter)

Jimbo

Do you agree with semi-protection or not? Do you have an opinion on the matter, is it not better than full protection?Voice of All 22:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. Sorry, but in this case we need a bit of monarchical rule. You should say yay or nay to the general idea of semi-protection. Marskell 22:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

A new picture?

Hi Jimbo. You're probably not in the habit of reading Talk:Aetherometry so may have missed http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia/awp_index.html which I think features you, somewhat photoshopped, off on the right hand side. William M. Connolley 12:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC).

Anti-Misplaced Pages rants seem to be a dime a dozen these days... usually coming from people who get in a huff because this site won't uncritically accept their own (often nutty) viewpoint without challenge. *Dan T.* 15:54, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

But this one is, I must say, particularly entertaining. :-) --Jimbo Wales 19:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Americans are funny!

Here's a good reason why people, especially Americans, should read your site!

http://media.putfile.com/On-The-Streets-Of-America-3

--Anittas 13:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Deleting Wikibooks

Please, just as a courtesy to the other admins and people who are trying to make Wikibooks a better place, let the admins on Wikibooks know if you want a Wikibook deleted. Removing an enitre Wikibook is more than simply deleting the first page, as it leaves a lot of "crumbs" behind that currently is not dealt with by Media Wiki software.

If you want b:Jokebook to be deleted, for example, just ask us (the admins) and we will do it for you.

Otherwise, please make sure that all of the sub-modules are also deleted. That is a huge task and can take quite a bit of time just to push through all of the pages on a large Wikibook. Leaving behind the other modules is just going to clutter up Wikibooks and perhaps even recreate the nightmare you are trying to get rid of. Orphaned modules are already a huge problem on Wikibooks that I for one don't want to see the problem get any worse. --Robert Horning 14:49, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

• nod* I understand. I only did it that way to make sure that I wasn't doing anything too non-reversible in case it was in error. I do understand that the full deletion will be more complicated.--Jimbo Wales 18:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Arbcom recusals

Hello - I wanted to alert you to a situation on a current Arbcom case that I feel is very inappropriate. The case was filed by User:Cberlet naming 5 other editors. User:Jayjg, an Arbcom member, has a lengthy personal history with Cberlet on wikipedia and has directly participated in many of the disputes that are involved in Cberlet's case. I posted these with a request that Jayjg recuse himself as the Arbitration policy requires, but he adamantly refuses. I fear as a result of his participation that this case could be skewed to favor Cberlet, who has engaged in many policy violations of his own. Could you please review this matter and advise? Thanks. Rangerdude 20:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Images with unknown source count updated

I have updated the count of images in Category:Images with unknown source; it's down to 6576. Thanks for reminding me to do it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 20:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for publication

Hello Jimmy Wales, Misplaced Pages:Requests for publication is a proposal that will help implement Misplaced Pages:Pushing to 1.0. It basically involves putting up a protected version of an article, but most importantly the main editable version is there nonetheless. The premise is to give an article the Published status that entails quality - good quality that schools would have no hesitation to use Misplaced Pages rather than Encarta or Britannica. -- Zondor 18:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom elections

Given that December is near, would you please inform the community about the process to be used for the upcoming ArbCom formation, and would you please inform the community what your reasons are for not wanting to hold an open election? You may want to look at this page, on which many editors have expressed their preference for open elections. Radiant_>|< 00:22, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

P.S. We need more bandwidth! El_C 11:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Hellloooooo founder :) There's a discussion at WP:ANI and I think a relevant discussion (well perhaps not highly relavant, but a little relavant) at Misplaced Pages:Consensus. I kindly (on behalf of myself) request some clarifications about this. Take care! (Hasta la wikitoria siempre :D ) +MATIA ☎ 18:45, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

When was the last time one of those British monarchs whose constitutional role you say you model your Misplaced Pages role on exercised this kind of power? It's been a while. Quit making that comparison if you want to override consensus and convention. That's a highly autocratic thing to do, and to top it off the community hasn't even gotten an explanation about it so far, much less a dialogue. Everyking 06:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

For those interested in possible struggles between heads of state and government, there's an interesting article regarding the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975. Enjoy! E Pluribus Anthony 06:28, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

We must know...POLL

What is your opinion on semiprotect. Please stop avoiding discussion :-(. We just want to know what you think. Many other users want Semi-Protection too. We have yet to have a serious place of discussion for this new tool to actually get implemented.

All in favor/against the semiprotection proposal listed above(Not necessarily the exact numbers 25 and 100):

Support:

1. Voice of All 05:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
2. Personally, I think Jimbo is just busy. But I support the creation of a semi-protect proposal of some sort. Titoxd 05:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
3. Support either full-protection akin to how we protect the Main Page or this "semi-protect" idea. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
4. --kizzle 06:23, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
5. Support in some form. E Pluribus Anthony 07:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

• • • Comment: This doesn't belong on Jimbo's talk page. He is not the king of wikipedia. These things must be decided by community consensus.--Ewok Slayer 21:32, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Wrong place... --Cool Cat 13:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

How to create policy

Might I suggest a more productive option? Misplaced Pages:How to create policy has some helpful suggestions, and Jimbo's input doesn't have much to do with it, particularly in the beginning phases—though he might offer his opinion all the same. This is really a community issue. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 07:26, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Yikes...doesn't look like a very good chance that a semiprotection or similar policy proposal has much hope of success. Thanks for the link though!--MONGO 19:20, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Yet I don't think there will be a problem reaching a supermajority on the matter. All it takes is enough advertising and for someone to create a proposal page. --kizzle 19:22, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Mindspillage, this is just to get the ball rolling. There has been substantial discussion already, and we want Jimbo's opinion now so we can do a full-fledged policy proposal. Titoxd 21:34, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Shall we create a proposal page at Misplaced Pages:Semi-protection or a meta page, perhaps? I'd love to contribute. -Mysekurity 02:17, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Do it. Flesh out a section for arguments both for and against then setup a vote tally. --kizzle 03:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

No voting! Kim Bruning 04:20, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Uhh, the page says we need to reach a supermajority of 70%, so I don't know how we're going to accomplish that if we can't vote. --kizzle 08:40, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's worked just about ... twice... it's not so handy. I put a comment up about that on the talk page. Y'know: Just write it down, talk about it for a while, edit some more, and when it looks like no one will object to this final perfect product you've got, stick a policy tag on there. and cross fingers and hold your breath ;-) Kim Bruning 10:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Someone might want to update that policy page then and take out the supermajority section. There will always be arguments against semi-protection, as it has both its advantages and disadvantages, just like the way things are now. It's just a question of which advantages and disadvantages outweigh the other, thus we need the vote. And informally, with the level of support I've seen in the discussions I've been a part of, I don't think 70% is an unreachable goal.

One person is editwarring about that and constantly reinserting. Kim Bruning 22:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Or not. Hallelujah. :) Kim Bruning 16:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Come on Jimbo, give these guys some helpful comment and then they'll be able to get on with making articles better ;) Pcb21 Pete 08:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Historically Black College and University recruitment

Hi Jimbo, Jmabel and myself have been discussing the merits of actively recruiting students and faculty from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. We have identified Wiley College as an ideal candidate for several reasons: they are the oldest HBCU west of the Mississippi, they have been a pioneer in the usage of computer technology in college education in Texas, and their location allows the outreach to send a representative in person, me. However, I have been putting it off because I realized that it would be odd to walk into Wiley to recruit on behalf of Misplaced Pages just because Joe and I think its a good idea. I thought it would be best if I consulted Anthere, Angela, and you and see what ya'll think before running off and making an appointment to discuss an outreach. Please respond as soon as you can. Thanks. -JCarriker 08:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello

Goodness....I can't believe I'm talking to the founder of wikipedia itself...! However, introductions are in order; my name is Megaman Zero, and I've been a part of your excellent community for almost a year now. I was wondering as a aspiring administrator, could you give me tips and some tidbits of advice...? Like I discussed with Mr. Sidaway, its been occupying my mindspace for awhile now... Also, could you take a look at my projects ( at the bottom of my userpage) and contributions and give me your humble opinion on my work..? I'd really like to know how helpful I'm being to my favorite site. Thanks for your time, and....nice to meet you..!-MegamanZero 12:37 28,November 2005 (UTC)

• Umm...okay..I take it you don't want to talk with me.. Sorry for wasting your time then...-MegamanZero 14:37 29,November 2005 (UTC)

It's not that he doesn't want to talk to you, it is just that he might not have had the chance. Jimbo doesn't always respond to everything, especially little things like your request. Instead of asking Jimbo, who is busy with Foundation things, try asking other current Admins. I see you've asked Tony, and that's a good first step. Check out the RfA page to see how you stack up against current nominees. Look at some recent successes and failures as well. --LV 14:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee elections, 2005.

Hi Jimbo,

It's been one month since you edited the Arbitration Committee elections page for this December (now just a few days away) to change the procedure, adding some brainstormed thoughts. Those thoughts are still all the information we have on the procedure, and we're almost in December.

A number of potential candidates have said they don't wish to put their name forwards if they don't know the election procedure, yet recently a member of the current Arbitration Committee said that all Wikipedians wishing to become arbitrators should put their name forwards immediately.

Yes, they all should. It would be good to put forward an indication of interest right away, and if anyone chooses afterwards to not participate of course their offer to participate can be withdrawn without any troubles. It will be quite helpful to us in deciding the best way forward to have accurate information about who is interested.--Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

This is really a terrible state of affairs for a number of reasons:

Firstly, we have no idea how the new Arbitration Committee is going to become the new Arbitration Committee at all. Not even the current arbitrators say they know how it's going to be done.

Yes, I am still talking to a lot of different people and gathering ideas to try to have the best possible go at it.--Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Are there reasons why these discussions are being held privately, and not openly on Misplaced Pages? Talrias (t | e | c) 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean? There are public discussions and private discussions. Sometimes people want to email me opinions privately, sometimes people want to talk in public.--Jimbo Wales 18:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Is it possible to provide some kind of "general opinion" based on private discussions you've had (without any specifics). Just so we're kept in the loop! :) Talrias (t | e | c) 19:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Secondly, it has been almost a year since the last elections, and there has been plenty of community discussion about what was good and bad about the procedure, and action has been taken on this by the community (for example, the deletion of the endorsements/disendorsements page).

The deletion of the endorsements/disendorsements page is a fine concept, but only addresses some of the problems. One problem is best highlighted, in my view, by the non-election of JamesF, despite being to my knowledge universally acknowledged as an excellent arbitrator, tending to the thoughtful and helpful middle ground on matters of importance, and hard working. The reason for him not being elected was not, as far as I can see, any dissatisfaction with his work in the arbcom, but rather a lack of political fame due in part to his quiet way of getting the job done in arbcom while (mostly, and perhaps unfortunately) giving up most editing.

Arbcom is a judicial position, not a popularity contest, and so elections are only a very rough stab at trying to get the right qualities and broad community support. Useful, of course, but by no means dispositive. --Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

makeing policy based on single cases is a really really bad idea.Geni 13:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, of course. But on the other hand, we've only ever had one case of an ArbCom election, and it went rather poorly in some ways, and I see no reason not to strive for a sensible improvement promptly. :-) --Jimbo Wales 17:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right that good candidates who aren't as prominent as others are less likely to become elected, but the counter-argument is easily made that selection could miss plenty of candidates who would be equally as good, and possibly better, who you haven't heard of. A solution to both of these problems would be to encourage people to put their names forward but not have a seat limit so preventing tactical voting. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thirdly, you've been deathly quiet. These are probably the most important positions in the Misplaced Pages community and the process deserves to be discussed openly. Yet all we've seen are some brief thoughts! You haven't responded to other suggestions or to criticism of his thinking.

I apologize for that. My period of extensive travel is finished as of this Saturday and I intend to spend 2 months simply working.--Jimbo Wales 12:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

That's good news. I hope you understand why I have made this comment. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Come on Jimbo, sort it out! It's been almost a year since the last elections, there has been plenty of discussion from the community (including the current arbitrators) on reform of the system, but all we've heard from you is a "current line of thinking". Yes, we know you have other things to do, such as the incredibly important role of getting funding. However, the encyclopaedia project relies on its community to exist and we have to get this right. Please join in the discussion and make your thoughts clear.

Talrias (t | e | c) 18:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! Oh and for the record, there has been quite some discussion about this at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2005/Straw_poll. Radiant_>|< 18:24, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Small note of thanks

I know this may not be as important as ArbCom elections or other pressing matters at hand, but thank you for your input over at Wikibooks. I am sorry to have missed you over there, but look forward to helping keep WB serious. Now if we could just get some of those policies passed we could move ahead. I have started a list of missing policies that you might want to have a look at. (It's on my Wikibooks user page, and not nearly complete). Thanks again. --LV 19:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Classic Rock

Hello. I was wondering if you would like to participate in my classic rock survey. I'm trying to find the most like classic rock song. There is more information on my user page. If you participate people would actually really want to be apart of it. Thanks a lot! RENTASTRAWBERRY röck 02:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Just letting you know

I'm one of your hard workin' admins. Just letting you know that both Essjay and User:Doc_glasgow left us today...2 very helpful admins. Doc in particular was a good vandalism stopped. Doc makes some good points on his userpage...just thought you'd like to know. We have to find a better way to stop vandalism. --Woohookitty 12:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

It's true that many Wikipedians don't stick around. There's a frustration factor that easily breaks many people here, it seems. But the sources of the frustration vary so much, and sometimes they contradict, so if you fixed one source you'd create another (to compare here, I fight vandalism quite a bit, but it is a very minimal annoyance for me, not something I would ever consider leaving over—but there are other things that make me truly furious, which others passionately support, and would leave if they were ever changed)...I've come to feel like the tendency of Wikipedians to come and go is not due to any big error we have as a project, but simply due to the temperaments of the people we tend to attract (magnified by the decreased emphathy and effective communication that comes with the Internet), and the high level of frustration that is, for most people, naturally going to come with intense involvement in something like this. In practical terms, I'm not really sure we could do anything to make it better. I can think of minor things that could possibly improve the situation, but nothing fundamental. Regardless, we keep thriving even though people are always leaving, so it shouldn't concern us too much. I remember last December when I came very close to leaving, I think I even announced it on my user page...and another time a few months later I did something similar...but for me, it just didn't stick. I never really even decreased my rate of editing, much less left the project. And after all that terrible stuff, I feel like I've kind of crossed some barrier of frustration where my negative frustration has transformed and given me a renewed energy for the project, and become almost constructive and helpful for me, and I haven't thought about leaving in a long time. Everyking 12:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Cabal ?

I didn't believe in such a stupid thing. Then I witnessed a VfA being closed out early after Brian asked Raul to personally take charge of Hamster's nomination. At first I thought it a joke but no, Hamster was plucked out early in a marginal election that could have gone either way if left for the required time. I've been totally disillusioned by the blatant and seemingly open and prejudicial influence with this promotion. Hamster may indeed be well qualified to be an admin, that's not the point. It's the discussion between Brian and Raul with Brian asking Raul to "personally" deal with the nomination and Raul gleefully responding "I did it (I'll leave out the smiley)" that I don't understand. The nomination was pulled early and before others had a chance to Oppose. That stinks of cabal. If you're allowed to read this then take a peek. I deliberately left out the diffs so that you can go through what we all have to do.
I also realize that I will be Persona non grata after this posting and with all my heart I wish that it wouldn't be so but, realistically I know that I will be marginalized after this; the price I pay for this expression. I'm not a wonderful contributor anyway so no great loss to the project, just a disillusioned one. (Heidi and Joe) -- hydnjo talk 02:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Hamster_Sandwich_RFA. If you have good reason to think the promotion was unfair, please post there.-gadfium 03:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

hydnjo - regardless of this posting I think you are (collectively) a great editor. Thanks for your contributions and for speaking your mind(s). Cheers, -Willmcw 04:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations

What you have made here is great. That some of human knowledge thing occured to me before i found out about that qoute. I atribute it 49% to google, 50% to wikipedia and its sister projects. About a third of googles share of that is because it auto corrects spellings on searches so lots of people use it to search wiki.Dolive21 22:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Semi-protection taken off your page

Just letting you know there is an important discussion ongoing at Wikipedia_talk:Semi-protection_policy, that you are invited to. It is clearly a major change in the way Misplaced Pages operates, so while you are not obligated to voice your opinion, it certainly would be helpful. Also, any other developers reading Jimbo's page are extremely encouraged to join the discussion. --kizzle 01:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I saw that!

That was nice how you editted your own page . Ha ha! Poor Larry Sanger. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 22:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a minor point, but important to get the history right.--Jimbo Wales 22:44, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

• That was somewhat cruel... Shoudn't Larry get at least some credit..?-MegamanZero 0:59 2,December 2005 (UTC)

• • Of course! He deserves a lot of credit. Simply point out that he did not "set up" the site is in no way intended to take away from his legitimate contributions. He was, like many many many other people, very important to the early days of Misplaced Pages.--Jimbo Wales 00:09, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Very understandle, see you in January at the Tampa meetup! If it is true that you live in St. Pete, I am minutes away. Don't want to sound weird, but that is the truth. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Jimmy_Wales#Larry_Sanger_and_the_creation_of_Wikipedia. — David Remahl 00:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Seigenthaler Sr. issue

Perhaps it's a good idea for the Wikimedia Foundation to make a public statement regarding the USA Today article. Not an apology, mind you, but rather a statement of regret. Also, this could be used to publicise the new article validation tools and the so-called Misplaced Pages 1.0 we are working towards. The statement should state that except for featured articles, no article on wikipedia has really been vetted for authenticity, but that we're working on changing this. I feel this would go a long way to silencing many of Misplaced Pages's critics. Jacoplane 23:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll be going on CNN on Monday to talk about it. --Jimbo Wales 00:07, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey Jimbo, what do you think about Talk:John_Seigenthaler_Sr.#Undeletion? Melchoir 02:16, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, thanks! Melchoir 18:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

• I see you are a extremely busy person Mr. Jimbo. My apologies for my post above, I see why you hadn't time to do what I requested. Anyway, good luck. -MegamanZero 8:10 1,December 2005 (UTC)

Is it possible for us to have the transcript of this? Will this be on CNN international or CNN.com ? --Cool Cat 20:23, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Me again on arbcom ;)

Hey Jimbo,

I've added my own thoughts on how it should be done to the straw poll, and I've asked you a couple of questions on the talk page. Cheers, Talrias (t | e | c) 12:34, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom

Hi

I hate to disturb you, but I really would like clarification of "Hybrid approach: Jimbo can put forward candidates for community approval, 50% majority is enough. And also the community can put forward candidates for Jimbo's approval, with the same 50% majority being enough."

Do you mean that you will only consider approving community-proposed candidates if they have gained 50% approval in a poll to select them? If so, how would this poll work? Would there be a single poll, covering both your candidates and the community's? No hurry answering, as I'll be leaving for the weekend in a few minutes. Thanks for reading this. Filiocht | The kettle's on 15:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

FYI

Essjay's departure from the project in my view requires your interference. After all he was admited in medcom showing he is fair and he was an administrator showing he is more than trusted. Please assist us in our quest to guide him to his senses. I do not believe he is expendable and I feel you would agree.

Thats all I got for now.--Cool Cat 20:21, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

• I concur. Voyager640 07:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
• I agree, although I didn't know him that well. — Rickyrab | Talk 01:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank You, Jimmy

I am crazy about encyclopedias and read them almost exclusively. I only discovered Misplaced Pages the past summer. If I had known about it earlier I would have been here earlier. So, since its the holidays coming up, I thought I would write you a thank you note for the wonderful, exciting gift you have given to me this year. Misplaced Pages. Its always nice when you get exactly what you want. So from my heart, Jimmy Wales, all the best to you and your loved ones, I wish you all happy holidays and that we all get exactly what we deserve in the new year. See you 'round the wiki! Hamster Sandwich 17:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Your very own Magic: The Gathering card

Hello Mr. Wales. I don't know if you've ever played, but I hope you will find your very own collectible card amusing all the same. If not, I hope someone reading this will find it funny. Thanks for this great encyclopedia. (Feedback from any user appreciated!) --JiFish(/_Contrib) 22:35, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• I remember this card! I heard they banned it from tournaments for its overwhelming destrctive capabilities and cheapness. Furthurmore, its very hard to find- they can only be found in MTG: Misplaced Pages Edition booster packs, which don't exist. -MegamanZero 1:38 4,December 2005 (UTC)

• Ah! Excellent! --Topaz 23:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• Ahh...another cheap legend, like Isamura!Voice of All 05:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Problem with Editing Expired Versions of Current Pages

When I log in, I find a problem with expired versions of current pages. If a page gets vandalized, and I try to revert, when I go to the old version, the current version still appears in the edit blank! But this doesn't happen when I'm not logged in! What's going on? — Rickyrab | Talk 00:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I found the problem. I use a Nostalgia style interface. Sometime in the past few weeks, the "Edit this page" link somehow dropped the ability to display the oldid number in the URL on old edits in the Nostalgia style of interface. I don't know how it came about, but it DID, and THAT change ought to be reverted. — Rickyrab | Talk 01:00, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Appeal of Arbcom case

Hello. I'm appealing for your intervention and input into an arbcom case here. I feel very strongly that this case has been handled inappropriately from the beginning, and that the main Arbcom participants are not reviewing this case in an impartial or balanced manner. This case originally began at my request when I filed Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Willmcw and SlimVirgin. Several days later, Willmcw - one of the users I named in my case - responded by filing a second case against me Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Rangerdude. The Arbcom originally voted to accept my case and merge Willmcw's complaints into it, but when Fred Bauder opened the case he did the exact opposite. Ever since then Fred's attention has been almost entirely on Willmcw's complaints against me. Fred is the only Arbcom member who has put forth voting principles at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Rangerdude/Proposed_decision and as a result virtually none of the items in my original complaint are even being considered except for a single minor warning against Willmcw, and nothing from the dispute with SlimVirgin is being considered. I've raised a few of Willmcw's policy violations on the workshop and talk pages and Fred seems to agree that they happened, yet he won't consider them in the formal part of the case and words the current findings on Willmcw in ways that intentionally downplay their severity. Meanwhile, Fred has accomodated nearly all of Willmcw's accusations against me and is currently proposing a one year probation against me for charges that neither transparent nor properly evidenced with diffs.

In addition to my concern that this case has been handled unfairly from my own perspective, I am very concerned about the precedent it may be setting and the incidents it is ignoring. One of the things Willmcw did that caused me to request this case is using white supremacist and other bigotted sources and terminology to insert guilt-by-association smears and other POV attacks on conservative and libertarian groups in political articles (see ). He has also behaved in an extremely harassing manner toward me and has wikistalked my edits since the day I signed up here, largely based on his now-admitted mistaken identification of another anon IP user with me last December (see ). Both of these charges have been documented and discussed thoroughly, yet they've been virtually ignored and excluded from the case by Fred Bauder. Since Fred is the only one proposing votes on this case the other Arbcom members are simply voting on whatever he puts up there and so far none of the major issues in my original case have even been addressed. Your help, advice, or impartial review of this case would be much appreciated. Rangerdude 20:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to fix Wikipedias most serious issues

Jimbo, I have come to conclusion that Misplaced Pages has a serious quality problem as you know, as I devoted Wikipedian I have been trying to improve the most important topics to featured article standard since I got here a year ago. The process is slow, and the truth is that there are not enough devoted Wikipedians who are actually working to get articles to a state in which they can be used as sources of research and valuable information. The Wikimedia foundation often do fund raises to raise money for new servers and equipment to help run Misplaced Pages, but with the new recent image server installed, and most of Misplaced Pages's speed problems solved, there are better uses of the profit made from these donations.

I propose a system where the Wikimedia foundation pays journalists, copy-editors and writers to work for Misplaced Pages for a pay per article. This would ensure that we have hundreds of articles becoming featured every month, not 30 or 40. What the encyclopedia really needs at the moment is lots of motivation, because at the moment the devoted Wikipedians are wasting their times wikifying articles or fixing disambiguation links. By doing this, not only would you fix the article quality issue, but also the references/verifiable sources issuse, and the Misplaced Pages reputation issue. Most recently the site has been attacked dozens of times by magazines, newspaper articles and journalists who are unhappy about the way Misplaced Pages is run, the way it works, and the quality and uses of it.

Misplaced Pages doesn't need time to make every article great, it needs the motivation to do so.

I hope you consider what I've said, thanks for reading!

— Wackymacs 07:07, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is this idea of paying people undermines the volunteer basis of the whole thing. And I think the motivation is there. I'm not convinced you'd get substantially more work out of people for a salary, and you risk turning off everybody who's not getting paid. The press criticism ought to just be ignored. It's simply foolish, or possibly malicious. Our system works, and it works brilliantly, as anybody can see by looking at the product. I think the encyclopedia is much better than it was a year ago—maybe twice as good, quite truthfully. And a year is actually not very long—look forward to a day five or ten years down the road. Moreover, the growth accelerates with fame. Misplaced Pages has its problems, but they aren't fundamental ones that need to be fixed with a fundamental change in the system—this is going after the wrong problem with the wrong solution. What we are doing in this respect is working. Everyking 08:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ummm...

... is ZDNet correct? Are you planning on stopping anons from creating new articles? If so, I'm not against it, though:

1. Were you planning on telling us somewhere?!
2. What the reasoning behind this? The number of new users is going to shoot up, and we won't be able to track them by IP addresses anymore. After all, it's trivial to create a new account - as I'm fairly sure you know as I suspect you may have a sockpuppet.

If the news report is wrong, well, my apologies! And please be aware that even if it's correct, I'm not attacking you. It must have been a tough week :(

Ta bu shi da yu 13:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You can read about it here: post on wikien-l

I agree. This dude should interact with his community a lot more. Wiki is becoming an institution, with an over-sized admin section that enforce the Wiki policy to the letter. In fact, why not reform the Wiki policy to a more liberal one? I'm tired of these forum fascists! A bit off-topic, but it spared me from making a new topic. --Anittas 13:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I spend all day every day interacting with the community. :-) --Jimbo Wales 14:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I love what you and the Wikimedia board do: but I really feel that there is not enough notice given about these things. It's not good to hear about these things from ZDNet (for chrissake!) before we at least get a chance to see it on WP:VP or an anouncements page. The whole sponsored links debacle - which by the way, once Angela explained it to me made me feel much better about everything - shows me that a lot of really good things are being done, they are just not being communicated clearly to the Misplaced Pages community. I spend a great deal of time on the site, and I gotta be honest: though I had no problem with the announcement, I was a bit miffed to have to have sent you a message! - Ta bu shi da yu 14:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I'm bloody tired (1:20AM in the morning here in Australia!) so if some of this is incoherent, sorry. One more thing, I only mentioned the USA PATRIOT Act on IRC because there was actually some changes made to the provisions of gathering records from cable providers. See USA PATRIOT Act, Title II#Scope of subpoenas for records of electronic communications - section 211 to allow the U.S. government to have access to the records of cable customers, with the notable exclusion of records revealing cable subscriber selection of video programming from a cable operator. Before you think I'm crazy, consider that a) I'm trying to do something about the parlous state of affairs the USA PATRIOT Act is in, b) as a consequence I've got PATRIOT Act on the brain (argh!), and c) it may or may not have some bearing on gaining access to the IP addresses of contributors on this website. I really hope you don't think I'm some crazed nut! - Ta bu shi da yu 14:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that announcing it to us is announcing it to the media, in an uncontrolled manner. That's a tough line to walk. - brenneman 14:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I know that. My comments still stand however. Had we been informed a little better about the whole sponsored link thing, I think that whole project against it wouldn't have been created. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I also don't trust the media. They often get it wrong. I'd rather here about this sort of thing straight from the board and Jimbo unexpurgated. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow, I was monitoring recent changes for awhile and did not find a single new article to tag. Didn't know why at first. Pretty impressive! InvictaHOG 14:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think the feature has been turned on yet. Looking at Special:Newpages, an anon has created a page as recently as one minute ago. Carbonite | Talk 14:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow, what a neat link! It's a lot easier than just clicking refresh on the recent changes button like I've been doing! InvictaHOG 17:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... interesting. I agree with the move, there are so many junk pages created by anons it is hard to believe sometimes. New pages patrol is probably the toughest job on Misplaced Pages. But I think this should have been discussed more beforehand, and announced to the community properly. It just seems like a kneejerk reaction to the Seigenthaler article. One article written by someone who knows little about Misplaced Pages, and a chat down the pub with 9 other Wikipedians does not equal consensus for a major change in policy. the wub "?!" 14:42, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I am sure it will be discussed extensively. I don't see any reason why such a discussion should proceed _beforehand_, though. We have had many many such discussions in the past, and the big obstacle is that we have no empirical data by which to explore the results. We can now have a discussion grounded in actual experience. There are absolutely pros and cons to preventing anons from making new pages, but we don't know the exact balance until we try it for a bit.--Jimbo Wales 15:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I have to chime in here to agree with Jimbo. The amount of times I've seen nothing get done because of too much discussion is outrageous! Just imagine I'd discussed WP:AN on the VP? Exactly how far do you think I would have got?! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Something else, will it still be possible for anons to create new pages in the talk space for commenting on articles? the wub "?!" 14:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

About Everyking's Comment

I'm stunned that Jimbo has deleted my comment. I restored it and he went and deleted it again, so it couldn't have been a mistake. Could he please explain himself? Everyking 14:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That is strange. I mean, it's his talkpage and it's his site, but still. Jimbo, dude, what's up? Oh, and are you a commie, Jimbo? I'm asking this because I noticed the "Hasta la Wiki" image of you. Commies are prepared to share everything, except free speech and free choice. ;) --Anittas 14:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

He can delete my comments if he wants, but I think I ought to get an explanation. Also, I think it reflects really badly on him. Everyking 14:51, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

On this occassion, I'd like to defend Everyking. I read the comment he wrote, and it wasn't anything more or less than what I'd said. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I think Jimbo should write a new Wiki policy based on the philosophy of Voltaire, not these redneck housewives who cry abuse everytime someone tells them what's on his mind. If you need my help in writing a new constitution, Jimbo, let me know. --Anittas 14:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me? I am a redneck housewife? - Ta bu shi da yu 14:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know, but I was refering to my own problems here on Wiki, with other moderators. --Anittas 15:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Everyone please give each other a hug. I deleted Everyking's comment because I find he has a tendency to turn what would otherwise be a useful discussion into a negative debate. I did not delete Ta bu shi da yu's comment because Ta bu shi da you has a tendency to engage in productive positive dialogue. I have no interest in debating nonsense with Everyking, and I'm still hopeful that this discussion can be about the experiment, not about Everyking's carping.--Jimbo Wales 14:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It really makes me nervous when Jimbo is deleting my comments. Not a sign of the king's favor. Not a good position to be in. Any hope still for that appeal, Jimbo? Everyking 15:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Let's see, Ta bu shi da yu, understandably confused by the situation, asks some very good if mildly pointed questions while acknowledging that he may not have the whole story, and makes a point of assuming good faith on Jimbo's part. Everyking, on the other hand, speculates about Jimbo's conduct and criticizes his priorities on the basis of this speculation, falling rather short of assuming good faith. Jimbo replaces Everyking's comment with a link to the place where he actually announced this experiment to the community. Even leaving aside the reputations earned by Ta bu shi da yu and Everyking, the difference in their approach is palpable and Jimbo's differing treatment of their comments understandable.

Everyking, there's hope for your appeal if you can figure out, from situations like this one, why your comments about other Misplaced Pages editors are so often damaging to the atmosphere of trust on which the Misplaced Pages community operates. Otherwise, no, I don't have much hope for you. --Michael Snow 23:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah well, you don't have to hope for me. This stuff about damaging an atmosphere of trust is silly, because if you knew anything about the issues I've been involved in, you'd know I've been pushing hard for the promotion of good faith and trust. In fact, that has been one of my primary goals on the project for a good while now, promotion of a friendlier and more tolerant atmosphere. So I don't take it very seriously when someone accuses me of doing one thing, if I know full well that my record and my whole purpose says the exact opposite.

Anyway, it is very depressing that Jimbo has a low enough opinion of me to go removing my comments. I would like to have the opportunity to seriously talk with him, in e-mail, IRC, or here...since he says above he doesn't want to "debate nonsense" with me, I don't know how realistic that is, but I'm pretty sure I could get him to look at some things a little differently. Everyking 04:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Can an anon still create their own user page?

Hi. With this new experiment to restrict anonymous users from creating pages, will this affect their ability to create their own user page? - Tεxτurε 16:14, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. Ask Brion? We could do it either way.--Jimbo Wales 17:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to have to plead ignorance... who's Brion? - Tεxτurε 17:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The Chief Technical Officer User:Brion Vibber. Nice guy, from the very limited discussions I've had with him. Carbonite | Talk 17:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

CNN appearance today?

A bunch of us in the #wikipedia IRC channel are gagging for details on your CNN appearance--exact CNN station, show, and time today. Can you please oblige on the talk page or on IRC? Thanks! Demi /_C 17:27, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

2:45PM East coast US time.--Jimbo Wales 18:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I just saw this appearance online. My God. Did that guy really say "The market will take care of Misplaced Pages?" What market? Is anyone buying the Misplaced Pages product? Doesn't all the revenue come from t-shirt sales and donations? I mean..wha?..huh?..muh? Did that fossil really claim to know anything about how the internet works? "I'm afraid if Misplaced Pages keeps this up, the government will step in and start regulating online information." Didn't he say something to that effect? Regulate the internet??? What, and spend 90% of our national budget on admins? The internet isn't going to be nice to you. Tough cookies, my friend. I'm sure Jimmy Wales has his own hate sites out there, but that's the First Amendment for you. Is this guy Barney Rubble's neighbor? Can I possibly ask more rhetorical questions? JHMM13 (T | C) 00:54, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not what he meant. He meant that the market for information—the visitors to come to Misplaced Pages for the encyclopedic aspect of the site—will go look at other sources if the accountability problem (which is more of a verifiability issue) is not corrected. The lack of visitors is what will "take care of Misplaced Pages," at least in that context. That said, to say that we're not doing anything to address the problem is not correct. We have Recent Changes Patrol, New Page Patrol filtering new entries on the "front end"; there is an organized volunteer group, the Counter Vandalism Unit, which meets over an IRC channel, as well as "lone wolfs" using Crypto-Derk's Vandal Fighter; they are monitoring constantly monitoring suspicious changes. Also, for pages under attack, there's page protection. There are also a plethora of proposals to curtail this problem: from a semi-protection policy that is gaining steam for the most prominent pages (perhaps those politician pages in the next election?), to the often-advertised article validation, which is going to be implemented soon too. We still can do a lot more, but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything. Titoxd 01:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo, check this out (about Nazism and Wiki)

A Romanian dude made the nickname "Nazismisntcool". That is, nazism, the ideology. You know, kill Jews, etc. To my great surprise, two 'people' went to his talkpage and asked him to change his nickname. Their argument was that Nazis might be offended by the nickname; furthermore, they linked to http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Username#Inappropriate_usernames to support their argument. Yeah, the last thing we want is to offend Nazis.

Anyhow, their argument was weak, because they tried to draw an analogy to Satanism, but Satanism doesn't necesarily involve evil or the desctruction of others. Satanism involves theology, or, a philosophy, of say, to not submit yourself (Non Serviam); and this was even raised in a book called Paradise Lost. My questions are: are these people sane, and, could they enforce such stupidity by the help of the Wiki policy?

I went and flamed those people, and one of them came to my talkpage and asked me to be civil. I asked him to go to hell. If I'm blocked, I won't be able to reply to any messages from you. However, these two people seem to be veterans of Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Sam_Spade http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Private_Butcher

The argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:NazismIsntCool#Please_change_your_user_name

I wouldn't be surprised if those people are moderators of Wiki, which is what bothers me most. I mean, even the most politically-correct pussy would say that Nazism isn't cool, right? So what's the problem here? Dude, my offer still stands: I can help you reshape the Wiki policy and get rid of these necromancers once and for all! --Anittas 21:43, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, clearly Nazism isn't cool. But neither is using slang like "most politically-correct pussy" and neither is going around with a provocative username. I think people should tend to avoid such names not just because it "might offend Nazis" but because it invites others to create POV-pushing names. I recommend people choose very ordinary names. :-) --Jimbo Wales 22:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not a very concrete answer, Jimbo. I understand what you're saying; such names can create controversy, but this is Wiki - everything here feeds on controversy. This, however, should be clear as water. Also, I would like to argue that a pseudonym is a part of one's identity, therefore, people might choose a so-called POV-nickname; and they should, as long as that nickname doesn't despict an evil act. At the end of the day, I hope your Wiki and their moderators wouldn't judge against such nicknames.

I speak from experience. Microsoft Zone tried to censor people and their nicknames; they even tried to censor sexual talk and nicknames that described a political stand, alcohol, etc., and their methods made certain groups of people leave. GameSpy, however, was a bit more tolerant and they did better. I think that for being a southern guy, you're pretty liberal, but you can always do better. :) --Anittas 22:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well once you've been around for awhile, you'll know that concrete answers don't often come from me. I talk about kindness and general principles and creating a healthy and positive work environment for everyone. I don't censor people, I persuade people. We've had our nickname policy for a long time, it has been interpreted by the community for a long time, and I am quite sure it'll all work out fine without me doing anything about it. :-)--Jimbo Wales 22:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

A random comment

Jimbo, I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to say it, but I just wanted to say thanks for all you do here. I've been a contributor for nearly a year now, but I've only been doing it hard core for a few weeks. I'm hooked and I can't overstate how important and useful this site is and will become. But you already knew that :) --YHoshua 22:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The Announcement

Hi God (of Misplaced Pages),

Just chiming in with several others on your userpage to add my expression of surprise that I learned about the anon page-creation policy change from the news. I understand not discussing it (since it is just an experiment), but -- as of now -- there is no link on the main page, no blurb on Wikinews... if I weren't enough of veteran to know your talk page is a hub in this universe, I wouldn't have found anything about it here. I'm sure many casual users will visit in the news' aftermath, and they should have some place to go. Ideally, maybe there could be a system to release such news very visibly on site at the same time it is released to the media generally. Thanks from a mere mortal, Xoloz 23:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote to the mailing list within minutes of finding out from Brion that the feature could go live. Before this, it was only an idea of something we could do. The idea that I made some official announcement to the press before the community is not really accurate actually.

I don't even regard it as a very big change, just a minor tweak, something to test. --Jimbo Wales 01:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A tweak? Making anons second class citizens? Isn't this a direct violation of everything Misplaced Pages stands for? And why wasn't it discussed before implementation, or at the very minimum, giving those of us who are long-time users the courtesy of letting us know ahead of time. User:Zoe| 04:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

While I also read about it in the news rather than here first, I wholeheartedly welcome this move. Personally, I'd go further and prevent edits too, but one step at a time. I don't suppose it will eliminate problems at a stroke, but it will make them much easier to track. I firmly believe that most petty vandalism is a result of anon users without any axe to grind changing things "just because they can", and are surprised that they are allowed to. More persistent vandals have other reasons and they will probably remain. Preventing edits would eliminate a lot of casual mutation of articles that occurs because it is just too easy. Graham 04:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A side benefit of this experiment is that anonymous editors have to provide a source for the registered Wikipedian to create the page they want. That helps us with our verifiability problems. :) Titoxd 04:18, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A Thanks

Thank you for putting something entertaining on the internet. You are, in my eyes, one of the greatest inventors of all time. Please respond. Pax Christi.--Anti-Anonymex2 23:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You rock.

Yeah. Go Jimbo! ☺

Excellent Job

With the CNN appearance, Jimbo. You made a reasonable presentation of how Misplaced Pages works, and it looked quite reasonable. --Xinoph 00:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are appreciated for having to catch all the public flak for Misplaced Pages. Yours was not an enviable position, having to defend Misplaced Pages from people who don't really understand the point of Misplaced Pages. "Hired people", indeed. They might want to look at Nupedia, and as far as the election goes: they've clearly not read up on our articles on the 2004 presidential election, have they? What this does highlight is that Misplaced Pages is just not compatible with the public view of it, and maybe it'll still be a long time before it is. JRM · Talk 01:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Who are these "hired" people? We ought to give them their own articles. ;) --Anittas 02:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

With all due respect

With all due respect of someone who has not been quite in your position before, that is, being grilled by two people on national television, I must say that I was slightly disappoined by how the nature of the discussion on CNN was allowed to go. I feel that more could have been done to shape the conversation instead of trying to parry comment for comment. I wish that I had heard some more about how Misplaced Pages has indeed gotten it right, for example Misplaced Pages was recently sourced in an obituary in the New York Times this Sunday as having the correct date of death four years before every other media source. But all criticism aside, thanks for standing up for Misplaced Pages, yet again. User:PZFUN/signature 02:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It was an interesting experience. In the studio I was completely unable to see the other two -- they did not have a monitor for me to be able to observe the others. With no facial expression cues, but being on camera myself, it was hard to shape or control the conversation in any way. I was reluctant to be one of those jerks who interrupts everyone, but perhaps I should have done at least a little of that. If I was in a studio with live humans, or if I had more experience with this format, I think I would have been happier with the outcome.

Having said that, I am happy with the outcome, overall. But it was a rather stressful experience.

One of the things that I wished afterwards is that I had printed out and brought with me the disclaimer from CNN.com, so that when the host read our disclaimer to me on the air in a snotty tone, I could have read her disclaimer right back to her. (Their disclaimer and ours say essentially the same sorts of things about there being no guarantees on the content. So Ha!) --Jimbo Wales 12:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I figured that something similar to that happened. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. All I can say is next time, don't be afraid to go for the kill! No-one ever got anywhere in network TV by holding doors, as they say. User:PZFUN/signature 03:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You sucked on CNN

Hey Jimbo, I saw you lying through your teeth on CNN and thought you looked like a despicable hack, despite the plaudits you are hearing from your sycophantic butt-kissing yes-men admin/editors here. Misplaced Pages has increasingly become a hodge-podge of slanted political crap, biased lies, character assassination, and bigoted chauvinistic excrement that passes itself off as precious metal. Your editors and administrators band together in their little cliques to play their petty schoolboy games and grind their political axes while you fiddle away happy in your ignorance. You suggested that Kyra Phillips edit the nasty article that purports to be her biography when you know full well that your gang of whores would attack her like a pack of rabid hyenas if she ever attenpted to edit an article about herself. You and your "volunteer administrators" are a bunch of arrogant self-righteous pricks that suck as much as your crap "encyclopedia". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.211.197.156 (talk • contribs)

You, on the other hand, absolutely rocked on CNN! Thanks so much for all your work in what must be an increasingly stressful unpaid job. </tease> ;-) --Jimbo Wales 12:27, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Go Jimbo!-MegamanZero 16:49 6,December 2005 (UTC)

I feel for you

I am sorry that you have been put under unforgiving amounts of stress here; I understand that you are busy here and that the Seigenthaler incident was not your fault holistically. I accept, as I think all editors should, part of the blame, and in part, a fatal flaw and a failure on the part of Misplaced Pages to keep pure articles. However, we must remember that this unfortunate incident does not hardly erase the several GOOD things done by Misplaced Pages, such as opening a free knowledge base to the world - you are among the pioneers of knowledge, credible to fame as the founders of the library at Alexandria. However, truths cannot be negated as I have seen here: Seigenthaler was not making a mountain out of a mole hill as other editors have implied; biased and unverifiable information is not acceptable, as to a strong degree such bad info is usually myth created by the author. I come here to tell you this, if you know me (which you will in January, but probably not know) you know I am not one of your most fanatic applauders out there (as I have seen in this place), but I am definately going to say that you deserve much credit. We all love you, remember that. You have created an excellent thing here, a tremendous amount of talent has been fused into one to create such a wonderful product. Your dream has come true. Now is the time to make sure that vandals, spams and trollers do not do the same thing as this now infamous IP! I just want to let you know that I am here to help, do not listen to the crazy message above that "you sucked on CNN." Disrespect like that is not tolerable. Keep up the good work, Jimbo. All of us Wikipedians can work through this mess.

You take care, εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 03:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

CNN Interview

Jimmy Wales - I have just watched your interview with on cnn.com with Kyra Phillips and John Seigenthaler(Click on ‘Concerns raised about bogus info on Misplaced Pages'). In this interview, in response to a question from Kyra Phillips about the accuracy of information on Misplaced Pages, you respond by saying that “people can write whatever they like on the Internet on message boards, mailing lists, etc” (paraphrased by me). In essence, you compare Misplaced Pages to message boards and mailings lists. Now, take a look at the top of the page en.wikipedia.org/Main_Page and read the words 'Welcome to Misplaced Pages, the 💕 that anyone can edit'. Notice the word 'encyclopedia'. How can you claim that Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and at the same time compare it with message boards? Isn't this hypocritical?

Sunny --xpanderin December 5 2005

I don't think it is hypocritical at all, because he says "that anyone can edit" that allows for all the baggage that comes with it, but especially considering there are "message boards" in the Talk pages for every article. Nobody in their right minds can expect Misplaced Pages to ever be 100% accurate because of the nature of it, but if you know how to read it, it is a tremendous resource that is hindered by one thing: it's on the internet. The claims Siegenthaler made about him only worrying for the safety of the First Amendment were absolutely bogus and unrealistic, but extremely typical of someone with his understanding of the internet to assert. In no way can any government adequately control the content of "the internet" unless they block access entirely to it, and that is something that will just not fly. Either that or we spend billions of dollars paying Admins to fix everything just so Kyra Phillips doesn't have people "seeing her like that." That's just too bad, Kyra, it's called free speech, and since it isn't hurting your career and nobody is really gaining anything from it aside from the vandal and whatever his motivations are, you can't do anything about it. JHMM13 (T | C) 06:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The thing to remember is that while the final version of an article is often encyclopedia-worthy in wikipedia, the road to getting there is a conversation between many different kinds of people. Including trolls and vandals. This is a fact of the internet, and only the most draconian measures will stop them, but then we'll probably have something more akin to Nupedia than Misplaced Pages. Now I'm sure CNN won't mind (See, here I am blasting CNN :) to see such a Free new media experiment fail. I noticed that in the attitude of the interviewer a litle, something like "oow we have paid editors, so we must be better than you commies". Jacoplane 12:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes. The point I wanted to make is that Misplaced Pages is not like messageboards on the Internet in some ways, but that it is like messageboards in some other ways. As long as we allow broad public participation, there are bound to be some bad people and some bad things will happen. That's in the nature of broad public participation. But unlike messageboards, there is a community here which cares passionately about getting it right and that community has the power to {sofixit}. --Jimbo Wales 12:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Wales, how many other message boards license a co-branded version of their posts with a for-profit public company? Won't the Answers deal make this partial-"message board" legal comparison more tenuous? Tfine80 23:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

ZDNet gave you a good rap

Have a look at - Ta bu shi da yu 04:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey man, love you, love all you wikipedians!!! And in the midst of the onslaught, yo, let's keep growing and show the world what dignified patience can bring. Yeah ... the darkness recedes. Cypa 05:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Editing page histories is a tad... brrr

I'm a bit worried about editing a page history, that just seems ... wrong ... to me, like alexandria library wrong. When will we stop doing this? Kim Bruning 06:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

What are you referring to? — David Remahl 06:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I think she's referring to what they asserted in the CNN interview. Siegenthaler said something to the effect of "Well it's still in the history," and Jimmy said something about it being deleted from the history, whatever "it" was. I agree with Kim Bruning entirely and would like to know exactly what right Mr. Siegenthaler has to lambast Jimmy Wales about something that was done to his organization's website, and why he insists on implying that his organization was the one making the "libelous" comments (by the way, I don't know why he should be so distraught about conspiracy theories, as they are often encyclopedic ...just look at the September 11, 2001 attacks page. JHMM13 (T | C) 07:03, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Page history is what protects whatever integrity Misplaced Pages has. Seeing how an article has evolved is a very important tool. It is dangerous if the people of the future can't find any reference to the kennedy assassination in the Siegenthaler article. This is the same reason why article deletion (as opposed to blanking) is harmful. — David Remahl 07:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It is not possible for us to keep revisions public which are libelous. It is not possible for us to keep revisions public which have been the subject of a proper DMCA (copyright) complaint. I think fretting over the historical implications of this is somewhat confused, since deleted revisions are still in the database (but not publicly accessible) so that in 100 years time, historians can have a peek. It's really FUD to say that people of the future "can't find any reference to the kennedy assassination in the Siegenthaler article" -- who has suggested any such rule?--Jimbo Wales 12:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

But when the (possibly) libelous edits are made into a public controversy by the subject himself, as has happened in the recent case -- he has now clearly spread the defamatory piece of text about himself much more widely than it ever was on Misplaced Pages -- does it remain necessary to suppress the history ourselves? I understand deleting libel and defamation in response to a private request from the subject to squelch it before it gets out widely, but that doesn't really apply when the person himself is making a public issue of it. *Dan T.* 13:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I agree we can't always keep certain pages public. I wonder though, does the deletions table actually get backed up and maintained, so that it'll be around in 100 years? I'll go find brion and ask. Kim Bruning 03:27, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

In the mean time, I just checked page history, and there's nothing there that would suggest that certain edits have been removed. I guess the combination of marking removed edits so that people know that it's been done, and making sure we do keep them archived would probably solve a lot of the concerns that people have indicated above. Kim Bruning 03:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, Brion confirms that those deletions will vanish at some random moment in time, due to that table not being backed up at all. I talked with you on irc, and I'll leave things to you. :-) Kim Bruning 01:03, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages as a big collection of trash?

Hi, i have some 1,200 article edits in the en:WP, some 12,000 in the de:WP, some 600 in the pl:WP. I think, the qualify of the WP ist very, very bad. How can such a piece of trash stay alive for many days? - i saw it because i wrote the german article about the same film.
I have read, the IP's can save new articles no more in the en:WP - it's very good! I think, the other Wikipedias should make the same.
Sorry for my not perfect english... ;) AN 08:17, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Doch doch! Ihr English ist sehr gut, mein freund. I think the quality of Misplaced Pages is not so bad, but I agree with you that we need to constantly play with our rules to try to find improvements, especially as we grow.--Jimbo Wales 12:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I proposed this kind of improvement you are testing now in the german wp some time ago and it was rejected for reasons like "we never did this before" (my favorite! *grmbl*), "this is not in Jimbos faith" (you made some very big impression on many people!), "no, wiki has to be open to everybody" and "we will lose great contibutions" (I guess they meant contributions like AN mentioned above...). Now, since the english WP made this usefull step, I think of proposing this procedure in the german WP and would ask you to throw in your vote if the proposal is installed. Sorry for my weird english, since your german is pretty good! =;o) Dickbauch 12:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Doch doch! Mein English ist nicht sehr gut. Ich verstehe nur ein bisschen Deutsch. Mostly a handful of phrases. If I need to find a hotel I can manage. If I need to talk philosophical matters relating to Misplaced Pages editing, I better stick to English for now.

What I think is that we should watch the English experiment for a few months, with whatever changes we make to it in English, before doing something similar in other languages. The issue, as I see it, is that new pages was a "firehose of shite" (in David Gerard's eloquent expression), and the point is to turn down the volume of that firehose a bit so that new pages patrollers can have enough time to properly deal with each item. --Jimbo Wales 13:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, that sounds smart. ;)

Since we have the same problem ("firehose of shit" is a nice expression for this) in the :de I thought it was a good idea to copy your procedures.

Thanks for your help and we will sit and watch you "Englishmen" very carefully. Dickbauch 13:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

it might be worth to try a different approach in the german wikipedia but address the same problems. Like for example regular "cleanup weeks" when anonymous editing is cut off in favour of cleaning up old stuff (with message on top "Please come back next week or log in"). German wikipedia could very well use such a time off occasionally. --Elian 16:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Before you suggest that in the de.wp, I think it would be best to watch the English try - if it works, we can just adopt it for our wp. --Tolanor: QS - something interesting from de.wp 17:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Full agreement to Tolanor. Our QS-System is at the beginning to grow. And it seems to getting better and better every day. This is in my eyes much more better than destroying all, what the Misplaced Pages is. Kenwilliams 01:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• As a new page patroller, the new system does seem to be working. It's pleasant to be spending more time fixing useful articles, and less time getting rid of newbie tests. Kappa 15:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Learning Spanish

It'd be easy to learn Spanish : )

I plan to spend one more year studying German, at least, and then switch to Spanish to learn it with my daughter. I won't fully decide about the switch until the end of next year -- if I can read German wikipedia by then then I'll consider my German "good enough", otherwise I'll keep learning German until I can read or until I give up on the insanity of the project. ;-) --Jimbo Wales 14:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That would be very unfortunate if you give up on German. There is a flock out there that looks forward to hear the gospel of "The sum of all human knowledge accessible for every person on the planet" and the revelation "Ten things that should be free" in their own tongue. Greetings, Longbow4u 18:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Ha, I wrote that message with my IP (I edit a lot from my IP at times; mostly to edit my userpage). I can help you learn a little Spanish; si quieres aprender! But, I know I am getting a little woresome; you are a busy man - so I will stop bothering you! εγκυκλοπαίδεια* (talk) 20:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Hasenjagd

Have fun with this special kind of new (or old?) German bolshewik humour:

http://de.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Vandalensperrung&diff=prev&oldid=11367727#Unscheinbar

Version vom 01:23, 6. Dez 2005 Jesusfreund (Diskussion | Beiträge) PRUUUST - verschoben ins Humorarchiv, Überschrift "der ganz normale Wahnsinn im Adminalltag". Selten so gelacht...

cu 17:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• And now an anti bolshewik joke:

Ich sehe das nicht so, denn Hans Bugs Kritik hat eine wichtige Funktion. Sie stört einzelne, aber für das Wohlergehen des Projekts ist sie wichtig. -- Weiße Rose 15:46, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)

Ahja? Also mir hat seine "Kritik" bei der Erstellung einer Enzyklopaedie noch nie geholfen... --DaTroll 15:47, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)

dito. --GrummelJS8 15:48, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)

Nicht überraschend. Die Funktion ist die eines Kammerjägers. Ungemütlich für das Ungeziefer. --Frisch From Fröhlich Frei 16:26, 7. Dez 2005 (CET)

Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Wikipedia_Diskussion:Benutzersperrung/Hans_Bug&oldid=11421707#Meinungsfreiheit

Have fun 19:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• And now a real big bundle of German bolshewik humour. Follow the first link and have fun. Great! 14:12, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Entadminisierungsanträge sind seit neuestem nicht mehr zulässig. (Vergleiche die Versionsliste der entsprechenden Seite). Botswana 13:38, 8. Dez 2005 (CET) =

Source:

• Oops, a problem. Towarisch PeterLustig has started with communism in de, but bourgeois people like Hans Bug has caught him in flagranti and call that "copyright violation".

"What to do?"(Lenin).

Karl and Rosa have a classic de-idea:

No Hans Bug - no problems .

A reason? (sorry, that´s a silly bourgeois question!) "Belege: Statt aller zunächst pauschal Benutzer:Hans Bug, Benutzer Diskussion:Hans Bug" (Stechlin).

Live show: http://de.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Benutzersperrung/Hans_Bug&oldid=11470758

btw.: Some commies name reasons: "Hans Bug nervt" or "he´s boring".

Have fun 11:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Trying to get prominent for 15 minutes (Andy Warhol).

Admin Anneke Wolf (aka "Rosa" or Rosa Luxemburg ) doesn´t like this current result:

Der unheimlich starke Abgang der Anneke Wolf:

http://de.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Administratoren/Probleme&oldid=11561304

http://de.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Wikipedia_Diskussion:Administratoren/Probleme&oldid=11562262#Wieso_gibts_nicht_schon_l.C3.A4ngst_einen_Sperrantrag_gegen_Benutzer:Anneke_Wolf.3F

Have fun 13:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Newspeak warning

You are probably sick of hearing about the Seigenthaler affair, so I will be brief and get right to the point: removal of the offending versions from our history is a very dangerous precedent. We are not denying that they exist, but act in good faith (to make mr Seigenthaler feel better), but at the same time we are doing a much greater damage: for all our history, all edits were visible, but now we are revising (whitewashing) our very history, making it - in other words - false. Being an academic researcher planning to write my MA and possibly PhD about Misplaced Pages, I see this as a terrible danger: we are making some content selectively unaccessible to researchers. Sociologists like me are increasingly looking at Wiki and it's history as a great archive of human interactions - but if the archive becomes selective and whitewashed, it will become useless to the academia. Imagine I'd like to write an article about Seigenthaler affair - but now the primary source is deleted from our database! As time passes by I can imagine all still existing copies and backups containing the original version being erased (on purpose or not) - and then we arrive at the perfect real life newspeak removal of unfacts cases (perfect removal from Wiki, but of course we cannot touch the copies cited by the news articles, so really, what's the point?). As this precedent is set, aren't we paving way for the deletion of all vandalised revisions? Imagine if GWB asks us for the removal of all ofending content on his page (why not? we did it for Seigenthaler). Wiki opponents can paralyze us (or at least burden us with pointless work) by demanding all vandalized edits should be removed. Brrrr.... Please consider restoring the original article's history, Jimbo.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Update: having read Kim comments above I feel slightly better knowing that the original copies are retained. Nonetheless I think they should be available to public (researchers) easily - perhaps after some one-click disclaimer? Anything else would impose limits on knowledge (and likely burden both the researcher and some wiki admin with additional work of having to write a request and go find the info in some archoves).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry but you are simply wrong. It has always been our policy to delete libellous revisions and there is nothing about this case which is any different. The idea that we have to keep every single version of everything, whether legal or not, is simply preposterous. I'm sorry if you weren't aware of it, but specific versions of articles are routinely removed by admins when they contain libel, personal information, etc.--Jimbo Wales 18:27, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

There is a difference in this case, as the subject of the comments has gone public with the issue, and aired the possibly-libelous material himself (much more widespreadly than Misplaced Pages ever did), and made the issue of Misplaced Pages's publication of the material into a public controversy. This makes the situation qualitatively different from one in which somebody quietly and privately seeks to remove defamatory comments. *Dan T.* 19:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Wales. You state that "it has always been our policy to delete libellous revisions." Does this Misplaced Pages policy apply to statements made against deceased persons that were they alive would be libellous? Thank you. - Ted Wilkes 14:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Board meeting

Jimmy, do you have an idea of when the next Board meeting will be? Are they open to the public, or limited to just the Board with minutes released? If you happen to know when the next Board meeting will be, do you know if there will be any discussion about the future of Wikibooks? Thanks for your help. --LV 18:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

CNN commentary and the Seigenthaler Sr. issue

It really pains me to see us being accountable of actions by vandals.

Granted I and other RC patrollers are making an effort in removing vandalism from wikipedia, we also have a real life we need to worry about. Vandalism can happen anytime on any of the 800,000+ articles by a misguided individual.

We need to cure the disease rather than purging the symptoms. ISPs where severe vandalism comes from (such as entire AOL ranges) should receive long term blocks so that customers can complain to their ISPs pointing out they are being very irresponsible. --Cool Cat 20:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Vandals are using AOL as a safe haven to commit libel and other wrong doings. Perhaps it is time we push back? Hall Monitor 20:59, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

So you mean punish everyone on an ISP because a few Che types decide that it is more fun to tear things down than it is to build something that is useful, credible, organized, honest, productive, verifiable and just? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.22.197.95 (talk • contribs)

I hate to admit it, but I agree also. Just take a look at any AOL IP's talk page and you'll see the problem for yourself. --JiFish(/_Contrib) 21:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

This amounts to suggesting that we change a long-standing policy in an attempt to influence the business model of a mega-corporation. Sounds a bit rash to me. Zocky 21:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Another solution should be that where an account has received a certain number of final warnings, they remain on final warning alert for one month after the last one is issued. In other words, if they receive say five, then if at any stage within the next month they vandalise an article in any way they are immediately blocked without the need for any more warnings. That would deal with the AOL vandals. Genuine AOL users wouldn't be blocked. But the moment a vandal steps out of line they would be, rather than receive the latest in the long line of 'please stop' messages which they in invariably ignore anyway. FearÉIREANN\ 01:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Blocking a spesific AOL IP is a waiste of time. The IP changes per edit. Hence we have to block large ranges to contain the vandals apathy. --Cool Cat 01:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo I know you are busy but why not RC patrol for a while. Not that we are desperate but experiencing difficulties of RC patrolers to devise a strategy accordingly. I welcome you to #wikipedia-en-vandalism on the server you regularly tag along with us. --Cool Cat 01:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It's in the New York Times, too. — Rickyrab | Talk 23:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC) Insisting on verifiable sources is already our policy, isn't it? If so, shouldn't we follow it? — Rickyrab | Talk 23:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Sugestion

Hi Jimmy:

I'm an sysop from pt.wikipedia. I Would like to give you a suggestion to improve the accountability of wikipedia articles:

I think it would be usefull a special page with a list of all the edits that were not verified by wikipedians in wich the community trusts (like the sysops). Only those trusted people, I will call it "verifiers" (choosed by voting by the community) were able to mark the edit as verified. In the recent changes, after that, we could be know how many "verifiers" have marked the article.

I think this change in wikimedia software is not difficult...

And may help against other John Seigenthaler Sr. case.

Thanks for all you have done! Manuel Anastácio 21:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A bunch of random thoughts on all of this

• Misplaced Pages is under construction. We're a long way from being decently complete on even basic issues, let alone publishing 1.0. Adjusting the expectations of finished product to decades rather than years might be appropriate.
• Logging of actions is central to our editorial processes.
• History is just a useful tool, not a collection of articles. It's the current version that counts.
• Fooling around too much with history can be painful, especially if the information that needs to be removed has stayed in the article through many good edits. Through GFDL, we have a legal obligation to authors of our articles to preserve the record of their authorship.
• We're well known and we aren't secretive. A rational semi-famous person should check their biography on Misplaced Pages and use the existing methods to raise any concerns. Maybe these methods should be made more obvious.
• Mirrors who copy our information are in a worse moral and possibly legal position on libel than we are, as they provide no method for misinformation to be remedied, and often no indication that the information hasn't been published as a finished text.
• The recent trend for better identification of individual revisions (cite this article, various schemes to provide links to peer reviewed revisions, etc.) might be making many of these issues worse, rathen than helping. It takes the focus off the current version and the wiki process.
• As Misplaced Pages becomes more well known, there will be many more readers than editors, and especially many more readers who won't instantly understand what it's all about. Maybe we need to make facts about Misplaced Pages more obvious to such readers.
• WP:AN/I, WP:AFD, IRC, and conflict resolution tend to concentrate the discussion of maintenance issues and help create a sense of community amongs editors who frequent them. They're also the most rapidly developing processes on Misplaced Pages, producing thousands of edits each day. This gives the false sense that this community is the same as or central to Misplaced Pages community at large.
• Maintenance can be controversial work, that's why we have all the workflow policies, to try to make it smoother. But it's also exhausting, and often takes many clicks for a single action, like nominating an article for deletion. It might be worth investigating integration of stabilized workflows into MediaWiki, to reduce wikistress.
• Engaging exclusively in some aspects of Misplaced Pages (or Wikimedia) distorts one's view on the encyclopedia and its editorship. Random article patrol gives a much better view of what wikipedia is actually like, and it's a great cure for wikistress.
• The IRC channel could use a more regular presence of "old-guard" respected editors with a good understanding of how community works, especially those that aren't primarily engaged in maintenance. I know that #wikimedia is much easier on the nerves, but #wikipedia is where the general feel for what's acceptable behaviour for members of the community, especially admins, is being created.
• My completely unscientific random-article survey suggest that we have less than 20.000 articles where edit practices are problematic. Some of these are on current issues, and will eventually settle down when the issues stop being current. Others are articles on controversial issues, which are often solved by somebody writing a good article. Both kinds are the most closely watched articles and vandalism on them is reverted practically instantly.
• We're progressing marvelously. We are much better than a year ago, and really really better than two years ago. We know that the current process works and we shouldn't be changing it without good data to suggest that changes would be beneficial.

And finally, the most important thing: What hooks people on wikipedia is that moment when you get the message that your test has been seen and removed, and an invitation to join the community and learn about its processes. That's when you make the leap of faith and decide that this weird concept might actually work. Please don't bite the newcomers. Zocky 21:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The current process is broken. Certain articles are so frequently vandalised that on any given day they remain in a vandalised state for 3.5% of the time regardless of how many administrators are watching the page. Hall Monitor 21:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

There's plenty of indication that our general quality is improving, so the current process seems to be working well for its purpose, writing an encyclopedia. Wheter it works well for consitently displying good versions of articles to readers is a different, and in IMHO, entirely secondary question, since we haven't published any finished version, nor should be having plans to do so in an immediate future. Zocky 22:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Agree with the stability issue of articles such as George W. Bush, I recomend semi-protection. Not the wikiest choice but better than protected and not-protected --Cool Cat 08:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Some statistics

I was curious to see what impact the recent change has had on the wiki. It looks like the last new page created by an IP user was "19:00, 5 December 2005 Inehrm (280 bytes) . . 201.144.73.61". What I did was look at the 24-hour periods right before and right after that.

Someone with direct DB access could probably give other interesting stats, but all in all, it seems like things are better and not overly impacted in a negative way. The incredible number of new accounts is probably not explanable by IP users alone. Misplaced Pages got a lot of press, which likely contributed to the new user registrations. -- Netoholic @ 21:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Can you compare that with figures for the same period last week? It would also be great if someone could find out how many of the new pages were speedied or afd'd. Zocky 22:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Going back that far in the logs is not something I would look forward to doing... and is probably really bad for server performance. I'm sure one of the database/tech guys (Jamesday?) could gathering some numbers. I'm not sure of a non-manual way of counting how many new pages were speedied/AFD'd. -- Netoholic @ 22:16, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandals now create accounts hence complicates the RC patrols job. We used to treat new articles from anons with suspicion now we also have to suspect users as there are less anon vandals now (however overal vandalism has not decreased and since the CNN comentary we have an increase in vandalism (at a point it was out of control)) --Cool Cat 01:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I know I'm interrupting, and I'm sure this has been hashed out elsewhere, but I'd like to say that, in my opinion, people should need an account to make any edits, and tying that to a verifiable email address would probably be a good idea as well. --DanielCD 01:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

That makes detection hard. People who dont bother to get accouns are more than likely one time vandals, long term users get an account without getting prompted. --Cool Cat 01:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and slaved away for a couple of hours, and tried to collect some data. I looked at the new pages From friday, 3 December that still exist. I checked last ten pages created in each of the hours, that's 240 pages. Unfortunately, my Firefox died a noble death after I had 80 something tabs open, so I mostly didn't get to do anything about pages that need attention. I also looked at the delete log for Friday. Trying to find out anything meaningful from there would require even more work than this, so I came up with a shortcut: I looked only at the pages in article space that were deleted with the standard summary "Content was foo and the only contributor was bar", and counted IPs and logged users. I reckon that roughly as many articles were deleted friday through AfD as there were nominated for AfD, so I went and pretended that all deleted articles were new pages and added them to the pages that still exist. Here are the results, along with extrapolated values for all new pages from Friday (numbers in italics are calculated, normal numbers are data I gathered):

It's bound to be off somewhat, but at least it's based on something. Maybe this should go to a more relevant page? Zocky 01:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism discussion should be moved to either a sub page or WP talk:VIP or even on WP:CVU this page is getting too large and it doesnt strictly concern Jimbo but the entier comunity. --Cool Cat 01:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

If that was you on IRC tonight...

Someone using jwales came onto the wikipedia-en-vandalism room on freenode and asked us if we chat in the room. We do have an all chat version of that room at #wikipedia-en-cvu. If that was you tonight...when you come on again, just pop into the vandalism room and we can all meet in the cvu room. --Woohookitty 02:14, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes that was me. I'm interested in a suggestion that zocky made about programming certain workflow processes into mediawiki to make life easier for patrollers. I'm wanting to learn: what do you do which takes 3 clicks which could in theory be reduced to 1 click? Things like that.

Coolcat recommended that I drop by the channel and actually do some patrolling myself. Sounds a hell of a lot more fun than talking to the press all day, that's for sure.--Jimbo Wales 02:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

One of the more annoying things than 3-clicks-instead-of-1 is the duplication of effort atm. 5-10 people might check a diff, and even try to revert it, before it scrolls off. Other times, when no-one's there, they scroll by, and are lost forever. I'm working on a way to fix this problem ;] --негіднийлють 02:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

If you would like a real world type example, Jimbo, take a simple vandal. When the "IP blanking a page" or "IP adding gibberish to a page" comes up in the wikipedia-en-vandalism room, we have to click on the diff first to see if it's vandalism. If it is, then us admins can click on the rollback button. Then we have to click back on our browser. And then click on "contribs" to see if this person is a persistant vandal and then back to the back button and then we have to click on the talk link to warn the person and then maybe the block user page to block the person. And again, this is if you're an admin. For non-admins, they have to go back to the history, click on an old version, etc, etc. So just for one piece of vandalism, it can take 2-3 minutes. I have no idea if it's even feasible, but it'd be great to be able to automate some part of the process. It's just like it'd be great if when we block a user, it could tell us if the user is blocked already. Right now, again, it's duplication of effort. When we go to block someone, we're given 0 indication as to whether some other admin got to it first, so we end up with people blocked 2-3-4 times, which is just a waste of effort and time.

Anyway, yeah, that'd be great. Come into the room for awhile and see what we do. There's other ways to RC Patrol but I really like the IRC room because the bot does do a good chunk of the work for us.

PS - Sorry for the wrong heading. Makes sense. I'm an admin. Over 14,000 edits. Been at this for almost a year and yet I often forget that darn second =. lol --Woohookitty 03:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You can use the intel function on my bot for ips, I am working on a way to make it work for usernames (given we now have magical increase in the hundereds of usernames created by the second just to vandalise a page... *sigh*). It is a tedious process.

Blocked usernames when diffs are loded should be identifyable, also wikimedia software should disallow multiple blocks on a user. it creates a number of problems. --Cool Cat 21:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Maybe I should rephrase that - we shouldn't integrate workflows into MediaWiki, but into the website. MediaWiki needs to provide features that would allow us to create somewhat automated workflows for writing the encyclopedia. We should take care that the features don't influence how things get done, only how much work it takes to do them. I can't speak for RC patrol, I mostly do writing, random article patrol and general improvements. Here's a bunch of things that I would find helpful. Zocky 04:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Some things that would help:

More ways to create dynamic content

If we had an augmented version of dynamicpagelist that could be customised to different inclusion criteria (by categories, by parentpage for subpages, etc.), different ways to sort the listed pages, show the content of the listed pages, etc., we could make mass discussion pages like the AfD, RfD, Village pump, Administrator noticeboard, etc. fully automated, so that they show only subpages which have been recently edited, according to the criteria we choose. We could even reintegrate all VfD's and have pages show only the kind of request the editor wants to see. This would both reduce the workload and make those pages more accessable and useful.

Dynamic creation of pages from templates

An often repeated procedure on wikipedia is substing a template to a subpage somewhere and then editing it to enter the data you want. We do this for all kinds of processes and it is quite tedious, especially so for things like AfD, where the current procedure is such:

1. put the tag into the article
2. preview, save
3. copy some code
4. click the blue link
5. paste in the copied code
6. preview, save
7. go back to the article
8. copy some code
9. click the red link
10. paste in the copied code
11. type an explanation
12. preview, save

Now, if there was some way to tell MediaWiki what to put in the editbox when you click a certain red link, much of the above could be skipped. Combined with a dynamically generated AfD page, the process could be reduced to:

1. put the tag into the article
2. preview, save
3. click the red link
4. type an explanation
5. preview, save

"customizable" edit pages

There are all kinds of things that a user should see before editing an article, but we keep those on talk pages, so the random reader never sees them. We could make the "edit this page" link accessable only through the talk page :) but that would be sort of unwiki. Another thing that we could do is allow editors to choose what to display above the edit box when a certain page is edited. That should in normal circumstances be things like todo lists and links to useful resources (like wikiprojects and relevant style manuals) but it may also include pointers to relevant discussions of controversial issues, setttled debates, etc. Limiting the length of this info in some way might be a good idea :) Hopefully, this would reduce the number of good faith bad edits and consequent discussions on several tangentially related talk pages.

Make categories not suck

• Categories are one of the best ways to find articles to work on, yet maintaining them is difficult and I think that not being able to visualise them is a big part of the problem. There should be an explorer-like thingy for categories (see screenshot of my crappy JS substitute to see what I mean), which would greatly reduce the number of clicks and/or open tabs when searching for articles to recategorize and categories to put them in.
• There is no easy way to watch category membership. There should be some kind of log for category membership.
• There should also be a way for members of a category to give some more information about themselves to the category. We have plenty of maintenance categories, but they're really hard to use, because finding an article that you are able to help with generally involves clicking on a bunch of links and checking out what the top tagbox gives as the reason that the article was tagged, or even worse, going to the talk page to find out. If the article could influence how it is listed in the category, we could leave those explanations in the tag, and easily find them in the categories. I'd say that a link like Chernobil (needs help from a physicist) or Isle of Man (lacks proper intro) in the cleanup category is more likely to be clicked by the right kind of person. Alternatively, we can make categories for each imaginable reason why an article is put on cleanup, but that requires users to learn dozens of categories. The same feature would be brilliant for articles that need to be listed differently in different categories, like James I in category:English monarchs and James VI in category:Scottish monarchs.

Thoughts from a patroller

Every once in a while, for 45 mins or so I'll sit in #wikipedia-en-vandalism and watch as the edits go by. I used to sit in #wikipedia-en-suspectedits too but that bot went down, which is a shame because it was good. I think the biggest problem right now is we have so many people trying to keep track of vandalism that nobody has time to go through and work on articles anymore. Also, around 6-10AM PST there is a lot of vandalism that seems to slip through the cracks.

What would be really cool is some sort of interactive network, like computer2 in #wikipedia-en-vandalism, but where all admins and accepted users(ones known not to be vandals) can check of checked diffs and then they disappear from the page so other people patrolling know that it's been taken care of and we don't have 10 admins going for the same diff. I guess it would be more of a seperate program, which I've seen quite a few, but none that are networked (if I'm wrong, please point me in the right direction).

as for the categories. I agree with the above poster.

PS. higher Tim Starling to join with Brion ;)

--Appleboy 04:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

edit, found User_talk:CryptoDerk/CDVF, and commented with my idea: User_talk:CryptoDerk/CDVF#what_would_be_really_cool

--Appleboy 04:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Editor notes

I am not an admin, but to fight vandals; re:what woohookitty said about multiple clicks, the clicking that I find most annoying is that after a reversion having to go to the history to refind the vandal, then go to them, their talk page, and leave a message welcoming them or warning them depending on the level of vandalism. As most of these messages have been templated if a short user message box was somehow incorporated in to the process where as part of a rollback a message to person being reverted field was availible (even if only for admins) it could be used to populated the common personalized welcome or generalized {{test}}<> templates. xaosflux /_C 04:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Amen to that --Appleboy 04:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Currently in order to revert a page

If done raw:

1. You need to load the history by clicking to it
2. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
3. Click on the version you want (load eveything on the page #2)
4. Click save
5. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)

If done through a diff link (generated by a bot):

1. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
2. Click on the version you want (load eveything on the page #2)
3. Click save

--Cool Cat 09:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

1. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)

Rollback button (admin only)

If done raw with rollback:

1. You need to load the history by clicking to it
2. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
3. Click on the version to rollback to (load eveything on the page #2)
4. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)

If done through a diff link (generated by a bot):

1. Load the diff by clicking on it (load eveything on the page #1)
2. Click on the version to rollback to (load eveything on the page #2)
3. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #3)

--Cool Cat 09:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Revert done through my bots IRC feed (using the revert link)

1. Load the version to revert to (without checking for the actual change) and click save (load eveything on the page #1)
2. Reverted versionappears: (load eveything on the page #2)

--Cool Cat 09:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Just wanted to add here that it's more than just reverting. We also need to usually warn or block the user, depending on the history. So there are more steps than this. --Woohookitty 21:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

RC patrolers dream

When wikipedia is slow stuff like this would help

Option 1:

1. Load the diff by clicking on it (without loading eveything on the page just the diff)
2. Click on a revert button (without loading eveything on the page just one button to revert as user already knows what action to take)
3. A message is displayed that revert has taken place but the page does not load.

Option 2:

1. Click on a URL (generated by a bot) (without loading eveything on the page just one button to revert as user already knows what action to take)
2. A message is displayed that revert has taken place but the page does not load.

--Cool Cat 09:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Recomendations

1. If we could load the diffs without the entier page (ie just the green and yellow boxes) dealing with small scale vandalism will be much easier. If diff was also avalible raw (machine readable not human friendly) it would be easier to seek for phrases like "hi mom" automaticaly. Currently the entier page needs to be loaded to check for an addition of 6 bytes (above example "hi mom"). RC patrolers are using 2,3 times the bandwith an annon uses inorder to revert them atm. --Cool Cat 09:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
2. On cases of an anon removing 60000 bytes from an article without an edit summary, I do not believe it is neccesary to even load the diffs so we should have a way to revert this without loading the page.

--Cool Cat 09:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Things to enhance detection grid

If the RC bots on irc.wikimediaog...

1. ...diplsyaed the total page size it would be easier/possible to catch vandalism on smaller pages
2. ...displayed an R for admin/user rollback it would be easier to identify real vandalism. The bot shows a M for "Minor edit" and an N for "New page"
3. ...anons were allowed to create new pages. Almost every page created by an anon is something useless and allowing them to post them as anons makes it easy to detect.
4. Semi protect for pages like George W. Bush
5. Longer blocks on IPs even shared ones. On high schools kids just love to vandalise wikipedia during the lunch break for example so its guranteed daily vandalism with 24 hour blocks.

Thats all I got for now. All mentioned here will not help cases such as "Seigenthaler Sr." directly. However when RC patrolers spend less time on more obvious cases of vandalism, cases like "Seigenthaler Sr." would be easier to catch. --Cool Cat 09:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Template

File:CVU2.PNG

This article is closely monitored by the Counter-Vandalism Unit for vandalism. Please use edit summaries to avoid your edits being mistaken as such.

A suggestion. Feel free to improve the template (as I am not happy with the wording). All articles currently "watched" by the CVU should be labeled with this assuming there are no objections. --Cool Cat 18:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

People like John Seigenthaler Sr. and CNN reporters dont know about our existance and are rightfully stressed. --Cool Cat 18:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm all for the idea, but where will the template be, and what would be the criteria to put it? We could put the template on the talk pages, (after all the template is "talk-page-yellow"), but vandals never go into talk pages. Should the template be on the bottom or the top of the article, or should it be applied to articles which are being currently vandalized, or very prone to vandalism, (similar to the spam template.)? --LBMixPro 22:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The template would go on talk, I dont think a formal criteria is necesary, everyone who RC patrols for a week knows which articles are just hammered with vandalism. --Cool Cat 22:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• Hell, I don't see why we shouldn't put that on every article. Might discourage some of this blantant vandalising. Maybe upon looking at the notice, anons will think twice about their insolense and make constructive edits -MegamanZero 0:06 9,December 2005 (UTC)