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Seriously, deeply concerned ...

...about the way our "Government" is evolving. I'm trying to hang on in here, by the skin of my teeth. I really don't like this "Government". It reminds me far too much of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. And also of the Ceaușescu regime. And of the Forced disappearances in so many places. And of Lord of the flies and Animal farm.

"Disappearances work on two levels: not only do they silence opponents and critics who have disappeared, but they also create uncertainty and fear in the wider community, silencing others who would oppose and criticise."

We're living in a scary place, right now. First they came….

I may be around from time to time, but certainly not as before. Surely this isn't what you meant by a "community"? Pesky (talk) 08:17, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's a lovely dramatic turn of phrase, but can you be more specific about a particular problem that I might learn something from?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:47, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

It's about the blocks of User:Penyulap and his talk page, as discussed at User talk:Courcelles and a few other locations. Fram (talk) 10:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

No, not, it's not just about that, at all. It's an accumulation of a number of things in a number of places. That's just one thing. A previous one, which I found very deeply concerning, was when ArbCom were asked for clarification on an issue, and brought out the firing squad as opposed to clarifying a point of law (which was all they were asked for). A total failure to understand the question asked of them, and an apparent failure to realise the concerns and consensus there. Pesky (talk) 10:06, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not about that? Well, if it had been about that, it would be worth noting that one of the major participants in the discussion at User talk:Courcelles has just now been blocked for two weeks on a different matter, but with an explanation at WP:AN that "I have blocked for two weeks, which I think was fairly generous, especially considering the personal attacks and the battleground mentality on User talk:Courcelles' talk page". I'm worried that this may enhance your dramatic turns of phrase, though :-) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 10:20, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I apologise for not being able to keep up with things. Real Life, ya know, getting in the way. this is one of the others. (As far as I recall, this is the one and only time I ever flew off the handle in the 'pedia. Yes, I hurled obscenities, myself ... very unlike me.) I wish it were easier to find archived requests – I've had to do a cowboy-cobble to get to (probably not all) of this. I'm not referring to any particular situation that affects me personally, here, just what seems to be developing into a very heavy-handed approach all around. Pesky (talk) 10:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Demi, dearest, I know you've predicted this, but that example is a little bit disturbing. If the block were required (and I'm certainly not saying it's not required, under the letter of the law), it would have been so much better if it hadn't been applied by someone who was involved in an argument with the user at the same time ... who hadn't just told the blocked person "You're not discussing, you're engaging in a torch-and-pitchforks procession. I strongly advise you to disengage and let someone else deal with this who doesn't have an ax to grind." So much better for this to have been done by someone who was disengaged from any current / recent disputes with the editor in question, and couldn't possibly be seen, by anyone, as having an ax to grind.

Adding: the above may very well not violate the letter of WP:INVOLVED, but it certainly appears to violate the spirit of it. Things like this do get gamed, in many places, though I'm not necessarily suggesting that this was deliberate gaming. Pesky (talk) 10:36, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it is being gamed, though perhaps not in the way you think. A phenomenon I've seen increasingly frequently in the past years is people setting themselves up in the role of a "critic of authority" and using that as a shield for their misbehaviour. Whenever someone tries to put them to task over the disruption, cue the cries of "They're trying to silence a critic!" The sad thing? It works more often than not. Most of the administrators then turn a blind eye and avoid acting for fear of being "repressive" given our powerful culture against that – and the arbitrators are even more strongly tied up given the scrutiny.

Is this everyone who claims "repression"? Certainly not. Still, someone much wiser than I once said "When someone screams about 'admin abuse', it's most likely true – they're probably abusing admins again." It bears keeping to mind before you take every claim from self-designated martyrs at face value. — Coren  14:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware that this happens. However, in attempting to shut up those who are gaming the system in that way, we need to be very careful that we're not also silencing those who aren't: those who are genuinely concerned that something has gone / is going very wrong. It's very tempting (and human nature) to tar everyone with the same brush. And it's almost always wrong to. Adding: there is always the thing, of course, where everyone who criticises is seen as "misbehaving". Pesky (talk) 14:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

That's true, but I believe that's actually very rare. I don't remember every seeing someone setting themselves up as a critic that got in trouble over the criticism rather than actual disruption – I'm sure they exist (and are possibly fairly common given the generally libertarian outlook of Wikipedians) but since they tend to never pop up on the drama boards, they keep a low profile and never end up in the limelight.

With one (very salient) exception, I don't recall a high-profile critic that was a critic before they got sanctioned for some problematic behaviour. — Coren  14:37, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

(Coughs) – iridescent 14:42, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm not "high-profile", I suppose. But I am (kinda by definition!) a critic. And I've never (yet) been sanctioned for any problematic behaviour. Pesky (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Me, too. And I think that others with messageboxes similar to that of Boing! said Zebedee also fit the bill. There is a problem at the moment. - Sitush (talk) 14:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

(e/c) Well yes, that's my point. I doubt you'll find anyone here even thinking of (virtually) roughing you up over that criticism! There is no conspiracy to take you out, nor "attempts to bait you", nor even people trying to find a nit to hang you over.

Let me put it this way: this project's community is so fundamentally permissive of criticism and anti-authoritarian in nature that even the trolls that pose as critics are left to disrupt and consume community resources – sometimes over years – over the reluctance of even appearing to be repressive. That is why I take it with a five-ton grain of salt when someone who ends up over and over on the drama boards is crying "Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" — Coren  14:52, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

@Coren

Would you please address Pesky's concern about ArbCom turning a request for clarification into an attempted banning of an editor (before most of them came to their senses)?

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:36, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

It was neither unprecedented nor particularly surprising; there is a reflex – not entirely unwarranted – to re-evaluate whether an editor's continued participation is beneficial on the whole when they have returned in front of the committee for the umpteenth time over the same issue. Would I have voted to ban him? I don't know. I haven't evaluated the situation, nor was it my job to do so. I do think that some of the comments from the sitting arbs were catastrophically asinine (on both sides of the discussion) and I will certainly vote accordingly come next elections.

Do I believe that this is indicative of a fundamental problem of repression or political payback? I know it isn't. I know for a fact that the poor sods currently sitting on the committee are doing the best they can to help the project, to the limits of their ability. Mostly it works out on average, sometimes it blows up. I certainly will be voting against some of the current arbitrators (not just over that incident), but I see no justification for heaping scorn on the group, the institution, or even those individuals whose judgement I find most lacking. I was in that seat. I know it's a fucking hard job. I know that even those I think should not be within 10' of the committee have willingly taken a shit responsibility for trying to do the Right Thing even if it means being spat upon and crapped all over as your sole reward, and they deserve respect if only for that. Disagree with them. Vehemently if you feel the need for it. Campaign, or run for a seat yourself. But do yourself and everybody else a service and stop imagining vast conspiracies to "get" some editors, or to take over, or whatever else is the reproach du jour. — Coren  16:20, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I've skimmed the rest of this conversation, but right now I really just want to make one point, directed at Pesky's original post: Pesky, are you aware how painful it is to be someone working in the "government" to help the encyclopedia run, and to see you saying we're basically committing genocide, murder, real-life horrors? I know you say you're very concerned about civility and not hurting people, so I'm really very surprised to see you tarring all admins with such a horribly offensive brush, especially when you're then hurrying to add that we're all so truly, deeply horrible that we're sure to arrange for you to "disappear" next because you dared call us the war criminals we are. No, I don't want you dead. No, I don't want anyone dead. I don't want the worst trolls I've ever encountered "dead" or "disappeared" or "sent to Siberia" or "given smallpox-ridden blankets," and I think I speak for pretty much every other admin on Misplaced Pages when I say that when you make statements implying that we do, or that we are just as bad as people who do, you are alleging very serious things about people who have never done anything to you. I don't understand quite why you dislike all of us so much when 99.99% of us have never had a thing to do with you, or why you feel it's ok to hurl such horrible words at us as if we don't have feelings and don't count, but I wish you'd give some thought to the fact that you're hurting real, live human beings when you go on about how we're less than human. It doesn't make the people you think are being victimized any better off for you to turn and victimize others. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

A fluffernutter is a sandwich, if it is so painful "to be someone working in the "government" to help the encyclopedia run", there's an easy way out of that "government" and its pain: just resign your position in the goverment, and go write the encyclopedia. 67.169.11.52 (talk) 17:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello logged-out/IP editor. Do you genuinely think that the best response to being hurt by what someone says is to resign and stop helping? If we all did that, things would cease to function around here very rapidly, and we might be able to power a small country with the force of all the "whoosh"ing as people go out the door. My personal feeling is that a better place to start is to ask the person to reconsider what value they're getting from using dehumanizing or offensive terms. Often they don't even realize that they've crossed a line or hurt you; other times having attention drawn to it will make them reconsider their strategy even if they knew what they were doing. In a similar "ask to reconsider" vein, I would point out that you appear to be conflating "administrator" with "has never written an article or otherwise contributed to Misplaced Pages content". Could I perhaps urge you to reconsider that notion? I'm in the middle of the pack as far as creating and improving articles - that is, I work steadily, but I am by no means a "top" creator - but I think you'll find any number of admins around here who create or improve tons of articles (as well as any number of non-admins who don't; for instance, under this IP address the only thing you appear to have done on Misplaced Pages is speak here on Jimbo's talk. That doesn't mean I get to look down my nose at you, as long as you're operating in good faith and trying to help). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:20, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Arbcom places restriction on editor. Editor edits in line with written wording of restriction but not in spirit (continuing the same behavior that the restriction was placed in an attempt to prevent). An administrator raises clarification request as admin actions taken in line with enforcing spirit of restriction are contested by editor. Arbcom leans towards banning due to the ongoing behavior but settles for re-wording the restriction to make it say unambiguously what the editor must not do. Entirely within their remit. If you dont want to end up at Arbcom, dont skirt around things arbcom have sanctioned you not to do. Pesky's complaint is about not following due process, however the due process here would have been for Arbcom to a)clarify intent of restriction, b)wait until someone raises an AE enforcement request or an amendment request. Its needless process wonkery given everyone was already on the same page after clarifying it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I can understand Pesky’s point of view, as the past few months have been very unsteady in certain circles. Malleus Fatuorum spent nearly 24 hours under threat of a ban at ArbCom. Large portions of the community spoke out against this and Malleus’ ban proposal lead to a number of editors going on strike. Penyulap is an example of a blocked editor who was trying to improve the encyclopedia, who has been blocked and unblocked from editing his talk page multiple times, along with his talk page fully protected (in no small part by sitting Arbitrators). I’m sure you’ll see editors here with an axe to grind.

The reason that these two cases are linked and the reason that Pesky has posted here is that they both involve civility complaints and de-humanisation of editors. In Malleus’ case, Jclemens suggested that he “is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Misplaced Pages community” as Malleus did not abide by all 5 pillars. In Penyulap’s case, similar to many blocked editors – his userpage has been blanked and tagged (), his talk page has been blanked and fully protected with accusations of trolling () - both actions have since been undone. I’m not commenting about the validity of any statements or actions – they are all debateable. If anyone want’s my opinion on these cases, I’d be happy to give them at my talk page.

What I am trying to highlight though is how we as a community treat people. From the comments made in the request for clarification to the comments made to blocked users to Pesky’s comments above, highlighted by Fluffernutter – which tar the “government” as similar to those responsible for atrocities. These are all uncivil comments, because civility means treating people like people. I was bored the other day and put together a list of contradictions between standard wikispeak and what I’d consider to be civil. We’re on the internet, it’s easy to forget that the editor you’re talking about is a real person, with real feelings. It’s a problem with an anonymous society and I don’t have a solution. Worm(talk) 16:48, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

• Jimbo, while we are talking about Arbcom I'd like to ask you about this email "And have you stopped beating your wife yet? Jimmy, I don't know if you have noticed, but you're not getting a heck of a lot of support for this block even from Arbcom, and most of us aren't all that impressed with Bishonen calling someone a little shit either.I speak only for myself here, but you missed the boat on this block entirely. You did not take time to inform yourself of the circumstances that led to the use of unacceptable language (an edit war when Daedelus kept putting "Retired" templates on a histrionic editor's userpage), and your entire response since then is to start off by personally attacking the person you blocked, and spending days putting words in her mouth. If you were any other admin, you'd be admonished at minimum. So....consider yourself admonished by me, at least." This email was written by one of your arbitrators and sent to the list and to you. There's nothing wrong with this email: an arbitrator disagrees with the block you imposed and makes her opinion known, expect in the next email Risker admits she sent this first email by a pure accident, and writes: "I apologize to everyone on this list, but most especially to Jimmy, for this outburst, which I never intended to make public." Jimbo, do you see any problem at all with your ArbCom? After all at least one one of your arbitrators has not enough honesty to say publicly what she really thinks. 67.169.11.52 (talk) 16:36, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Ah, yes, Risker committed the heinous crime of accidentally copying a strongly worded email she intended to be a private complaint on a mailing list, then had the gall to apologize for the mistake of unwittingly making public what she meant to remain private. Such evildoing must not be left unpunished! — Coren  16:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    "a private complaint"? Wasn't this "private complaint" a little bit too private? What's the point in writing "a private complaint" that is not intended to be shared with anyone? This is not only Risker's problem. Most Wikipedians are afraid to speak up publicly because of the risk of retribution, but guess what, a person cannot be honest only in private. A person cannot be unafraid only in private. 67.169.11.52 (talk) 17:34, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    By sharing it with the person to whom you are complaining? It's a polite thing to do when you have cencerns with what someone did by talking it over with them and not making a public dramafest out of this. Not that the concerns expressed there weren't already being discussed in less personal terms on the mailing list by the arbitrators, but you wouldn't know this since you're citing out of context from a leak in order to denigrate someone; and facts do tend to get in the way of a good tar-and-feathering, right? — Coren  17:39, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    I agree with this, but how did get an idea that Risker intended to send this email to anybody at all? 67.169.11.52 (talk) 17:43, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    ... because she did send it? I mean, this was clearly addressed directly to Jimmy; that she clearly didn't intend to send it to the mailing list has no bearing on the matter. Or perhaps she didn't intend to send it out at all after writing it – some people write in anger to vent and then think better of it once they cool down. That's also a very good method of behaving cordially in a tense environment (one which I wish I had used on occasion myself). Both scenarios seem commendable to me and paint Risker in a fairly good light, yet you seem to think this is worthy of censure? — Coren  18:36, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    Coren, this email was not going to be sent at all. You do not believe me? Okay, let Risker speak for herself: "So there I was killing time while "on hold" by cleaning out my draft folder - you know, the one where you stick those emails you'll probably delete when you've gotten over whatever insanity you're suffering at the moment - and somebody in the next office plugged in a fan." As you see Risker was going to delete this email. She calls her attempt to be honest "whatever insanity you're suffering at the moment". So as you could see there's only one possible scenario in regards to Riscker's email, and this scenario paints Risker in a very bad light I am afraid. 67.169.11.52 (talk) 21:32, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    I don't see how it paints in a bad light. What's wrong with venting in writing without planning to send? ...and this was how many years ago? What's the point of this now? --Onorem♠Dil 21:40, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

    You call it "venting". I call it "being honest only in private". "Being honest only in private" is a dangerous condition, and most members of Wikipeia's "goverment" suffer from it. Of course many other members of Wikipeia's "goverment" are never honest even in private. 67.169.11.52 (talk) 23:00, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

@Fluff (and all those sharing Fluff's views): yes, I actually do understand how difficult it can be to be in a governmental-type situation. I really do. I can (kinda) imagine the amount of pure crap wossname that arrives in the email every day; I can sure as heck understand the levels of stress which can be involved. Fing is, though, fing is ... that a lot of good people are seeing things going wrong. Not just "all the usual suspects". We seem to be swinging towards more and more draconian measures to deal with what are sometimes really semi-trivial little things. And draconian measures, unless the levels of absolute pure justice are unimpeachable, are always something to be very cautious about.

Oh, umm, errmmm .... I didn't actually tar all admins with the same brush. And I didn't actually call everyone war criminals. I just said I'm being reminded of various oppressive regimes, where the voices of critics and "the puling masses" can just get silenced. It seems that my original concern has been kinda twisted around a bit; almost certainly unintentional, I know, but still a little hurtful to see what I was trying to say being distorted into some kind of all-out name-calling attack against all admins and all arbs ... Pesky (talk) 18:17, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, you did invoke Godwin in your opening paragraph; that's rarely conductive to cool heads even with the very best intentions and some people are bound to take offence. That said, I don't think anyone is making light of your concerns, but I do think you're worrying for the wrong reasons. I think that fear of an oppressive regime on Misplaced Pages are not warranted. Yes, there are critics that end up in trouble. No, I don't believe it ever occurred that they ended up in trouble because they were critics. Some may have gotten in trouble over the manner of the criticism (trolling, or disrupting to make the point) that would have been welcomed if they had behaved, some were critics that ended up in trouble for unrelated reasons, and some simply played the role of critics as a cynical ploy to shield themselves from consequence of their unrelated misbehaviour.

If I ever find someone who was ousted or harassed because they held or expressed critical views, I'd be the first to take up arms to protect them. — Coren  18:45, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

(after much edit conflicting) Really, either you're making a point that Misplaced Pages's admins are operating like dictatorships that "disappear" people - in which case it's appropriate for you to say we remind you of war criminals - or you're making some other point entirely, in which case saying we remind you of this dictator, that maniac, and this book about how people get off on abusing each other is...not only misplaced, but very unnecessarily inflammatory. I feel like I say the phrase "unnecessarily inflammatory" a lot lately. That's probably because people on Misplaced Pages are prone to using hyperbolic, extreme language to describe what could be described much more calmly, and then being surprised when the extreme language is interpreted as them saying what they mean to say. Let's try an analogy. I know you love your ponies, right? So suppose I think you've overworked one of them one day, and I wander up and I say to you, "God, watching you work that pony reminds me of the guy who just got arrested for slowly dismembering dogs while enjoying their pain. No, more than that. I'm reminded of that other guy who who doused a horse with gasoline and then lit it on fire, and then posted on youtube." You, obviously, would get upset. How could I say such a thing about you? You love your ponies and you would never, ever purposely injure one of them or be cruel to them or enjoy them suffering! Would it be appropriate for me to then see how upset you were and say, "What? I'm hurt that you think I was comparing you to cruel, animal-killing maniacs! You've twisted around my point, which was just that you've overtired your pony and I think you shouldn't do that!" And really, maybe that is all I meant. But I sure did a bad job of saying that, didn't I, since instead I somehow managed to compare you to horrible abusers of animals? In other words, if what you want to say is "I think we need to be careful about interpreting criticism itself as disruption", then you can say that very well without throwing out things that look like accusations that the administrators here are maniacs who not only disapprove of criticism, but will take any violent, destructive means necessary to keep people from seeing it. I believe you if you say that wasn't your point, but I question why you then felt you needed to couch your point in language dehumanizing admins as horrible criminals.

The problem with doing that - the problem with overreaching your analogy to the very end of that slippery slope, with implying we are the very worst of the worst, is that you're spiking your own guns. If that's what you think of admins who you haven't even met yet, or haven't even had a conflict with - and all signs until your latest comment point(ed) to that being what you were trying to get across - how can we learn from you at all? If I'm going to be thought of as Ceaușescu whether I block vandals, or I never once use the block button, or I counsel everyone I can get my hands on and only block as a catastrophic last resort, how would I know whether I'm actually doing anything wrong with any of those? There's no real feedback here; I'm assumed to be horrible no matter what I'm doing. If you really want people to hear and understand what you're afraid you see happening, and you want us to be able to act on it, you have to speak in realistic terms, actually explaining what the problem is, because those are the only type of terms that give people something to act on that might satisfy you. Godwinning, on the other hand, alienates the very people - those reasonable, calm, non-abusive admins - that you want to be listening to your concerns. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:04, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

What Fluff said, really. You're twisted and hurt that we took offence at comparisons to brutal, autocratic and in many cases genocidal regimes? You didn't intend repeated citing of brutal, autocratic and genocidal regimes as things that reminded you of us to imply that we reminded you of brutal, autocratic and genocidal regimes? And that when you said "government" you didn't mean to tar all its members, or even the majority of the members, just some of the members? I'm having a hard time AGFing on all of that. I would suggest that if you don't intend for things to come out like that you try not to start a discussion by invoking godwin's law. Ironholds (talk) 19:11, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

:o( That's not what I meant. I apologise if anyone thought I was calling them, personally, names. And I didn't see this as a "me vs. them" thing, at all. So I'm a bit confused by references to "us". I note Coren said That is why I take it with a five-ton grain of salt when someone who ends up over and over on the drama boards is crying "Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" But I wasn't crying that I was being repressed, and I don't end up over and over on the drama boards ... if I were only better at expressing myself (or finding links to oppressive situations / regimes / whatevers which aren't "brutal, autocratic and genocidal "). I'm concerned; maybe I could have found better wording (but Real Life is a bi@tch and a half at the minute), and all that really happens seems to be a kinda pile-on Yell At Pesky thing. Never mind. Pesky (talk) 19:25, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

The danger of speaking so metaphorically as you did, Pesky, is that it results in wide ranges of interpretation. I can see why some were offended, but I can also see where you were trying to come from. I won't speak to the specific cases that brought you here, but I will say that I support Coren's arguments. As a general rule, the first people to scream "oppression!" are often those who feel that hurling abuse at others is the most effective way of backing up their criticism. So when they get sanctioned for being abusive, they cry that it was instead due to the criticism itself. The problem at this point, IMNSHO, is not the "repressive regime", the rules or even the abusive critic. The problem is the enablers. The abusive critic rallies their supporters, earning just enough support to continue doing what they were doing. Consequently, a frustrated community reacts to the abusive critic, and you create feedback loops, hurt feelings and repetitive complaints. It is those enablers that cause these problems by not taking the abusive editor to task. Give an abusive person a sense of entitlement and invulnerability, and nothing good will come of it. It's like training an attack dog and setting them lose on the community. Resolute 20:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

• I know and understand exactly what Pesky was rather clumsily tying to say at the beginning of this thread , and I, unsurprisingly, agree with it. That we have Coren talking his usual load of hypocritical bollox “’’If I ever find someone who was ousted or harassed because they held or expressed critical views, I'd be the first to take up arms to protect them. — Coren (talk) 18:45, 6 November 2012 (UTC)’’” is equally unsurprising. I can’t be arsed to find the link to prove how he behaves, but I’m sure someone can if he wants to argue it – he can be dismissed. The way Misplaced Pages’s leadership behaves is becoming increasingly cult-like, mysterious and unpleasant and is one of the reasons I have largely withdrawn. This blasted and ridicuous, overused Godwin’s law prevents a lot of honest opinion, to such an extent it could have been drafted by Adolf Hitler himself. Now, put that in your pipes and smoke it. Giano (talk) 19:56, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

  Interestingly(?) enough, you are the one salient example I was speaking of; the one case I know of of someone who became a stern critic as a result of having been wronged. — Coren  20:53, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh I remember your concern well: Odd isn't it how this quote is removed from your contributuons record ~ I wish I had such magical friends . Giano (talk) 22:37, 6 November 2012 (UTC):

"*Giano, your paranoid delusions are taking a turn for the worse. I'm hoping this blows over soon before you cover yourself with ridicule, because your contributions (especially in architecture) are valuable; but you are quickly expending what little credibility you have left by insisting that the windmills are giants. The only place there is a conspiracy is in your own overactive imagination. You're being confused by a consuming grudge over an imagined slight to the point of twisting everything that happens into self-fulfilling confirmation of your delusion. And, to prove the point, you'll now deem me part of that conspiracy (if I wasn't already) for pointing this out.

Take a break away from Misplaced Pages for a few months and do something else to clear your head, or go and discuss things with a health professional. "Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed." — Coren (talk) 17:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)"

• I have restored (it was removed overnight ) this comment above by Corent to my post as it's an exampled of how a sitting Arb (as Coren was at the time) can attack an editor, without rebuke from his peers) and then have the comment removed from his contributions, while at the same time condemning incivility and bullying. This is a prime example of the way that Misplaced Pages is run and it concerns many and it needs to change. Giano (talk) 07:46, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so very magical, sadly. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

You can find a verbatim copy there. It was on a page that ended up deleted in an unrelated discussion, but I've nothing to hide. That comment, of course, was intemperate and quite a bit nasty – which is why I've reconsidered and reverted it swiftly. I fail, however, to see how that's relevant to what I've been saying here. — Coren  23:09, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, you reverted your own post within less than a minute of making it. It was Giano, in his great wisdom, that chose to restore it himself. Mind you, this was more than two years ago now, I think. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:59, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

• Rich Farmbrough, currently blocked, wanted someone to post his message here. Just doing it procedurally. Wifione 03:32, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

This idea that Misplaced Pages is not "Real Life" is fallacious. I have had at lest two editors contacting me saying that they were suffering ill health because of abuse on Misplaced Pages, and two who have felt close to taking their own lives. In every case but one administrators (individuals, not as a cadre) were responsible. You have to remember our editor demographic corresponds very closely to the suicide demographic. It is only a matter of time before "Misplaced Pages editor takes own life" is a headline, and I just hope that when that evil day happens none of us have anything to reproach ourselves with. (Note: We have of course lost editors to suicide, but not due to Misplaced Pages as far as I know.)Rich Farmbrough, 03:24, 7 November 2012 (UTC). (posted in edit-2346. -Wikid77 06:16, 7 November 2012 (UTC))

Good point. There is such a thing as a community here – the only community for some active members. It is time we acknowledged this and began insisting on more humane treatment of each other; we should, at the very least, observe the norms of a functional workplace. One aspect of the governance problem that Pesky points to is slowing our progress toward a more humane ethos here: admins with little social wisdom lording it over others are virtually unremovable. They have no idea what real incivility is, what it can do to recipients, how it undermines genuine debate, or that it matters. These tin-eared misfits are numerous enough to defend each others' behaviour and influence the mores of the rest of the community. Not sure what the answer is. (It would help if we didn't elect such people to ArbCom, though.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:03, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Very smart comments from Anthonyhcole. Pesky was alluding simply to abuse of position & power, which everyone agrees is "bad", but people pile on to criticize examples of abuse of power, only meant to highlight why abuse is 'bad' thru exaggeration to make a point, because they have no other argument. Pesky is right. The environment & culture is tending repressive. I wake up every morning wondering if I have been indef-blocked (again) for having made conscientious comment I can support and back up. The Request for Clarification re Malleus morphed into a ban proposal, the criticisms of abuse of process are obviously reasonable. (WP doesn't want anarchy, does it?) I made a couple light exchanges w/ Penyulap re Elen, and they've apparently been rolled into "trolling" accusation which rationalized a further block of access to his Talk. Admins have been clearly extra-authoritative and trivially oriented IOM, presumably to assert their buttons & egos, which just produces resentment and complaints re obvious fairness issues, which are marginalized to "there is no justice" mantra. The resentment smolders & grows. Pesky is pointing to something real. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 06:11, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

It happens a great deal. I can understand why people get hurt and offended by less-than-wise use of language (which I fully admit to, but I couldn't think of many linkable examples of abuse of power). BUT ... here's the big "but" ... this is what happens. The harshest input comes not from addressing the point I was trying to get across. We probably need, as a whole, to focus much more on what someone is trying to say, rather than attacking the way they said it. Anyhoo, that's it from me here (on this page). Anyone wanting to know what Real Life is like at the mo has only to visit my talk, and just read. Pesky (talk) 06:26, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

• Term limits and leadership lottery re Plato: As before, I favor term limits for admins, to again become non-admin users after so many years of membership in admin factions, but then I also favor "mandatory wikibreaks" where users agree to schedule time away to prove they are not addicted, well, not "overly addicted". However, I am channeling Plato with ideas I haven't remembered in years, specifically the selection of random leaders, as in:

"Dear User:X, as a long-term user beyond 3 years, you have been selected at
random to become a one-year junior admin, do you accept this offer?"

I cannot quickly verify the concept was fully Plato's idea or perhaps Socrates (remember I'm channeling here), but the general concept is to avoid cronyism by spreading administrative power, by random appointments, among qualified people to deter cliques of people (aristocracy) from all seeking related powers. The idea is related to the "philosopher king" issues. By having a level as "junior admin" then the powers could be kept limited, and perhaps a chosen junior admin might, months later, submit a wp:RfA to become a full-fledged admin, not limited to the "one-year" (or 6-month?) term as a junior admin. At least, with randomized leadership, there would be fewer us-versus-them groupings, which seem to be quite common these days. -Wikid77 06:58, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

The "philosopher king" concept is indeed Plato's, but the idea of officials being chosen by lot in order to avoid cronyism would be better attributed (albeit with a level of uncertainty) to the reforms of Solon about a century earlier. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 11:08, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I lied, above ... I haven't quite finished here. Has anyone else noticed the weird thing? There seem to be two conflicting no-win views here: #1 is "If you've been oppressed, you probably deserved it! Stop whining!", and #2 is: "Why are you having a go about this? Nobody's ever done you any harm?" So ... who can actually try and point out stuff like this, if neither the people who may have been directly affected nor the people who haven't been have any perceived right to do so?

The trouble is, partly (I think) that people's politely-worded concerns simply get ignored, belittled, brushed under the carpet, not really addressed, until it gets to the point where they're so frustrated that they yell. And then all that happens is they're told off for yelling ... Pesky (talk) 11:18, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Stop it! It is ungood to present logical argument. You will be *blocked* from editing if you persist in this tendentious and battleground behavior. This is your final warning. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 11:40, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Pesky (talk) 12:23, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Ahhh. So ... any ideas on how the community can actually improve on this one? Because it is a real problem. And I'm not here because I've personally "been oppressed" and am whining about it. Nothing I've "brought on myself". Stuff like that. And it's a much bigger, more extensive problem than just one or two cases. Also, I'm not here "because I'm an enabler" (and when someone can get blocked for calling a group of editors sycophants, and anyone thinks that's OK, then nobody should think it's OK to call any other editors enablers, fan-club, posse, supporters or anything else which means the same thing; either both are just fine or neither is).I'm here because I'm seriously, deeply concerned about what's happening to the atmosphere in our community. And a lot of other people are, too. They just might not all be prepared to stick their necks out. Pesky (talk) 04:49, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't calling you an enabler, Pesky, so my apologies if you took it that way. I was speaking in general terms. We have the abusive/oppressed (depending on your point of view) and the oppressors/defenders (again, depending) as the obvious groups in this dynamic. But without speaking to any specific cases, there are those who wrap the enablers around themselves as a shield or as a weapon. We will never resolve these issues by pretending they don't exist. The motives of these enablers will vary - some won't realize the role they are playing, and therefore are being used. Some just like fucking with the system. A few are malicious, and use the person they are enabling like an attack dog. Most are actually acting honestly, thinking they are doing right. But you know what they say about good intentions and the path it can lead one down. Regardless, any solution has to consider more than just the oppressed/oppressor point of view. Because Misplaced Pages has editors who are basically professional victims. They will abuse the system, cry out for support, and paralyze the community. They become a drain on volunteer time, morale and resources. But you are right that Misplaced Pages has legitimate victims - on both sides. The amount of abuse some at all levels put up with - including arbitrators - is ridiculous. Consequently, I would argue an important first step is to separate the truly abused from those that only act the part. Resolute 05:08, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Term Limits would certainly make for a very different governance of our community, and if we only had a limited number of mops then they might be useful. But there are drawbacks to term limits, especially when you consider that we want unpaid volunteer admins between them to be around 24/7 365 days of the year. With our existing setup we are beginning to get worrying gaps, and that is with circa 700 admins. A much smaller group of admins would struggle to avoid having the occasional hour long gap at AIV. By contrast if our existing active admins drop another 10% a year then we could be some time before we have to look at options such as pure wiki deletion (though the AIV gaps will get worse). With term limits there would also be a huge loss of experience, and a smaller newer admin cadre will almost by definition be making more mistakes of inexperience. But there is also the issue of specialism, at the moment we get by with a large number of admins many of whom only get involved in areas of adminship that they feel comfortable in. The fewer admins we have the more psychological pressure there will be for all our remaining admins to be able to do any admin task, consequently we can expect a higher error rate from our reduced number of admins. But the most serious argument against term limits for admins is that it will exacerbate the existing divide caused by the scarcity factor, and the lack of mainspace editing by specialist admins. We are already seeing all sorts of signs of tension between admins and other editors, and some misjudgements by Arbcom that I can only put down to Arbcom members having no time to edit and thereby losing touch with the community; The fewer admins we have and the more mistakes they make the worse that will get. What we really need is to replace RFA with some sort of process that appoints all experienced clueful editors as admins. If everyone is an admin or could be in a few months then the admin/nonadmin tensions will melt away, and the admin who only does admin type stuff will thankfully be very much an exception. ϢereSpielChequers 19:20, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Section break

Yup, that's the really difficult bit! However, I think we could look at ways of trying to reduce the instances of heavy-handedness, where the punishment (OK, OK, I know stuff is supposed to be "preventative, not punitive") is OTT for the crime, and possibly consider retributive/vengeful "OK, I'll find something else to block you for, not related to my argument with you" workarounds for WP:INVOLVED. 'Nother thing to consider ... how about putting some kind of a limit on the number of times any one admin can block any one other individual? I know that it wouldn't get over the "Oh, he just asked one of his friends to block me instead!" response (which could be applicable either to a perfectly good block on a genuine offender, or to an atrocious one), but after a while a genuinely abusive admin would possibly run out of "friends" because they'd all exceeded the limit as well, whereas in the case of genuinely blockable offences the pool of available admins to do the blocking should never run out. The other thing this might get over is the feeling, from the blockee, that a particular admin is responsible for too great a number of their blocks and is hounding them. What about some more possibilities like that? Pesky (talk) 12:09, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

OK Pesky. You find half a dozen instances over the past year of an admin repeatedly blocking the same user.

• It must be the same account - you can't count blocking a basket of socks as 'repeatedly blocking'
• fiddling around with the block log eg to remove or permit talkpage access doesn't count as reblocking,
• and it must be more than twice, to allow for the admin raising a block on condition that the editor doesn't....(edit war or whatever), and reblocking when the editor does it again.

And then we'll all look and decide whether this is an actual problem that happens all the time on the pedia, and needs rules to stop those dreadful admins beating up the poor users without any redress at all. Or not. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:41, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Admins don't repeatedly block the same user , they know they would not be able to get away with that - however they also don't need to - it would be naive to think that there are not groups of admins working together. - Pesky has made a couple of perceptive comments as to how the current admin model is disaffecting a lot of contributors Youreallycan 15:29, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed - cliques are a phenomenon found in pretty much every group of humans, so it would be pretty odd if we didn't have 'em here. But to achieve anything, the focus needs to be on what the actual problems are, not on proposing solutions for things which manifestly aren't problems in the format expressed. Pesky is a good editor to ask these questions, because she's never been blocked, so no-one can say (as they would to you or Keifer) "oh you're just complaining because you keep getting blocked" (subtext, you keep getting blocked, you must deserve it). And I agree that a lot of Pesky's observations are good. But we've been round this course a few times now, and suggested solutions that don't get anywhere near the core problems just cause the discussion to dissipate.--Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Administrator abuse is a problem. Jimbo and ArbCom have already discussed the difficulty of taking action against administrators who are protected by fellow administrators. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:00, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

That would actually go back to my commentary about enablers. But then, despite best efforts to pretend otherwise, that is not a problem associated with administrators. It is, in fact associated with any long-term popular editor who just happens to get on the bad side of any other long term popular editor. Resolute 16:11, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

An administrator left this personal attack on my talk page:

"I really don't know what type of social adjustment problems you may have in real life, so I'm not going to assume too much. However, it is clear to me that not only are you an unsuitable person to be part of the Misplaced Pages community, you are quite possibly so incapable of self-reflection that you shouldn't be using any online forum at all. I can normally take your trolling as part of the rough and tumble of Misplaced Pages - that's fine and part of what happens here."

Guess which user, the abusive administrator or myself, received a block warning, from an uninvolved administrator setting an example of civility, AGF, and NPA. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:39, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I like how you quote out of context, failing to note that that began when you made a posting that one editor found highly offensive, and he told you so. Was his commentary polite? No, I'll grant you that. But then, who are you to speak? You seem quick to attack others for perceived slights ("Two-faced arbs without the honesty or integrity to make a ruling on incompetent/dishonest/uncivil arb behavior") but as is typical, you are even quicker to complain when you get back what you give. Perhaps you should take a long look in a mirror before complaining about how others disregard civility, AGF and NPA, eh? You're no victim, Kiefer. Resolute 17:45, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

@Resolute, you are apologizing for administrator abuse. Again, I complain about one-sided enforcement of civility and NPA. Scott MacDonald made a severe personal attack, and has suffered not even an admonishment. I was threatened with a block. That disparity is the inequity.

I provided the diffs so that others can see the context. What was quoted out of context? An administrator derailing a discussion with nonsense about male breasts? The administrator going bananas when informed about effects of cancer, etc.?

You are quoting me out of context. My statement was about the arbitrators not dealing with the recent Civility Enforcement fiasco. It was not about Scott MacDonald, who did not like my discussing prostate cancer, etc.

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:59, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Nah, I am just a fan of irony. Such as: I was once threatened with a civility block by one of the admins linked to in this thread for a rather apt description of a non-admin's behaviour on Misplaced Pages. The warning was bullshit, of course, but trust me, the shit and abuse isn't unidirectional. I just don't hold grudges, and I don't run around a dozen different forums complaining about it. Resolute 18:34, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

The point is that a warning should also have been given to the administrator who left the personal attacks.

A warning to me was not bullshit (that is, it passes a laugh test among blocking heads at ANI, for example), although it would have been better below something I had written that was arguably uncivil (and would have been credible if it noted incivilities to which I had responded).

Placing a nasty block warning below the other administrator's abuse was a display of power---not the first (as ArbCom and Jimbo discussions have shown) and alas likely not the last.... Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:24, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

We need a bigger ArbCom that can look into more cases and more community control of that ArbCom. That's one of the points in the platform of the ArbCom Reform party. Once that's in place, discussions like this can happen on one of the ArbCom pages; if something can be done to address the situation, you can implement that much faster. Count Iblis (talk) 17:03, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

First you should determine what exactly is the Misplaced Pages community. Is this thousands of editors who create content and never or almost never voice their opinion in the community discussions, or it is a bunch of trolls who hardly create any content, but happily support community bans of content contributors. 67.169.11.52 (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Excellent point. We don't hear from a lot of the community, because they keep their heads down and just create content, gnome away or whatever. There are admins whose name never appear at ANI, who beaver away doing stuff with images, blocking penis vandals or deleting spam pages. We rarely hear from any of these people, but they are a large part of what makes this encyclopaedia keep running. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:38, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Admin abuse is and has been rampant for years. Admin's can do nearly anything including violate policy and get away with it. This is determinatal to the health of the project and causes a lot of users to leave. Of course nothing will ever be done because its impossible to get a consensus so the problems continue, admins see they can get away with nerly anything and its nearly as hard to get someone desysopped as remove them from Civil service for the US government. The only thing at this point that will change it is for the foundation to finally show an interest in the project, quite the benign neglect and quite turning their back to the problem. What we need is a couple folks at the foundation to ride herd over the Admin cadre. To keep them inline, make sure things are happening the way they should and when necessary put them back in their place. This will not only help to solve the admin problem but will also give them some credibility which I'm sorry to say has been lacking and getting worse. Having said all that I know thats not going to happen, most readers of this will probably just think I am ranting and will ignore it and nothing will continue to happen. Whatwe do not need though is a larger stronger Arbcom that is no better than the Admins they would be supporting. Kumioko (talk) 17:17, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

So you're saying the WMF could replace Arbcom with a couple of staffers, like what happened at Livejournal. Get rid of the ability of the community to govern itself. Do you want to run for Arbcom on that platform? Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:32, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

But this Admin Abuse can only exist because you do have problem editors who need to be dealt with. If you have a system that is not so efficient, what happens is that good editors who do have some problems end up getting banned/blocked even if better solutions were available because "it takes too much community effort to find a better solution". The real reason is that with an overworked and burned out ArbCom, ArbCom only accepts a limited number of cases and will not be able to do a good job ineven those cases. Admins have then free reign in other cases, and then it's a Wild West like situation where you can have some Admin abuse that goes on unchecked. So, we do need a much larger ArbCom that will exert a much tighter control of the Adminstrative aspects of Misplaced Pages. Count Iblis (talk) 17:37, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to ask you the same question as Pesky - point to instances. There are one or two, but the truth is that the number of cases presented has gone down drastically, and the number of cases that need to be taken have gone down drastically, because the community prefers to deal with these problems itself. This results in blocks and bans enacted by admins at noticeboards, in much higher numbers than in earlier years, and actually much less these days for Arbcom to do. We've desysopped a few admins in my time - oddly some of the parties to this discussion crying about admin abuse, cried and cried that we were unfair to desysop them for....admin abuse. Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:44, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

@Ellen, Let me address the first question first. I do not like the existing Arbcom environment and of that I have been pretty clear I think. As much as some might think otherwise I do not have a problem with most of the individual members and have actually met several of them in person and have a lot of respect for them. What I do not like or agree with is the atmosphere that has generated that if they accept a case, then nothing good will come out of it. If its a user, they will be banned, desysopped or restricted because they won't accept a case unless they think the user is guilty and that itself generates a predetermination of the outcome. If they accept a case regarding something else, they have a much much better process and I think that with the exception of 1 I have agreed with the decision or could at least accept and understand it. But the cases weren't chosen based on guilt as is the case of editor related cases. Leading to the second comment, I believe this is why the cases have gone down. Because there is a general lack of faith in the decisions and most users who are familiar with Arbcom generally think that the end result isn't going to be good for either side.

@Count Iblist, Admin abuse exists for multile reasons including burnout, a general atmosphere of the admin is always right and others. Regardless of the number of people with the admin permission set its the same 5 - 75 admins doing all the work. If it wasn't for the editors without the tools helping out, many of which, myself including who can't get or don't want the tools, the admins would hve been overwhelmed long ago. I do not think that the foundation should, could or needs to override Arbcom, but, Arbcom isn't currently capable to manage the Admin cadre, probably wouldn't want to mix that with their judicial role and shouldn't because of that judicial role. The foundation keeps saying they are trying to help to make things better but they keep leaving it to the community and frankly (and I know this will hurt some feelings but oh well) we (including myself) have failed miserably at fixing it. We can't do something without consensus and can't get a consensus to do something. If the foundation isn't willing to step up to make some of these decisions to try and turn things around, they may as well shut the servers down and call this noble effort a social failure. Kumioko (talk) 18:09, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

It will be a failure as a social experiment if you replace the volunteers with staffers. Seriously - go over to VPP, suggest that, and see how long you live (metaphorically). And I'm sure this will madly tickle you - from Mbizance on AGK's talkpage my concern that Arbcom is far too lenient on parties to cases by assuming that those brought before it are acting in good-faith. By the time a dispute reaches Arbcom, there has usually been a failure on the part of someone. It may have been that the accused is guilty of violating policy or it may be that the filer is guilty of escalating a matter beyond reason or it may be that one of the parties has such poor communication skills that they cannot resolve a dispute on their own. Arbcom seems unwilling to recognize that most requests involves someone messing something up and is willing to entertain lengthy screeds of argument, let everyone speak their mind, and then tailor the narrowest sanction it thinks will address the precise problem. Broader sanctions (topic bans instead of interaction ban, site bans instead of interaction bans, etc.) instead of the most narrow sanction and severe sanctions for disruptive (overly long, IDHT, uncivil) conduct in Arbcom proceedings (the person should be on their best behavior, they know their behavior is being reviewed by the final body on Misplaced Pages) should be the norm, not the present outlier. Lets face it, if everyone was as beastly as you say they are, you'd still be blocked for socking. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:34, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not talking about replacing anyone, I am talking about adding. This wouldn't replace Arbcom, admins or editors. What it would do would create a connection between the foundation and the Admin cadre/Arbcom. But with that said. Paid staffers do the development, paid staffers are maintaining the servers, paid staffers are doing other things, why not making sure that we aren't running around doing something stupid just because we are admins and can get away with it.

I know you are a member of Arbcom and I know that there is a movement to make Arbcom bigger, to expand their powers and increase their workload. Aside from my personal feelings on that, Arbcom does not and probably will never have the bandwidth to monitor the Admin community and as the judge, jury and executioner role they already have I don't think they also need to be the hall monitor. I'm not even saying that it needs to be a full time job. I do think it needs to be someone who doesn't actively edit, who doesn't have strong ties to the community and who can determine if an Admin is acting in error in a nonbiased way. They don't need to remove the tools or ban them or block them. Just float by and mention to said admin that they have or may have acted in such a way that is not appropriate. If it happens too many times then they can act. I believe that just knowing that someone is watching will stop a lot of the ongoing admin abuses and big ego's. In regards to that comment that is kinda funny, and in utter contrast to my opinions, which isn't in itself surprising about the place. That's why we can never get a consensus on anything here. There are always groups on opposite poles and not enough in the middle. In the end though we need to do whats best for the project and the Pedia. Whatever we are doing currently isn't working and a blind man (or woman) can see that. We need to do something and try it for a while, if it doesn't work we can adjust fire and try something else. But just sitting here arguing that everything won't work and trying nothing is absolutely not going to help. If someone has a better idea, great lets try it.

IRT my history, your right I have made mistakes (like Iron Man largely public) and thanks for bringing that up to decrease my credibility. I appreciate that. :-) I am not trying to indicate the place is full of monsters, but there are some monsters here, some are hiding in the shadows, some are hiding in plain sight and have admin tools they are there and they pop up from time to time. Going back to my block though its all good now because I am done editing. I may make a comment here and there on a talk page or levy a vote in the upcoming Arbcom elections but with all the content being protected and not being an admin I got tired of waiting a week for my edits to be implemented only to have to explain to the admin how to do it because they don't know template programming. I stopped vandal fighting a couple years ago because I couldn't block them and I couldn't protect the pages. I'm simply not the basic editor anymore and I am not allowed to do the more advanced things so there is no sense in staying. I can't grow and continue to learn and help out so its time to retire. Kumioko (talk) 02:56, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't have, stored in my fast-access memory, a huge list of particular cases of one admin performing multiple blocks on one editor. That almost certainly doesn't mean that there aren't any. Also, in most respects, I'd actually much prefer to leave individual names and so on out of discussions like this, as, as soon as names are mentioned, it tends to derail the discussion into almost-strawman arguments about the ins and outs of that particular case, to the great detriment of thinking wholly about the bigger picture. I think that happened, to a lesser extent, right up at the top of this conversation, when I stuck to "big picture" wording, and it was immediately decided that this was definitely only about Penyulap, which it definitely wasn't. I do think people should avoid stating something as fact when it's only an assumption!

I can, for example, think of one instance when an admin took an action which, although not technically involved, was done after a long (and evident) history of personality clash with another editor, going back for many months. I left a note on the admin's talk, and my view was backed up by another admin who saw it. We do have some really good admins, with integrity and honour and big hearts (and sound minds). But we also have some of the other sort, who don't see a problem with abusing the power that they have been given.

I really don't have the time (Real Life stuff) to go hunting through enough block logs to try and find particular instances where an individual user may have been the subject of too much focus from one admin, or a small clique of admins. But something else occurred to me as a possibility that we should maybe consider, and that's the "weeding out" of block logs; finding a way of separating the genuinely good blocks from the highly-debatable or even atrocious ones, and displaying them in some kind of different log. I think this would require something along the lines of a "jury of admins / editors in good standing" (combination, ideally) to look at particular block logs and make a rational and fair decision about what should stay in the main log as a sound and good and deserved block, and what should go into the secondary log. I know that something along these lines is already on someone's to-do list as a thing to think about, so it may eventually happen.

This would be a great proactive move to make, as in many, many instances editors look just at the length of the block log, the number of blocks, without considering in any way the quality of the blocks. (This is one of those instances where size does matter ... that's what people notice.)

I'm really not trying to get up anyone's noses here, just trying to come up with ways of improving what we have. A lot of people have lost faith in the current situation, and it's not just the people with lists of blocks, sanctions, reprimands, and so on. Pesky (talk) 07:45, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I would dispute that last sentence - as the 67 IP observed above, the majority of editors (and even the majority of admins) never appear at handwringing sessions, so neither you nor I have any means of judging their mood. Be that as it may, your notion about block logs is on sounder ground than your notion about admins reblocking users. I recently accidentally blocked an innocent user (didn't untick a box in a script) and spent the next week apologising. Worse, when I looked into it, it's not possible to remove the entry, all you can do is blank the reason for the block (and you're not supposed to do that because it makes it look even worse than it was to start with). Some means of oversighting blocks made in error would be worth looking into further. If you have that (which is a technical solution), then you could see if the community wants some means of being able to oversight blocks that it doesn't agree with. Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:39, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I've heard that several times before. And your one of the more competent admins, it happens more often than it should. I have even seen editors at things like RFA trying to contest it when someone brings it up and they get comments like Oppose - User is unwilling to admit they made a mistake and they end up losing the RFA. That is just one of many examples. Currently if a user doesn't agree with an admin, they have to try and figure out the right venue to go to, then try and figure out how to properly submit something, then have the endurance to spend the next several weeks in discussion. If we had some hall monitors that periodically reviewed admin actions whether through the logs, floating about the site or in other ways, we would soon find that although we would lose a few admins undoubtedly because their shenanigans are discovered and dealt with, the admin abuses would stop, the general mood would lighten and things on this one small niche piece of Wiki life would start to improve. Now I Arbcom is willing and capable to perform this function its worth discussing but I don't think they should because of reasons I already mentioned. I think at this point the community has shown that we are unwilling and incapable of competently completing this task. We talk a good talk but at the end of the day we are incapable of any real significant change because there is never a consensus. We need someone to show some leadership, grow a spine and try something. If it doesn't work, as I said before we can adjust and try something else but we cannot continue to stick our heads in the sand on these issues. Kumioko (talk) 12:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Any community is going to have bad eggs and game players; they exist here within the admin corps and amongst the remainder of the editing pool as well. I don't think we have a particularly large proportion of those people when the editorship is viewed as a whole, but we do tend to have large chunks within smaller parts of the the 'pedia. One of the larger chunks is amongst those that hand out around the admin/policy/arbcom pages and as these are the most active and influential users it can take its toll.

The solution isn't to expand or improve arbcom IMO but requires a social change. It is to reduce the power of individual adminstrators, and admins as a whole. We should remove the requirement for admins to close certain discussions; a simple way to do this would be to say that anyone with X edits over Y months, and without community sanctions, is "trusted" and given powers to close and implement discussions. Admins should be relegated to "tool users" merely there to press the delete/protect/block buttons as required, and not arbiters of anything. We need proper content abitration, so that admins are not called on to break up content disputes. We need to make adminship more accessible and easier to take away. However, these social changes have been tried before and not got anywhere. --Errant 12:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It has been a growing opinion of mine that as the community has taken on more of the role of dealing with unruly users, the cases coming to Arbcom are - leaving aside the ones dealing with administrators - frequently ones where there is an unresolvable content dispute. I've even joked on this page that Jimbo should set up a coin-toss policy to resolve the most intractable disputes. I have thought that there might be a place for an established, binding, content dispute resolution process, to handle the ones where the two sides are utterly entrenched. Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:18, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

@ Errant, I would largely agree with that except for the last sentence. Changes have been "discussed" but not tried. We can never get a consensus (and probably never will) about doing any changes related to RFA.

@ Ellen, as I mentioned before I don't think its so much that the community has taken over the role as the community is shrinking, editors are leaving en masse and the general communities notice that if it goes to Arbcom, the editor is going to be blocked or banned but only after spending the next several weeks in endurance tests and discussion just to have the outcome be a Ban, desysop, edit restriction because Arbcom wouldn't take the case if they didn't think the editor was guilty. So why even bother. IF your going to submit it to Arbcom, you may as well block them because that's what the result would be anyway. Kumioko (talk) 14:29, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Kumioko, your personal demons are your problems, not mine. Your continued belief in the great myth of editors leaving en masse because of Arbcom is your problem, not mine. That you have created a situation in your own head where Arbcom can never legitimately take a case, because you cannot comprehend the difference between taking a case on prima facie evidence, and making a decision based on an investigation which has hopefully revealed the whole truth of the matter, is your problem, not mine. Ask User:Wikid77 for some data on the actual size of the community - you will be surprised. Check out how many sanctions are handed down at AN and ANI - you'll be surprised. I can also recommending spending some time at WP:AE observing all the editors who in many cases have already been sanctioned by Arbcom, and in all the others have been warned that they will be sanctioned, going at it like Kilkenny Cats to get sanctioned again. You really will be surprised. Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:19, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Your right that is a perception on my part based on longterm experience in both AN, ANI and Arcom cases. I may not be an admin but it won't take a data analyst to see that I have spent a large amount of time in these discussions. You may not agree with my viewpoints or hypothesis but I do actually have some idea what I'm talking about and am familiar with the policies and the forums. I just choose to side with the editor when Admins use tactics like a certain one I won't mention did recently to get their way. Which no one seems to care about by the way which I find highly annoying. I also agree that Wikid presents some interesting numbers. I do not think they are particularly accurate though and here's why. Rich did a massive amount of edits a month, including his bots even more so but the numbers Wikid displays shows no measurable difference. You cannot tell me that we suddenly got enough new editors doing more edits to pick up the slack. But the numbers reflect no noticible increase or decrease. How is that? Kumioko (talk) 18:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Elen wrote " the number of cases that need to be taken have gone down drastically, because the community prefers to deal with these problems itself. This results in blocks and bans enacted by admins at noticeboards, in much higher numbers than in earlier years, and actually much less these days for Arbcom to do."

I think this is a step in the wrong direction. Compare Misplaced Pages to real world society. We started in the Stone Age, ArbCom can be compared with the elders of the tribe. As society gets more complex we need to move in the direction of the analogue of a modern justice system. Instead what has happened is that we moved toward a larger tribal system where the elders are letting local warlords deal with problems. The elders make sure that there is no infighting between the warlords. Count Iblis (talk) 17:22, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. Here are a few of the utterly stupid things we are doing as a community that shows potential editors that Misplaced Pages is really not the encyclopedia anyone can edit and we really don't trust you so don't bother that needs to stop. Mostly by our "trusted" admins.

1. We have range IP blocks in place now that essentially exclude about 2% of the entire worlds internet from contributing. This incudes libraries, iuniversities, high schools, etc. Yes there was vandalism at these sites but there was a lot of good edits too and some admins blocked them simply for their own convenience rather than any meaningful purpose.These IMO need to be reviewed and most restored.
2. Certain admins have been going on a mass protecting spree protecting templates and articles at an unprecedented rate because they are trying to "prevent" vandalism. Most of these have never been vandalized, ever. But they are protected so no one except the aforementioned "trusted" admins can edit them.
3. Misplaced Pages's rules are hard to learn. There are a lot of them, some are not intuitive and a lot disagree with each other. But new editors that make a stupid mistake because they don't understand are blocked indefinately. Sometimes this is necessary but frequently its not. There are currently thousands of editors indefinately blocked. Many for good reason, a lot for not so good of a reason.

These are just a few. Kumioko (talk) 18:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Count Iblis: You have a rare gift for coming up with ridiculously flawed metaphors. Of course it was barely two days ago you were trying to instigate a coup to remove the current ArbCom at AN, I fail to see how that reflects your vision of a "law and order society" on Misplaced Pages. Admins are not warlords. ArbCom is not a government. We don't need political parties in ArbCom elections. Wake up and smell the coffee. Your ideas are not, have not been, and in all likelihood will not be supported by the community. You managed to fool a few users for a minute there with the ArbCom reform party but it seems they have all seen the light now, I note not a single one of them has come to your defense over yesterday's "recruitment RFC" disaster. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:36, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, although Iblis' idea is probably unworkable, you can at least see the logic in it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 02:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Semi arbitrary section break

Wowsers, I was gonna read this whole thread. But then I realized, the folks in Florida will have their state's votes counted before then. GoodDay (talk) 06:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm absolutely sure that, if we tasked ourselves to come up with a whole flotilla of ideas which might change the atmosphere for the better, around this issue, then we could actually do something. There are probably some ways of scripting a few things to flag up situations which might want to be double-checked. The weeding of block logs, I'm sure, could be done and would be beneficial. What about some way of checking the number of blocks made by individual admins, to suss out if there are a few who are more trigger-happy on the block button than others? (Would probably have to exclude blocks of IPs as for the most part those are likely to be vandalism blocks; yes, I know IPs are human too, but still ....) Could someone work up a script which checks things like this? Then at least a small panel of auditors could have a look to see if the blocks were all good, and justified. Of course there will be some admins who a script might flag as "possible trigger-happies" who aren't, at all, worthy of the flag, but it might help to highlight instances where a trigger-happy admin could do with a warning, or just a chat (or maybe a break from adminship if they're burned out?) Pesky (talk) 08:04, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem with that idea is that the admins making the most blocks probably are not the ones making the most problematic blocks. It's more likely the top results from such a script would be checkusers and/or admins dealing with WP:LTA. Checkusers often find "sleeper" socks that have never even edited and long term abuse trolls tend to create throwaway accounts by the dozens. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:32, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I'd go further. The admins who do loads of blocks are the ones who watch AIV and block loads of vandals, either indef blocks on accounts or short term blocks on individual IPs. Can anyone remember the last time that sort of block got contentious? Contentious blocks are invariably not for vandalism, and are blocks of IP ranges or longterm editors not new throwaway accounts. Watch for the blocks of editors with more than 1,000 edits, that's where we get contentious blocks. As the blocking of an established editor is almost never for vandalism it would be sensible to upbundle this to the crats. They are already trusted to block and the very few blocks involved would not be that much of a workload. I suspect that quite a few editors would be much more relaxed about admins if we lost the ability to block them, so it might even take some of the tension out of RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 18:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Hence the challenge to Pesky to come up with any evidence at all that admins repeatedly blocking users who don't deserve it is a problem, rather than a fantasy of Pesky's. Iblis's idea of 'lower courts' on the other hand is, in my opinion, actually starting to emerge naturally (as long as you remember not to think of them as legal processes). WP:DRN has emerged; contentious RfCs are being closed by troikas rather than by single users; AN is handling bans and topic bans. I think there's scope for splitting up the melange of tasks that fall to Arbcom - and indeed merging some of them. The whole AE area to my mind doesn't work good at the moment, and pushing some of the responsibility for managing these sanctions back to an elected committee that rotates, rather than half a dozen admins that just burn out, should be considered. On the other hand, BASC should be separated off, and have a much more clearly defined scope and working practice, particularly now UTRS is available.

Much of this is just rearranging the deckchairs though (but not necessarily on the Titanic). What seems to bother most editors (although see notes above on the silent majority) is being able to edit in peace, without being molested by other editors (hence the challenge to Kumioko to come up with any kind of evidence that editors are leaving in droves because of concern over being sanctioned by an insane Arbcom). It is our dispute resolution procedures (the lower courts) that still need improvement, and Misplaced Pages's legendary tolerance of trolls, pov pushers, internecine warriors etc that is still the more major problem for most editors. Elen of the Roads (talk) 18:22, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

@SpielChequers - I don't think the crats idea would fly - that's not what they are there for. However, the idea of a 'lower court' which would actually make a decision as to whether a senior editor warranted a sanction is a possibility. The WMF themselves might however oppose it, as their focus is almost exclusively on new editors, and they are not minded to support what they might see as discrimination against new editors. Elen of the Roads (talk) 18:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Currently all admins can block any editor. Changing the code so that only Crats can block accounts with over 1,000 edits is technically easy, and it isn't giving the crats any more powers than they have, just taking away some power from other admins. But if the crats don't like this it would be quite practical to have a separate group of editors who had the block anyone userright. As for the WMF, the important thing is to present this as a way to reduce tensions between admins and the community, not some sort of newby biting process. ϢereSpielChequers 18:50, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

This is a terrible idea. For starters, people with over 1,000 edits get blocked all the time for edit warring. Even very experienced users sometimes have a lapse in judgement and partake in edit warring. Why should we have to appeal to a higher power to block for something as obvious as 3RR? Practically everyone blocked at WP:AE is also very experienced. And why should a user with 900 edits be subject to stricter standards of behavior than users who have been here for years and ought to know better already? On top of that, there are not very many active crats, it's not a job a lot of admins even want, and the community is rarely in a mood to promote new ones anymore. And, as if that weren't enough, crats are generally expected not to act decisively but rather to act only when there is a clear consensus (as in RFA) or a very specific policy (as in CHU) that supports a specific course of action. That is not going to mesh well with the realities of blocking problematic users. this would create a massive class of unblockable users, including every single admin. I do agree that blocks on very experienced users are a problem area, but this is not the solution. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

The actual number of blocks we'd be talking about is really quite small, and yes edit warring would probably be the most common cause. IMHO we are too free with blocks re edit warring, and it would be much better if we were warning people each time they approached being blocked. But sometimes it really is necessary to block active editors, and I think that crats would be the right people to do these blocks because we should only be blocking where there is a clear case - so with this change some of our sillier blocks just wouldn't happen. But with the power to block also comes the power to unblock - and if a vested contributor was blocked then only a fellow crat could reverse it. So I would hope that some of our dramas would get resolved without use of blocks, and those completely unblockable characters would have to remember that if they did merit a block they could no longer rely on their friends to undo it. ϢereSpielChequers 19:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not the crats job to block people, and they never signed up to block people in the crat role. They would turn you down flat.Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:01, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

All the current crats are already admins, so upbundling an admin function to them isn't giving them an extra right, just increasing the number of times they are likely to need to exercise that right. However if the existing crats would prefer that we appoint some additional crats or a new user group for this then either is doable. The important part of this suggestion is that by taking that one tool away from admins we reduce the tension between the admin cadre and other editors, and we enforce a move away from blocks and the threat of blocks as an early resort for the enforcement of policy. Think of it a bit like guns and Police forces. Here in the UK only a tiny minority of the Police carry guns, there are armed police available for when guns are really needed, but if the Police actually kill someone it is national news. Policing with consent is much easier if the Police are no better armed than the populace. ϢereSpielChequers 06:22, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

As a general matter, I've long since felt that when good-faith editors lapse into edit-warring, they often should first be warned and then blocked from the page or from the topic area for a couple of days, rather than blocked outright, which simply deprives us of their ability to contribute in other areas. I also agree with Elen that the current group of bureaucrats neither signed up for the responsibility of handing out specific kinds of blocks nor were they necessarily selected with that role in mind. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:05, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I love the idea of "protect against editing by users X, Y and Z." I think this should be entirely possible at the page level - topic level would require some more complex programming and would have lots of loopholes - including the risk that other editors could then extend the topic ban by adding the topic tag to other pages. ϢereSpielChequers 06:22, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I also really like this idea. Blocking someone for editing warring on one particular article is dropping an elephant on them when a tap on the shoulder would usually do. If they're only disrupting Page X, let's try separating them from Page X before we hurry off to separate them from zomg everywhere, ever. I wonder if it would be possible to get a dev to just give us five minutes of brainstorming on such an idea, as far as quick answers for "Is this feasible software-side? What parts of it do you think would be low-cost? What parts high-cost? What parts are hell-no-never-gona-happen?" A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I am going to hazard a guess that if something that awesome could easily be done they would have done it already, but I suppose it couldn't hurt to ask. Who wants to ask? I've already bent enough of their ears this year. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:31, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why a software change would be needed in order to use this idea in appropriate situations. A few times over the years, I've said to an editor caught up in an edit-war "in lieu of my deciding whether to block you, will you agree not to edit Article X or Topic Y for 24-48-72 hours" and they've said yes and kept the promise. And if (for example) an AN3 report were closed with "Editor A instructed not to edit Article A for 24 hours" in lieu of "Editor A blocked for 24 hours," and then Editor A disgarded the instruction and edited A again, the other party to the AN3 report would be complaining about back on AN3 so quickly it would make one's head spin, and a block would follow. If the editor seems out of control and unlikely to follow the instruction, then the administrator could block in the ordinary way, but most editors would comply with a 24/48 hour ban from a given article or topic in lieu of a full block. I certainly think the idea is worth trying more widely. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:37, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't the capability already exist anyway, with WP:Edit filter, or can it not be used for this purpose? Unless I'm misunderstanding (I often do), a nice front end to create an edit filter rule could be all that's needed? Begoon  02:41, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not an expert, but I believe an edit filter applies to a given type of edit from all editors; I don't think it's set up to be customized to permit one editor to edit an article but not another. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:42, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

You could well be correct. WP:Edit filter doesn't list "account name" as one of the User criteria you can fling a regex at, although it is in this list, intriguingly. Possibly it won't work without software changes, then - I was really just trying to find a "no work" or "little work" solution. As you said, it's usually spotted quickly when editors "break" topic bans, and this idea does nothing where "socking" is involved.Begoon  02:51, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

• addendum: Special:AbuseFilter/148 seems to indicate the filter here can act based on 'user_name' regexps (filter log). I'm not an expert, either, and I can't see the "private" filters which may also use this variable - but it at least still seems as if it could be possible. Begoon  04:04, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

For investigative purposes, to answer questions which can't easily be answered in an unbiased and representative way by individual editors, would it be possible for some intellismart individual(s) to work up a script? ... which would pick up on which admins have been / are most likely to block editors with (say, for starters) over 5,000 edits (that will rule out all of the vandalism and sock blocks, I expect). Following on, could I make a suggestion that either a radio-button or checkbox list ("tick all that apply") for blocks, to make for easy searching for type of block. Obvious suggestions for checkboxes would be edit-warring, civility, etc. etc. I have no idea how easy or otherwise it might be for a script to go through existing block logs to pick up on wording and mark each block on said checkboxes appropriately, but it could be considered. Ditto kind of input for blocking user talk-page access, protecting user talk pages, and so on. If we really want to get to the bottom of exactly what is happening around blocks, we need some data-handling tools. Another thing I think we could really do with is a piss-easy way of viewing blocks-per-thousand edits and blocks-per-years-of-service, so that when less-than-analytical people are looking at block logs, they have a way of comparing like with like. If we can combine those two with weeding-out of block logs to remove bad blocks (as above) it would be possible to make a start of getting more objective viewing of individual block logs and less knee-jerk reactions from the general public (thinking particularly of pile-ons affecting consensus).

Adding: I think another one which might be useful is a script which will pull up (for human checking) blocks which have followed within n-amount of time (pick your number) of interactions in unrelated areas between blockee and blocking admin. That could well highlight some possibly-problematic interactions. Pesky (talk) 11:27, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Ummm ... it seems to have gone deathly quiet, here. The above was kinda the answer to the "come up with examples, woman!" thing. As I mentioned above, I feel it better not to bring individual cases up, because any individual cases brought up by any individual editor will be subject to all kinds of (probably subconscious) bias-effect stuff, and always just invite strawman-type arguments responding to each individual case rather than addressing the bigger picture. It's all too easy (and species-normal for H. sapiens) to lose sight of the wood while looking at the trees. We need, not individual examples from individual editors, but some really decent data-mining and data-handling tools. (Which can't be suspected of being participants in any kind of fan club, enablers, supporters, buddies, and so on.) I know darned well that we have people in here who can produce those types of tools as easily as I can produce a roast dinner. That is what we need; it helps us towards transparency and genuinely objective analysis. Those things steer us in the direction of tweaks and solutions. Any clever volunteers to come up with some decent stuff? Pesky (talk) 21:48, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Economics graph removed from several articles

Jimbo, File:Employment growth by top tax rate.jpg has been removed from several articles recently by people who say it is biased politically. However, it is not clear whether the people who have been removing it are similarly biased against the conclusion which is suggests. Please see the discussions at Talk:Economics for more information. Jimbo, can you please have someone see whether and are factually accurate, to settle this? 70.59.27.75 (talk) 14:54, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

This is a content dispute and not for me to decide. But speaking as an ordinary editor, the graph is absolutely and totally biased to the point of absurdity. Such oversimplifications to make a political point are the very definition of bias. The data was taken from US historical data and so ends up being a comparison of an era when the top tax rate was 80-90% to various modern eras. But that 80-90% era coincided with the post-war boom, which was caused by a large number of factors, which may or may not have included tax rates on the highest earners.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

This is an IP sock of Dualus (talk · contribs). See Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Dualus - Alison 19:33, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo, I am certain that if our positions were reversed, I would want you to tell me about Art Okun's mistake in 1975 in which he used year-over-year correlations instead of run lengths which is why the IMF recently radically reversed their position on austerity and many commentators suggest they did not go far enough. The graph is historically accurate, and in complete agreement with the new IMF anti-austerity position which had been pro-austerity since Art Okun's 1975 math error was identified and corrected last year. What governs income inequality more than the top effective tax bracket rate? Again, there is no doubt in my mind that if our positions were reversed I would expect no less than complete (and persistent!) honesty on such topics, whether they concern the toxicity of heavy metals or the plain truth about the position of the peak of the Laffer curve. There is a correct mathematical answer which may not be politically comfortable, but is by definition free from bias. I suggest that those who insist against evidence that the peak of the Laffer curve is less than 0.5 are in fact more biased than the accurate historical information on the graph. I am sorry if this is uncomfortable, but it is the truth, it is verifiable, and it is easy for anyone to prove it by examining the veracity of and (which are summarized in this deleted section.) 199.16.130.122 (talk) 05:46, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

• Jimmy is right that the graph tendentiously implies causation between marginal tax rates and economic growth in different eras of 20th century American capitalism. Life is more complex. One could generate bar graphs of similar quality relating the average number of television channels on American televisions to economic growth (fewer channels = more growth). That's probably at least as high a correlation, I speculate — but it's a false relationship, there is no necessary causation there, rather declining growth rates are a function of time and the gradual disintegration of industrial manufacturing in the United States. I'm actually chiming in here to offer assistance to Dualus back into the WP fold if at some future date he wants to move past the POV axe-grinding, edit-warring, and sword-crossing with ideological opponents and to become a serious contributor of NPOV historical material. It's probably a six month or one year process getting back into good graces, I would guess, and will absolutely require a fundamental change in attitude as to what WP is about and one's place in it. But glancing at your edit history, there seems to be a good amount of energy, dedication, and commitment, albeit misdirected. Drop me an email if you want to talk. MutantPop@aol.com. best, —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 05:56, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

So do you believe, then, that the IMF was in error to reverse their position on austerity last month? In any case, thank you for your kind offer. I am sorry that you believe the use of mathematical proof techniques and adherence to their results is tendentious. My contributions stand on their own, and although I concentrate on controversial articles, I fully realize that these sorts of accusations come with such an interest. The vast bulk of my efforts stand unchallenged, and for those who question my commitment to improving the encyclopedia, I would point to my recent GA on Birth control ("before" version) as representative of the typical quality of my ordinary work here which does not get swept up in silly censorship games. 199.16.130.122 (talk) 06:04, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I have been involved through third opinion with a related content dispute on Trickle-down economics. My general advice then and now is that these primary source graphs are often being used in a way that constitutes synthesis. This sort of graph should not be used to draw conclusions or imply arguments about the validity of any particular economic policy. Even the combination of two series such as the above graph is original research. I see very little use for such an OR graph in any article. Gigs (talk) 15:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

The synthesis argument is not convincing because this particular controversy is central to the current most prominent political debate in Washington, D.C. It is very easy to find prominent eminent authorities who agree with the proposition that raising taxes on the rich creates jobs. Similarly, I can find no sources saying that raising taxes on the rich slows the economy or job growth which are based on empirical data. There are plenty of op-eds and publications in WP:FRINGE "Austrian economics" journals, but nothing peer reviewed by mainstream academic journals. Do you know of any? 81.169.144.135 (talk) 15:28, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the graph represents either a biased or incorrect view. The only thing it says to me is that as tax rates go up, job growth is relatively unaffected. Are you folks saying the left scale is exaggerated? It is, but the size of the numbers themselves is sufficiently obvious to make that issue unimportant to me. Sure the variations in tax structure over the years make any comparison difficult and I would like to see more detail, but I doubt the higher granularity would make a difference. The argument is that top tax rate doesn't stifle growth. This may be because the top tax rate affects a tiny portion of the population that is more concerned with wealth management than income. I'm saying that as an old person who is more interested in managing wealth. Bob Calder 17:47, 17 November 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by B calder (talk • contribs)

• The general issue here is whether "original research" should trump sources when removing material. If you have a reliable source that says that raising taxes creates jobs, or an herb is helpful against a disease, etc., does the naysaying editor's general belief and assumption that "that can't work", in the absence of any cited source that says it doesn't work, override your source because "it must be biased somehow"? This was also the issue in the great VnT debate. When there are sources to say that something works and it doesn't work, obviously the best solution is "these say yes(ref) and these say no(ref)"; but when an editor has no source obviously the only "neutral" solution available to him is to expunge all data that conflicts with his POV. Wnt (talk) 17:48, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

The main problem with the site

It seems like quite a few people of late are popping up here noting concerns about the site. Having worked on one aspect of the site for a while, I'm realizing that a lack of firepower there is the biggest issue facing the site. The issue is one of copyright, or more accurately the utter lack of fighters. The number of semi-regulars I see tackling that I could probably count on one hand, the copyright problems page has a two month backlog, and there are over 75,000 possible violations in contributor investigations to look through. All the back and forth on content issues means nothing with all the copyright problems that we need to be tackling first. The years-old violations I have found hurt the site far more than Beatles nonsense or AfD discussions could. It's part of a systemic problem, in a sense; we will always have new article writers popping up from time to time; it's when we lose the maintenance people who handle stuff like this that causes the most trouble. Wizardman 00:56, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Best way to deal with this is to either duplicate or expand the feedback request service to incorporate maintenance requests and distribute them to active users. Speaking for myself, I would be happy to volunteer for random maintenance tasks distributed to my talk page, and it would be great if users could see a record of their work on a subpage devoted to user statistics (I previously argued for this on village pump). Users want to be involved and they want to see their work measured. This has nothing to do with trophy hunting but with being able to view active tasks from start to completion and to measure what users are doing with their time. Viriditas (talk) 03:08, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

There's a related proposal in the early stages: User:Sphilbrick/Tour_of_Duty Gigs (talk) 15:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Feedback's a possibility. I've been considering doing targeting CCIs myself, if anyone is interested then based on their articles/topic choices I could find good ones for them. Haven't seen the Tour of Duty link before, but it's interesting, will have to look in more detail. Wizardman 23:17, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

There is a mismatch between the amount of volunteer time available and the amount of stuff that needs doing. Overall the pedia is improving, but not as fast as some would like, and in some areas we may even be regressing. Unfortunately the WMF has not been helping here, the latest big development is the Article Feedback Tool, and as was obvious to some of us this has been a net cost in volunteer time. As evidence that those of us who thought AFT was a mistake were right, I now have a plea on my user page to spend more time on the clean up squad going through Article feedback.... As a community we need to make time to keep the AFT comments patrolled, but it would be much better for the pedia if we'd simply canned the AFT, or when it was tested against a call to action we'd gone with the call to action. Highlighting the edit button or trying various different options to remind people that they are welcome to edit would be a far more constructive use of WMF money than AFT was. We need developments that enable editors to use their time more efficiently, or that save editor time. The software for handling edit conflicts could easily be improved so that more edits take and fewer are lost to edit conflicts. Of course it isn't just the WMF, we need the community to agree to adopt some form of flagged revisions so as to make sure that every newbie edit is actually checked, but to reduce the ridiculous waste of volunteer time in the current system whereby some edits are checked many times and others slip through completely unchecked. ϢereSpielChequers 18:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

+1. --Andreas JN466 07:15, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

What an incredible *****y waste of my time that was

How does anyone find the time for this nonsense? I'm having nothing further to do with the Prem Rawat article. On and off for six years I tried to draw attention to the miserable revisionism perpetrated there by Rawat followers...started a RFC etc but was met only with abject disinterest and failure by the impartial people to do anything other than to conclude that Momento was 'uneducable' and then to make their FEEBLE excuses and leave. However you might be interested to know that, just like I said, Momento is now having a field day removing a ton of well-sourced material - all critical and of course - with NO opposition WHATSOEVER. Is this really acceptable? Anyway I'm out. Very disappointed to learn how easy it for people to abuse Misplaced Pages to bias articles. I feel like writing an article to the Times and my children's college... Really... it makes you wonder how Misplaced Pages articles can be relied on for a balanced picture when the work of years can be obliterated by one or two unconscionable idiots. This really is my last word on that pathetically handled article. Bye!PatW (talk) 20:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I wish I had the time to weigh in there myself. I hope others will. I'll try to take a look soon. It would be helpful for me if you can indicate one single starting point. For example, one clear obvious and easy example of a reliable source that has been excluded unfairly. Or of something that is being "spun" falsely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Today I've banned a couple people from the article and warned another one, which has been a long time coming; I would have done it weeks ago, but other forces had different ideas. It honestly never should have gotten to the point where I'd have to do it 4 years after the original case, but it's here now, and sometimes the nuclear option is the only way to keep things from degenerating even further. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I hear you. This has been a known problem area for a long time. I expect it to continue to be so.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Correct. There will just be replacement followers to edit the article. Although I said that was my last word since you express some interest in taking a look and to answer your question - Here I attempted to resist one of Momento's moves to remove something that, in it's day was a notable furore and reported widely in newspapers, but that Momento wanted to exclude / play down on grounds of it being 'undue weight' in a BLP etc. The incident was when Rawat's Divine Light Mission's president, one Robert Mishler and another high ranking follower left, denouncing the Guru in various 'whistle-blowing' ways. At the time Prem Rawat was known as 'Guru Maharaji' and he was the recipient of more publicity (mostly adverse) than he has ever had since. In fact this largely bad press compelled Him to become distinctly 'press shy' ever since. That is why most of the sources about Him are from the seventies. The modern sources are mostly 'vanity press' organised by followers. Anyway, the Mishler revelations and other publicised incidents (such as the guy who'd 'pied' Rawat as a protest, being duly nearly killed with a hammer blow to the head by a vengeance-filled 'revered' follower ) contributed to public fears that this was a potentially dangerous cult. At the time public mistrust of cults was at a high following the mass suicides of followers of cult leader Jim Jones at Jonestown in Guyana. Mishler and his associate made the notable and controversial comparison of Guru Maharaj Ji with Jim Jones. Momento wanted to suggest that their claims were 'exclusive' although, as I pointed out, multiple sources, both newspapers and scholars saw fit to cover the incident. PatW (talk) 00:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, please stick around but please keep me informed. There's no reason to let apologists win the day.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:53, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - but I guess it won't be on articles about Rawat since I have managed to get myself 'blown up' by my own bomb :-) PatW (talk) 01:08, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

This article clearly needs to be fully protected. This will force discussion to occur before changes are made. 108.28.162.125 (talk) 01:14, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo. I don't know how closely you, or any others are watching the Prem Rawat article. Clearly some are as I have received some private enquiry. However I will let you know if I see 'apologists' return (although I will be impotent to offer opposition myself). Over on Blade's page the banned Rawat faithful are asking him to reconsider. Rather than unblock everyone I concur with the above view that the article should be fully protected to force discussion. Without me or anyone informed enough of the subject to oppose, the article will simply descend into further religiously motivated editing. I do see the fairness in me being also blocked as a party to the 'battle-ground'. Such a 'battle-ground' was the inevitable consequence to opposing committed pro-Rawat editors. PatW (talk) 13:29, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll watch the article as much as I can, but it's going to take several of us. It'll be helpful if you can keep me informed here, thank you for that offer. I do think it is often helpful to have a "everybody out of the water" time-out. I have received myself an angry email from a Rawat faithful editor questioning my views of God, etc.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:23, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes - well you're about to be banned yourself from Rawat articles so you'd better watch your behaviour! See Here PatW (talk) 14:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

The link I supplied above (to the stuff I described Momento removing plus my counter argument) was archived. It's been moved to here Sorry 'bout that. It's very hard to keep track of all this stuff. PatW (talk)

A kitten for you!

Thanks for creating Misplaced Pages!!!

Seonookim 05:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

:-) Maxtirdatov (talk) 11:19, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Cite_web COinS cut so Misplaced Pages 20% faster

This is just an FYI about the improved {cite_*} templates now allowing 20% faster Misplaced Pages reformatting (or edit-preview), as with Template:Cite_web (etc.) quickened by removing the COinS metadata from Template:Citation/core. After months of discussions, and the use of new Template:Cite_quick for rapid reformatting in a few major articles, developer Tim Starling finally proposed/performed the removal of the slow COinS metadata (on 12 November 2012), and {cite_web} or {cite_news} now run 35% faster, to cut 6 seconds from edit-preview in major articles with ~200 {cite} footnotes. Hence, a major celebrity article which formatted in 24 seconds will edit-preview within 18 (just within the frustration level, ~20 seconds I think). As with any technical discussion, there were some objections to removing the COinS metadata, despite allowing 1.6 million articles to reformat 15%-30% faster. Other users even noted how the former COinS data was misformatted and broke some math articles (now running OK). Although the upcoming Lua script Module:Citation (on test2.wiki), which I helped to improve, will make {cite} templates over 10x faster (for article edit-preview 300%-400% faster), that improvement is still months away.

Meanwhile, the current markup-based templates can still be improved, in preparation to use Lua-based templates. Here are the major processing steps:

• STEP 1: Each {cite_web} formats 230 aliases as standard parameters to invoke {Citation/core}.
• STEP 2: {Citation/core} then re-checks all standard parameters to format the wikilinked footnote text.
• STEP 3: {Citation/core} then re-checks most standard parameters to format the COinS metadata.

Currently, Tim cut STEP3 (totally removed the COinS markup from {Citation/core} ), and that reduced the processing by about 35%. The next stage would be to bypass both Template:J to directly format the footnote text when only the most-common parameters but also check for rare parameters to instead run the full STEP 1/2 when special parameters are also used in a {cite} which cannot be formatted by the simple bypass logic. The use of a bypass method will likely make the citations, on average, another 3x faster than now, because over 90% of {cite} usage does not involve the rare parameters. Meanwhile, {cite_quick} already runs 9x faster for special articles which need rapid reformatting, such as many nation articles. Anyway, the overall 20% faster edit-preview from mid-November is a massive improvement, due to the impact in 1.6 million articles, and confirms that major progress is being made (although somewhat slowly). -Wikid77 (talk) 17:22, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

What about the metadata? Is there a replacement in the works before this is done? are we losing data for 2 second gain?Moxy (talk) 22:04, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Removal of COinS metadata is temporary, re-added in Lua: The ongoing discussion, at Template_talk:Citation/core, is treating the removal of the COinS metadata as a temporary step, and the COinS data is already "re-added" in the Lua script version (on test2.wiki), test2:Module:Citation, which I have personally inspected to ensure the COinS metadata is formatted by the upcoming Lua module, which it is. Meanwhile, DASHBot (or other automated interfaces), which parse for {cite_*} metadata, will find none at all, but if we add bypass logic into {cite_web} to make it 5x times faster, then we could re-add the COinS data, and then {cite_web} would still run 4x faster than the prior {cite_*} versions of October 2012. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:16, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Commons admins asleep at the switch?

Jimbo, I started a thread on the Commons' admin noticeboard to alert them to a fairly easy to spot pattern of copyright violation. During that discussion, I posted several examples with evidence that they were copyright violations. Some of those were subsequently nominated for deletion and deleted, as expected. What seems concerning is that other examples I gave have not been deleted or even nominated for deletion. In one case, that involves a set of over 100 copyright violation images. If telling admins on the admin noticeboard that something on Commons is a copyright violation doesn't provoke any action, something is seriously wrong. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:52, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

You're of course welcome to hunt down copyright violations, and it looks like half of the files you've identified actually are. But the people who disagreed with you did so because they didn't think some files were copyvios, and figuring out if they are is complicated. Your "pattern" is something that you and other volunteers you recruit are free to use in looking for further infringing files - but if you're suggesting anything more, i.e. to abandon the assumption of good faith based on what a contributor's interests are, then that is a bad idea. Wnt (talk) 21:55, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Wnt, once again you have managed to misunderstand what is being said. I am not suggesting that we abandon good faith based on someone's "area of interest". I am suggesting that uploads which follow a certain pattern are very likely to be copyright violations as I have demonstrated in that thread and elsewhere. The interests and intentions of the uploader are completely irrelevant. We are not talking about users who have misunderstood the copyrights involved - we are talking about deliberate and wilful copyright violation (including in some cases image manipulation to make sources harder to find and falsification of EXIF data). There is nothing complicated about the 100+ images uploaded by User:Freemont Solstice. Despite the filenames, the images have been available from many sources (here, for example) since 2010. That user is likely a sockpuppet of a repeat offender. Why are these images still on Commons? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:29, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

If you suspect this user of being a copyright violator and sockpuppet, why is the only message on his talk page a completely unjustified warning that "Commons has a specific scope". (That is some lovely artwork from a notable public event that is most definitely within scope) Since all of Fremont Solstice's uploads are photos of this one event, I have no idea how you decided he's a sockpuppet, but he certainly hasn't had a chance to defend himself. Wnt (talk) 00:04, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Users cannot delete their own uploads. I have told the Commons admins that the uploads are copyright violations and provided evidence for my claim. They have failed to act. This has nothing to do with Commons scope in any way - copyright violation is a legal issue, not a content issue. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 05:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages article deleted without proper procedures

List of pedophiles listing only 5 people thus far who had their own Misplaced Pages articles and were famous for being convicted of this, was deleted by an administrator without going to AFD. Those on the list are already in one category or another for Category:People convicted of child sexual abuse. The discussion about this was quickly closed as well. Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard#List_of_pedophiles Can administrators just ignore the proper process of sending something to AFD, and just do as they wish now, silencing all opposition? Is it alright to put convicted child sex offenders into categories but not alright to have a list of all those in these categories? List provide far more information, and are more useful. If the article was probably named People convicted of child sexual abuse, and listing those already in that category, would there be a problem with it? Dream Focus 23:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

As long as the admins in question have sufficient inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary yes.©Geni 00:01, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:IAR. Coren's speedy deletion had massive support in that discussion. And you can add mine to it as well. If you want to pick a fight about it, WP:DRV is the venue you want. Resolute 00:06, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Well you can cite IAR if you want, but you don't need to. Administrators have long been able to delete articles that are problematic with regard to WP:BLP purely at their own discretion (see the BLP policy and the badlydrawnjeff arbitration case); of course, it's expected that they will immediately seek review of their actions. Seems to be exactly what happened here. CIreland (talk) 00:15, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

See above. This was a massive BLP headache waiting to happen. I'd support that deletion as well. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 00:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

By only listing those already in the category, I see no problems at all. Anyway, I have in fact contacted the administrator on the talk page, as is required before starting a deletion review. Dream Focus 00:14, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The very obvious issue that Coren identified in his deletion rationale at AN are not resolved by renaming the article. You will have to address that problem first. Resolute 00:21, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

His deletion rationale was "G10! Holy shit! This coatrack is a BLP nightmare even if it were perfectly maintained and consistent? It's UNDUE, and a libel magnet!)" A rename would've solved it, since we are not libel by listing only those who were convicted of a crime on the list. Dream Focus 00:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The out-of-process closure was entirely appropriate. Under no circumstances should Misplaced Pages be facilitating libel, which is what such a list would inevitably do. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:17, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

• At deletion review now. Misplaced Pages:Deletion_review#List_of_pedophiles Dream Focus 00:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

  It may be instructive to review Talk:Pedophilia/List of self-identified pedophiles. I believe the original title of the now-deleted page was "List of famous pedophiles", although it is difficult to confirm that from the available history and logs. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Um, why wasn't the talk page DC links above deleted along with the article? Ooops - never mind - I'd misread the link... :( AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:30, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Have a nice day.

Hello Jimbo. Just stopped by to say "hi".

Hi!

by Kevin12cd Talk to me This was posted at 01:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Electoral Commission RfC Closure

Jimbo,

In accordance to the Electoral Commission proposal and your partial endorsement of the same, your are requested to close the advisory request for comment located at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Electoral Commission and appoint the members of the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is comprised of 3 Commissioners and any remaining persons who are qualified to be "reserve members."

The interpretation of the results and appointments are left to your discretion, and the summary above was provided as a courtesy. Please make your appointments at your convenience. The nomination period is active and due to close on 11/20/2012

Sincerely, --Tznkai (talk) 04:06, 18 November 2012 (UTC)