FT2's state visit, So how was it for you? Options

[Peter Damian]

I'm not sure what to make of it. But I won't say anything in any case, because I would like to hear what the uninvolved parties think. (The involved parties being myself, Probivouac, and Docknell - could I ask them not to comment, please).

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[One]

I get the vibe that FT2 isn't the lashing-out type. He's not here to feed his ego, nor to chastise us for our fallen state, nor to study us as a Wikilogical curiosity. I've always felt that FT2 is more-or-less on the level in his interactions as an arbitrator, and probably here as well. I realize that's a minority opinion (and I have others--like the notion that Fred Bauder wasn't such a bad arb), but it is my considered opinion. He seemed genuinely concerned about Mantanmoreland, for example. I still count him as second best behind Newyorkbrad.

His acts are not always clever. Proabivouac was honestly wronged, for example, and his recent ArbCom screw-up is well-known, but FT2 seems sincere to me.

[wikiwhistle]

I get the vibe that FT2 isn't the lashing-out type. He's not here to feed his ego, nor to chastise us for our fallen state, nor to study us as a Wikilogical curiosity. I've always felt that FT2 is more-or-less on the level in his interactions as an arbitrator, and probably here as well. I realize that's a minority opinion (and I have others--like the notion that Fred Bauder wasn't such a bad arb), but it is my considered opinion. He seemed genuinely concerned about Mantanmoreland, for example. I still count him as second best behind Newyorkbrad.

His acts are not always clever. Proabivouac was honestly wronged, for example, and his recent ArbCom screw-up is well-known, but FT2 seems sincere to me.

FT2's here as a sort of 'public relations' exercise, for himself as much as anyone I expect, after the close of wikimedia uk. While we were discussing his professional capacities and the wikimedia project with which he was involved, was when he turned up. And I can't really blame him.

Don't get me wrong, I think he's chosen to do this himself. He's just doing what he thinks is best. It remains to be seen whether it will work. But FT2's presence may mean he's discussed more nicely than he otherwise would have been. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smiling.gif) It's a sort of 'damage limitation' IMHO. Are the threads with what might be his real name connected with the close of wikimedia uk tarpitted or no-indexed? If so, it might be nice to make sure he knows as maybe he thinks this will come up in a google search for his name.

[FT2]

FT2's here as a sort of 'public relations' exercise, for himself as much as anyone I expect, after the close of wikimedia uk. While we were discussing his professional capacities and the wikimedia project with which he was involved, was when he turned up. And I can't really blame him.

Don't get me wrong, I think he's chosen to do this himself. He's just doing what he thinks is best. It remains to be seen whether it will work. But FT2's presence may mean he's discussed more nicely than he otherwise would have been. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) It's a sort of 'damage limitation' IMHO. Are the threads with what might be his real name connected with the close of wikimedia uk tarpitted or no-indexed? If so, it might be nice to make sure he knows as maybe he thinks this will come up in a google search for his name.

I give Somey permission to quote my email of April 29 (and his reply if he wishes), as well as my email of last week (if needed), to address some of those questions. Please do.

There's an old saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything else starts to look like nails. It might be hard to believe someone could want to visit for dialog, and would want to know at least the views of credible critics, but if some here stopped believing everyone on Wikipedia is in a conspiracy and against them, and others on Wikipedia stopped believing every criticism and user here is disruptive, a lot of people who aren't on the extremes of either view would probably be happy.

My on-wiki role is simple - I'm a wikipedia administrator and editor. (I enjoy cleanup work, and edit a wide range of topics.) In December, I was voted by the community to sit for a 3 year term on a committee that handles some of wikipedia's most difficult disputes and privacy-related issues. I do that job till I burn out, till three years are up, or till choosing to resign. I took it up because I was handling disputes of that scale already and felt I could best help by offering that role, and because like any other admin and user I could see that Arbcom was hitting issues and I felt I might be able to help avoid some of them. Which has been a lot tougher than I thought, to be honest, and was made almost impossible when Newyorkbrad resigned at the exact same time of year that burnout often hits, also accompanied by Deskana's absence.

I don't see any conflict between my role there, and dialog here. It doesn't mean I agree with everything. It means I want to know a wider range of views than I might hear on Wikipedia alone, and discuss some issues with critics not just supporters. Also, a number of disputes start with doubts and uncertainties being discussed off-site; making it easier for users to ask actual questions early on could pay off. They could ask anyway, but sadly, people usually don't ask unless it's made easy to.

And now I need to go catch up on the last 24 hours posts.....

[Milton Roe]

There's an old saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything else starts to look like nails. It might be hard to believe someone could want to visit for dialog, and would want to know at least the views of credible critics, but if some here stopped believing everyone on Wikipedia is in a conspiracy and against them, and others on Wikipedia stopped believing every criticism and user here is disruptive, a lot of people who aren't on the extremes of either view would probably be happy.

Okay, let's see what we can do to start making you and the people who interact with you on WP a little happier.

Some issues are inherrently polarizing, because they involve differences in philosophical/ethical and theological views which are simply not compatable, and never will be. So the question is how to handle them on WP.

In the past the way it's ended up being done, is to summarize competing POVs within the same article while the article is small. As it grows, the various factions need their own space to "get away from" each other, as it will, and lay out their cases in peace. Subarticles are then spun-off. These are by definition NOT POV forks, so long as the various articles contain short summaries of the others, and links, so that walled gardens are not created.

Now, this eventually can work well (or as well as you can hope for, at least). A standard example is the Scientology article, which ONLY works because the various people who have strong points of view have been given 23 subarticles in which to do it. If you want any major POV regarding scientology, it's in there. There are separate articles for Criticism of Scientology, Ethics (Scientology), Scientology controversies, Scientology as a business, and so on.

Now, this process isn't perfect, and articles on religions aren't quite mirrors of each other. You'll find a Criticism of Catholicism and a Criticism of Mormonism article, just as you will for Scientology (these are criticisms of the beliefs themselves). And you'll find Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Mormonism (each with their own articles) defined as the prejudices and bigotries against the people who hold or practice the beliefs. Strangely, there is no Anti-Scientology as an article.

When it comes to other beliefs and actions, we begin to see a non-parallel process in operation. Within homosexuality there are no references to articles about "Criticism of homosexuality" (the ethical or health-related objection to the acts themselves, rather than the people who practice them or are drawn to them), by that term. Instead, we simply have an article on "homophobia" in which all this is defined as "irrational." What? This is very much like definining all objection to any Jewish belief as "anti-semitism" or "Jewphobia".

If you'd like a parallel, there is a long section in the Pork article about health risks in eating pork and there's an entire subarticle on Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork. Incredibly, the parallel article in homosexuality is simply called "religions and homosexuality." What happened to "restrictions" in the header? And there's nothing about additional health risks in men having sex with men, at all, in these days of AIDS (yeah, despite much politicking, it's still overwhelmingly a disease of IV drug users and men who have sex with men, and a gigantic amount of money has been wasted, admits the WHO recently, on "general education of schoolchildren" which should better have been used to target groups at risk). But eating pork chops and having anal sex are fairly parallel activities (though I suspect the pork chop habit is the safer). A decent encyclopedia would organize their discussion in the same ways.

Now, many fights about POV-pushing happen as small articles on things like paraphilias grow. Ultimately, many of these should probably be large enough to have some subarticles on anti-paraphilias and "Criticism of paraphilia X". As well as subs on religious proscriptions, ethics, business, and so on. What people trying to insert this stuff into the "main and only" article are doing, is simply signalling that such a fission is trying to take place. At this point, wise editors can allow to happen (as they did with the religious articles) or they can block it for more drama, as has happened with homeopathy, zoophilia, and so on.

What's not supposed to happen is that some admin who is supposedly familiar with the history of the way controversial articles have grown on WP, and with the appropriate ways of preventing edit wars, to show up on the middle of such a process where a paraphilia article is expanding, and say: "You're POV-pushing, [of course they are!] and since we officially are NPOV on WP, I'm going to block you if you do any more of this!"

That kind of thing speaks of both ignorance of the workings of WP, of the ongoing biases in what actually exists on WP, and (finally) of abuse of power. I believe I've seen you do it. If you come here to WR to defend it, we're going to rub your nose in it. And since there's not much you can do about that here, you can debate it rationally or slink off.

So. Ante up. Dialog(ue) over to you. Why not let the article on NLP grow in the same way as the article on Scientology? What's your problem with a "Criticism of zoophilia" article? Or, for that matter, an Anti-zoophilia article? We have an Anti-circumcision article (now redirected to "genital integrity"), but strangely no "Criticism of circumcision," or "Circumcisionophobia". Probably this is because neither side wants to be caught accusing the other of religious or cultural bigotry, even though it's no more or less bigotry than choosing (or not) to eat pork or choosing (or not) to have anal sex, or sex with animals.

The day you acknowledge that all these things are the same problem, and they can't be looked at as a nail to be pounded at with your banhammer when you meet some editor with a POV you don't like, is the day you start to learn the real difficulties of administration on WP. So, welcome to WR, FT2.

May you find it uncomfortable here.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe:

[Carruthers]

The day you acknowledge that all these things are the same problem, and they can't be looked at as a nail to be pounded at with your banhammer when you meet some editor with a POV you don't like, is the day you start to learn the real difficulties of administration on WP. So, welcome to WR, FT2.

Interesting points, all of them. However, this line of thinking only points out the inherent fallacy of WP:NPOV policy and how it relates to COI and the administrative hierarchy currently in place.

I firmly believe that there is no such thing as a NPOV edit: everyone has their own values, positions, ideas which they naturally want to see become the "established and accepted" position. When this position has been achieved, through "consensus" (on WP...and in life, read this to mean "the elimination of dissenting viewpoints". Yes, Virginia: some people will do anything for tenure...),
, the process becomes much more complex: it is no longer about the examination and analysis of knowledge, or dialog or even consensus....It becomes an issue of protecting the "perfect state" in which the knowledge is presented.

Of course, you always have somebody coming along who says (usually quite rightly) "that's not right, because X happened before Y which implies Z". If this idea is accepted, then the entire construction falls apart. So, therefore we have an "Inquisitorial process" which serves to remove such "heretics" from the "perfect state" which exists.

What happens when one of the "Grand Inquisitors" visits the area of Hell in which all of the excommunicated wail forever outside of the Gates of Paradise? More importantly, why should he do so? What is the motivation? Could it be....Conversions???

Now, before anybody brings up NewYorkBrad, I have to say that he is indeed the exception that proves the rule. I also believe that he has many questions about the current administrative structure in WP and is working towards reform.

I also believe that, given the kind of behavior that we've seen in the past few days on the part of our friend here, this process of reform is going to be extremely difficult because....some people are going to have to let go of a lot of ideas for it to be effective.

Ite missa est