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Posted by: ownage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Userbox_policy_poll#Oppose

Posted by: blissyu2

I am shocked and horrified. There are about 5 times as many Support votes as Oppose votes for this terrible policy. And the irony is that Userboxes, especially political ones, improve NPOV because they make the biases transparent. We can never actually achieve NPOV, so making a bias transparent is a very good thing.

I think that a lot of people misunderstood the question, or perhaps they were just fearful of opposing almighty Jimbo.

No doubt he will say that this proves that Kelly Martin, Snowspinner, Tony Sidaway and company were right in mass deleting userboxes.

Posted by: ownage

at this moment, 96 support, 27 oppse. So about 3 times more supporters than opposers. Probably more people should vote, lots of people don't even know that this poll is going on.

Posted by: blissyu2

Yeah, closer to 3 than 5. But still a lot. Its dodgy though.

Posted by: God of War

It's because of the obtuse language in the policy. Many see it as a reasonable policy without realising it essentialy says all template space userboxes that show a POV will be deleted. I tried to clarify this on the page and was met with "What you say is correct, but unneccesary" WTF. They want their policy to be obtuse so that people won't realize what they are voting for.

Posted by: Blu Aardvark

Nuetral and abstaining "votes" also factor into the result.

There are several reasons, IMO, that we see the number of support votes that we see. One of them is that most Wikipedian's still follow a "Jimbo is God" mentality, and believe that, since they think he opposes PoV userboxes, that they should oppose PoV userboxes as well. Another reason is that people are sick and tired of the userbox war, and are looking for a way out of it. A compromise solution comes up that they may not fully agree with, but they are tired of running after the admins who are speedying them out of process, arguing on TFD and DRV about the value of the templates, and watching admins ignore the result of the debates and do whatever the hell the please regardless. (Tony Sidaway calls this abusive behaviour "common sense"). Of course, speedying templates is preferable to listing them on TFD. For one, on TFD, no consensus defaults to "keep". On DRV, it doesn't necessarily.

It's disappointing that DRV is being treated the way it is however. DRV isn't intended to be a vote on whether or not the template should be undeleted. DRV is supposed to be a discussion to determine whether or not the deletion was in accordance with Wikipedia policy. It's a shame that most people voting "keep deleted" (and many voting "undelete") don't seem to realize that this isn't how DRV is intended to function. If they did realize it, mark my words, the discussion would be nearly unanimous to undelete the templates. T1 is valid, but it should be used with common sense (and not Tony Sidaway's defination of common sense). If the template is TRULY divisive, and cannot feasibly be corrected, to delete it makes sense. Most people won't oppose these deletions, either. But to delete a template because "well, I think it's divisive" or "userboxes must die!" isn't a common sense interpretation of T1. It's a disruptive interpretation.

Posted by: thebainer

I suggested to some of the people involved that they just forget about userboxes for a while, and go write some articles, but it didn't seem to go down very well. Obviously people on all sides just want to fight, not to get on with doing useful things.

See also http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-February/040573.html for my thoughts on userboxes and political expression.

Posted by: chalst

It's amusing that several people seem to have arrived at the conclusion that the overwhelming support for the proposed policy that is seen as overwhelmingly bad here must be evidence for groupthink at wikipedia, and not groupthink here.

Me, I voted neutral: the policy is in the general area of a workable compromise, but it's lousily worded. I'm bothered by userboxes to the extent that they facilitate poll stacking operations, but beyond that I think that freer expression is good for wikipedia, hence moving userboxes out of template space is a good thing.

Posted by: ownage

Wikipedia is structured to encourage group think. This forum does not have rules that punish indivualism.

Posted by: Blu Aardvark

I think you are reading too much into the opinions here. I, for one, do not believe the proposed policy to be overwhelmingly bad - I voted nuetral. As for evidence of groupthink... this isn't in and of itself evidence of groupthink, true. Wikimedia's systematic flaws are. Allow me to elaborate. http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CommunityMayNotScale - once a community reaches a certain size or number of members, it stops functioning as a community. Wikimedia has reached this point long ago. Factions, groupthink, and cabalism is a natural response to this. When a community is forced to scale, people form their own mini-communities. This is a systematic problem, and no matter how long the elitist cabal argues about how bad factionalism is for the project, the fact remains that factions will remain. It is natural and to be expected.

When I refer to the elitist cabal, I refer to the faction that has the ear of the ArbCom, and believes themselves to be the group referred to by Raul's First Law. The elitist cabal can ignore every rule, and trample any user, in the name of "product over process". If a user attempts to bring a member of the elitist cabal through dispute revolution to ArbCom, it is (nearly) a given that the Arbitration Comittee will decide unanimously against that user (there are exceptions, of course). Want an example? Look at Lir's third case, and actually check the evidence in the "Findings of Fact" section. The evidence is incredibly weak, and nothing is presented anywhere in the case to justify a ban of a year.

Posted by: God of War

Don't worry, this poll is now at 64% and falling. Thanks to everyone that helped with this. If your curious as to some of the reasons this fell so far look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#StrangerInParadise_spambot_spamming_userpages.

Just 7 days ago this poll was running at 77% and looked dangerously close to early closure. Now it is almost guaranteed to be soundly defeated.

Posted by: Cynical

Sorry, but I don't honestly see the problem with this proposal. Userboxes get to stay, just not as templates. The proposal doesn't pretend to be anything else, so if anything the confusion seems to be on the 'oppose' side (the number of oppose votes saying 'this will stop me from expressing myself' is staggering)

Posted by: God of War

Lol, I closed this on the exact moment it ended. One guy got upset because it wasn't a "Cabal Approved" closure and proceeded to revert war and then start striking out oppose votes of those who had been solicited to vote. Where there's smoke there must be a flamewar up ahead.

Posted by: Golbez

Cabal approval granted. (not that it was required, anyone can declare a poll closed if it's at the proper time, except in admin-action polls like RfA and AfD, since those require an admin's/crat's action) What annoys me most here is the striking out of valid votes, and had I noticed it myself I might have blocked him on the spot. But there's been an edit war since, so I would rather not punish one side.

I love flexing my muscles.

Edit: Seems the closing date was added on March 2 by Locke Cole, and since it wasn't part of the original conditions of the poll, it's not a valid closing date. I do not fault you for closing it, just letting you know what's up.