SB Johnny and Wikiversity Options

[Ottava]

So SB Johnny decided to block me for one week on Wikiversity just because. Wonderful stuff. He claimed I was being disruptive for complaining that Abd was pretending to check recent changes while not actually doing that.

If you haven't noticed, Abd has been selectively welcoming people who are disruptive and they all happened to vote in support of him. They also say he has been doing a good job at recent changes.

Anyone can see from my contrbs that I had to go through and fix a lot. It isn't a coincidence. SB Johnny claims I have done nothing since coming back, but that is pure bs. I love how Wikiversity is making Wikipedia look far better in terms of logical practices.

[Ottava]

Ever just wonder how Abd is just blatantly making things up?

Case in point, this list.

Active vs inactive.

Abd says this user is active: StaniStani.

1. # 04:08, 13 September 2011
2. 07:32, 15 September 2011

Previous edit: 23:47, 9 May 2011


I'm in the "inactive" even though 5 edits the day before he was nominated and 11 total if you include September and August.


Then there are a surprising amount of "new" editors who appear in August.

(Returned in August) 1 (Aug 29th),

(Few edits) 2 (August 20th), 3 (August 17th)

(Some edits) 4 (August 18th), 5 (August 23rd)


I find that really interesting.

This post has been edited by Ottava:

[Abd]

Then there are a surprising amount of "new" editors who appear in August.

Ottava is really onto something here.

(Returned in August) 1 (Aug 29th),

Fedosin is apparently a Russian physicist, with some original ideas. I'd assisted in preventing his pages on WV from being deleted by the Wikipediots. I.e., those who attempt to apply Wikipedia standards to Wikiversity. Ottava would largely be in that group, Ottava was really a frustrated Wikipedian, banned for his incivility, not for content reasons, he'd done some excellent work. So, for him, Wikiversity was desirable as a way to act out his Wikipedia fantasies. To stand for Good Content. Which, of course, requires making that decision. Wikiversity handles content disputes in a very different and highly inclusive manner. That is because even "poor content" can still have educational purpose and usage, and we don't kick a student out of our free university for writing a Bad Paper. In deletion discussions involving Fedosin articles, I saw people completely ignorant of physics criticizing them, calling "nonsense" what was just plain too complicated or too esoteric for them. We don't make those decisions, as a community, i.e., decide what's right or wrong or sensible or nonsense, deleting the latter, except in ways that are subject to high consensus.

(Few edits) 2 (August 20th),

Refugee from es.wikipedia, where, under a different user name, he'd violated guidelines and was seriously slapped down. He tells the story in my CC. He appeared because I suggested es.wikiversity or en.wikiversity, for what he'd wanted to do. He's not an academic, I think, but he knows one and that's the work he's presenting. It's solid, though his English is not great. It may not have been appropriate for es.wikipedia, but I did research it, and, whether it was appropriate or not, he had been abused, because he was just told that he was wrong, in an unfriendly way, he was not guided so that he could understand the guidelines, and he was clearly clueless. When I established rapport, I was able to explain his errors to him, he really did understand that the basic error was failing to seek consensus, insisting that he was "right."

[3 (August 17th).

White Fennec may be the same user who was blocked by me previously. This is about the article on Boubaker Polynomials, which had been deleted on various wikis in some rather weak grounds, boiling down to whether or not they are sufficiently notable. I became aware of the issue when a Popo Le Chien, claiming to be from fr.wikipedia, demanded that the article be deleted, with a racist comment. I investigated and found that there was a Popo le Chien, i.e., properly capitalized according to French usage, who was a French 'crat, and prominent there in opposition to ... Boubaker polynomials. But I strongly suspected that this was not him. And so I blocked the account, and filed a request at meta for a global lock, which was granted. Ottava made a Huge Fuss, thinking I'd been hasty. I was worried about the reputation of the real Popo le Chien, because if people read the work of a straw puppet like that, the impression might never be corrected. I was right. Or at least Popo le Chien did not want to take responsibility! (I think it really was not him). Had I been wrong, it would have easily been fixed. But it got stranger. A French user then claimed to be the real person with the name of the account that had created Boubaker Polynomials, that this was an "outing" account. I blocked the page creator and revision-deleted the traces, and suggested that the user, if they wanted to participate cooperatively, should register an account. White Fennec appeared, and took responsibility for the article. I do not know if White Fennec is the same user whom I blocked, and I don't care. What I do know is that the user is at Wikiversity to help with that resource, which is a legitimate one, clearly, hence we have a user who is there for educational content. I think, reading this, you might understand why, even though I blocked the user or a friend of the user, the user might support me. It's because I encouraged what was legitimate while prohibiting and stopping what was not. Ottava doesn't understand this. To him, people are either Good or they are Bad. To me, they are just people, and anyone can do something good and anyone can do something bad. Encourage the good, reward good behavior, and discourage what isn't good. I have raised five kids, they did well, and I have two more. I know what works and what doesn't work, and, briefly, blame and punishment don't work. Natural consequences and prevention of harm do work. Kids understand it and so do most adults.

(Some edits) 4 (August 18th),

Brick and mortar instructor, Howard Community College. Seriously active with serious use of Wikiversity for real-world academic use, an engineering course. Ottava is an idiot, and is simply demonstrating that he's clueless about how Wikiversity is actually being used. 1sfoerster is a newbie, and often edits logged-out. That will change, he's tractable and cooperative.

5 (August 23rd)

Refugee from Wikipedia. I hadn't noticed him much until he was attacked by S Larcia. S Larcia has now smelled the coffee and is very interested in Wikiversity, because he saw how my welcoming attitude caused Marshallsumter to be totally cooperative in terms of addressing the copyright concerns that had been brought from Wikipedia, whereas the Wikipedia attitude resulted in a big mess to be cleaned up without any help from the one who might have created it.

I find that really interesting.

It is. Except for 1sfoerster, these users represent a certain portion of my work, which involves inviting users banned elsewhere to contribute positively at Wikiveristy. They do. The result is less disruption elsewhere, something that completely escapes the Wikipediots, and their work at Wikiversity is either positive -- sometimes very positive -- or it's harmless. There are implications for the entire WMF.

[Ottava]

Fedosin is apparently a Russian physicist, with some original ideas. I'd assisted in preventing his pages on WV from being deleted by the Wikipediots. I.e., those who attempt to apply Wikipedia standards to Wikiversity.

This is Abd speak for - "He had crazy fringe ideas about science like me, and I gave him a platform to try and legitimize his crazy ideas".

So, for him, Wikiversity was desirable as a way to act out his Wikipedia fantasies. To stand for Good Content.

Yet I was on Wikiversity and an admin on Wikiversity long before I was ever banned. Over a year before. Funny.

Wikiversity handles content disputes in a very different and highly inclusive manner.

By that, Abd means that he allows for all the troll edits like this to stay, because this is clearly what Wikiversity is about: "My mother's name was Maryam who was born at Kraming, Khaplu Baltistan Pk. She was the second eldest of her eleven real sisters and one real brother. Her father's name was Isabaqdul who had three elder brothers namely Muhammad Jan, the eldest, Abdullah and Ali. When my mother was born, her eldest uncle Mr. Muhammad Jan decided to marry her to his second eldest son Hasan and the marriage was arranged accordingly in their mid teens. The marriage broke after birth of my sister who was a little bit disabled by birth. Mr. Hasan married another lady when his father passed away. My mother, a holy Qura'n learned lady was married to Mr. Muhammad Yar r/o Mikserpi, Khaplu, Baltistan after tallaaq and iddat... Innaa lillai wa innaa ilaihi! May Allah rest her soul in eternal peace.!"

The above was taken from this page which was previously in the mainspace. It doesn't belong anywhere on Wikiversity.

That is because even "poor content" can still have educational purpose and usage, and we don't kick a student out of our free university for writing a Bad Paper.

Odd, because Abd indefs people without waring or notice. That doesn't seem like an attempt to redeem them.


The rest is equally insane, and there is only so much insanity one can stomach.

[Abd]

I'd skipped to the end, but when I looked back, I saw that there are some matters of interest here, than can, for those interested, explain better what Wikiversity is about and what I'm up to.

Fedosin is apparently a Russian physicist, with some original ideas. I'd assisted in preventing his pages on WV from being deleted by the Wikipediots. I.e., those who attempt to apply Wikipedia standards to Wikiversity.

This is Abd speak for - "He had crazy fringe ideas about science like me, and I gave him a platform to try and legitimize his crazy ideas".

No. We are an educational institution, and we allow users, including experts like Fedosin -- and he is an expert -- to develop resources in relative peace and security. It takes expertise to review the work of an expert. It will ultimately happen, I'm sure, and if a Fedosin page is actually not supportable in the presence of expert opinion, it will become a subpage, ideally, with criticism explaining and exploring errors.

The existence of a page on Wikiversity does not "legitimize" any ideas. The existence of a page on Wikipedia doesn't even do that, though as Wikipedia actually starts to develop true peer review, which Wikiversity will help it to do, it might.

There are differences of opinion among experts. There is no one "expert position," very often. When someone comes to Wikiversity with truly out-there ideas, we have ways to accommodate them, and if they aren't interested in cooperation, they may end up blocked. It's unusual. Most people prefer to cooperate, give them a way to do it, they will. Try to exclude them, they may break the windows and climb in anyway. Better to channel their work. What I saw happening with Fedosin is that non-physicists were judging the work of a physicist, and determining that this was nonsense. Do understand that some physicists will call the work of other physicists "nonsense." They might even work at the same university.

It is about time to look again at Fedosin's work. I prefer this to be done by experts, who will advise the community. But we are short of those with the time to devote. Any experts interested? Hint: Ottava is completely unqualified. I've edited scientific work that has been published in a major journal. Ottava, and Wikipedia, and others who fancy themselves as "informed," have rejected this work as "fringe," but the peer reviewers at major journals don't agree. The contrary position has almost completely disappeared from mainstream journalsIt just goes to show.

Wikiversity handles content disputes in a very different and highly inclusive manner.

By that, Abd means that he allows for all the troll edits like this to stay, because this is clearly what Wikiversity is about: "My mother's name was Maryam who was born at Kraming, Khaplu Baltistan Pk. She was the second eldest of her eleven real sisters and one real brother. Her father's name was Isabaqdul who had three elder brothers namely Muhammad Jan, the eldest, Abdullah and Ali. When my mother was born, her eldest uncle Mr. Muhammad Jan decided to marry her to his second eldest son Hasan and the marriage was arranged accordingly in their mid teens. The marriage broke after birth of my sister who was a little bit disabled by birth. Mr. Hasan married another lady when his father passed away. My mother, a holy Qura'n learned lady was married to Mr. Muhammad Yar r/o Mikserpi, Khaplu, Baltistan after tallaaq and iddat... Innaa lillai wa innaa ilaihi! May Allah rest her soul in eternal peace.!"

The above was taken from this page which was previously in the mainspace. It doesn't belong anywhere on Wikiversity.[quote]Excellent example, I'm glad that Ottava chose it. It demonstrates that Ottava is essentially crazy, and probably should be banned from Wikiversity central structure. Fine if he writes about Shelley or whatever he actually knows about.

"Troll." This is apparently a Pakistani user. Definitely not a troll. That's his mother he wrote about. The fellow is entirely new to wikis or anything like it. I found an article on a very small town in Pakistan, in Wikiversity mainspace. So I moved it to his user space, and advised him that he was free to improve it there. He's not ready, as far as I see, to work on mainspace pages, and it might take him quite some time to get there. What he's learning on wikiversity is how to edit wikitext, how to write and express himself, and he's doing that, mostly, in his user space. He's monitored, and if he creates inappropriate pages in mainspace, they are almost immediately moved to his user space. He recently created a couple of pages in mainspace, and they were obviously user space type pages. I've asked him repeatedly to not create pages in mainspace, but my observation with highly unskilled users is that they will do it anyway. It takes repetition. Any educator knows that, and you don't improve the skills of these people by blaming and shaming and excluding them. Wikiversity is for educational resources, but part of this is fostering the actual process of education.

Ottava was also opposed to my work with a very young user, about 7 years old at first contact, according to the biography he wrote. But he writes fantasy. Originally, some of this was put into User:Abd/Playspace, but when he had a stable account -- that took some doing for a 7-year old! -- pages were moved into his user space, and he has almost entirely settled to only working on pages there. So he's learning writing, wikitext, and cooperation with a community, which is a big thing. This same user was considered a cross-wiki vandal, because what an even relatively clueful 7-year old writes is likely to be seen that way. The result of my welcome and support of him at Wikiversity has been the disappearance of such cross-wiki disruption, it appears. In other words, the openness of Wikiversity is preventing disruption elsewhere. This kid had discovered, already, when I found him, that when blocked, all he had to do was reboot his modem, and the block magically went away. Sitting on an elementary school IP. Great! His home IP, a major provider, floating IP, etc. Young. Has many years ahead of him where he's still young. Not intimidated. Now, you can engage and support someone like that, or you can try to exclude them. Exclude them, you are training them in how to avoid your exclusion. And that is exactly what they will do.

You can play a game of whack-a-mole, or you can start to wake up and deal with the real world, the way it is. "Bans" are largely a fantasy.