JoshuaZ looks at Section 230, and gives me an idea... Options

[Piperdown]

wow, don't mess with Somey!

You get today's Butters Goes Professor Chaos Award. Hell hath no fury like a mensch scorned!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butters#Professor_Chaos

This post has been edited by Piperdown: Tue 18th December 2007, 5:14am

[Daniel Brandt]

Perhaps when Google gets up to speed, we could offer a second search option for this board. All you have to do is put a Scroogle search form on this site. That way your search terms are private, even from the admins on this board, because the search is sent directly to Scroogle. You can even tell it to use SSL if you like.

Of course, some will complain that Scroogle is run by me, and assume that I'm snooping. Not very likely — I've been running Scroogle for three years now and I'm busy enough just keeping my five servers running. I have never looked at the search terms except when chasing down bots and abusers that have to be blocked, so that the servers stay available for warm-blooded searchers.

Assuming that Google does a decent job indexing this entire WR board, I think the Google search is better than the Invision PB built-in search. There's no reason why both can't be offered.

I expect it will take about 10 days for Google to get up to speed on WR.

[Moulton]

Who knows, maybe we'll even get some new VIP's coming in! Those are always fun...

Especially if they come bearing an olive branch and a proposal to negotiate an honorable treaty of reconciliation and peace.

[Amarkov]

I think Google will get a full index considerably sooner than 10 days. The older stuff might take a while, but they've already begun to show results from the editors subforums.

[Somey]

wow, don't mess with Somey! ...

Heh heh... Still, everyone should understand that this isn't something I personally wanted to do. That's in addition to the fact that it wasn't solely my decision... I was actualy one of the holdouts.

The problem here is that crawlers are indexing this material right now, as we type - and once indexed, it's going to take a while for those entries to disappear, though they probably will eventually. If they act now (and take advtage of this limited-time offer!), maybe we can all avoid some lasting damage from this situation. But somehow I think they're going to dicker around over it for way too long, and the damage will be done, and it could take months for Google to clear that stuff out. And they'll have JoshuaZ to thank for it, as far as I'm concerned.

At one point I considered e-mailing ol' Joshy directly, but that would have been useless. And asking them politely to reverse the actions of what may now be their most abusive administrator (not to mention the nerdiest) is like yelling at a brick wall. What's the point of asking them nicely? They don't understand "nice" - they understand the veneer of civility, but for them, civility is just another weapon used to get people blocked.

Anyway, this isn't our last ace in the hole - we still have a few others... It was unfortunate that we were driven to using this one, though, since it was probably the easiest one to implement!

But somehow I think they're going to dicker around over it for way too long, and the damage will be done...

Then again, I could be wrong about that.

Thanks, Krimpet?

[Piperdown]

...ace in the hole...

uh-oh, no you did-int!! you just made mediacrity-mantanmoreland supersekret paranoid again.

[Jonny Cache]

I have never figured out why we censor names in the first place. They have never done that for the users that they abuse.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 6:04am

[The Joy]

Thanks to Krimpet and Ryulong!

"Thanks to... Ryulong?" I think I saw a pig fly!

[Moulton]

Does Josh have a HOLE in his head?

What astonishes me is that Josh is a math major and math tutor, so he clearly knows what a function is.

And he knows about self-reference, so he knows about recursion, and hence about chaos theory.

And yet he is enamored of the wonderfulness of Heaviside Switch Functions as the function of choice when designing a feedback control system.

How could he have been so blind as to reprise Hammurabi's Original Logic Error (WP:HOLE).

[Somey]

I have never figured out why we censor names in the first place. They have never done that for the users that they abuse.

Because if we do as evil does, then we become the evil ourselves?

Don't get me wrong, of course... The name redactions were mostly for self-identified-female editors who had publicly expressed a desire not to be named, or people who had made specific (and non-threatening) requests. There are still a fair number of names, but nearly all of them are people who had already been identified elsewhere and presumably didn't want to bother going to the trouble of getting their WP username disconnected from their real one, if that's even possible in some of these cases.

Anyway, now we have to determine if there's going to be a wheel-war over this... If not, then I think we should probably hide the Editors forum again. I know some people see that as a form of censorship in itself, but I don't personally.

In the meantime, I'll go ahead and take down the top-row banner thingy...

[Piperdown]

Don't get me wrong, of course... The name redactions were mostly for self-identified-female editors who had publicly expressed a desire not to be named, or people who had made specific (and non-threatening) requests.

but wait, JzG said that all that SlimVirgin/SweetBlueWater/Sunsplash/SlimV/Candi/Sarah stuff was just lieslieslies from CrazyEvil Dan B and Wacky Wikipedian Personally Attacked User:PatrickByrne.

so why the fuss over redaction? i guess JzG just doesn't know what the gerard he is talking about. i'm crushed, disillusioned, that someone so sure of themselves, in such a high position of virtual authority, could be so wrong.

oh, my wikivirginity has gone and will never blossom again. the horror.

[east.718]

Thanks to Krimpet and Ryulong!

"Thanks to... Ryulong?" I think I saw a pig fly!

Actually, all this started from a private discussion which me and another low-profile admin who won't be named set in motion. Ryulong just happened to be the only person sober enough to type something on the administrators' noticeboard.

[Moulton]

Resignation by political suicide?

[Somey]

Actually, all this started from a private discussion which me and another low-profile admin who won't be named set in motion. Ryulong just happened to be the only person sober enough to type something on the administrators' noticeboard.

Drinking on a Monday night? That reminds me, I never did get the laundry out of the dryer...

Anyway, thanks for doing that! So - what are the chances of a wheel war erupting over this? I don't see ol' Joshy as having much backup among the other admins, at least over something Brandt-related... We know Slimmy, JzG, and the rest of the Cabal won't help him, probably not Dave Gerard or Snowie either, and CharlotteWebb isn't an admin. Most of the admins who might consider getting involved at this point (besides Jimbo himself, I suppose) probably wouldn't have the required intimidation factor. Who's left?

[Somey]

so why the fuss over redaction? i guess JzG just doesn't know what the gerard he is talking about. i'm crushed, disillusioned, that someone so sure of themselves, in such a high position of virtual authority, could be so wrong.

I gotta be honest here... I really don't think people like JzG or MONGO or even SlimVirgin actually read Wikipedia Review at all, not in any substantive sense of the word - I think they come here, search on their own usernames, and ignore everything else that isn't about them personally, which comprises about 90 percent of the site (though in Slimmy's case, maybe more like 70 percent). This would be perfectly in keeping with the kind of narcissistic behavior they demonstrate on WP itself, though of course I should hasten to point out that I'm not a professional therapist or anything like that.

Even if they aren't narcissists though, can you really blame them? It's a fairly popular, active forum... All 600 members are human, not spambots, and only about half are lurkers. Compared to a typical web-based forum that isn't all about Britney Spears or the Great Linux vs. Windows Debate, that's quite a large number - and the issues being discussed here are often fairly heady, right? Plus they've got plenty of other fish to fry on WP, and WikiEN-L, ad nauseam.

That, to me, is why people like JzG make ridiculous statements like the board is "dominated" by someone like Looch, who hasn't posted anything of significance here in months. JzG is familiar with Looch, knows who Looch is, and Looch posts mostly about JzG, so that's what JzG sees when he drops by - he ignores the rest, but because he's also completely bonkers, he apparently just assumes that everything else here must be about him too. And when we point out that he's lying about us most of the time, it's not just that he is lying, it's that he doesn't even know what the truth actually is.

I'm venting, though... I should be sleeping right about now, not venting!

[BobbyBombastic]

Actually, all this started from a private discussion which me and another low-profile admin who won't be named set in motion. Ryulong just happened to be the only person sober enough to type something on the administrators' noticeboard.

wonder how often that happens at Britannica.

[Daniel Brandt]

Heh heh... Still, everyone should understand that this isn't something I personally wanted to do. That's in addition to the fact that it wasn't solely my decision... I was actualy one of the holdouts.

The problem here is that crawlers are indexing this material right now, as we type - and once indexed, it's going to take a while for those entries to disappear, though they probably will eventually. If they act now (and take advtage of this limited-time offer!), maybe we can all avoid some lasting damage from this situation. But somehow I think they're going to dicker around over it for way too long, and the damage will be done, and it could take months for Google to clear that stuff out. And they'll have JoshuaZ to thank for it, as far as I'm concerned.

Sure, take down the banner. But let Google keep going. You were one of the holdouts, and a group of us who were holding your feet to the fire on this did it on the basis that the Editors forum should have been available to the bots from Day One anyhow.

My position now is that there's a good chance that Google will do a decent job of indexing this entire Board, old stuff and new. At that point we can add a Scroogle search box that will be clickable as either a site-specific-plus-keywords, or an entire-web search. It could even be a secure connection to Scroogle. There is zero overhead for this Board to do this, because it happens on my servers, not the server that this Board uses. (In fact, if folks prefer Scroogle over the built-in search, it will reduce overhead for this Board.) It would be a useful addition to the Board search we have now, and will make this Board stickier and more interesting. There are some advantages to the built-in search, and we should keep it there. But I suspect that most people will gravitate toward the Google results from Scroogle. Part of the reason is that they have a feel already for how to use Google and don't want to figure out the search system for this Board.

Besides, we're already addicted to the extra traffic we get from Google, aren't we? Don't lock out out the bots from Editors now that we are halfway there. Let's see what sort of a job Google does with all these extra pages.

You can see what a Scroogle search of this Board will look like by going to Scroogle and using search terms site:wikipediareview.com (where search terms are what you're looking for). Keep in mind that Google hasn't indexed most of the Editors forum yet, and is probably two or three days behind on the other forums as well.

[WhispersOfWisdom]

Okay, so "it's not clear what will happen" turns out to mean "everyone so far has agreed that the history shouldn't be there". I suspect some, at least, have seen the threat to make this forum indexed...

The threat was on Friday - it's now a reality. A LOT of people who had done Google searches to find background information on Wikipedians they were in conflict with, only to be somewhat frustrated due to our bot policy, are going to find it much easier in a couple of days, if not already. I expect both page views and new-member registrations to increase significantly. They're not going to realize how significant this is until it's too late, I'm afraid.

Who knows, maybe we'll even get some new VIP's coming in! Those are always fun...

Please do not back down on this issue.

Keep. Per Daniel Brandt.



This post has been edited by WhispersOfWisdom: Tue 18th December 2007, 2:22pm

[thekohser]

Scroogle is blocked by some corporate firewalls as a "Proxy Avoidance" problem. I presume that the Scroogle plug-in on Wikipedia Review could trigger that sort of filter? That wouldn't be a good thing, and I wouldn't want some users of WR to find the entire site blocked because of that type of filter. Is that even possible? I'm not a complete propeller-head, so I certainly don't have the answers.

Greg

[Moulton]

I'm confused about parts of this debate and where people stand on the issues.

Daniel Brandt has his HiveMind page, where he compiles information on the identity of otherwise pseudonymous WP admins.

Erik is evidently on record with the view that the "sum of all human knowledge" should be freely publishable by anyone, including WP publishing a biography of Daniel Brandt (against his will).

WR is vacillating on the issue of making public discussions of various high rollers on WP, with or without facilitating discovery of their real world identity and personal history.

WP has a mixed policy on publishing concordances of IPs with editors and their pseudonyms.

WR has an inchoate policy regarding the issue of whether IP addresses are private.

Could we have a public conversation to sift through these policy issues and see if we can sort out what gets through the sifter?