Editors union, Power to the workers Options

[Peter Damian]

The Established editors association will be a kind of union of who have made substantial and enduring contributions to the encyclopedia for a period of time (say, two years or more). The proposed articles of association are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Peter_Da...blished_Editors here - suggestions welcome.

Administrators are very welcome to join, so long as they meet the criteria for admission, and so long as they are committed to the core objectives of the Association, including supporting other members.

All nominations will be by me for the moment, but other nominations are welcome - please use the space provided http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pet...her_nominations here to nominate anyone who you think would be eligible and interested (which may include yourself). When there are enough nominations, there will be an election from among the nominees.

I nominated Jimbo for a laugh.

[A Horse With No Name]

This reminds me...where's SmashTheState? He is one of the very few Wiki people who I admire.

[Nerd]

What's the point of this "union"? You're volunteers, you have no rights to speak of, so what hope do you have here?

[Peter Damian]

What's the point of this "union"? You're volunteers, you have no rights to speak of, so what hope do you have here?

There were no worker's rights before trade unions. That's what unions are for.

[Nerd]

What's the point of this "union"? You're volunteers, you have no rights to speak of, so what hope do you have here?

There were no worker's rights before trade unions. That's what unions are for.

This is Wikipedia, not the real world.

[Peter Damian]

Awful idea. Wikipedia is not a hierarchy, and all users should be treated equally. Meetare Shappy Cunkelfratz! 14:26, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jim...ors_Association

[Peter Damian]

Up for deletion already

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mis...blished_Editors

[Jon Awbrey]

Sisyphus, Sisyphus, Sisyphus …

[Eva Destruction]

Up for deletion already

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mis...blished_Editors

There's something deeply ironic about Shappy (T-C-L-K-R-D) – a.k.a. serial sockpuppeteer User:Shapiros10 and founder of the User:Shapiros10/Under-18,don't give a damn about it Cabal (sample quote: "A few days beofore June 25, a 12 years old user eneterd a RFA. Sadly, he failed, because of his age, he was told: "how can i trust a user who has a bedtime to be an admin". This was an outrage, and was reacted as such. A discussion was then opened up and more disgusting comments were made. Then, three editors rose together and realised this outrage. The cabal fights back against that disgusting rascicm, and will one day rise above the darkness.") nominating this for deletion on the grounds that "There are already enough cliques on Wikipedia".


Moderator's note: Several (somewhat off-topic) posts about Shappy (T-C-L-K-R-D) , the irony of his attempt to delete the page in question, and his general worthiness as a Wikipedia editor were moved to the tar pit.

[thekohser]

PD, I was going to suggest that maybe you and I write an article about your "union" along with details from my experience in the mid-1990's with America Online's "Homework Help" team of volunteers. AOL was compensating the volunteers with Internet access time (back in the day, where you'd pay AOL by the minute for bandwidth), at the rate of complimentary access at 2x the amount of time volunteered, helping students with their homework challenges.

Anyway, once the business model went to unlimited access, I suggested that we could still be "compensated" at the rate of 2 cents per interaction, which would be donated monthly to a charity, chosen by the Homework Helpers. The AOL authorities banned me when I pushed this recommendation to a community "vote".

And, now, I see your page is subject to deletion.

Same sort of culture that ruined AOL, seems to be in place at Wikipedia.

Greg

[Peter Damian]

PD, I was going to suggest that maybe you and I write an article about your "union" along with details from my experience in the mid-1990's with America Online's "Homework Help" team of volunteers. AOL was compensating the volunteers with Internet access time (back in the day, where you'd pay AOL by the minute for bandwidth), at the rate of complimentary access at 2x the amount of time volunteered, helping students with their homework challenges.

Anyway, once the business model went to unlimited access, I suggested that we could still be "compensated" at the rate of 2 cents per interaction, which would be donated monthly to a charity, chosen by the Homework Helpers. The AOL authorities banned me when I pushed this recommendation to a community "vote".

And, now, I see your page is subject to deletion.

Same sort of culture that ruined AOL, seems to be in place at Wikipedia.

Greg

Let's see!

[Peter Damian]

We are not a venue for free speech. Chillum 16:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[Nerd]

We are not a venue for free speech. Chillum 16:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

And what is the importance of this quote? He's right, you know.

[Eight]

The Established editors association will be a kind of union of who have made substantial and enduring contributions to the encyclopedia for a period of time (say, two years or more). The proposed articles of association are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Peter_Da...blished_Editors here - suggestions welcome.

Administrators are very welcome to join, so long as they meet the criteria for admission, and so long as they are committed to the core objectives of the Association, including supporting other members.

All nominations will be by me for the moment, but other nominations are welcome - please use the space provided http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pet...her_nominations here to nominate anyone who you think would be eligible and interested (which may include yourself). When there are enough nominations, there will be an election from among the nominees.

I nominated Jimbo for a laugh.

I like the basic idea, but you might want to flesh this out a little more before you let it sit in a place where Wikipedians can get at it. Here's the thing. So you have a union of some type, and a member runs afoul of "the law" and gets blocked, or topic banned. The editor alerts the union, and the union does... what, exactly?

All I can see coming out of this is another MySpace club on Wikipedia that shows up and makes a lot of noise whenever one of their friends gets in trouble. Even though the group would elect members, and have strict criteria for membership, they would probably just be perceived as a snobbier form of noise machine.

On the other hand, if you changed the rules on who can join, you might have a workable idea. As it currently seeks to exclude any editors who are essentially technocrats, rather than writers, this would automatically be antagonistic not only to sysops and the powers that be, but also to a great number of "ordinary" editors who are not part of the power structure. A union for all regular editors, that protects against admin abuse, supports and contributes to the development of policies, supports and develops members would be a better idea since it would be seen as genuinely trying to grow the project, instead of just exclude a certain class of good faith editors. If someone wants to become an admin, they could then leave the union, but perhaps retain some type of emeritus status. A union like that would then have legitimacy to negotiate things on behalf of editors.

[Cla68]

This union to some extent formalizes the adversarial situation between editors and admins in Wikipedia, although many of the people you nominated for membership are admins. The admins who don't do any substantial article writing should respond by forming their own union. The admins in Wikipedia do need some kind of support group to help make admin actions in Wikipedia more consistent and fair.

[Malleus]

The admins in Wikipedia do need some kind of support group to help make admin actions in Wikipedia more consistent and fair.

More consistent and fair? They could hardly be less consistent and fair, so that's a pretty low-hanging fruit. The answer for admins is for there to be fewer and better ones. Simple. No need for a support group for the incompetents, dump 'em.

Then maybe the regular editors would not feel the need the circle the wagons.

This post has been edited by Malleus: Sun 14th June 2009, 12:08am

[emesee]

perhaps wr could be thought of as a sort of editors union in more or less formal respects; it just so happens that some of the editors (or x-editors) are on strike by choice or by force...

[Peter Damian]

This union to some extent formalizes the adversarial situation between editors and admins in Wikipedia, although many of the people you nominated for membership are admins. The admins who don't do any substantial article writing should respond by forming their own union. The admins in Wikipedia do need some kind of support group to help make admin actions in Wikipedia more consistent and fair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=296361415

[CharlotteWebb]

There were no worker's rights before trade unions.

See right to work.

[Kurt M. Weber]

What's the point of this "union"? You're volunteers, you have no rights to speak of, so what hope do you have here?

There were no worker's rights before trade unions. That's what unions are for.

There still aren't. There are "individual rights" that EVERYONE possesses, to be sure, must the set of so-called "worker's rights" aren't really rights at ll, but are in fact despicable and illegitimate violations of the individual rights of employers.

The nature of rights is such that their scope is static, universal, and objective. They cannot be expanded or reduced by governmental fiat (or by anyone else's say so, for that matter). They are a logical conclusion of the fundamental nature of the Universe.