Sceptre and Criticism of Youtube AFD/edit war, Someone's getting spanked Options

[NotARepublican55]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...cism_of_YouTube

Article devoted solely to the bad things about YouTube, which runs counter to our NPOV policies, as all articles must not be solely devoted to one viewpoint. This is the crux here: a valid summary style article would contain both criticism and praise of YouTube; neither is really in short supply. Unlike Social impact of YouTube, which at least tries to be neutral, this article is not, will not be, and fundamentally can not be because, as YouTube is not an artistic work in itself, the default definition of "criticism" implicitly restricts the content of the article to be negative. Additionally, the criticism itself is not notable; this is just a laundry list of poorly sourced criticisms that aren't really about YouTube, but about What People Do On The Internet That's Actually Against The Terms Of Service But News Services Be Damned To Make The Distinction (which is a problem with most "Criticism of Web 2.0 sites" article). The only section of the article that I can see containing merit is about copyright: both infringement and false claims thereof; which should be preferably split out to something like Copyright on YouTube or Copyright on the Internet. Sceptre (talk) 14:44, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Well that's cool and all dude, but like Smithers says, "then why isn't Criticism of Wikipedia, Criticism of Wal-Mart, and the Criticism of the War on Terrorism deleted? This is just the strangest nomination".

Sceptre's response:

"What about article X?" is not a good argument. It's not even an argument. The odds are, they haven't been nominated for deletion. And, the truth is, even if they were nominated, they'd probably get kept because "omggz itz notabul!" And there's nothing strange about enforcing NPOV. Sceptre (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

News flash Sceptre - if you have an issue with "criticism of" articles on Wikipedia, then take it to the Village Pump or wherever and make your case there. Nothing in your AFD rationale gives a reason why this specific article should be deleted. You just gave a whiny little rant in the form of an AFD, about why you think these kind of articles violate NPOV. And it also looks like you're still upset that you got spanked awhile back for mass-nominating "criticism of" articles for deletion. That's the reason you aren't mass-nominating all criticism articles, because you know that if you do you'll get banned again, but apparently you've figured that if you nominate them one at a time, then you just might be able to slip under the radar. Jesus Christ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm..._revert_less.29

After Sceptre's AFD gets flooded by 'keep' voters calling him out for his assholery, he tries removing a bunch of sources from the article which he (unilaterally) claims are "unreliable" (in order to make the article smaller and more likely to be deleted). Then after another editor revert him, he reports him for edit warring and "telling bald-handed lies" about him.

He's continuing to do it, with a bunch of bare-faced lies. Sceptre (talk) 04:18, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Just a note if anyone's thinking of blocking both parties (i.e., me as well): seeing as Vexorg was reinserting poorly sourced/unsourced material about living people (most notably, the Venezuela corruption charges; the source given is dead), then the reversions to remove the material are exempt from 3RR. Sceptre (talk) 04:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

And unfortunately it looks like the end of this drama is "Vexorg" being blocked for edit warring, while Sceptre is simply given a warning to "discuss more, revert less". Well you seriously lucked out dude, because I was banned recently for only a fraction of this kind of nonsense.

I don't know what's scarier - the thought of him someday becoming an admin again, or simply that he somehow managed to become a Wikipedia admin in the past - granted it was a long long time ago, but the thought of how AFD voters could screw up that badly just makes me shudder.

This post has been edited by NotARepublican55: Mon 8th February 2010, 7:18am

[Somey]

Sceptre's response:

"What about article X?" is not a good argument. It's not even an argument. The odds are, they haven't been nominated for deletion. And, the truth is, even if they were nominated, they'd probably get kept because "omggz itz notabul!" And there's nothing strange about enforcing NPOV. Sceptre (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, "Criticism of..." articles are created in cases where something has been heavily criticized for a large number of issues by large numbers of people/groups (YouTube being a fairly good example), and the "criticism" edits become so prevalent and "disruptive" that the rest of the article suffers from neglect, or some other form of qualitative decline. In other words, they're supposed to be a courtesy to other WP'ers who are more interested in non-critical aspects of the subjects in question, or more accurately, they're a means of offloading the most warred-over content to a separate venue.

To get rid of them would presumably mean putting the warred-over content back into the main article in each case, which would of course be worse, as far as both the subject and the other WP users are concerned. In Wikipedia's case it would even make things worse for the readership, since the articles in question would lose whatever stability they might have otherwise had. (In fact, I can't think of anyone for whom this would make things significantly better, other than rivals/enemies/competitors of the article subjects.)

In effect, Mr. Sceptre is arguing that criticism should always be covered in the "main" article, which is actually correct (though highly impractical in many cases), but he isn't coming out and saying it because he knows this would be extremely unpopular. Instead he seems to be saying that non-counterbalanced criticism itself is a violation of "NPOV" - and he apparently believes (or wants us to believe that he believes) that "NPOV" a meaningful term.

So, either Mr. Sceptre is simply being a fool, or he's playing a somewhat deeper game here, and thinks everyone else is a fool. Of course, he's also a WR member and I don't want to assume the worst of him, but the fact is, his judgment has never really been especially good, and IIRC he's involved himself in some rather quixotic efforts (like this one) in the past.

[Milton Roe]

Sceptre's response:

"What about article X?" is not a good argument. It's not even an argument. The odds are, they haven't been nominated for deletion. And, the truth is, even if they were nominated, they'd probably get kept because "omggz itz notabul!" And there's nothing strange about enforcing NPOV. Sceptre (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, "Criticism of..." articles are created in cases where something has been heavily criticized for a large number of issues by large numbers of people/groups (YouTube being a fairly good example), and the "criticism" edits become so prevalent and "disruptive" that the rest of the article suffers from neglect, or some other form of qualitative decline. In other words, they're supposed to be a courtesy to other WP'ers who are more interested in non-critical aspects of the subjects in question, or more accurately, they're a means of offloading the most warred-over content to a separate venue.

Yes. In that, they're really no different than offloading ANY section of an article which gets overgrown, criticism or not. Per [[WP:SS]] (which should be "pillar" that all newbies should read) you spin off bloated sections to their own {{main}} subarticle, LEAVING a SUMMARY behind. So long as you DO that with criticism, you are not guilty of an NPOV-fork, which by definition means moving the critical stuff out, but leaving no summary of it, nor sign of how to see it, if you like.

Note that in a symmetrical case where there are just as many people who believe X as not-X (both positive and negative views have equal weight in the "reliable literature")*, both article and critical article will be mirrors of each other, with each containing a summary section referring to the other, and a {{main article}} tag there.


* Understand I'm just giving WP policy here. The difficulty of apprending what the correct NPOV weighting of differing expert viewpoints IS, itself takes an expert. So there's no getting away from having an expert do the writing. Sorry.

[CharlotteWebb]

As I understand it, "Criticism of..." articles are created in cases where something has been heavily criticized for a large number of issues by large numbers of people/groups (YouTube being a fairly good example), and the "criticism" edits become so prevalent and "disruptive" that the rest of the article suffers from neglect, or some other form of qualitative decline. In other words, they're supposed to be a courtesy to other WP'ers who are more interested in non-critical aspects of the subjects in question, or more accurately, they're a means of offloading the most warred-over content to a separate venue.

Yes. In that, they're really no different than offloading ANY section of an article which gets overgrown, criticism or not. Per [[WP:SS]] (which should be "pillar" that all newbies should read) you spin off bloated sections to their own {{main}} subarticle, LEAVING a SUMMARY behind. So long as you DO that with criticism, you are not guilty of an NPOV-fork, which by definition means moving the critical stuff out, but leaving no summary of it, nor sign of how to see it, if you like.

Let's take the "European Union" for example. According to WP it is a glimmering utopian society, for which there is no "criticism of…" article, only an obscure page called "Euroscepticism".

The latter is not mentioned anywhere in the article text. It is only tucked away in the small print of a navbox whose contents are collapsed (hidden) by default.

Until one year ago, even this courtesy was too much for readers to ask.

[Sceptre]

The sourcing of the article was terrible. It still is in parts, but really, you think I'm removing properly sourced content?

404, 404, 404, 404, far-right "news" source, blog, etc... surely the paragons of sourcing.

[EricBarbour]

As I understand it, "Criticism of..." articles are created in cases where something has been heavily criticized for a large number of issues by large numbers of people/groups (YouTube being a fairly good example), and the "criticism" edits become so prevalent and "disruptive" that the rest of the article suffers from neglect, or some other form of qualitative decline. In other words, they're supposed to be a courtesy to other WP'ers who are more interested in non-critical aspects of the subjects in question, or more accurately, they're a means of offloading the most warred-over content to a separate venue.

So, in other words, they are censoring that which is "not censored".

[Sceptre]

Yes. In that, they're really no different than offloading ANY section of an article which gets overgrown, criticism or not. Per [[WP:SS]] (which should be "pillar" that all newbies should read) you spin off bloated sections to their own {{main}} subarticle, LEAVING a SUMMARY behind. So long as you DO that with criticism, you are not guilty of an NPOV-fork, which by definition means moving the critical stuff out, but leaving no summary of it, nor sign of how to see it, if you like.

Note that in a symmetrical case where there are just as many people who believe X as not-X (both positive and negative views have equal weight in the "reliable literature")*, both article and critical article will be mirrors of each other, with each containing a summary section referring to the other, and a {{main article}} tag there.

* Understand I'm just giving WP policy here. The difficulty of apprending what the correct NPOV weighting of differing expert viewpoints IS, itself takes an expert. So there's no getting away from having an expert do the writing. Sorry.

Most of the time, criticism articles are either created to a) make the criticism seem more important than the praise, or b) to hide it from most peoples' views, as few people will click through. I'd much rather see articles such as "Copyright on YouTube", "Content policy of YouTube" than a thrown-together laundry-list of bad things under a "criticism" tag. It looks better, fosters better editing, et cetera; it's win-win.

And Somey is somewhat accurate in his first post in this thread. And to answer the question in your fourth paragraph: most Wikipedia editors are idiots. The recent hub-bub over BLPs seems to show that, especially with the prevalent school of thought around Wikipedia that protecting people's reputations shouldn't be done if it scares off the newbies.

This post has been edited by Sceptre: Tue 9th February 2010, 8:41am

[Somey]

The sourcing of the article was terrible. It still is in parts, but really, you think I'm removing properly sourced content?

I don't recall anyone here saying you were removing properly sourced content... The OP, Mr. NotARepublican, was simply saying that you were removing source references to make the article more easily deletable. It's a time-honored WP'er tactic, isn't it?

And what do you mean by "etc."...? There are still 46 references in the article, so if you removed 6 already, that means 6 out of 52 were either 404's or (arguably) bogus - that's actually pretty good, by Wikipedia standards.

The main point here is that if you think these "Criticism of..." articles should be removed because they're somehow inherently non-NPOV, that's simply wrongheaded. It might suggest that you're a super-nice guy who doesn't like to see people and their companies/ideas/products criticized, but big scary operations like Youtube can usually take care of themselves, actually. You should concentrate on smaller, less scary operations.

[NotARepublican55]

Most of the time, criticism articles are either created to a) make the criticism seem more important than the praise, or b) to hide it from most peoples' views, as few people will click through. I'd much rather see articles such as "Copyright on YouTube", "Content policy of YouTube" than a thrown-together laundry-list of bad things under a "criticism" tag. It looks better, fosters better editing, et cetera; it's win-win.

You're basically re-stating my point. Your issue is really about "criticism of" articles in general, not just this Youtube criticism article. So if you think this is an important issue, you should take it to Village Pump, RFC, or wherever's most appropriate and make your case there - because it's a sitewide issue, not just an issue with one or two stupid articles. All AFDing articles like that will do is make you look like a dick and possibly even get you hit with the banhammer.

And Somey is somewhat accurate in his first post in this thread. And to answer the question in your fourth paragraph: most Wikipedia editors are idiots. The recent hub-bub over BLPs seems to show that, especially with the prevalent school of thought around Wikipedia that protecting people's reputations shouldn't be done if it scares off the newbies.

Well that we both have to agree on.

This post has been edited by NotARepublican55: Tue 9th February 2010, 9:03am

[Somey]

And to answer the question in your fourth paragraph: most Wikipedia editors are idiots.

Right, but we usually gain more traction with them if we refer to them as simply "misguided" or "idealistic to the point of being delusional."

The thing that's dangerous in this case, not that I particularly worry about WP and its users being endangered, is that a couple of years ago, both Walmart and the Coca-Cola Company (and maybe one or two others) were the subject of media/blogosphere attention for having had their "Criticism of" sections offloaded to separate articles, which was seen as a whitewashing attempt - like you say, readers don't always "click through." To delete any such articles without fully reincorporating them into the main article(s) could easily be seen by those same people as "finishing the job" (of whitewashing). There might even be speculation as to whether the person(s) proposing the deletions are being paid by the companies in question to do so, not that I would accuse anyone in particular of such a thing.

But if you add in the double-bind proposition, then you could also be accused of acting against those companies' interests by drawing attention to the criticism article(s) and essentially threatening to have them reincorporated.

So, basically what I'm saying is be careful - big companies like predictability, and they don't like people upsetting the apple cart. A lot of the criticism in those articles may be unwarranted, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for big companies.

[Sceptre]

The sourcing of the article was terrible. It still is in parts, but really, you think I'm removing properly sourced content?

I don't recall anyone here saying you were removing properly sourced content... The OP, Mr. NotARepublican, was simply saying that you were removing source references to make the article more easily deletable. It's a time-honored WP'er tactic, isn't it?

And what do you mean by "etc."...? There are still 46 references in the article, so if you removed 6 already, that means 6 out of 52 were either 404's or (arguably) bogus - that's actually pretty good, by Wikipedia standards.

The main point here is that if you think these "Criticism of..." articles should be removed because they're somehow inherently non-NPOV, that's simply wrongheaded. It might suggest that you're a super-nice guy who doesn't like to see people and their companies/ideas/products criticized, but big scary operations like Youtube can usually take care of themselves, actually. You should concentrate on smaller, less scary operations.

I generally left the good stuff alone; the copyright section, for example, which takes up a good 70% of the references, is actually quite good. The only stuff I removed were unreferenced things such as the Honduran corruption matter, the Hillsborough section (as I said, I'm a Liverpool fan, but I still don't trust the Liverpudlian press to report on anything H'boro related in anything other than a reactionary or grieving tone), anything that doesn't criticise YouTube (you can't criticise YouTube for allowing people to plan to upload videos in the same way you can't criticise a bottle of detergent for killing bacteria or criticise plants for photosynthesising), anything where criticism doesn't exist (the IDF videos, and YT working with pro-Israeli organisations to remove anti-Semitic material, after removing the far-right blogs) and little stubby sections that don't really criticise the company but really criticises the users.

As I said in my nomination, this isn't "Criticism of YouTube", this is more like "Criticism of YouTube users". Criticism of YouTube encompasses things like their application of copyright law (from both sides of the fence) and their content policies; see: banning Wael Abbas, Pat Condell, and being remarkably slow in deleting neo-Nazi content, which was the subject of a CNN report in itself. It's funny, actually; the removals I've made, I think, actually increase the article's chance of survival.

And yes, I do suppose that it does suggest I'm a nice person, but really, I'd prefer if Wikipedia didn't have these sorts of articles because, as a top-ten website with a clear mandated policies of neutrality and sourcing, we have an ethical commitment to uphold that policy. I just hope more editors would think this way.

[NotARepublican55]

The sourcing of the article was terrible. It still is in parts, but really, you think I'm removing properly sourced content?

I don't recall anyone here saying you were removing properly sourced content... The OP, Mr. NotARepublican, was simply saying that you were removing source references to make the article more easily deletable. It's a time-honored WP'er tactic, isn't it?

And what do you mean by "etc."...? There are still 46 references in the article, so if you removed 6 already, that means 6 out of 52 were either 404's or (arguably) bogus - that's actually pretty good, by Wikipedia standards.

The main point here is that if you think these "Criticism of..." articles should be removed because they're somehow inherently non-NPOV, that's simply wrongheaded. It might suggest that you're a super-nice guy who doesn't like to see people and their companies/ideas/products criticized, but big scary operations like Youtube can usually take care of themselves, actually. You should concentrate on smaller, less scary operations.

I generally left the good stuff alone; the copyright section, for example, which takes up a good 70% of the references, is actually quite good. The only stuff I removed were unreferenced things such as the Honduran corruption matter, the Hillsborough section (as I said, I'm a Liverpool fan, but I still don't trust the Liverpudlian press to report on anything H'boro related in anything other than a reactionary or grieving tone), anything that doesn't criticise YouTube (you can't criticise YouTube for allowing people to plan to upload videos in the same way you can't criticise a bottle of detergent for killing bacteria or criticise plants for photosynthesising), anything where criticism doesn't exist (the IDF videos, and YT working with pro-Israeli organisations to remove anti-Semitic material, after removing the far-right blogs) and little stubby sections that don't really criticise the company but really criticises the users.

As I said in my nomination, this isn't "Criticism of YouTube", this is more like "Criticism of YouTube users". Criticism of YouTube encompasses things like their application of copyright law (from both sides of the fence) and their content policies; see: banning Wael Abbas, Pat Condell, and being remarkably slow in deleting neo-Nazi content, which was the subject of a CNN report in itself. It's funny, actually; the removals I've made, I think, actually increase the article's chance of survival.

I think a better idea would be just to remove those links instead of AFDing the whole article without giving a real reason for choosing to nom this specific article over say "Criticism of Walmart", that's my opinion.

And yes, I do suppose that it does suggest I'm a nice person, but really, I'd prefer if Wikipedia didn't have these sorts of articles because, as a top-ten website with a clear mandated policies of neutrality and sourcing, we have an ethical commitment to uphold that policy. I just hope more editors would think this way.

I don't see why criticism articles violate NPOV as long as the article itself isn't biased toward the critics. If the article just documents the criticism without implying that the critics are either "right" or "wrong", then what's the problem? By your standard of NPOV why shouldn't we just remove all criticism references from every article on Wikipedia (if just documenting that the subject of the article was criticized = endorsing the criticism)?

[Sceptre]

The sourcing of the article was terrible. It still is in parts, but really, you think I'm removing properly sourced content?

I don't recall anyone here saying you were removing properly sourced content... The OP, Mr. NotARepublican, was simply saying that you were removing source references to make the article more easily deletable. It's a time-honored WP'er tactic, isn't it?

And what do you mean by "etc."...? There are still 46 references in the article, so if you removed 6 already, that means 6 out of 52 were either 404's or (arguably) bogus - that's actually pretty good, by Wikipedia standards.

The main point here is that if you think these "Criticism of..." articles should be removed because they're somehow inherently non-NPOV, that's simply wrongheaded. It might suggest that you're a super-nice guy who doesn't like to see people and their companies/ideas/products criticized, but big scary operations like Youtube can usually take care of themselves, actually. You should concentrate on smaller, less scary operations.

I generally left the good stuff alone; the copyright section, for example, which takes up a good 70% of the references, is actually quite good. The only stuff I removed were unreferenced things such as the Honduran corruption matter, the Hillsborough section (as I said, I'm a Liverpool fan, but I still don't trust the Liverpudlian press to report on anything H'boro related in anything other than a reactionary or grieving tone), anything that doesn't criticise YouTube (you can't criticise YouTube for allowing people to plan to upload videos in the same way you can't criticise a bottle of detergent for killing bacteria or criticise plants for photosynthesising), anything where criticism doesn't exist (the IDF videos, and YT working with pro-Israeli organisations to remove anti-Semitic material, after removing the far-right blogs) and little stubby sections that don't really criticise the company but really criticises the users.

As I said in my nomination, this isn't "Criticism of YouTube", this is more like "Criticism of YouTube users". Criticism of YouTube encompasses things like their application of copyright law (from both sides of the fence) and their content policies; see: banning Wael Abbas, Pat Condell, and being remarkably slow in deleting neo-Nazi content, which was the subject of a CNN report in itself. It's funny, actually; the removals I've made, I think, actually increase the article's chance of survival.

I think a better idea would be just to remove those links instead of AFDing the whole article without giving a real reason for choosing to nom this specific article over say "Criticism of Walmart", that's my opinion.

And yes, I do suppose that it does suggest I'm a nice person, but really, I'd prefer if Wikipedia didn't have these sorts of articles because, as a top-ten website with a clear mandated policies of neutrality and sourcing, we have an ethical commitment to uphold that policy. I just hope more editors would think this way.

I don't see why criticism articles violate NPOV as long as the article itself isn't biased toward the critics. If the article just documents the criticism without implying that the critics are either "right" or "wrong", then what's the problem? By your standard of NPOV why shouldn't we just remove all criticism references from every article on Wikipedia (if just documenting that the subject of the article was criticized = endorsing the criticism)?

If a criticism article exists without a corresponding praise article, to a layman it suggests that the criticism is more important, which, in a lot of cases, is a lot of bollocks. That, and moving things to a criticism article also may be seen as "whitewashing" as, as said a few posts up, few people will click through.

[NotARepublican55]

The sourcing of the article was terrible. It still is in parts, but really, you think I'm removing properly sourced content?

I don't recall anyone here saying you were removing properly sourced content... The OP, Mr. NotARepublican, was simply saying that you were removing source references to make the article more easily deletable. It's a time-honored WP'er tactic, isn't it?

And what do you mean by "etc."...? There are still 46 references in the article, so if you removed 6 already, that means 6 out of 52 were either 404's or (arguably) bogus - that's actually pretty good, by Wikipedia standards.

The main point here is that if you think these "Criticism of..." articles should be removed because they're somehow inherently non-NPOV, that's simply wrongheaded. It might suggest that you're a super-nice guy who doesn't like to see people and their companies/ideas/products criticized, but big scary operations like Youtube can usually take care of themselves, actually. You should concentrate on smaller, less scary operations.

I generally left the good stuff alone; the copyright section, for example, which takes up a good 70% of the references, is actually quite good. The only stuff I removed were unreferenced things such as the Honduran corruption matter, the Hillsborough section (as I said, I'm a Liverpool fan, but I still don't trust the Liverpudlian press to report on anything H'boro related in anything other than a reactionary or grieving tone), anything that doesn't criticise YouTube (you can't criticise YouTube for allowing people to plan to upload videos in the same way you can't criticise a bottle of detergent for killing bacteria or criticise plants for photosynthesising), anything where criticism doesn't exist (the IDF videos, and YT working with pro-Israeli organisations to remove anti-Semitic material, after removing the far-right blogs) and little stubby sections that don't really criticise the company but really criticises the users.

As I said in my nomination, this isn't "Criticism of YouTube", this is more like "Criticism of YouTube users". Criticism of YouTube encompasses things like their application of copyright law (from both sides of the fence) and their content policies; see: banning Wael Abbas, Pat Condell, and being remarkably slow in deleting neo-Nazi content, which was the subject of a CNN report in itself. It's funny, actually; the removals I've made, I think, actually increase the article's chance of survival.

I think a better idea would be just to remove those links instead of AFDing the whole article without giving a real reason for choosing to nom this specific article over say "Criticism of Walmart", that's my opinion.

And yes, I do suppose that it does suggest I'm a nice person, but really, I'd prefer if Wikipedia didn't have these sorts of articles because, as a top-ten website with a clear mandated policies of neutrality and sourcing, we have an ethical commitment to uphold that policy. I just hope more editors would think this way.

I don't see why criticism articles violate NPOV as long as the article itself isn't biased toward the critics. If the article just documents the criticism without implying that the critics are either "right" or "wrong", then what's the problem? By your standard of NPOV why shouldn't we just remove all criticism references from every article on Wikipedia (if just documenting that the subject of the article was criticized = endorsing the criticism)?

If a criticism article exists without a corresponding praise article, to a layman it suggests that the criticism is more important, which, in a lot of cases, is a lot of bollocks. That, and moving things to a criticism article also may be seen as "whitewashing" as, as said a few posts up, few people will click through.

To be honest now that you've explained your reasoning, I'll admit you may definitely have some valid points, and I may have misjudged you.

But my main point is that this is a sitewide issue, not just an issue with this particular article (or any particular criticism article that you've AFDd). Your AFDs for criticism articles aren't working and it's making you come across as a pain in the ass (even if you do have valid points).

My advice? You should start a policy proposal about this and explain all your points like you just did here and get some sitewide consensus on the issue. That's the correct route to take if you want to try to fix things. Noming article after article isn't going to get your opinions much support on Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by NotARepublican55: Wed 10th February 2010, 3:35am