Aw, this is long. If I cared enough, if I wanted to create some effect, I'd boil it down. I don't, so I won't. Understand, folks, that I don't
WP:DGAF, so tl;dr, for me, is just stupid irrelevancy. Who cares if you read it? My favorite response is where a user quotes the entire thing, then adds at the bottom, tl;dr. So if you didn't read it, why did you quote it? If you receive a photo of a pile of dogshit, do you forward it to your friends, saying, "I didn't examine this."? For that matter, if some obsessed idiot emails you a tome on something that interests you not at all, do you forward it to everyone on a mailing list, saying "I didn't read this."?
Forward it, comment on it, explain it, if you find value worthy of sharing with others. I write for those who find value, not for the rest. Any questions?
QUOTE(thekohser @ Sun 22nd May 2011, 2:47am)
Somewhere in that melee, Guy Macon said:
QUOTE
The consensus is to remove BLP from all articles.
I think we can all live with that!
Very funny.
He meant to say, of course, "PC." He's misrepresented the result of the RfC.
I'm amazed at how few in the core understand how wiki process works! "Consensus" cannot make decisions unless there is some sort of automated mechanism, which is very much a bad idea. Rather,
closers make decisions, basing them on arguments
and some idea of consensus. In theory -- and I've seen it in practice -- a closer can make a decision that is contrary to the expressed !votes by a large margin, and the closer's decision stands until and unless it is reversed. In the RfC, Newyorkbrad was quite careful to note that application of the decision was not universal, that pending changes might remain for some articles. And a discussion specifically on the BLP question started and has not been completed.
There was, then, no closed consensus that PC was to be removed from "all" articles. Further, the wiki concept, as was implemented and as it worked (obviously with varying degrees of success) for years, does not make decisions from "rules," it makes them ad-hoc, according to the ongoing judgment of
individuals. There are then "rules" about wheel-warring, about dispute resolution process, etc., but in every case, the distributed executive power always has discretion.
The only body in Wikipedia that makes decisions by vote is ArbComm, and those decisions have no coercive power, in fact, they are judicial decisions, and administrators ("executives") could, in theory, ignore them. (And they often do, without consequence.) Especially they can ignore them by not implementing them, no administrator is required to act, ArbComm cannot enjoin action, but only prohibit action, in practice. And then the enforcement of that prohibition is a matter of discretion.
Indeed, the haphazard and ad-hoc nature of enforcement of policies and decisions is part of the Wikipedia problem. What I saw, first with regard to the bans of others, and only later in my own case, was that once a ban existed, if there was any vagueness about the meaning, administrators would interpret it in various ways. Those who saw an action as harmless and not a "substantial violation" would ignore it. And those with an axe to grind would interpret it as a violation, and would block, and so a block log would be built up showing "violations," which then would establish, to a widening circle, that the user was "disruptive." One can see, examining my block log, that the same administrators showed up again and again. It only takes a handful out of the many hundreds of active administrators to have a devastating effect.
That is, the ad-hoc process favors ever-stricter and narrower interpretation of rules and decisions. To give a possible example of an alternative, consider the Request Custodian Action process I suggested for Wikiversity: there is a request page, which is never used to discuss the action; all that happens on that page is a request is filed, and a neutral administrator -- representing to the community that he or she has no bias in the matter, or disclosing bias, under some conditions -- "takes the case." The custodian then would act, if action is obvious, or search for or receive evidence and argument, on their talk page or other appropriate page, with affected parties being notified. The custodian would then decide and act, and report that. Consider what WP ANI would look like if this had been done on WP!
(You could actually watch the page without clogging up your watchlist!)
Instead, we have what amounts to Wikipedia 911, but with debate. Imagine calling emergency services and having to argue your case! No, they are dispatchers, they send an officer to investigate (if it's a police matter), ASAP. The officer makes an ad hoc decision for the welfare of the community. The officer has no power to punish or even to decide equity, beyond immediate possession, for example, and those decisions are not binding, they are temporary. It's up to the courts to make binding decisions, later, upon deliberation, if they are needed.
Wikipedia theory, as explained in the policies and guidelines, is often excellent. It is practice that falls short, and even discussing this on-wiki is almost impossible. That's what can be done at Wikiversity. The only danger there is that it turns into a get-even grievance forum, which can't be tolerated. I'm using Wikiversity to document my Adventures in Ban Evasion, but not to attack any administrator, which is beside the point. I'm critical here, that's a different thing. There, I reported that Kww and Timotheus Canens used revision deletion to hide edits merely because they were from me and were ban violations or block evasion. That's just a fact.
If I abuse Wikiversity with any of my edits there, they can be removed, but it certainly is not my intention. The reporting page has been proposed for deletion, but that's unlikely to succeed unless something changes drastically.
Wikiversity is one of the few WMF wikis that unblocked Thekohser, delinking the account in order to render the global lock ineffective. From Thekohser's point of view, I think, it was a political move, for him to cooperate with what it took, politically, to make the unblock effort successful. But for me and for Wikiversity, it was a stand for academic freedom. That freedom is not absolute, as I noted during the 2010 Hand Of God intervention, Wikiversity must consider, indeed, "cross-wiki issues." Hence using Wikiversity as a "staging ground" to organize "response testing," -- which is what was alleged -- would be beyond the pale.
A university course could study patterns involved in robbery and police response, but for the course to run some "test robberies" would be illegal and would be stopped. However, if a robber provided data on his adventures, so to speak, it could certainly be considered and studied, compared with police records, etc.
Of course, an editor making constructive or at worst harmless edits is hardly robbery. Even if it involves "trespassing." It's more accurately civil disobedience, and society is always ambivalent about that, often praising it in the end, even as it punishes it in the short term.