THE NERVE. These kids didn't even read WP:NOT!

Some grade school teacher HAD THE NERVE to actually use Wikipedia as an educational tool and get one student to write a few paragraphs about topics studied in class (sounds like a pretty cool idea to me....) and JzG and Fan-1967 SAVE WIKIPEDIA from this HORRIBLE Bandwidth theft!

The nerve of these kids! How dare they post their page on an encyclopedia! And it's a ROLE ACCOUNT!

(..I've been appalled by many things at WP, but never have I seen anything more mean or stingy than this; Jimbo, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!)

Wow. They pretty much just backhanded a group of students. Not even a, "hey we appreciate the enthusiasm but..."

Its just...

"No."

JzG (Guy) has of course plagiarised my name! Apart from that, I'd give him only 6/10 on the bad admin scale. There are far worse admins. (There are some better ones, too!)

Sorry, Guy, your heart is in the right place, but this was just too much. I mean, how can you be so mean and rude to a bunch of school kids? Doesn't this prove that everything that they say they're doing is a lie?

I'm really angry about this....One would hope that the Media would pick this one up....

Two thoughts (hey, for the price of one):

1. My standard statement regarding kids and Wikipedia:
Kids should be reading encyclopedias, not writing them.

2. [Putting on my devil's advocate hat; gotta adjust the horns a little; ah, that's it]
Yes, it's easy to sympathize with the plight of these poor little ones, who ventured boldly forth with a Great Idea in the Service of Education and Warm and Fuzzy Collaboration and all that; but really, doesn't this just explicitly violate a bunch of rules, there in plain sight, as to what the Encyclopaedia Is Not? As the guy (assuming gender here) pointed out, they're not in the web-space-provision biz (although I'm not quite sure what he meant when he said that others could provide that "business", since the whole idea is free web space, but whatever.)
[removing hat]

But they coulda/shoulda been a whole lot nicer about it, no doubt. Maybe that's good, though; a whole classroom now pissed at Wikipedia ...

It's pretty crazy. It highlights a key problem: any number of admins could look at that and say, "hey, neat project", but just one of them can come along and threaten or block, and then it would be almost impossible to take a different approach without a big fight erupting. I don't believe for a minute there are more than a small handful of admins who would take this hard line against an elementary school class project, but the nature of Wikipedia administration strongly favors those who take the hardest line and makes everyone else virtually irrelevant.

Couldn't a sensible admin post on WP:ANI and start a discussion, or am I being hopelessly naive?

b.

Jonny

Any user can post on there and start a discussion.

I expect PL knows that. She must mean "Would it do any good?" Possibly, possibly not.

It seems to me that proper response here should have been something like: "Hi kids! We're really happy that you like wikipedia. You all can edit Wikipedia, but just not at the same time. This is because that would be a role account, and the only role account allowed is the PR agency that handles our publicity! But you CAN all have seperate accounts and you can then write articles about Pokemon and Barbie all you want. Just don't put beans up your nose, though"...

Or something like that.

It's the underlying meanness which really made me angry. But Wikipedia is no longer fun......It's now DEADLY SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!

How? Every conceivable article on those topics has been written already, and a few inconceivable ones too.


There is indeed an official WP:BEANS page.

Doesn't do to make light of it, though - I bet some of the children went hysterical when they found out.

Not I!

You're right about that, of course. The meanness was and should have been avoided. I think that the point that can be extrapolated here is that normal rules of politeness (ie adults should try to be nice to children, assuming that their contributions are made in good faith and not as some sort of prank) are not valid on wikipedia.

However, this is true with the Net in general. It's so much easier to be rude to people online.

Fan-1967 is on RfA now, or should I say that on the bureaucracy thread?

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Fan-1967


Fan-1967 is on RfA now, or should I say that on the bureaucracy thread?

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Fan-1967

OK, we heard you the first time!

With credentials like his, I'm surprised that he isn't doing better in his RfA.

Looks like he's pretty much screwed. He's going to need a ton of more supports...a ton.