Dynamic Workspace for Article on Systemic Abuse

I'm going to set aside a couple of pages at the Review to work on this initiative dynamically, as I can't get two thoughts together at that Ping-Pong Skool For Hives.

Jonny Cache to Version Control:

• The Present Archival Version
• Current Wiki-Abused Version

'''Forms of ''systemic'' or ''systematic'' abuse that appear to be inherent in the Wikipedia system and not necessarily assignable to individual accounts'''

Toward a Definition. A '''systemic abuse''' is form of abusive conduct on the part of agents that is facilitated by fundamental properties of the system itself, suggesting a predisposition or a susceptibility to abuse that is "built-in" at underlying levels of the system architecture.

'''Note.''' This page is very rough. Most likely a lot of the material below will be moved to the corresponding talk page as the leading ideas are gradually refined from the mass of raw data. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 11:15, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

==Problems With Equal Enforceabilty of WP:COI==

===General Information===

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest Current version of Wikipedia Guideline : Conflict Of Interest (WP:COI)]

===Position 1===

* Evaluating whether a Wikipedia account owner is complying with Wikipedia policies and standards does not require information about the person(s) using the account.

===Scenarios===

====Scenario 1 : Self-Promotion====

Is someone actually arguing that Wikipedia admins shouldn't block people who are only there to self-promote? Does shining a penetrating light on this block reveal any problems? [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 09:04, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

The problem that many people experience in Wikipedia is that the provisions that are set up to prevent conflicts of interest, for example, WP:COI, do not appear to be enforceable with any sort of equal justice under the conditions of pseudonymity that prevail there. What happens in actual practice is that honest people get abused on a continual basis while dishonest people get away with all sorts of abuse. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 09:34, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

Blocking people who are only on Wikipedia to force ad copy onto Wikipedia by hook or by crook isn't okay. Is someone arguing that it is?

As usual, it's lesser degrees of that which are debatable. How much self-promotional intent or conduct is okay? Is it okay to write a NPOV article about your own business? Is that possible? Should people be allowed to do their best when they have no hope of being impartial about their own work? While everyone agrees that a certain amount of self-promotion (writing about things that interest you) is okay and a certain amount (writing ad-copy articles about yourself, your business, and your products) are not, no two people agree about where the line falls between those two extremes.

You're going to find that any policy or guideline, written down or implicit, is going to be subjectively enforced, full of holes, selectively enforced, and much-debated. As with any project, respected users who push the boundaries are going to be given more slack than new ones, new edge cases are going to be more heavily scrutinized than long-standing ones which are "grandfathered" in, and people who are jerks are going to get less slack than people who are nice.

Characterizing this as a "systemic abuse" isn't terribly useful. It may be useful to describe where the line has fallen in the estimation of specific users, but this will tend to be most useful on the users' individual pages. [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 10:48, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

JA: This was just my first try at abstracting the generic, logical, persistent, recurrent, system@ic, ..., whatever features of a problem that certainly does exist in the Wikipedia system of the world, but which it was simply not possible to examine fully there. I am by nature a theorist of systems, and given the choice, I am much more interested in the character and the dynamics of system@ic problems than I am in pursuing yet another interminable shaggy dog soap opera discussion of the sort that I saw breaking out already on JzG's talk page. So maybe the light will be better under this lamp-post. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 11:02, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

Here's another one of AMIB's points that seems generic enough to take up here. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 12:02, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

<blockquote>
<p>All that said, I forsee a trying problem for this project.</p>

<p>Sometimes, an admin is going to do something based on their discovery of who someone is, and it's going to look questionable if you don't know why the admin did it. The typical Wikipedia method of dealing with this is to confirm that the something was done for the right reasons through private channels (OTRS, #wikipedia-en-admins, whatever) for a number of trusted users. This is not a great system, admittedly, but it works in a rough-and-ready way.</p>

<p>Now, you want to shine a light on admins, and I guess that's a good thing. I dunno. But you're going to have to come up with some way to deal with the fact that you're creating a venue for people to rail on about these done-for-private-reasons problems or you're gonna have some jerk blocked for edits that had to be oversighted fighting with an admin who can't justify his actions without violating the jerk's privacy until the end of time.</p>

<p>Moreover, I suggest that you figure out some way to deal with this problem ''soon'', or face being written off as the place for people with grudges to smear the objects of their obsession. [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 08:55, 27 June 2007 (PDT)</p>
</blockquote>

JA: One of the things that Wikipedia Pundits keep trying to convince people of is that "the application of Wikipedia Policies does not depend on knowing the real identities of Wikipedia Editors". There is obviously some kind of "a trying problem" here, but I think that it is a problem with Wikipedia and not with this site. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 12:12, 27 June 2007 (PDT)
:Often, the application of Wikipedia policies results in the revelation of the identity of Wikipedia editors, be it because someone recognizes an otherwise psedonymous Wikipedia author (Hey, I know you from...) or because someone develops an identity on Wikipedia that transcends a particular pseudonym (Hey, Lightbringer. 'Sup?). This site doesn't allow someone to reveal that information when relevant. That's the problem I'm highlighting, here.

:Obviously, Wikipedia accepts the consequences of pseudonymity, which include people who are self-promoting. Right now, [[WP:COI]] describes a common systemic violation of [[WP:NPOV]] (which, if you don't like, you're probably not ''ever'' going to be happy on Wikipedia). People are blocked for blatantly pushing a particular point of view on Wikipedia, not for why they're pushing that point of view. [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 00:19, 28 June 2007 (PDT)

====Scenario 2 : Self-Citation====

Academic journals normally have one of two policies regarding self-citation:
# Authors may cite their own works.
# Authors may not cite their own works.

Either way, the policy applies equally to every case — that's what it means to be a policy.

Of course, academic journals don't ''normally'' allow authors to publish under pseudonyms, and especially not to submit articles under names that hide their identities from the journal editors and publishers themselves.

So the Wikipedia system systematically introduces additional wrinkles into the relationship that normally exists among author, publisher, and reader.

Jonny

Wow, that's pretty good so far.

Dynamic Workspace for Article on Systemic Abuse

Working Copy

'''Forms of ''systemic'' or ''systematic'' abuse that appear to be inherent in the Wikipedia system and not necessarily assignable to individual accounts'''

Toward a Definition. A '''systemic abuse''' is form of abusive conduct on the part of agents that is facilitated by fundamental properties of the system itself, suggesting a predisposition or a susceptibility to abuse that is "built-in" at underlying levels of the system architecture.

'''Note.''' This page is very rough. Most likely a lot of the material below will be moved to the corresponding talk page as the leading ideas are gradually refined from the mass of raw data. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 11:15, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

==Problems With Equal Enforceabilty of WP:COI==

===General Information===

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest Current version of Wikipedia Guideline : Conflict Of Interest (WP:COI)]

===Position 1===

* Evaluating whether a Wikipedia account owner is complying with Wikipedia policies and standards does not require information about the person(s) using the account.

===Scenarios===

====Scenario 1 : Self-Promotion====

Is someone actually arguing that Wikipedia admins shouldn't block people who are only there to self-promote? Does shining a penetrating light on this block reveal any problems? [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 09:04, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

The problem that many people experience in Wikipedia is that the provisions that are set up to prevent conflicts of interest, for example, WP:COI, do not appear to be enforceable with any sort of equal justice under the conditions of pseudonymity that prevail there. What happens in actual practice is that honest people get abused on a continual basis while dishonest people get away with all sorts of abuse. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 09:34, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

Blocking people who are only on Wikipedia to force ad copy onto Wikipedia by hook or by crook isn't okay. Is someone arguing that it is?

As usual, it's lesser degrees of that which are debatable. How much self-promotional intent or conduct is okay? Is it okay to write a NPOV article about your own business? Is that possible? Should people be allowed to do their best when they have no hope of being impartial about their own work? While everyone agrees that a certain amount of self-promotion (writing about things that interest you) is okay and a certain amount (writing ad-copy articles about yourself, your business, and your products) are not, no two people agree about where the line falls between those two extremes.

You're going to find that any policy or guideline, written down or implicit, is going to be subjectively enforced, full of holes, selectively enforced, and much-debated. As with any project, respected users who push the boundaries are going to be given more slack than new ones, new edge cases are going to be more heavily scrutinized than long-standing ones which are "grandfathered" in, and people who are jerks are going to get less slack than people who are nice.

Characterizing this as a "systemic abuse" isn't terribly useful. It may be useful to describe where the line has fallen in the estimation of specific users, but this will tend to be most useful on the users' individual pages. [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 10:48, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

JA: This was just my first try at abstracting the generic, logical, persistent, recurrent, system@ic, ..., whatever features of a problem that certainly does exist in the Wikipedia system of the world, but which it was simply not possible to examine fully there. I am by nature a theorist of systems, and given the choice, I am much more interested in the character and the dynamics of system@ic problems than I am in pursuing yet another interminable shaggy dog soap opera discussion of the sort that I saw breaking out already on JzG's talk page. So maybe the light will be better under this lamp-post. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 11:02, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

Here's another one of AMIB's points that seems generic enough to take up here. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 12:02, 27 June 2007 (PDT)

<blockquote>
<p>All that said, I forsee a trying problem for this project.</p>

<p>Sometimes, an admin is going to do something based on their discovery of who someone is, and it's going to look questionable if you don't know why the admin did it. The typical Wikipedia method of dealing with this is to confirm that the something was done for the right reasons through private channels (OTRS, #wikipedia-en-admins, whatever) for a number of trusted users. This is not a great system, admittedly, but it works in a rough-and-ready way.</p>

<p>Now, you want to shine a light on admins, and I guess that's a good thing. I dunno. But you're going to have to come up with some way to deal with the fact that you're creating a venue for people to rail on about these done-for-private-reasons problems or you're gonna have some jerk blocked for edits that had to be oversighted fighting with an admin who can't justify his actions without violating the jerk's privacy until the end of time.</p>

<p>Moreover, I suggest that you figure out some way to deal with this problem ''soon'', or face being written off as the place for people with grudges to smear the objects of their obsession. [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 08:55, 27 June 2007 (PDT)</p>
</blockquote>

JA: One of the things that Wikipedia Pundits keep trying to convince people of is that "the application of Wikipedia Policies does not depend on knowing the real identities of Wikipedia Editors". There is obviously some kind of "a trying problem" here, but I think that it is a problem with Wikipedia and not with this site. [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 12:12, 27 June 2007 (PDT)
:Often, the application of Wikipedia policies results in the revelation of the identity of Wikipedia editors, be it because someone recognizes an otherwise psedonymous Wikipedia author (Hey, I know you from...) or because someone develops an identity on Wikipedia that transcends a particular pseudonym (Hey, Lightbringer. 'Sup?). This site doesn't allow someone to reveal that information when relevant. That's the problem I'm highlighting, here.

:Obviously, Wikipedia accepts the consequences of pseudonymity, which include people who are self-promoting. Right now, [[WP:COI]] describes a common systemic violation of [[WP:NPOV]] (which, if you don't like, you're probably not ''ever'' going to be happy on Wikipedia). People are blocked for blatantly pushing a particular point of view on Wikipedia, not for why they're pushing that point of view. [[User:A Man In Black|A Man In Black]] 00:19, 28 June 2007 (PDT)

====Scenario 2 : Self-Citation====

Academic journals normally have one of two policies regarding self-citation:
# Authors may cite their own works.
# Authors may not cite their own works.

Either way, the policy applies equally to every case — that's what it means to be a policy.

Of course, academic journals don't ''normally'' allow authors to publish under pseudonyms, and especially not to submit articles under names that hide their identities from the journal editors and publishers themselves.

So the Wikipedia system systematically introduces additional wrinkles into the relationship that normally exists among author, publisher, and reader.

Jonny

Thanks. This is hardly an Original Repertoire for me, of course, but for this rep I took a bit of english from a couple of AMIB's more intelligent cues and spun off the article as UC It Now. I will try for a little while longer to develop it at the WikiAbuse.Com site — OWA TENAS SIAM — but if it becomes impossible to do anything at all productive there then at least it won't be a total loss for our e-dification here.

Jonny

Same Ol' Same Ol' ...

Every day that goes by on WikiAbuse is a new kick in the head ...

My fledgling attempts to rise above the fray of Fundamental Attribution Bias (FAB) was first tagged as {{crap}} by the sort of twitmouse who can only seem to squeak in template talk, and when I asked to get that detagged, my humble starticle got declared "Not Ready For Prime Time" — remember when that was the very definition of the wiki way of starting an article? — then it was "moved" to my user space, deleting the standard redirect in order to break all ex-&-in-ternal links, 'cause we wouldn't want to e-courage more than 1 person to read or work on the page, now would we?

Some of these people have obviously spent so much time drowning each other in that Disputed Identity Powdered Instant Softdrink (DI-PIS) that they have totally forgotten what a real wiki is like — AS IF they ever had a clue.

¬E4′× in the humble opinion of OLCW:

• The Present Archival Version
• Current Wiki-Abused Version

I am 1 day away from declaring Rootology a double agent ...

Jonny

Jonny, I have to add that Root's been getting my goat a little bit lately, too. Seems that he's too cozy with JzG, and you'll note on WikiEN-l that Guy's got you and me in the same class of PerpetuaTroll gripers. You know, even a slightly magnetized object, when pushed close enough to another magnet, will eventually overcome the static friction and slide over the table and nestle up real comfy and close with that other magnet.

Root and JzG, sittin' in a tree... W-I-K-I-I-N-G.

(I hope this doesn't get Rootology all in a twist. Just having some fun. With a kernel of truth, though.)

Greg

Ingratiation is JzG's signature strategy, not Root's. Look at the JVM thing. You would think it would be so transparent as to be ineffective. I think when done publicly (on wiki or list) it puts pressures on the beneficiary to be gracious. It is still manipulation.

Strangely enuough — well, not so strangely, really, if you'll remember the "circles" that we're running in, er, being run around here — the WikiAbuse article on Systemic Abuse has already become a target of, what else, systemic abuse.


Now I know this exercise, and if it ain't SlimVirgin, then I'm guessing that it's some tackler or end-runner being "coached" by her.

Right, Coach?

Jonny

It's perfectly clear what happened.

I went over there in fear and trembling but still good faith, and got down to the grimey work of posting hard diff data on the miniscule sample of SlimVirgin's abuses that I was able to recall or quickly dig up. But some people have a problem with that — people who have no real interest in doing productive work on the goals of the project — and so they started pelting me with every bit of {{carp}} and {{crap}} that they could spew out, and they set about their all too familiar routine of blaming the victims and strangling the messengers of all that's rotten in the Site of Wikipedia.

This is the very same routine that is visited on any other person who calls attention to the abuses and the problems in Wikipedia, whether at Wikipedia itself, on the Wikienlist, or now at WikiAbuse.Com.

And Rootology simply shows no signs at all of being able to stop it.

Jonny

I wasn't too happy with the most recent addition to the Poetlister page, so I did this.

I'm taking bets as to how long/short it will stay up before it gets reverted back.

It was Sunlight who added that.


Quote from
http://wikiabuse.com/index.php?title=User_...6119&oldid=6107

JA: Why have you given extra pemissions to users like Sunlight who are clearly running amok ??? [[User:Jonny Cache|Jonny Cache]] 19:45, 29 June 2007 (PDT)



Sunlight is edit warring with Johnny over
http://wikiabuse.com/index.php?title=Categ...6120&oldid=6116

It has "these basic biographical/lifestyle details would be good so that we could collect some rudimentary statistics about administrators/users"

And the whole page is nothing but plans for really personal information.


I see sunlight categorized Johnny Cache already on his userpage http://wikiabuse.com/index.php?title=User:...6130&oldid=5577


Sunlight's other edits have been stuff to tie into his page of "statistics about administrators/users" and basically to collect personal info on eveyone.


I'd watch him, Nathan, lest he copies ED's article on you over to WA.

And there's the curious and undefined category [[Categorists]] which includes only Poetlister, Runcorn and BrownHairedgirl. Is this a suggestion about BrownHairedgirl?

LamontStormstar: If Sunlight does that, I'll have a nice talk with Rootology.