On May 7, 10 days before JzG was admonished by arbcom, he deleted all his user pages. He hasn't been seen since, save for one edit to NYB's talk page on May 8.

For what it's worth, even a radical like me wants to see FlaggedRevisions at least trialed.

I think that semi-protection is poorly written software that should be deprecated as soon as possible. I'd much rather see something like Flagged protection implemented. It's a much smarter solution than a blanket and arbitrary ban on anonymous users or users with less than ten edits and four days since registration.

As I've said to you previously, I think a part of Wikipedia's success has come from the idea of open editing. If there are reasons to protect a page (libel, very high visibility, etc.), the pages definitely should be protected. But going around protecting pages willy-nilly is a bad idea and it goes against Wikipedia's core principles.

You're an Arbitrator, which gives you a bit of clout and leverage with the community. Why not try to implement stronger notability guidelines, with a special focus on porn stars and criminals? Trying to ban all anonymous editing is just a waste of time. Regardless of what you or I think, it will never happen. But raising the notability threshold, that's something that's reasonably doable.

Having Barack Obama no longer appear in search engine esults because a vandal added __NOINDEX__ to some obscure template isn't a particularly good thing. If the subject of an article isn't notable, delete his or her biography. If there are persistent problems with an article, protect it or block the disrupters. Sweeping it under the mat is a silly solution.

Not true!

Do we know for a fact that __NOINDEX__ in a template affects any page on which the template appears? If so, then it's a rather misguided, if not poor, implementation - it should only affect pages on which it appears in the actual WikiML for the page.


If only they would...

So true.

It's one of those statements that everyone can agree on but really means nothing at all. Nobody wants to keep biographies about people they believe to be non-notable.

Except the person(s) who wrote the article, the person(s) who are fans of the subject of the article, the person(s) who hate the subject of the article, the person(s) who went to the trouble of finding (or stealing) a photo to illustrate the article, and of course, User:JoshuaZ.

Have you been drinking, EK? I thought you were a tea-totaler.

I think the key word in Everyking's post was "they believe to be". All of the people you list above presumably believe that the subject is notable.

Definitely sure. In fact, the {{NOINDEX}} template is just a wrapper for __NOINDEX__. It's easy to track template usage; magic words like __NOINDEX__ have no tracking mechanism built-in. A user could add it anywhere in any article directly and it's very unlikely anybody would notice.

But the lack of tracking is only part of the issue. The other issue is the underlying principle. The theory is that if content is in a content namespace (as defined in the configuration files), it shouldn't be able to be de-indexed using __NOINDEX__ by any user. It's a view I agree with. Unless we force users to deal with the content, they'll simply slap __NOINDEX__ on it and it will be available via mirrors, the API, and direct searches of Wikipedia's database. If the content is bad, it needs to be properly resolved.

Many mirrors are rarely if ever updated. One bad content gets in them its stuck. And thats one of the great problems we have.

That's like saying we don't have a problem with crime because few people do things they themselves believe are actually wrong.

Nor a particularly bad thing. The world will still spin on its axis. The lack of a BLP for Barack Obama on WP is so completely an example of a non-problem in the world that does not scream for a fix in any way, that it's hard for me to think of a more eggregious example.

Bio information on dead-tree important subjects is always superfluous when on Wikipedia-- it's available more accurately with ease, elsewhere. Bio information on live subjects who are so much less famous that it IS more difficult to dig up info on them (though not impossible), is a harm, because it's invasive of privacy. The middle between those extremes is so thin that I suspect it doesn't exist for people who don't want to be biographied.

Allowing BLP only for people who give permission would take care of this (for a Who's Who-type market might exist there), but WMF has no plans ever to do that. That would be a hard job involving the identification of living persons and their actual wishs in the real world, and WMF doesn't do hard jobs that can't be parcelled out to volunteers who work for free. And this one can't be.

Out of curiousity, have you stopped beating your wife?

I don't believe I was making an argument, so I don't doubt it's flawed. I was making fun of what I call open editing fundamentalists. The Wiki will survive without IPs editing some articles, templates, and even a semi-active admin's talk page.

Root's use of the page, which MZM admits was dramatic, was posted on WR and looked like a troll/privacy violation magnet. Such a page is only tangentially related to our project anyhow, especially considering that Root was not doing much article editing or blocking. It struck me as a good enough reason to semiprotect it, and you'll note that Casliber agreed.

Preemptive article protection might discourage new contributors in high-traffic areas, but any IP address posting on his talk page during JoshuaZ-Rootology drama is unlikely to be a newbie. As a wise woman said, "The WR IP contribs never help any given situation."

I'm not fond of people who complain about others "hijacking" their own user page; people delete comments, decorate, and express themselves however they please. Unless they're using their page for actually inciting others, I think the "community" is best off letting users manage their own damn pages. If it was so annoying, MZM could have, y'know, looked at one of the other 3+ million pages on Wikipedia. The fact that MZM and Xeno have not harassed any users since seems to confirm my suspicion that they were singling Rootology out for unrelated reasons (perhaps because of how "annoying" he was). For reference, here's a list of admins with semi-protected pages not harassed by Xeno and MZM:

Alison
Avraham
Bastique
Chris G
DaGizza
Deckiller
Deiz
Dominic
Francs2000
Hermione1980
Jéské Couriano
Jpgordon
Keilana
Kwsn
Luna Santin
Marine 69-71
MBK004
Ohnoitsjamie
Persian Poet Gal
PMDrive1061
Risker
SchuminWeb
Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
SlimVirgin
Stwalkerster
Thatcher
The JPS
The-G-Unit-Boss

...not semi-protected anymore [1]

Indeed, J.delanoy in his vandal-whacking exuberance appears to forget to set expiries sometimes. (edited from "an awful lot" to "sometimes")

Some of those users have an anon talk page in compliance with the protection policy.

Some are victims of severe and protected harassment.

Or maybe he has, in his wisdom, decided that indefinite semi-protection is inappaopriate, and by not checking with him you're being something of a shithead?

Quite apart from the question of who's "protecting" harassment, is this supposed to be an argument in favour of your blanket unprotections?

Edit: Oh, I see, you only unprotected fourteen of them. I presume that those would be the ones who haven't been the victims of protected harassment? Though I've got PersianPoetGal's page watchlisted for some reason or another, and I can promise you she's gotten a lot of harassment there. Not sure whether or not it's of the protected variety.

I honestly did not expect that to happen. Mass unprotecting 14 admin talk pages (half of them)... is something.

I apologize: you weren't singling Rootology out. It was apparently just on your mind last month due to being posted on WR.

I think your stance is unreasonable, but I trust that some others will soon be making that argument.

Unless he's just being polite, I think he just forgot, or it was a slip of the mouse.

(n.b. quoted text above was amended in the original from "an awful lot" to "sometimes")



Indeed, I didn't "mass unprotect", I carefully reviewed each protection and the disruption that preceded it and made and administrative decision in line with our protection policy.

From UT:Persian Poet Gal:
Administrators, please do not protect my user talk page. When I feel it is necessary I will instate it. Thank you! (see Why I No Longer Protect My Talk Page...)



Thank you for recognizing this. (I'll also appreciate you not using terms like "harass", that would be bothering without a purpose).

FWIW, you may think it's unreasonable, but it has been my stance all along, see Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy/Archive_9#Indefinitely_semi-protected_user_talk_pages:_should_policy_require_an_unprotected_subpage.3F.

Don't pick on J.delanoy, you big hairy bully. Why don't you pick on someone your own size?

Let me know how tall you are and how much you weigh -- that will make it easier to find someone for you to pick on.

Sorry, I amended it from "an awful lot" to "sometimes". It wasn't a lot, it was just a handful.

Besides, in terms of admin actions, J.delanoy is a giant! Much bigger than me =)

You still hold the lead in protection modification however: Wikipedia:LOGACTIONS#Protection_modifications

Personally, I find horses big, hairy, and terrifying.

#19-23 on undeletions are all WR members including me, MZM, and Xeno.

Yes, we definitely need more admins willing to go through the reports MZMcBride has helpfully prepared for us and modify inappropriate protection lengths. It's tedious work and requires one keep an eye to make sure the disruption doesn't come right back.

Interesting. Xeno just un-semi-protected my talk page, and didn't do me the courtesy of leaving a note. I wonder if he looked at the history of 4chan vandalism my page gets. Ah well, it always amuses me when Grawp finds some /b/tards to play his stupid games, and other folks seem to get a lot more exercised about his antics than I do. I wonder if Xeno will be watching my page while I'm on vacation.

I always keep a close eye on pages I unprotect.

Feel free to reprotect if you're ok having an indefinitely semi-protected talk page (to me, it looked like someone simply forgot to set an expiry), but you ought have an unprotected subpage for anons and IPs.

If it's just /b/ stuff, (childish, absent of outing, etc.) I personally don't think indef is warranted.

(And yes, I did review the vandalism that preceded it. Our Arkum Asylum inmate... )

Whatever. I find these sorts of disputes amusing. The amount of energy spent over semi-protected talk pages, or the possibility of a public discussion forum by vested editors, far outweighs their importance compared to Wikipedia's many real problems.

We are.

What's "inappropriate" being, of course, a determination to be made unilaterally by you.

No, it's defined by the protection policy and past precedent.

"Indefinite" far too often becomes "permanent" because no one bothers to check back on it.

Elsewhere on WR you recently posted that you'd been increasingly snarky in your comments here and that perhaps you needed a break from posting here. If I were making a list of "Key Indications That a Break is Needed," I think I'd put calling fellow admins "shitheads" somewhere near the top.

Fair point. I think I can abstain from further such remarks, but if I can't I'll take that break.

(Also, Xeno, apologies for the remark. It probably wasn't the most constructive way of expressing my objection to your unprotections.)

Has it occurred to you that "indefinite" protections are sometimes legitimately intended to be definitely permanent?

No worries re: the remark.



Then we really ought to be changing the motto of the project to "the encyclopedia that any account holder with 10 edits and 4 days tenure can edit".

For the most part, the indefinite protections weren't meant to be permanent, nor were they necessary. Out of 267 articles where I lowered the permanent semi-protected, only 51 had the semi-protection back in place 4 months later. (See User:Xeno/unprotects )

Thanks to MZM for crunching the data on that.

Or "the encyclopaedia anyone can edit, except for a tiny portion of the pages which have been indefinitely semi-protected for good reason and that only account holders with 10 edits and 4 days tenure can edit"?

Hell, there are plenty of indefinitely semi-protected templates; I presume you have no objection to most of those. That suggests that we agree on the principle, and differ only in degrees.

Plenty of fully protected templates too, but it's unlikely an IP would make a helpful drive-by edit there. I understand the need for liberal protection on templates being that vandalism can be spewed widely and the way caching works it might take a while for it to squid out depending on the size of the job queue.

Note also my edit to the post to which you replied, not sure if you replied prior to seeing it. Many of them were an admin who had a policy of applying indefinite semi-protection along with move=sysop after pagemove vandalism. And also a bunch from before protections could have an expiry. So no, they certainly weren't meant to be permanent.

We've strewn way off topic from root's retirement, so a mod should probably split.

Standby ANYONECANEDIT fundamentalist "argument." (Not actually a complete argument, because it assumes there would be something wrong with only allowing accounts to edit.) It would be a vaguely convincing line if Wikipedia were almost 50% semiprotected. In reality, it's more like 0.1%, and this quip has almost no relation to reality.

I think the point about admins setting protection indefinitely and forgetting about the page are valid. From what I've seen, that's the case in a lot of these protections. (And it's not limited to just protections, IP blocks have the same issue.)

It wasn't the case with the indef semi of mine that Xeno lifted without consulting me (though I was on wikibreak at the time, so it's perhaps not reasonable to expect that he would have).

I assume you're talking about Ctrl+Alt+Del. I was particularly astonished to find an indefinitely semi-protected article with an indefinitely semi-protected talk page. It's just the kind of subject a drive-by IP might improve.

But I understand there's been some fairly severe abuse on that page, so I don't fault you. A case for flagged protection I guess.

I'm not in a position to complain, but can't these Wikipediots take their conversation elsewhere

If you weren't making an argument, what were you making with that wall of text?

I already pointed out that I couldn't give a shit if his page is protected. I was simply noting that your whatever was flawed, because you mentioned vandalism where there wasn't any.

Yeah, I wonder, who out of 'anyone' does the ability to make 10 edits and 4 days actually exclude or restrict.....
Cas

Lazy, impatient, idiots?

...fun of open editing fundamentalists. Like I said. Right there above.

If you don't like my walls, you don't have to read them. Oh wait. You don't.

Haha, right. I like how you've become an epic douchebag after getting on the AC.

At least you're amusing.

No, Xeno is just plain rude. You should see him in the admins' cafeteria: pushing his way past people who are standing on line, grabbing food out of trays with his unwashed hands, not paying for his lunch, chasing away people who want to sit at his table. Really scary stuff.

I dunno about ANYONECANEDIT, but WP is the soap opera that anyone can make a cameo appearance in.

As Hero-Goat Dramas go, there are endless opportunities to play the role of the goat.

The main deficiency is that there are scant venues for singing the tragoidian dithyramb.

Or the swan, in the case of Zeus/swan dramas. Zeus, of course, being played by the sole founder.

You asked a question I just answered. I'm sorry for being frustrated with you.

I don't have an issue with you. I'd wish you'd drop the axe.

Say, what happened to Rootology? I thought this was supposed to be our opportunity to vivisect him.