MzMcBride opened a can of whoop-ass over on Foundation-l.

That William Pietri guy does more spinning and dodging than a White House press secretary.

Anthony gets in a real zinger, simply by copying a paragraph from Pietri's own business website, dripping with caramel-coated irony.

Then, Erik Moeller wipes the tears from his pro-child-porn eyes and pouts on behalf of the Foundation and the hired developers who apparently don't know how to set up a test server.

I have not seen such a feeding frenzy on Foundation-l since I set one off with the "rent space from Wikia" fiasco.

Excellent!




P.S. I should have known it would be only a matter of hours before Austin Hair stepped in with the only counter-point he seems to know -- "moderate" the folks who ask the important questions.

And then there's Steven Walling, butt snorkeling in syrup.

Does the WMF realize how many journalists and potential contributors probably watch that mailing list?

Good:

As a software developer, there are so many scary admissions that it is hard to know where to start. One of the worst to me seems to be that they cannot quickly and easily replicate the production environment. Rather suggests to me that the production environment has evolved and nobody really knows how it works, so when it comes tumbling down one day, nobody will know how to rebuild it. It stinks of a bunch of people without a clue who have put themselves forward for a job that they cannot do.

My favourite "Can't you just speak English?" moment has to be:



I remember when people called that "tired".

Charlotte's razor:
Never ascribe to anxiety what can be explained by total disinterest.

Updated list of production wikis currently using FlaggedRevvvs:

• Alemannic Wikipedia
• Arabic Wikipedia
• German Wikipedia
• German Wikiquote
• German Wiktionary
• English Wikibooks
• English Wikinews
• Esperanto Wikipedia
• French Wikinews
• Hebrew Wikisource
• Hungarian Wikipedia
• Interlingua Wikipedia
• Icelandic Wiktionary
• Polish Wikipedia
• Polish Wiktionary
• Portuguese Wikinews
• Portuguese Wikisource
• Russian Wikipedia
• Russian Wikiquote
• Russian Wikisource
• Ukrainian Wiktionary
• Classical Chinese Wikipedia

Which all makes the discussion on the mailing list even more perverse and does nothing to create any confidence in the software team having a clue.

And now we have Jimmy taking some initiative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/poll

Hell, I could kiss him.

This Erik Möller sidestep is really pathetic. "You didn't ask nicely, so you are not getting an answer (which is convenient, because I don' t actually have one)"

I see MZMCBRIDE got moderated for his response, but really, he was spot on here.

So typical of Wikipedia: living people can get abused, slandered, chewed up and spat out, and that's OK, but if you break WP:CIVIL and don't play a nice wikigame you're for it..

I've got the same type of nonsense all over my talk page from people like Duvova. Put on your blinkers, hold your nose, and play our nice game of wiki.

Do you want us to slap you now or later? (Trick Question)

Jon

Indeed. No matter the result of this straw poll (even if it goes 70% support to 30% opposed), full English Wikipedia flagged revisions extension will not be implemented. Or, if it is implemented, it will last no longer than a month. Once they see that it makes participation drop, they will panic and remove it, per the Kelly Martin maxim.

But would he kiss you back?

Looks like the Oppose cavalry has arrived.

And would he slip you any tongue, doc?

Sigh, yes.

Unfortunately, Jimbo went off half-cocked here. A few concessions (only on BLPs - and a sunset clause) it would have divided the opposition.

The snog is off.

One of my favorite oppose !votes :




Hey, we're policymakers! Whoda thunk?

I'm really surprised this time —

Jimbo usually manages to fire off a week's worth of hyper-press releases before the Wiki-Pinheads puncture his 99 Lulz Balloons.

Jon

But but...

"Wikipedia is not a democracy, and it never has been." - Jimbo Wales

Why if I didn't know better I'd think he almost wanted someone to stop reform while still being able to say its not his fault.

Sadly, I have to agree--too many trolls would be affected, and interest in adding to their
Instant Twat-O-Pedia might slowly evaporate.

Then what would Mike Godwin have to do, chase ambulances?

Jimbo is doing good again. I just wish that he explained that using the German settings is not equal to flagged revisions on all articles.

Articles must be initially sighted in order for them to enter the flagged universe. Judging by the prior polls, we will be sighting articles on BLPs and perhaps problematic articles with BLP implications. We will not be sighting minerals.

How do you know when an articles a BLP (unless the editor is thoughtful enough to add the BLP category)? Or is problematic with BLP implications? For example suppose someone creates an article on a living person and (by mistake or maliciously) says they are dead? And of course if someone creates a new article is that a "revision" to be flagged?

The moronic masses at the project have made it absolutely clear they will refuse to do anything about the BLP issue at all, so it's unlikely a simple "flag" is going to inspire them to action even on that front.

So sight everything, flag it all. I'd also strongly suggest only exposing vetted articles to people who are not logged in.

Let the trolls, drama mongers, and others run screaming from the project: success is what they fear.

How would you prevent editors from marking an article as sighted? In the German set-up it is easily done. If you edit an unsighted article, a button is conveniently placed on your screen, inviting you to mark the article "sighted" by clicking on it.

I am not sure whether once sighted, an article can be "unsighted".

Can someone familiar with the German WP clarify what William Pietri means by this:
I interpret that to mean that the German WP will be adopting the same system, which is news to me. Is this a correct interpretation?

I don't think so. I guess he meant he'd put up both the planned English version of FR, and the current German implementation, so people would be able to try both.

Jimbo says he'll run a second round of his poll about the German version of Flagged Revisions next week.

Benitoite will be take that very hard. An underappreciated rare gem from California, Benito always seems to try for stardom, but ends up playing the heavy, anyway. Where's our BLM tag?

Jimbo is playing games again: he knows that he has to appear to be in favor of flagged revisions in order to save face with the celebrities he wants to be friends with, but at the same time he fundamentally opposes them because he believes they will hurt participation, which will make his cock shrink. Therefore, he puts up a poll while at the same time canvassing for oppose votes in the background.

That you call this "good" makes me question your sanity.

Refreshingly cynical as ever.

Oh, {{citation needed}}?

Two thumbs up for that.


It covers about 10% of the U.S. and makes Ted Turner almost look like a reasonable person.

I think this incident is once again demonstrating the actual lack of power that Jimmy now has.

The power that Jimbo has and power that Jimbo is willing to exercise are two different things.

He's like the CEO of a phone company pretending that he can't do anything about obscene phone calls, because he's "only a subscriber".

Jon

What Jon said.

Also, did I just say that?

I don't see how. He's getting the outcome he wants.

If there's evidence that his public statements on FlaggedRevs don't match his private feelings, I've yet to see it.

In this particular case, if he actually had the power to enable this extension, doing so would gain him a lot of political capital. But you know as well as I do that he does not have the technical power to push this through, and I've seen nothing to suggest that he has the political power either. At least not nowadays.

When a FR poll is unknown to most of the community it is support, when it goes public it is oppose. Simple.

The Wikipedia community always opposes changes. That's why they should be ignored for important decisions like this.

Exactly what outcome is it that you're saying he wants? The half-assed hybrid solution proposed by "the community"? Or the status quo?

He's perfectly happy with the status quo, and is deathly afraid of any sort of flagged revisions.

Then why, according to you, has he even bothered to push a change to the status quo? He could have ended all discussion of flagged revisions a year ago by closing the poll as "sorry, 60% was not a sufficient enough consensus to move ahead."

NucularWarfare = Yet another case of Wikipedia Induced Skull Full Of Whip & Chill (WISFOWAC).

Jon

Because if he did that, he'd have people screaming at him that he's not doing enough to prevent libel of living people (and especially of living people whom he really really wants to like him). This way he can pass the buck to the community for not doing anything, and absolve himself of all fault, while at the same time getting what he wants, which is as much attention as possible.

It's not that I'm never cynical; I am sometimes, and I agree this might be Kabuki. But I think Jimbo's the real McCoy on BLP. I read him as sincere.

Maybe that makes me a sucker, but would you like to make a bet? I think Jimbo's going to come through on this.

If cash isn't your thing, I'm willing to compound my sins by wagering beer.

That means you intend to lose this bet, right?

How, specifically, will you define the term "come through"?

Maybe I'm too paranoid, but I think he's only the real McCoy on BLP because that's the path of least resistance. I think back to the time that Wikia had a spanking site suggesting erotic spanking of Boy Scouts. The reason he did something about it was because people were beating down his door talk page.

If cult members start leaving because the instant gratification of being able to say whatever you want on one of the top websites in the world becomes slightly delayed gratification, then doing the obviously right thing is not the path of least resistance.

I'm afraid that I can afford to be making any wagers at this time, not when there's some question still where April's mortgage payment is coming from.

Jimbo does sincerely believe that Wikipedia should not be libeling people. But his sincere belief on that issue is not going to compromise his personal need for Wikipedia to be as large as possible. He simply isn't going to let mere ethical concerns, especially in the abstract, interfere with his personal need to have the biggest cock on the block.

Of course he takes action whenever the ethical concern becomes concrete, because that action just banishes one or two visitors, and such one-off actions have little impact on overall site participation, especially if he can marginalize those affected as "malcontents". But enabling flagged revisions isn't a one-off action; this would be a paradigm shift, and he's flatly afraid that moving in that direction would ruin his boner permanently. Jimmy's very risk adverse, especially when it's his projective hard-on that's in the line of fire.

Might be. I don't claim he's a saint, but I think he will turn it on.


Are you interested in this bet? How would you define it that you would think an even money bet fair?


Maybe my bishop would appreciate that.


I agree with you on these competing desires. At this point, 9 years after the experiment began, I think that Jimbo now agrees #1 is more important than #2. I also think that he intends for this to be a BLP project rather than the German Wikipedia's 100% saturation.