Puzzles worthy of attack

Prove their worth by hitting back


--Piet Hine

Elsewhere in these pages, we have struggled to find more creative and effective ways to address a litany of challenging and persistent problems with WikiCulture.

We have a bit of a respite here, a week-long vacation from one of the more vocal vectors who transmits many such problems in our general direction.

So let's have a chautauqua, a retreat, to see if we can devise some more creative and innovative approaches to recrafting this increasingly tedious and banal drama. Let's come up with a new ending for the song that never ends.

Who's game?

Maybe someday you'll fold up your beret, your monocle, your cigarette holder, and your director's chair and put your systems thinking cap back on, and then it may be worthwhile trying to work with you …

But I'm not holding my breath —

Jon

That Jonny. He's always feinting.

I'm game. As I commented here, one of Wikipedia's problems is that there isn't a forum, besides ArbCom, to determine when Wikipedia's editors are violating basic human decency (ethics), even if they aren't technically violating any of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.

In my opinion, Wikipedia needs some kind of ethics oversight board. A board comprised of members who don't or can't edit Wikipedia but are familiar with it, such as many of the participants in this august forum, might be one way to approach it.

Yes. And ArbCom clearly doesn't have the scope, the mandate, or cojones to do that.

From your ArbCom discussion link...


As you may know, a handful of us sought to construct a general workshop on Managerial Ethics over on Wikiversity.

And as you may also recall, Jimbo (prompted by the corrupt editors of IDCab) came galumphing into Wikiversity and shut down the project, declaring studies of Wikimedia Ethics to be "beyond the scope of the project." He called me a "jackass" for having the temerity to propose ethical standards and personally site-banned me from all WMF-sponsored sites.

So yes, I welcome your expert good offices in thinking more creatively about how to introduce the fundamentals of managerial ethics into a culture that is manifestly allergic to learning even the most elementary notions of ethical responsibility.

Well, you all did make some progress on the idea. If any of the participants are still allowed to edit Wikiversity, I hope they'll jump back in sometime and try to complete a proposed plan of action with recommendations for how to install an ethics governance body within Wikimedia.

I don't think WV is a good place for that: the bosses (both big and little) seem to be very much in the "nip it in the bud" mindset, so continuing the work there would involve a lot of walking on eggshells.

It would also be difficult to avoid being sucked into the great WV drama engine, which of course would suck up all of your time and thus prevent you from working much at all, let alone working while walking on eggshells.

If someone (even me) registered a domain and installed collaboration software (such as PHPBBS & Joomla!) and established private and public document creation areas for cooperative work such as this, and established the site prepaid for five years, would anyone come to such a place to develop this into a working Ethics Board?

More importantly, would anyone back at Wikipedia pay attention?

Shpilkes in the Geneckteckessoink


Here is evidence to support SB Johnny's view...

Greg Kohs was among those who worked on the course on Managerial Ethics. Like me, he was site-banned by Jimbo, and his SUL is globally locked (just like mine). To get around the global SUL lock, Greg created a declared sock puppet that would be detached from the SUL matrix. Greg has been trying to work within the bureaucracy to resume editing at WV under his declared sockpuppet account. Here is the latest bureaucratic maneuver, posted just a few hours ago...


And, indeed, Adam did summarily and unilaterally reblock Greg's new declared sock, User:Ethical Accountability, this morning, with the annotation, "reinstate per concerns at User talk:Abd."

Greg is clearly a pawn on a very slow-moving chess board.


In case readers here do not recognize the term of art "walking on eggshells" its a reference to dealing with extremely obnoxious people who are known to be suffering from Cluster B Personality Disorders. People like that are so obnoxious, they quite literally make you sick. This morning, JWSchmidt had to go vomit after he looked at the Recent Changes. I, too, heaved buckets of stomach acid when I was dealing with this tsuris two summers ago.

Barry has been slowly adapting the WV stuff here, but it hasn't really taken off (yet). There was some discussion early on about making a protected namespace for it (where only members of certain usergroups would be able to read and/or write), but nobody seemed to think it was necessary to do so.

Probably not, but I suppose that would depend on the quality (and tone) of the finished product.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...


Please discuss. Is the above analysis correct? If not what is being overlooked here?

It would depend, for me, on the real-name reputation of the governor of that site. I wouldn't work too hard on a site hosted by "Zoloft".

On the surface, it would appear that Abd is acting as a gentle, inclusive facilitator; while Adambro is acting as a rash, exclusionary automaton.

However, it's possible if you scratch below the surface, Adambro is merely advocating for a more direct approach -- find a Bureaucrat who will un-lock the SUL for User:Thekohser, and just settle the matter between me and my nemesis Jimmy Wales, once and for all. If I "behave" on Wikiversity, I win and Jimmy loses. If I can't "behave", then I lose and Jimmy wins. If I "behave", but then Jimmy re-introduces himself into the battle, then I really, really win and Jimmy really, really looks like a pathetic loser.

I've described my situation on Wikiversity more mildly here.

A reasonable statement. If I set up a site like that, it would:
A) Be registered under my real name.
B) Be administered by a set of users selected by the participants.
C) The host credentials transferred to a third party agreeable to the founders.

I have two such sites installed at the Utah State University School of Journalism, where my faculty colleague there teaches Online Journalism and Mass Media Ethics.

One installation uses WordPress with BuddyPress. The other uses Elgg.

Would either of those installations be of interest?

I think there's no shortage of website installations where good and productive things can be done.

I think the shortage is in number of people willing and able to make a dedicated commitment to something that will last, and for which they will receive appropriate credit and gratitude.

Then there's the XS of techno-geeks who have snatched a few buzzbits of social science jargon out of the airwaves and φancy themselves e-minently qualified thereby to bring the Twint Tablets of the New Mosaic to all mankind.

Jon

Perhaps. More likely, there is no player (other than the pawns themselves). Everything happening on Wikiversity now -- with respect to this affair -- is easily explained by some combination of stupidity and stubborn persistence in prior decisions.

Notice that I'm on wikibreak. It's real, and the mess got so intense that I concluded it was hopeless to try to make even a few comments at this point. Nevertheless, mess included, I see that progress has been made.

Both Moulton and Thekohser are now blocked by local custodians, not by Jimbo. Adambro and Darklama are still burbling about how the real "block" is the "global lock," but it is quite likely that if WV finds consensus, a steward will lift the block. I asked Mike.lifeguard about it, and it was clear to me that actually challenging the lock without first having consensus was futile. So how to find consensus?

The case of Barry (Moulton) and Greg (Thekohser), on the face, were quite different, similar almost exclusively in that both are critics of the wikis, and both were blocked by Jimbo. Moulton, however, was clearly considered disruptive by many Wikiversitans, or at least some within the remaining custodial core. I would not have attempted to deal with the Moulton case first. I started with Thekohser, because there was never a local consensus to block Thekohser, and quite a bit of sentiment against it. Greg fully cooperated with my efforts. He could have contributed content on his Talk page, as suggested by Ottava, but I proposed he use self-reversion.

Self-reversion worked. The content was created and self-reverted. Nobody bothered the sock IP, even though it was clearly identified in the edits as being Thekohser. The content was good, as far as I could see, and nobody has complained about it. Self-reversion is much more efficient than creating content in one place to be put elsewhere. Self-reversion also works much better for ordinary small edits. The point of self-reversion was to be cooperative with a ban, which sounds counter-intuitive, but if anything could demonstrate cooperation, this is it.

Meanwhile, Diego Grez, rather naively, I think, set up an alternate account for Moulton, Caprice, doing pretty much what I'd done with Thekohser, an acknowledged sock (Ethical Accountability), with a block allowing only Talk page editing. Both of these then bypassed the global lock. This was, by the way, noticed by at least one steward. None acted to interdict it. Earlier, a Kohser sock had been locked by Mike.lifeguard, so it's not like they weren't paying any attention.

Moulton had not asked to be unblocked, and was thus under no obligation to cooperate at all. That point has been missed! Moulton simply continued to act like Moulton. I did unblock Moulton's sock, Caprice, since Moulton had been unblocked by Diego. Consistency, eh? At one point Moulton was completely unblocked, but, of course, the Moulton account couldn't be used because of the global lock. It seems to me that Moulton unblocked was perhaps slightly more cooperative and expressing some reasonable position, but I haven't analyzed it in detail. I was hoping that the custodians would hold off on blocking Moulton until there was some *actual cause.* Not just inertia. Part of the point is that blocking him doesn't really do any good except it legitimates reverting all his edits. I don't see a consensus possible at this time for unblocking, but maybe it could come *if Moulton wants it and cooperates.*

Thekohser, however, was fully cooperative, was not under any kind of community ban on Wikiversity, had not misbehaved in any blockable way, AFAIK, back in March. That's why people were so upset then!

So the situation now is that Thekohser has been blocked again for no misbehavior at all. It's now radically out of process, starting to justify JWS's complaints. It is almost as if the severity of his prior complaints created the response, not an unreasonable hypothesis. (Complain bitterly that someone is an asshole, don't be surprised if they then act like an asshole.)
I've seen some depth in Adambro, but he's not there now. He was more or less correct in his enforcement of the Moulton blocks, but sometimes excessive. I was perfectly willing to cooperate with him on that. However, I see no reason at all for his block of Thekohser's acknowledged sock. "Lack of consensus" is the opposite of a reason for a block!
Problem is, I'm pretty sure that a steward will require a local consensus first. And getting a real consensus on WV is like pulling teeth. I was looking for an operational consensus, i.e., an active account that was not causing problems, and then, in that context, getting a local consensus would be much easier.
That's correct. But my "game" really has nothing to do with Jimbo and everything to do with how wikis operate (and could operate if tweaked). Jimbo is not going to intervene with tools. He might intervene with advice, which could be very interesting. I would not care to predict it. Wikiversity, right now, is probably very low on his list of priorities!
Steady on, Greg. You are, actually, winning. Stay the course. I really wonder what they were thinking, Ottava and Adambro.... did they think I'd allow you to stir up trouble?

Look, in the long run, Wikiversity and the WMF need cogent criticism. Part of the problem was a lack of ethical guidelines covering how criticism of the wikis would be handled. Absolutely, I'd like to see the best critics of the wikis re-integrated into the community. There are ways to do it, I believe. But they will require some shifts in attitude.

That's a reasonably fair observation, but there is more going on, just beneath the surface, that may not be so obvious to the casual observer.


One of the theses I put forth two years ago is that on almost any controversial issue, you almost surely cannot find consensus (at least in the short term). Thus the status quo (whatever it happens to be) tends to persist.


I am first and foremost a science educator. Science has a long and turbulent history of disrupting commonly held beliefs. Galileo and Darwin are probably the most notable of these in the annals of science, but leaving aside their notoriety, their stories are not particularly unique.


Yes. Look at how many Custocrats agonized over answering a question I never asked. There are several important reasons why (unlike Greg) I did not ask to be unblocked. I wonder how many of those reasons the involved parties can articulate.


And there is but one Custodian who avails himself of that gambit. Whodat? And whydat?


Yes, there is a whole lot of "out-of-process" activity going on, mostly revolving around one remarkably curious admin.


Perhaps Charles Ainsworth will demonstrate a better way to raise the issues of ethical guidelines for WMF-sponsored projects. Hopefully he will be able to devise a new departure from the failed paths that Greg and I have explored.

Humankind's Original Logic Error

Sometimes in the course of human events it becomes necessary to diagnose long-festering errors in the architecture of the culture. One can recognize these ancient and poorly diagnosed errors because they persistently produce endless reruns of the same banal drama. In every generation an annoying iconoclastic thinker stands up and once again points out the recurring anachronistic errors that continue to disturb the functionality of the cultural system. Among these persistent errors is a notorious one that can be recognized by its prominence in the literature. One can find an early story about it in Genesis 2. Augustine of Hippo, while not a mathematician, offered a scholarly analysis of the same error. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote two novels about it. The founders of nearly every religion sought with indomitable passion to eradicate this error from the political landscape. In every case in history, the political powers that be fought back with corrupt power, employing violence, oppression, unjust condemnation, alienation, and even such sophomoric practices as immurement of outspoken and iconoclastic scholars in the janitorial hall closet. But there is always an escape route from this hoary error, because the name of the error is HOLE. One can always escape through the HOLE. And those who mistakenly think otherwise might well be laboring with a silly HOLE in their head. —Azazel Nation 13:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)