Newyorkbrad at last takes a stand on the BADSITES issue(s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=197228498

Fuck the encyclopedia! DO NOT LINK TO ENCYCLOPEDIA DRAMATICA.

Normally I think very highly of Newyorkbrad. IMO the worst he's ever been at times is boring and tedious. But this is just illogical.

Now, whether or not ED should be linked in normal WP discussion is irrelevant and not for this thread (I personally think it shouldn't, for the record) but to suggest that WP avoids linking to it in an article about ED is ludicrous. The obvious preliminary solution is to just not reference any pages that do indeed harass (and by harass I mean encourage cyber-stalking of, or post identifying details about, not say HE POOPS HIS PANTS AND FUCKED HIS COUSIN) minors (or any other living individuals, for that matter). But that's not good enough for Brad, Attorney at Lawl! After all, people might click links on that site and get to a page that HARASSES someone, somewhere.

What Brad doesn't realize is that any halfwit yahoo who's heard of Google with enough interest to click one of those links is just as likely to search for Encyclopedia Dramatica on their favorite engine. It's not like it doesn't happen already; those of you with an autocomplete on Google toolbar or something similar, type "encyclopedia" into it and see what the top autocompletion is (hint: it's not "encyclopedia Wikipedia"!). Brad's finnicky proposed sacrifice of relevant article links is not going to accomplish anything. Furthermore, I'd argue that the policy will in fact be "defamatory" (or whatever synonym applies to a non-living entity such as a website) to ED. No doubt anyone who realizes that one can edit Wikipedia articles sees that there is no link, they'll attempt to put one in. Oh, but wait! You can't, because encyclopediadramatica.com is on the spam blacklist! It must be a spam site!

Am I right about this, or am I grasping at straws?

Both!

The idiotic BADSITES concept will never die as long as a handful of people, especially MONGO, continue to regard links to certain sites (in any context whatsoever) as a personal assault on themselves, and others keep thinking that such people need to be appeased.

It would be enlightening to hear from Brad on:
- what beneficial effect he thinks refusing to link to sites like ED could possibly have
- what wikipedia is doing to protect its underage participants that might be more effective. In an online climate that's makes some schools reluctant to even post their students' faces to the web, why is wp throwing sensitive kids into such a charged arena as the editing of politically and socially contentious pages?

Rather than aknowledge and address the glaring faults in their own interactions with other WP editors that get catalogued on said supposed 'badsites' the likes of MONGO et al would rather carry on playing the same nonsensical thought-crime games that feed their little ego fueling power trips. Ironically ensuring that said 'badsites' have all the material they need to sustain their existence. MONGO & his ilk are the very lifeblood of 'badsites'.

The thing I can never understand is why when millions of Muslims are offended by Wikipedia containing images of Mohammed, the reaction is "Tough shit... Wikipedia is not censored... editorial decisions won't be influenced by somebody being offended by something!" But when a few Wikipedians have their feelings hurt by something some "BADSITE" writes about them, then suddenly it's different; NPOV and normal notability guidelines don't count or should be contorted to reach the necessary conclusion that all reference to the evil site must be suppressed to salve the feelings of Wikipedians.

The ''attack site'' AKA bad site issue is predictable. Wikipedia is some virtual society/community, and each community attempt to protect their members. Wikipedia places the community before what it claims to be (encyclopedia). You probably don't understand because you think Wikipedia is before anything else an encyclopedia. It's a virtual social gathering before being anything else. That's why it has various guidelines and policies which are unrelated with encyclopedic content and give more importance to those guidelines and policies. If you pay attention, what they give much more importance on, are rules which have more to do to maintain the social order than the intergrity of the content itself. What is hard to understand is not the badsite issue, what is hard to understand and my amasement is that it only had partial success.

Wikipedia is like one of those countries that allows only one political party, and persecutes anyone who is not a loyal supporter of the only authorized party.

I don't know if we can really say that, what is the government? The Arbcom, the ''cabal'', the community? I don't think there really is a government.

There are some structure, they have democracy (somehow), a suprem court (Arbcom), the law enforcers (admins)..., government? Not exactly.

It's simple, really. Most Wikipediots aren't Muslims.

Kohser, Laser.
Laser, Kohser.

Jonny

Sniper will do as well.

Indeed. In Cuba, for lower level politicos, there's only a single candidate, put up by the Party, and all you get is a vote on "yeah" or "nay." If more than 20% of people vote "nay," he's out (I don't think that ever happens, but it could, in theory). At Wikipedia, the difference is that anybody can nominate anyone for a lower post, or you can nominate yourself. But again there are never runoffs between contenders for a single position, and never any 51% wins. At Wikipedia, they always have to pretend that such a thing never happens, and could never happen, so they're careful to avoid it. Instead, they do the old one-party "concensus" vote, and the line for "consensus" is pretty much where Cuba draws it. Of course, more people get voted down at wikipedia.

On the other hand, at the upper levels of WP, like the"stewards" who have power to create or de-sysop admins (see super-wizard), I don't think they ever have elections. Basically, it's just the old Politburro shuffle. Carolyn Doran the drunk got to be a Steward. And Essjay the brownosing twerp. It's who you, er, "know." Sometimes, no doubt, who you " know" in the Biblical sense.

Milt

That's not exactly correct. See the steward information page on meta. Elections are held approximately annually. To the best of my knowledge neither Essjay nor Carolyn Doran has ever been a steward. Perhaps you are thinking of something else.

Hope that helps clarify matters.

Harassment isn't good, of course, and I agree fully that ED is not in any way a decent site. But why do people think pretending that these sites don't exist will help anything?

either way, why even mention ED at all? for what would one want to "link" to them on WP? I can't see any purpose either.

of course, saying nybrad takes a stand on anything is lude-i-crous. I've never seen anyone take more of a 10.000-word essay of a non-stand that says more of nothing, regarding the GW affair. What a cop-out.

But why let something as pesky as facts get in the way of a good rant?

Essjay was definitely never a steward, and I'm pretty sure Carolyn Doran wasn't either, though I suppose they might have made her one for a few weeks before she was given her walking papers, or whatever they're calling it over there.

However, this guy is a steward:



...and it's probably a good thing, too, since otherwise there just wouldn't be enough Spartak Moscow followers among the stewardship.

Probably just typos or lapsi oculi — it should have said, or he should have read, that Carolyn Doran got Stewed and Essjay got Skewered.

Jonny

Okay, on Essjay, from Fred Bauder, you are correct: [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?act=Post&CODE=02&f=5&t=16512&qpid=85233]
"Oh, and a quick retraction - apparently he was ex-Mediation Chair and on the ArbCom, not ex-ArbCom Chair. My apologies. Point remains, he was a bureaucrat, a checkuser, and had oversight. That’s the 3 big guns of Mediawiki privilege levels*, and he had them all. I don’t doubt that in a year’s time, had this not been discovered, he could have made Board of Trustees or something.
* = (Steward is not an official MediaWiki privilege level, it’s a hacked-on thing that Wikimedia does)"


That last asterisk is Bauder's. I don't know if the situation has changed since.

That's the line the BADSITES proponents always use... but flip it on its head and ask, why would one want to arbitrarily restrict what sites anyone can link to?

how do you think i feel? Essjay baptized my first-born, performed last rites on my dear old dad, gave first communion to my wee nephew, and convinced the wife that the holy grail is indeed a rusty goblet instead of a cute young french chick who does random acts of anonymous kindness. I was shocked I tell you, shocked, to find that wasn't! I'm now relegated to ranting against the church, and laughing bitterly at Dave Allen DVD's.

yeah, but i'm (prolly inconsistently) in the "if it's not a WP:RS", don't link to it", camp. If there's something of relevance in a talk page that is supposed to be proof of something or other (this wikipedian does bad things on the internets!), if they haven't done something wrong on Wikipedia that can't be corroborated by a WP:RS, who cares?

Let's take MM for example. A reliable source (his own Forbes byline) shows he was in Varkala. His own editing months before was on WP:Varkala. Bingo - I didn't have to link to ASM to show that, you just got straight to the WP:RS, and WP.

I don't think there's any reason of any kind why anyone should be linking to WR or ED anywhere on WP. Just re-post the relevant information directly into WP, and if that information needs sourcing, find it somewhere reliable. What happens on WR/ED/etc is not a reliable source, and what people do on here should have nothing to do with what they do on WP.

That concept is applied very unevenly, LOL. Was it Crockspot who went on a Gaybashing Binge on a site, and the "Badsites" crowd turned a blindeye, but those same people cut-and-pasted posts from WR? Just don't use any of it.

I think Judd would agree. What he put on ASM, the parts that applied to WP, could be pieced together from

1) Honest use of checkuser
2) Reliable sources. Those include blogs written by BLP subjects, lol
3) On-WP behaviour
4) WP:RS material

but he was forced to do his own checkuser approach, and post it to a unreliable site. So just make the stupid WP:Checkuser process and evidence reviewable to a privacy-sensitive extent, to all WP'ians.

Piperdown, you don't think that linking to ED in an article from ED would have any encyclopedic value?

Not a loaded question either. It's arguable that it may not be... my beef is that Newyorkbrad is acknowledging that it would be and still wants to prohibit linking to it.

Well, that's not entirely fair, they do have some semblance of government, the only problem is they've modeled it disturbingly closely on the one in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. The latter part of the book obviously, once the cabalistas grew tired of all that bothersome conch business and smashed it. Now all they have left is the unabashed bullying and constant references to the BADSITES to keep the smaller children afraid and in line.

Man, I used to LOVE watching the Dave Allen re-runs on PBS what I was about 13 or 14. That guy was one of the most creative producers of sketch comedy, other than Mel Brooks, that I had ever seen.

Lord of the Flies is a pretty good analogy to the ruling clique on WP.

For what it's worth, I don't define bullying as a legitimate form of government.

Differences is that ED should not be used because it is unreliable not because it is a ''BADSITE'' AKA attack site.

When Wikipedia has an article about a website or organization, though, they generally link to the site itself as a matter of course regardless of its RS qualifications. See Stormfront (website) for example.

That's because there are two different reasons to link to a website, when used because it can be used as source, or used to simply show the official website. In the second case, the information provided is the site itself, not necessarly what the site has as content (but could, to show their position). In that context if an article on ED could survive, it should also contain a link to the site.

Brad is a big defender of underage administrators. Now we see a defence of censorship because they don't want to risk offending the tender sensibilites of those minors. It is a ridiculous stance. Teenage admins do not have the maturity and decision making abilities of adults. It is a huge reason why governance of Wikipedia resembles Lord of the Flies.

It's not only bad for Wikipedia, it is bad for the kids. It breeds mouth foamers like Sceptre (quickly on-course to blow up bigger than MONGO) as well as lapdog patsies like Ryan Postlethwaite. These are kids, their minds are still forming and maturing, and they are viewing and repeating pattern behaviors formed based on the hostile environment of Wikipedia. That's not normal, they'd be better off playing Grand Theft Auto which at least acknowledges not being reality.

(Also, since this is about ED, ED does not allow underage admins. Good for them.)

I was hoping you would not endorse "guitar hero" over really playing a musical instrument.

Brad may be a kid at heart...

To tempt young kids into playing adults is not a good idea.

Wisdom requires experience and time, not brains.

Let's hope Brad is not the N.Y. judge on the list with CLIENT # 9...a.k.a., former Governor of New York, E. Spitzer. Would that be too much for Wikipedia to handle?

(i.e., one of the clients on the list from The Emperor's Club, is a New York Judge)

Since Brad knows of some judges, and/or maybe he is a judge, maybe he could enlighten us?


Anonymous fake profiles without age limits? What a disaster already happening...

I'm 22 thanks - I think I've shown an ability to make mature decisions. Never knew I was one of those lapdog patsies....

ED does allow underage admins though. One that I had become friendly with was 17 when he was sysopped.

Ryan here (assuming he's telling the truth) makes a good point that I endorse: it doesn't matter how old a person is, but rather how mature they act. "Lapdog" types, smack-talking cliquesters and wannabe-cabalists exist in different age categories; I couldn't tell an age difference between Sceptre and Ryan either.

I wonder how old Nearly Headless Nick is?

EDIT: Note that I've been inactive at ED for over a year and they may have changed their (her actually, since it's one person's decision really) policy.

Yes.

I think you have, too, Ryan (and it's great to see you over here.)

But suppose we're talking about something more than just being an editor, or a entry-level sysop. Take yourself out of the equation, and just talk about 22 year olds in general: would you agree that the people calling the shots at the project level - say, the Arbitrators, but also "undocumented" über-admins - should be older than that? How many of your brightest friends would you feel confident placing in charge - even a little in charge - of, say, a law firm, a fortune 500 company, a city government, a division of troops…or an academic department, a famous museum…or the New York Times, or Encyclopedia Britannica?

I think there's plenty of teens that have shown themselves to be capable of making very good sysops, some just work on the backlogs and get very little notice - that must mean they're doing something right. It's good to have a younger perspective, especially considering one of our target audiences are the people in school/college/university.

With respect to the arbitrators, I still think if someone has proven on wiki they are able to show the correct attitude and understanding that is expected of an arbitrator, there's nothing stopping them taking that role. I understand your point that it could be considered that they are in charge of a top 10 website, but they aren't really - they simply sort out editorial behaviour. The running of it is down to WMF where I'm fairly sure that we've left that to old hands who have experience in their respective areas.

WMF don't and can't get involved in the sort of issues we're thinking of.

I actually think that's a problem with the way wikipedia is structured. The fact that "sysop" - a bag of miscellaneous technical abilities such as deletion, blocking, etc, is so inextricably conflated with "administrator" which is, much as some of us would like to think it's not, a decision-making role.

The "party line" is supposedly that an administrator has _no_ extra decision-making capabilities - except that's been eroded. non-admins have been taking more crap recently for closing XfDs than they used to. I occasionally see it explicitly stated that non-admins ought to have no voice in a community ban discussion. Something needs to change, whether by _actually_ running things by consensus of all users, sysop or not - or by explicitly creating a decision-making role that is separate from the technical role.