Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 07:19, 4 August 2013

In this world, hatred has never been defeated by hatred. Only love can overcome hatred. This is an ancient and eternal law. –Dhammapada (1:5)

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Template collapsing

You are free to change the autocollapse parameter in {{Frank Lloyd Wright}} as you see fit for individual pages or globally.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 05:25, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

AN/I

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Gobbleygook (talk) 07:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Habitability of red dwarf systems

You are invited to work on User:Wer900/Habitability of red dwarf systems, as I improve it significantly until it can be brought to GA class. Your aid is most appreciated. Thanks, Wer900 • talk 23:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. That's a very interesting (and valuable) topic. I will take a look. Viriditas (talk) 02:11, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Allegations of CIA drug trafficking

Hi,

Since you're working on Acid Dreams (book), I thought you might also be interested in Allegations of CIA drug trafficking. It's been on my list of problem articles for some time. I removed the most egregiously bad sources but there are still some very significant issues. There's legitimate some stuff in the article, but there's also some very dubious, fringe material. Best, GabrielF (talk) 03:32, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a look but it sounds like a can of worms. Viriditas (talk) 05:07, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I took a look. There are several ways to approach this, but from past experience, the "scalpel" method would work best, i.e. slash and burn. Viriditas (talk) 04:27, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Template:Wikinews

I was wondering if we should do something about these. While the occasional links could be useful, it does seem like a lot of them are bad, and it's not really a WP:RS. Adam Cuerden 09:19, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It's an interesting question. I seem to remember there was an intense discussion about this very thing many years ago. I'll try and find it. Viriditas (talk) 04:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

In the meantime, I think I'll handle the ones that I can provide concrete evidence of being bad links. Misplaced Pages:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_July_14#Template:Wikinews_category. The categorization scheme on Wikinews is so broad (the mere mention in one sentence is often enough) that it's essentially useless for Misplaced Pages's purpose. Adam Cuerden 22:49, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

A very sensitive touchpad! Happens all too often, just need to breath on it and it executes an unwanted command! Leaky Caldron 11:31, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Tell me about it!! :) Viriditas (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:Gobbleygook

A tag has been placed on User:Gobbleygook, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Misplaced Pages. This has been done for the following reason:

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet basic Misplaced Pages criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. 155blue (talk) 21:34, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh My God

How do you handle the bullshit? Even my watch list is giving me heart palpitations, I'm taking MAM off of it. Dude, I hope you have a strong heart. I am gathering that you do. petrarchan47tc 01:05, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Tag teaming, suspected socks engaging in COI edits promoting a singular POV while using off-topic sources in violation of our no original research policy. Who do you think is going to get blocked here, me or them? Take a look at my block log if you aren't sure. Viriditas (talk) 01:10, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

What a pile of crap from Gobbleygook and company. You rightly pointed out, many times, that no long-term studies have been done. Sometimes it is important to read beyond abstracts and Monsanto press releases, but of course the biased, drama-creating, and sometimes paid corporate shills on the 'pedia will gather their friendly admins and editors to community-ban you for "repeated insiviliteh!!!!!!111!11!!" while having free rein to ignore all facts, truth, and nuance in papers. Wer900 • talk 01:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has been absolutely overrun by shills. Big Oil and government special interests (is there a difference?) are well established here, but the GMO promoters are absolutely out of control. The problem, as I see it, is that the Ayn Rand-loving co-founder of this site is perfectly OK with giant corporations taking an equally giant role in building and shaping 'their' articles. BP, for instance, was writing their own drafts and having shills, er, independent BP-friendly editors, insert the drafts word-for-word. These included sections on their most controversial endeavors like Tar Sands and various oil spills. When brought to Jimbo, the response was a big yawn and a full throated defense of the practice, of BP and everyone involved. Because of the tag teaming and the relatively recent switch from rational RfCs to allowing straight-up voting by literally anyone, regardless of their knowledge of the subject, the RfC process has become a complete joke and really, an invitation for special interests to solidify their positions. IMHO, this is really no longer a place for honest editors - unless they don't mind having their time wasted. At the end of the day, the establishment will have their way. petrarchan47tc 00:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Petrarchan47, are you referring to the removal of your edits? Have you considered starting a talk page discussion? Viriditas (talk) 02:14, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

V, to be frank, I think what I'm expressing is a nearly complete loss of interest in further contributing to this encyclopedia. Our edits are always removed or changed at the expense of 'regular people' (or, the 99%), and in favor of special interests. I do not see good results from talk page activity anymore. I do not see administrators following the rules, or encouraging each other to do so. I see this website as so massively slanted in favor of special interests that it is not justifiable for me to continue to support this project in any time-consuming way. The only article I've worked on lately that does not seem to be ruled by a special interest 'editor' or group of shills is Edward Snowden. It is collaborative, with mutual respect and no government rep (surprisingly!) policing every edit (as happens at any page related the the BP oil spill or any page that mentions GMOs). It is an atmosphere that reminds me of the old days, when people just enjoyed building articles and adding information. Now 98% of the activity I see here is about spinning articles. It's about keeping information damning to the powers-that-be out of this website, or told in a pretty way. The MAM page remains an example of this type of activity that is absolutely mind boggling. People are being paid to do this work, and that is precisely why it feels like one's time is being wasted here. The vast majority of the editors I bump into here these days are not straight-shooters. This seems to be a somewhat new phenomenon, but it is blossoming out of control with no brakes in sight. petrarchan47tc 06:03, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

May I have your permission to raise the issue with SV, or do you want me to drop it? Viriditas (talk) 03:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

No, V, it's not important. I'm just venting. petrarchan47tc 05:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Petrarchan, you shouldn't remember the past fondly. In the past, Misplaced Pages was warm, fuzzy, and had no sourcing requirements or burden of proof whatsoever. While that may have been a good model in the early days of Web 2.0, it doesn't work today. Besides, as we begin touting the "good old days" we lose sight of the challenges ahead of us, which are completely distinct from those of yesteryear, and the ignorance of said challenges may contribute to our downfall nearly as much as the current abrasive and toxic encyclopedia environment.

With that said, I think that the following few suggestions would help significantly, in the short and the long term:

• Abolish AN/I and all "conduct" and "civility" noticeboards, and eliminate the specific SPI page (although, without doubt, retain checkusers). Replace them with magistrates' courts, staffed by a new user group known as jurists and designed around case requests, with each party to the case providing evidence. Outside parties may only comment on the case on its talk page, and may bring up meta-issues related to the case, but may not explicitly support or oppose a given infraction.
• Grant ArbCom the power of discovery of IRC logs for all channels. Anyone who refuses to provide the requested logs, at least in private, may be sanctioned for contempt of the Arbitration Committee.
• New government bodies for Misplaced Pages should be created as follows:

• Establish an elected Administrative Control Board with the ability to hire, control, or sanction administrators with penalties up to and including desysopping, whose decisions specifically deal with administrative misconduct and may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee.
• Establish editorial boards, elected by the community, to deal with content issues in a speedy manner, police biographies of living persons, accord FA and GA status, resolve content disputes, and generally oversee the improvement of content. Nine editorial boards, in the areas of formal science, natural science, social science, history, philosophy and religion, popular culture and current events, arts and literature, and miscellaneous shall be created. Each editorial board will name an Editor, who will represent the board at a higher-level Misplaced Pages Editorial Board. The chair of said board will rotate bimonthly. Content disputes will undergo mandatory mediation, then appeal to one editor in an area relevant to the dispute, then an appeal to an ad-hoc editorial board consisting of editors from the relevant boards in weights commensurate with the content in question, and finally to the Misplaced Pages Editorial Board.
• A Misplaced Pages Assembly, again popularly elected by editors, should unify the two groups and should have the authority to generally enforce Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines with the regulations it deems necessary.

• "Discretionary sanctions" should be abolished, as should Arbitration Enforcement. All cases in both the magistrates' court tract (the "legal tract") and the editorial board tract (the "content tract") should be enforceable in magistrates' courts or by one editor resolving low-level content disputes. All dispute resolution entities on the legal tract and the content tract are bound by the precedent of their respective tracts.
• Create a Department of Information to handle all matters regarding the revelation and hiding of information. Create a freedom of information policy, stipulating that all proceedings and evidence from the legal and content tracts must be made available to any editor in good standing upon request after six months, and made public after twelve months, with private or otherwise identifying information redacted where necessary. The same body may also handle private requests for oversight or revision deletion, and must keep a log of all such actions and a valid explanation thereof. Any questionable decisions by the Department of Information regarding the release or redaction of information may be appealed to ArbCom in a default-public proceeding.

Viriditas, you might think of it as a bureaucratic morass. But remember; Misplaced Pages is not a proper superorganism, like our brains or ant colonies. Both of the latter have sections with clearly defined roles on a high level, and that is what I am proposing. Believe it or not, the total amount of "bureaucracy" will not increase by much, but power will be decentralized (all dispute resolution is made public in short order). Wer900 • talk 04:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Putting aside whether I agree or disagree with you, can you focus on the most important proposal here? It should be a single, simplified proposal that will lay the foundation for reform, and through its implementation, it will allow for the discussion of other proposals you would like to see. But if you want to achieve anything, you have to focus on a single reform by itself, but at the same time, allow for that reform to open the door to other reforms. So out of all of the reforms you listed above, which one do you consider the most important and pressing at this time? Keep in mind what you are dealing with. The enemy isn't your proposal, it's change itself. People don't generally change their behaviors or their institutions or their way of living without good reason, but here's the kicker, this "reasoning" is often irrational. A lot of times, it has to do with herd mentality, imitation, and arguments from authority. Very little decision making is actually based on reason. Please try to wrap your head around this fact. This is why change does not come from the top. It comes from the bottom, from single individuals doing things differently, thinking differently, and living differently. So, ideally, your reforms should allow individual editors on Misplaced Pages to directly contribute to this change without consulting any higher authority. I hope this makes sense, but this is how real change occurs. You don't wait for some guy on top to give you the OK, you have to do it yourself. That's the source for all lasting reform. Viriditas (talk) 04:30, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

When editors "do it themselves", they tend to form schools of sharks on AN/I and suppress all opposition. For the record, the most important single proposal would be the replacement of all of the noticeboards with magistrates' courts. Wer900 • talk 05:14, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

You are assuming that the drive to form primate dominance hierarchies will overwhelm the drive for individualism. But that isn't the problem. The issue is, what do both the dominators and individualists value and how can you work within that framework? I'm going off the top of my head here, but most GA and FA-Class articles are written by one person, so most editors do it themselves by practice. Maybe this is the unstated point. That is to say, collaboration doesn't work as well as it could. Perhaps the most important proposal should be focused on collaboration from the POV of the individual rather than from the group. For example, noticeboards should ideally be decentralized so that one would be able to access real-time help anywhere at anytime from any page. Driven solely by the individual needing help of some kind, whether it be with sources or with other editors, one should be able to attract this attention immediately without having to hang out on separate boards, separate talk pages, and monitor different pages for a response that may never come. So given all of these things, the most important proposal in my mind, is the way we interface with the site, the way we are able to contribute and collaborate, and the way we can help increase value and knowledge for everyone. But magistrates' courts? My friend, my poor friend, if you have ever had to deal with any court in your life, that would be the last thing you would ever propose. I don't know how to say this, but hell no. :) Viriditas (talk) 08:04, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I only used the term for lack of a better one in the English language.

• A most distressing talkpage thread to read. I have been strongly against any paid editing for years. Now this. Jusdafax 05:51, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

More distressing is that you can come with all your diffs, a proven story of folks abusing the system, and it makes not a wave. People blatantly abusing noticeboards, playing games rather than honestly editing and building the encyclopedia is par for the course? Accepted without so much as a yawn? I was expecting at least 5 editors to be banned forever based on the results of a thorough inquiry by a team of admins. Now I feel like an idiot continuing to hope that the tooth fairy really does exist, but never ever finding a quarter. petrarchan47tc 05:16, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Stop saying to stop making shit up

You have said things like "Stop making shit up" too many times. He may be making shit up, but the response is uncivil, and civility is a pillar of Misplaced Pages. Please focus on content, and not the fact that you don't like an other editor. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:49, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

You may not like the terminology used but exactly why do you feel that qualifies as a justification to berate this editor over it? Civility is not about the use of language you do not approve of yourself. I suggest you get over it and look at the exact "Shit" being referred to. Seriously. Is the fact that the language used is offensive to you more important than the information in question. People should not make up information, but the fact is we do not censor editors. Get over it and focus on the content.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

July 2013

Please do not remove maintenance templates from pages on Misplaced Pages, as you did to Talk: March Against Monsanto, without resolving the problem that the template refers to, or giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your removal of this template does not appear constructive. I re-inserted one with revised wording. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 12:11, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

It should be noted that you have previously nominated this article for deletion, but did not succeed by a long shot, which raises the question, Robert McClenon, if you are coming from a truly neutral POV, or indulging in WP:BATTLE with this template. Jusdafax 12:39, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your accusations about paid editing

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

I did not start the discussion, but you should be alerted about it. Thargor Orlando (talk) 00:27, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

• I closed it, since Tryptofish, the initiator, indicated he was agreeable to that course. In my view the discussion had grown stale, and I wrote a closure to reflect the issues in brief. To expand just a bit further: As I see it, the core of the issue is how Monsanto is being portrayed, and how GMO food is defined either as accepted as non-harmful by the scientific community, or is being questioned by some members of that community. If there is a way to solve that dispute, it would be helpful, needless to say. One last thought for now: WP:5 is worth reading carefully. Jusdafax 07:13, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Question for you

I want to make sure that you have a chance to reply at WP:ANI#Question for Viriditas. Thanks.--Tryptofish (talk) 15:04, 1 August 2013 (UTC)