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Something fun from Jimbo for the politically inclined

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WP Board of Trustees

Just noticed that Article IV, Section 3 of Misplaced Pages Foundation Inc.'s bylaws do permit payment for expenses to trustees by resolution of the Board. So the statement that they must always pay for their own travel etc. is somewhat misleading. Best regards. Barry Wells 00:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Who said that board members must pay for their own travel?--Jimbo Wales 18:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

user:Essjay, under Rules for candidates - since removed--Paul E. Ester 18:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Happy Birthday! :D

Hey Jimbo!

Happy birthday! Hi Jimbo Wales! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy birthday! Enjoy this special day! ~~~~

Hehe i got the 1st spot :D it's the 7th here in Australia btw ;) Have a good one man, here's to 40 more! --Deon555|talk|e|Review Me! :D 04:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages Birthday Committee wishes you a very happy birthday! Enjoy your special day.

Have a good one :) -Ladybirdintheuk 09:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It said make a birthday wish for Jimbo. I wish that at each April Fools day, wikipedia and uncyclopedia switch domains just for that one day. Oh and Brian Peppers comes back that day, too, but is protected and has one link: to a YTMND search for Brian Peppers. Anomo 10:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Best wishes from Germany! -- Simplicius 10:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Stephen Colbert

What is your opinion of the Stephen Colbert vandalism? Do you think Mr. Colbert meant in good humor or just distaste? Thank you.--71.197.196.45 03:47, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

New messages on wfm

Hi, can you have a look here please? :) jd 10:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Robert Steele

There is a thread on WP:AN about some recent comments of Steele - . Since he seems to have talked to you about it at least in part, I thought it prudent to let know. JoshuaZ 12:56, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I have had a tough day wikipediaing

and having to mess with my pictures - scanning, photoshoping out dust, etc - was the final straw. So, i've decided to ask you to help me get a digital back for my hasselblad so that I can once again afford to use that system. Life is good. Carptrash 02:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

SlimVirgin and a serious abuse of power. (you need to read this)

Jimbo, I've just posted this on AN/I, but I've watched as similar information has been quickly deleted by the subject recently, and don't suspect she'll do the same on your talk page, so I post it here as well to be sure you're made aware. Thanks and take care.

I am an active Wikipedian in good standing. Consistent with the letter and spirit of WP:SOCK, this account was created today for the sole purpose of making the present complaint and obviously has not, nor will it ever, interface with my main account. Sockpuppet? Yes. Abusive? No.

That I feel it is necessary to do this anonymously at all is indicative of what I see as the root of this very complaint: an administrator who has come to regard herself as exempt from the policies that maintain fairness and order here, and who has lately demonstrated a certain eagerness to exercise her power in unethical ways.

Basics

SlimVirgin appears to have abused her position for the benefit of one editor and the detriment of another, violating her ethical responsibilities to this community in the process.

I've learned that many editors know about this situation generally, since it was first described some weeks ago on another website. Instead of linking to that site, I'll summarize what I've gleaned from forum banter and my own email exchange with the the editor involved, inviting those more familiar with the specifics to follow up and fill in the gaps.

Details

Recently IPFrehley claimed he had evidence of abusive sockpuppetry on the part of Mantanmoreland.

At one point he uploaded a graphic of some sort which he intended to use as a “visual aid” when making his “case” (he clearly had no idea what the hell he was doing).

After uploading the image but before he could do whatever he was going to do next, IPFrehley was blocked by SlimVirgin and the image deleted (but not until after she apparently let Mantanmoreland have a copy, since he does refer to it on some thread I can't find now).

Based on comments IPFrehley made in another setting, it seems that prior to this, he reached out to a few admins, explaining what he wanted to do and asking for advice. He said the only ones he specifically remembers were Morven and Humus sapiens but thinks there were three or four total requests made. None of them replied to his email, though at least one forwarded it to either SlimVirgin or Mantanmoreland, which is how she managed to intercept and block IPFrehley so quickly when he finally decided to do it by himself (she must have been waiting for it to happen).

When it did, SlimVirgin took advantage of IPFrehley's obvious lack of familiarity with WP:SOCK, because she told him to send his evidence to her via email so she could judge it privately and offline.

Here's where it gets interesting

IPFrehley says he didn't believe SlimVirgin was really interested in the evidence he was sending, so he did something a little diabolical: in the document he emailed SlimVirgin, he hid something that would alert him when it was opened (I don't get that tech stuff so don't ask me more about it), to know if it even got looked at. He says that yes it was opened, not by SlimVirgin but by Mantanmoreland -- 'the same person his evidence accused!!!!! (Here's where he explains how he knew that).

Looking over their contribution histories it's easy to see that Mantanmoreland and SlimVirgin often work in tandem. But that's no excuse for secretly passing him information sent to her in confidence and with the promise that it would be reviewed and judged appropriately.

IPFrehley says he later emailed SlimVirgin asking if there was another explanation (other than what seemed obvious...that she was sending the information to Mantanmoreland) but she refused to answer, except for apparently announcing somewhere that IPFrehley was sending her threats.

I've yet to verify that, but is sounds pretty typical of a pattern that's emerged over time.

I suspect SlimVirgin will argue that because IPFrehley has since been indef banned and even spawned some socks of his own since this episode that his claims should be disregarded.

I would respond by noting that when all this happened, IPFrehley had yet to be banned. Also, IPFrehley openly admits to creating multiple socks specifically attempting to bring this situation to the community, which he apparently tried to do more than once though record of it is gone because he was summary banned and reverted and all diffs permanently deleted from the history.

In my time as a wikipedian, I've grown to respect SlimVirgin's dedication but feel increasing concern over her fading sense of impartiality and even propriety. If what IPFrehley says is true, it represents a grave deception, violation of trust, abuse of power, and act of inexcusable cronyism on the part of SlimVirgin. I'm requesting that her administrative powers be suspended while evidence related to this and other alleged abuses be presented and reviewed by a panel other than the Arbitration Committee, which I do not feel can be impartial in this case. --SecondMostLikely 06:14, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Responses to the above on AN/I, including Fred's response. SlimVirgin 06:56, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm New Here, But Dismayed At What I See

Hi, you probably will never read this, but what i've seen at

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Kelly Martin2

is unfortunate.

It seems that the rules on Misplaced Pages are made by strongarm tactics rather than by any process. Attic Owl 06:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Help with edit summaries

You mentioned at Wikimania that you had problems always remembering to use an edit summary, and then I brought up that there was actually an option in the interface to force edit summary usage, but you hadn't run across it. So here's how to turn it on. Go into your preferences, click the Editing tab, and check Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary. Hopefully within a month or two you'll have good enough edit summary usage to pass an Rfa :-P Cyde Weys 17:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Awesome!!!--Jimbo Wales 18:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure Jimbo already knew this. Anomo 19:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious as to why you would assume that? There are a team of skilled developers making this software - Jimbo can't know about every feature. It looks to me like Cyde had a good suggestion and Jimbo appreciated it. Johntex\ 23:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It was a totally serious comment by Cyde. Among top wikipedians it is well known that I am a clueless editor. :) --Jimbo Wales 00:09, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I have something in common with Jimbo Wales...Sweet!--KojiDude 00:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Attack article

Hi Mr. Wales! Does this article belong on Misplaced Pages?Steve Dufour 18:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Barbara Schwarz

Barbara Schwarz, née Bretschneider, is an illegal immigrant from Germany living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is known for filing a record number of requests under the United States Freedom of Information Act, for filing a large number of lawsuits, and for posting a large number of articles to Usenet newsgroups.

A quick review of this article shows that it is referenced and there are sufficient sources to provide evidence of notability, and the article has survived two discussions of whether it should be deleted - which means that the community has reached concensus that the article should be included in the encyclopedia. --Trödel 03:12, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The "community" that likes this article seem to be the individuals who are fair gaming her, I would guess because they think she posts too much to their Usenet group.Steve Dufour 05:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Please see my edits to that article. --Trödel 05:56, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. The article is much improved in tone. I have excused myself from editing it any more since I am too emotionally involved.Steve Dufour 14:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:User:Dangherous

While randomly searching around Wiktionary, I stumbled onto this. Aperently, the user used a sock puppet to vandalise the Main Page with the edit summary "going out with a bang". However, when going through both he and the suspected sock puppet's contributions, I used Crtl-F to search for the word "bang", and even going as far as 2,000 edits back, nothing came up. Maybe I just don't understand what was going on (in which case, please explain it for me), but this isn't making sense to me. (If you aren't the right person to ask about this to, could you please tell me who that would be? Thanks.)--KojiDude 06:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

He deleted the page with the edit summary going out with a bang, not edited it. The deletion would not show up in the history, but in the deletion history. Here is a link http://en.wiktionary.org/search/?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Wiktionary%3AMain+Page. Cowman109 23:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Disenchanted due to high-level admin actions

Not knowing where else to turn to on this, I post here.

Summary: I believe that actions of a high-level admin (User:Essjay) violate not only the rules as set forth in policy, but the spirit of them. Further, followup questioning on these actions has shown me a profoundly disfunctional class system between editors and admins and I believe this is a problem that must be solved.

Links of import on this topic:

• An Rfc that quickly spiralled out of control, ending up with the blocking of an editor by Essjay
• An AMA process which Essjay refused to participate in
• An attempt to move forward, ignored by Essjay
• An acknowledgement by the other (Rfc-capable) admin that the editor may have suffered for the actions of previous users, not necessarily his own actions

What it basically comes down to for me:

• Admins, while understanding their busy-ness, need to be required to participate in processes and policy involved in questioning their actions.
• The rules on "excessive personal insults" need to be spelled out more clearly to avoid disingenuous and over-reaching actions by admins claiming that they were insulted.
• Methods used to solve such issues need to be clearly identified as "has teeth" or "has no teeth", so that editors don't waste voluminous amounts of time going through pointless steps to attempt to reach a solution, only to find that the attempted resolution doesn't mean anything and can't propel the system to improvement.

I do feel like I'm 'fighting city hall' here, as the little guy. My involvements with some admins have been overwhelmingly positive, but my involvements here seem like there is a very broken class system between editors and admins and it's extremely disheartening. I hope you don't take this as just some editor complaining about a single poorly-handled block, because it's more than that. The system appears to be broken there doesn't seem to be a way for people on the broken side (regular editors) to fix it.

Regards,

--Kickstart70-T-C 23:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I think it's personal attacks, not insults. A tip here is not say they did something wrong or made the wrong choice because they will claim it is a personal attack. Anomo 04:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I hope you see how horribly bad that is. --Kickstart70-T-C 16:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

User talk:MyWikiBiz

This user has claimed that you wanted him to be unblocked but were having technical problems doing so, and has asked for other admins to do it. If that's the case I'd be glad to unblock for you... but the story sounds a bit implausible, frankly. Mangojuice 00:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

See here.--KojiDude 00:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

An Injustice Done

Why did you have to go and ban CapnCrack. All he did was try his best, you can't hold that against him. And then to go and ban another 190 people just because they were his friends is just spiteful. Talk about rubbing salt into a wound. The Capn was down there in the trenches with all of us, working for the common good of Misplaced Pages. Slowcheetah 06:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

SwedishConqueror

"Hi"

It says that you made this, so I was wondering if you could help me. I'd like to know just a few things:

1. How do you make things go all black when you do the title of an article?
2. How do you make the different section headlines go all black?
3. How do you make certain words turn blue, and how do you know which ones to do this to?

Thanks

SwedishConqueror 16:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)SwedishConquerorSwedishConqueror 16:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

1. Three single quote marks on both sides of the title
2. Two equal signs on both sides of the subsection title
3. Two brackets on both sides of the name of an article that already exists in wikipedia

WAS 4.250 17:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Please Block

User:Jakinthebeenstalk because I messed up on the name and I changed it so that it is how I like it. Happy BirthDay... I think thats right.

--Jak 20:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Never mind. It redirects now.(?)

Hi Jimbo! Following up on the discussion we had earlier on POV maps. The featured map in question is which potrays the modern borders as claimed by PRC. A disclaimer on the image page claims:

• Wikipedians Wished a Happy Birthday from the Misplaced Pages Birthday Committee