Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 06:43, 4 October 2011

This is Jimbo Wales's talk page, where you can send them messages and comments.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

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Archives

Index –index– October 28, 2001 – April 12, 2004 April 16, 2004 – August 23, 2004 August 28, 2004 – December 8, 2004 December 9, 2004 – March 23, 2005 March 23, 2005 – July 24, 2005 July 26, 2005 – September 9, 2005 September 9, 2005 – September 24, 2005 September – December 2005 January 2006 January – February 2006 February 2006 February 2006, cont. March 2006 April 2006 – late May 2006 May 24 – July 2006 July 2006 – August 2006 August 2006 Most of September 2006 Late September 2006 – Early November 2006 Most of November 2006 Late November 2006 – December 8, 2006 December 9, 2006 – Mid January 2007 From December 22, 2006 blanking Mid January 2007 – Mid February 2007 Mid February 2007– Feb 25, 2007 From March 2, 2007 blanking March 2–5, 2007 March 5–11, 2007 March 11 – April 3, 2007 April 2 – May 2, 2007 May 3 – June 7, 2007 June 9 – July 4, 2007 July 13 – August 17, 2007 August 17 – September 11, 2007 September 14 – October 7, 2007 October 28 – December 1, 2007 December 2 – December 16, 2007 December 15 – January 4, 2008 January 4 – January 30, 2008 January 30 – February 28, 2008 February 28 – March 11, 2008 March 9 – April 18, 2008 April 18 – May 30, 2008 May 30 – July 27, 2008 July 26 – October 4, 2008 October 4 – November 12, 2008 November 10 – December 10, 2008 December 5 – December 25, 2008 December 25 – January 16, 2009 January 15 – January 27, 2009 January 26 – February 10, 2009 February 8 – March 18, 2009 March 18 – May 6, 2009 May 5 – June 9, 2009 June 10 – July 11, 2009 July 12 – August 25, 2009 August 26 – October 3, 2009 October 4 – November 20, 2009 November 20 – December 21, 2009 December 22, 2009 – January 25, 2010 January 22, 2010 – February 22, 2010 February 22, 2010 – March 17, 2010 March 17, 2010 – April 9, 2010 April 11, 2010 – April 24, 2010 April 23, 2010 – May 12, 2010 May 10, 2010 – June 4, 2010 June 4, 2010 – June 26, 2010 June 26, 2010 – July 22, 2010 July 22, 2010 – August 23, 2010 August 4, 2010 – August 28, 2010 August 28, 2010 – September 14, 2010 September 13, 2010 – October 6, 2010 October 6, 2010 – November 8, 2010 November 8, 2010 – November 21, 2010 November 21, 2010 – December 6, 2010 December 6, 2010 – December 22, 2010 December 21, 2010 – January 17, 2011 January 16, 2011 – February 10, 2011 February 6, 2011 – March 19, 2011 March 16, 2011 – March 26, 2011 March 26, 2011 – April 22, 2011 April 22, 2011 – May 16, 2011 May 17, 2011 – June 9, 2011 June 10, 2011 – July 1, 2011 July 1, 2011 – July 15, 2011 July 16, 2011 – July 26, 2011 July 26, 2011 – August 15, 2011 August 14, 2011 – August 23, 2011 August 21, 2011 – August 31, 2011 August 30, 2011 – September 7, 2011 September 4, 2011 – September 25, 2011 September 26, 2011 – October 19, 2011 October 16, 2011 – November 5, 2011 November 4, 2011 – November 12, 2011 November 11, 2011 – November 24, 2011 November 24, 2011 – December 6, 2011 December 3, 2011 – December 14, 2011 December 10, 2011 – December 16, 2011 (RFC about the Stop Online Piracy Act) December 15, 2011 – December 30, 2011 December 27, 2011 – January 9, 2012 January 9, 2012 – January 18, 2012 January 17, 2012 – January 30, 2012 January 28, 2012 – February 12, 2012 February 7, 2012 – February 25, 2012 February 19, 2012 – March 4, 2012 February 27, 2012 – March 18, 2012 March 17, 2012 – April 2, 2012 March 31, 2012 – April 13, 2012 April 12, 2012 – April 18, 2012 April 18, 2012 – April 26, 2012 April 26, 2012 – May 6, 2012 May 2, 2012 – May 22, 2012 May 19, 2012 – June 9, 2012 June 4, 2012 – June 20, 2012 June 18, 2012 – June 28, 2012 June 26, 2012 – July 12, 2012 July 3, 2012 – July 22, 2012 July 19, 2012 – July 29, 2012 July 25, 2012 – August 9, 2012 August 7, 2012 – August 30, 2012 August 29, 2012 – September 13, 2012 September 13, 2012 – September 27, 2012 September 26, 2012 – October 5, 2012 September 24, 2012 – October 20, 2012 October 9, 2012 – October 31, 2012 October 29, 2012 – November 19, 2012 November 17, 2012 – December 5, 2012 December 2–15, 2012 December 15–28, 2012 December 24, 2012 – January 12, 2013 January 13–31, 2013 February 1–10, 2013 February 11–28, 2013 March 1–16, 2013 March 17–27, 2013 March 28 – April 6, 2013 April 6–19, 2013 April 19 – May 3, 2013 April 25 – May 8, 2013 May 6–19, 2013 May 18–30, 2013 May 27 – June 16, 2013 June 17–30, 2013 June 27 – July 30, 2013 July 31 – August 4, 2013 August 4–12, 2013 August 13–27, 2013 August 28 – September 4, 2013 September 5–10, 2013 September 11–22, 2013 September 24 – October 6, 2013 October 7–16, 2013 October 17–27, 2103 October 28 – November 6, 2013 November 7–19, 2013 November 20–27, 2013 November 28 – December 5, 2013 December 6–24, 2013 December 25–30, 2013 December 31, 2013 – January 14, 2014 January 15–24, 2014 January 25–29, 2014 January 30 – February 10, 2014 Archives not yet dated: 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 This manual archive index may be out of date. Future archives: 184 185 186

This page has archives. Sections older than 1 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 2 sections are present.

Policy commission

Policy pages are different from article pages because the original ideas of editors are prohibited from article pages, but not from policy pages.

Just offering a suggestion that you consider appointing a commission of people you know to be trustworthy competent clear writers, that oversees the editing of the policy pages. The purpose of the commission is to help by noting problems and/or suggesting changes. If the editors at a policy page are either unwilling or unable to make appropriate changes, the commission would have the authority to make the changes. These changes by the commission could not be reverted, except possibly through an appeal to the commission, which the commission would either accept or reject. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I too favor something like that, except I believe the policy committee should be elected rather than appointed. Looie496 (talk) 22:40, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

One of the reasons for Jimbo appointing a commission is to avoid the politics of an election, which can include voting based on political alliances, stealth canvassing, etc. --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

The idea of "governance from on high" for policies or for anything much other than mechanical operations might have "unforeseen consequences" froma legal point of view. While I think it would be great if salaried Wikimedia employees had some authority over articles and editors, such would assuredly affect the legal status regarding libel and other laws in various nations. By devolving the decisions to the "community", the foundation has a layer of insulation it should be unwilling to forego. This is not actually "mere opinion" but from many years experience as a contractor for an on-line service. Cheers. Collect (talk) 23:04, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

It's also just wrong, I'm afraid, Collect. There would be no legal ramifications at all to the Foundation doing such a thing, and reasoning about legal risk has played as close to zero a role in our decision making around these issues as I think it is possible. This is an oft-repeated myth, that we do things the way we do them so as to insulate the Foundation from legal risk, but it just isn't true.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:25, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Glad to hear that - I was using my experience with a "major ISP" and its legal department which basically said the ISP did not wish to get involved in anything remotely approaching a legal case <g>. I ended up seeing an attorney about a threat from an aggrieved party, and (thankfully for free) he gave the opinion that the threat had absolutely zero weight. Which the ISP legal department could have figured out without sending me the registered mail. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I modified my suggestion to more accurately reflect what I intended and perhaps address some of your concerns. I added the sentence, "The main interest of the commission should be the clarity and organization of policy, rather than content which I expect would only be rarely affected, if at all." Also note that the commission would not have authority over article editing. --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I have undone your edit, because it made my reply false. Editing a talk page statement after people have responded to it is hardly ever a good thing to do. Your clarification gets the point across perfectly well. Looie496 (talk) 03:42, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing WP:TALK, especially WP:TPO and WP:REDACT, I decided to restore what you deleted from my message, per the last option of WP:REDACT, by clearly noting that it was an addition and including a time/date stamp. Also, please note WP:TPO and recognize that you do not have my permission to modify my message. Thank you for originally bringing your concerns to my attention. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; but with that modification, it's less like what I had in mind. Looie496 (talk) 05:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Making policy by consensus can be a tiresome process, especially where consensus doesn't favour your views. If Jimbo could wave a magic wand and appoint a commission of people sufficiently skilled at squaring circles that they could write policies to suit all points of view and resolve all differences on the pedia, then I think that after a little shock people would get used to the idea. Though if such people exist they would have more legitimacy in the community if they were an elected commission. Of course we should remember that there is an alternative model for developing policy based on crowd sourcing and consensus, and before ruling that out we should just check to see how the ten year Nupedia v Misplaced Pages experiment has gone. Assuming that by now Nupedia has triumphed and Misplaced Pages is but a flawed forgotten experiment then yes, we should conclude that a hierarchical top down approach is better than a bottom up consensus based one. Alternatively we could treat the current Image filter initiative as a trial of a new way of making policy. If that goes so smoothly and uncontentiously as to discredit our current policy making processes then I'm sure the community would embrace a similar process for all policy formulation. ϢereSpielChequers 07:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

At the end of the day, wikipedia is an encyclopedia. I think we are in danger of thinking of wikipedia politically in terms of policies rather than focusing on what is most important, encyclopedic content. In fact if many on here cut the bureacratic/governor pretense and wrote articles instead the site would be massively better off.. And if much of the time spent discussing policies and wiki politics instead went into actual development planning and how to feasibly greatly improve overall content we would start meeting our real objectives...♦ Dr. Blofeld

It's a mess...

Dispute resolution

Hi Jimmy,

I thought you may be interested in a proposal I have raised at the Village Pump (found here) for the potential creation of a new dispute resolution body. While Misplaced Pages has evolved a lot over the years, in 2003 you created the Mediation and Arbitration Committees, and they have worked quite well over the years. I am interested in your input on my proposal to create another DR body to bring binding resolution to some content disputes. My rationale can be found at the village pump, and while I realise this flies in the face of our style at Misplaced Pages (open editing, consensus etc) at present we have no method for resolving content disputes on Misplaced Pages that are influenced by outside conflicts or political agendas, a few examples of these are Senkaku Islands, Ireland article names, Eastern European disputes and Palestine-Israel articles.

We have no way for bringing some resolution to the actual content issues, conduct issues can be dealt with ArbCom but these sort of methods can be gamed (stonewalling can be done civilly and peacefully for example). The issues remain even after going through the dispute resolution cycle, a few times over. While I have no concrete proposal at present, I have a few ideas on how this could be done. Perhaps this "Content committee" could be a sub-committee of MedCom/ArbCom and issue time-limited remedies (similar to this remedy, for example). It could be a separate body that can be explored by the community after other methods of content dispute resolution has been unsuccessful, or perhaps it could be a body that MedCom or ArbCom could refer a dispute to. I'm really not sure. I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter, however, as I do think we are ill-equipped to deal with disputes on Misplaced Pages that are influenced by external conflict and think it's a discussion we should at least have as a community.

Awaiting your thoughts,

Steven Zhang 10:49, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Without commenting on your proposal specifically (indeed, I haven't even read it yet), I just wanted to say that I strongly support consensus building around positive solutions to 'CPOV-pushing'. (Civil POV-pushing) in Misplaced Pages. I'm not especially persuaded by Israel/Palestine as an example, as it seems to me those issues are sufficiently monitored and debated by people of diverse views that we do a reasonably good job. I'm more concerned about less popular topics which can be extremely one-sided due to the fact that the only people who are interested in the topic for extended periods of time are advocates for one side, and random Wikipedians have to deal with a longterm battle that is just exhausting.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:54, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

My proposal was directed at creating a solution to disputes that go around the DR processes over and over, I do think in most situations we can handle these disputes but with cases such as Senkaku Islands and Abortion (which I submitted to ArbCom myself because all other avenues had failed to resolve the dispute) we have no way for bringing resolution at present, and took it to the village pump partly from the suggestion of an arbitrator at the workshop page. The details are at the village pump, but I agree that people digging in their heels until the other party gets fed up and leaves is a problem we need to address, and I think this is a potential solution. Best, Steven Zhang 11:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Meta:DICK

Over a period of months had been being improved one word at a time. Today, bam. shows how a single editor can manage to ignore any concept of improvement by consensus etc. Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:31, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

As you can see, I reverted it to the last consensus version and asked for changes to be discussed on the talk page. I hope that will help. I would join the discussion, but it seems unlikely that I will have time in the coming week or so, as I'm going to be slammed with work.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Francis of Assisi imprisoned at Perugia

The U.S. national TV networks have been reporting from Perugia all day (all week). Some U.S. reporters have noted that Francis of Assisi joined the war between Assisi and Perugia at age 20, in 1202, and he was injured and imprisoned with the others during the Battle of Collestrada, on the edge of Perugia. His father paid a ransom to have him freed the next year. Francis of Assisi died just after sunset on this day in 1226, almost 23 years after being freed from prison at Perugia. Dying after sunset, then October 4 is the Feast Day of Saint Francis of Assisi. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:27, 3 October 2011 (UTC)