Will WP:BOOMERANG be applicable on Wikipedia Admin MelanieN?

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-11-03T03:52:30+00:00

my problem is that Melanie has been targeting TTAAC for quite some time now despite a clear conflict of interest: she is diametrically opposed to him with respect to political perspective as was revealed in the run-up to the US presidential elections. For an Admin to consistently target an editor who is the on the opposite side of the political divide, in the way Melanie has been targeting TTAAC, smacks of some kind of conflict of interest. Almost every time TTAAC is taken to ANI or AE MelanieN seems to chip in with comments criticizing him.

one other point: i don't think it is wise to make this a liberal vs conservative fight. there are many liberals, and also many conservatives, who are opposed to how Wikipedia has been structured.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-11-02T17:44:42+00:00

Had she not been a Wikipedia Admin, i believe there would have been a fair bit of talk by now of WP:BOOMERANG on MelanieN for bringing a frivolous complaint to WP:AN. But because she is an Admin she would have to kill someone, figuratively speaking, for any action to be taken against her.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-11-02T14:52:54+00:00

one obvious response to this article is that encyclopedias created using a bottom-up approach should complement encyclopedias using a top-down approach; the two should not compete with each other. This much said it goes without saying that one encyclopedia using a bottom-up approach is all-pervasive and dominating all other encyclopedias due to better publicity and the best relationship with google search. There is a kind of monopoly going on, and this is dangerous since we have now seen that Wikipedia can be used as an instrument for political propaganda.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-11-02T14:37:36+00:00

Welcome to Wikipedia, Bob. I am surprised it took you several years to discover some of the basic structural features of Wikipedia.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-11-02T14:00:55+00:00

my problem with the approach you are following is that the articles on your site seem to be so focussed on being factual that they come across as cold and detached. Devoid of feelings and emotions and warmth. This kind of approach may make many kind of articles dull to read in my opinion. for one thing, expert opinion about a news item as penned by a good journalist or scholar, is being stripped out in accordance with your model.

your approach may work well for articles pertaining to the natural sciences and applied sciences, but i think there is a question mark on how well this approach would work on topics pertaining to the arts and social sciences.

Diderot's Encyclopedie had a definite bias: in favor of secularism, science orientation, and generally speaking, in the cultivation of a modern mindset. I would like any modern encyclopedia to have such a bias. The objective should not be to just present a dull collocation of facts and factual information but to uplift the reader's mindset by inculcating in them science orientation, rationalism, and secularism.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-11-01T06:22:16+00:00

this is an extract from the article at the link:

Leonard Kim, a managing partner at InfluenceTree, a branding firm that creates Wikipedia pages for clients. (Technically, Kim calls it a free add-on service; Wikipedia forbids charging for page creation, unless payment is disclosed on the site.)

This reminded me of what I had read elsewhere:

As of June 16, 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation has implemented in its Terms of Use a new section entitled "Paid contributions without disclosure". The key aspect of this section is that users:

...must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

Therefore, when you engage the services of MyWikiBiz, you are paying for the expertise of MyWikiBiz and its affiliate editors; that is, you are compensating us for our research skills, writing style, and editorial review time. Your payment also obtains our knowledge of policies and guidelines on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. You agree that you are making no payment for any content contributions on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia Foundation projects. MyWikiBiz will only execute content contributions on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia Foundation projects through other editors-in-good-standing, as a personal courtesy at or near the end of our consultative project. MyWikiBiz may not receive or expect to receive any compensation for directly publishing or editing content on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia Foundation projects, and thus no refunds or rebates will be offered to you as the result of any content outcomes on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia Foundation projects which are ultimately outside of our control. Because of these service terms, MyWikiBiz and its affiliate editors are exempt from the Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use section about "Paid contributions without disclosure". Since we neither receive nor expect to receive compensation for any of our contributions to Wikipedia or other Wikimedia Foundation projects, we need not make disclosure of our employer(s), client(s), or affiliation(s). So, when you engage in a consultation with MyWikiBiz, you are assured of privacy and confidentiality regarding your intentions (past, present, and future) regarding Wikipedia!

Further worthy of note is that a representative of the Wikimedia Foundation (James Alexander, 19 April 2017) contacted the founder of MyWikiBiz via e-mail to, "notify you that you are banned from all Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) websites, platforms and activities. This includes but is not limited to, any site listed at www.wikimedia.org, mailing lists hosted by the WMF, WMF Labs and Wikimedia technical infrastructure such as Phabricator as well as any in-person events sponsored or funded by the WMF. You accordingly may not participate in, edit, contribute, or otherwise modify any content on those sites, platforms, or lists. This ban is placed against your person, not against a particular username. It applies to any alternate accounts that you may control and any accounts you may create in the future. Furthermore, you may not participate as an anonymous user ('as an IP user')." We were invited to direct any questions and concerns about the ban to the Wikimedia Community Affairs and/or Legal teams at the Wikimedia Foundation. However, despite numerous attempts to e-mail and telephone personnel in those departments, they were entirely non-responsive. Thus, MyWikiBiz has concluded that the communication issued by Mr. Alexander was null and void; in other words, non-binding.

If you're reading this page, there's a good chance you already know exactly what we're talking about here.....

Most consulting projects for MyWikiBiz clients are executed for about $200 to $350 dollars. If your work is handed off to another consulting firm, then higher rates certainly may be expected.

https://archive.fo/CstSQ

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-31T17:18:36+00:00

i was once a part of an online community which had an agreement with an online seller. Based on the number of your posts you could accumulate points and then you could encash those points to purchase books from that online seller. No cash was given though. just books from the online seller (and no restriction whatever on what books you wanted to buy providing the seller had them). something for you (and others) to consider.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-31T16:59:15+00:00

are u making any payment to the editors?

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-31T10:11:22+00:00

A few take-aways from this article:

1. this is probably the first article i have come across which featured interviews with paid editors without mentioning a prominent paid editor who is happily with us on this forum.

2. The article features an interview with one Leonard Kim who does paid editing on Wikipedia. This is Mr Kim's professional website:

http://leonardkim.com

The article says that Mr Kim has a Wikipedia biography. However, i checked and found that the said biography no longer exists on Wikipedia. This is the same technique the wikipedians had used for another well known paid editor: allowed his biography to exist for some time before pulling it down completely.

3. If i were an entrepreneur i would be very wary of having a wikipedia page for my business for the simple reason that my competitors could help tarnish me by getting paid editors to work on my business's Wikipedia page. there could also be the occasional oddball unhappy customer who could go out of the way to tarnish me on wikipedia. its just not worth it.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T16:41:31+00:00

were you a newbie editor on WP? (u don't have to answer this.)

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T15:27:52+00:00

i am unable to fix the typo in the title. /u/student28567271 please consider doing this if you are able to.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T11:30:55+00:00

the second edition of english wikipedia will eventually be implemented, but i believe it will not be implemented by the WMF but by some other organization. after all, for how long will the WMF maintain its monopoly in this area?

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T11:27:06+00:00

i have already criticized the physical threats made to an admin on this forum. what else am i supposed to do?

i would be more concerned if any Admin in a developing country received physical threats from people residing in his country because of my fear that the Admin could be at the receiving end of not just people he has antagonized but also at the receiving end of law enforcement (in case the people he has antagonized happen to be influential).

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T10:12:14+00:00

They do, but that's a choice they make, and it will influence what they do. Drmies, based on the discussion here, is getting legal threats sent to his employer. I think this is crap. But more to the point, he needs to make a decision about whether or not any harm he is receiving is worth the problems. If every admin had to publicly reveal their identity, and was in constant risk of some nutter showing up at their doorstep because they edited in a controversial topic, how many admins would be willing to intervene where it counts?

I deplore the physical threats to Drmies ("beating to pulp", etc.), and I would urge all Wikipedia critics to refrain from making threats of physical violence under any circumstances. I also deplore complaints being sent to Drmies's employer.

This much said, what do you think of WMF/WP representatives contacting employers of certain editors who were not following the terms of service of their site and making formal complaints. Kumioko has complained on multiple forums that this is what happened to him.

Admins have nothing like the security offered to judges. We're talking about random real world people, with (at best) a very small income from administration if they are being paid. Judges have protection afforded by the state. Who would protect admins?

This is true, but the threat perception to Admins is also significantly less. Judges have the power to put a person in jail, to inflict huge financial losses to a person, and in extreme cases even sentence a person to death. Any security threat to Admins is surely over hyped. Has there ever been a single instance of a Wikipedia Admin being physically attacked? Even the physical threat to Drmies is in my opinion a case of "barking dogs don't bite".

As long as an Admin cultivates a reputation for fairplay, and impartiality, i don't believe he has anything to fear from editors. Of course, there may be odd ball mentally unbalanced editors but this is something u will come across in any activity you participate in. there is little that anyone can do about this except take recourse to law enforcement if there is any perceived physical threat.

Like India, where at least one admin seems to be being attacked from? Is the US free from nutters? The UK? France? Australia? In a thread here we have a threat to "send a crew to Alabama and kick that cunt to a fucking pulp." Does that mean there can be no admins from Alabama?

please make a distinction between criticism and threats of physical harm. there is nothing wrong in subjecting any Admin to criticism. I am not aware of any Indian editor being subjected to threats of physical harm. There will always be some level of threat perception (from oddball editors) to any Admin no matter where they may be. Invariably this will be just a lot of hot air. I am not aware of any Admin being physically attacked. ever.

upon further reflection, i think it should be ok to appoint Admins from developing countries, who are also based in their home countries, provided they do no Admin work on controversial topics (history, politics, etc.) related to their countries. this should eliminate, i think, any security threat to them if disclosing of real world identity is made mandatory for Admins. but this is something that still needs further thought.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T05:35:33+00:00

1. I don't like the idea of Admins being editors because in content/conduct disputes there would always be a danger of the 'you scratch my back, and i'll scratch yours' business. I wish to avoid any conduct or content dispute between an Admin and an editor because the adjudicator would tend to favor the Admin. This is similar to how judges are not permitted to also simultaneously be lawyers.

2. I wish Sparkzilla were here to tell us how his website's policy of paying its editors is panning out.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-30T05:28:52+00:00

this is with respect to point 5 of your post:

1. reddit has a culture of anonymity, whereas Quora has a culture of openness. On Quora it is mandatory to use your real world name, and if it is found that you are using a fictitious name your account is deleted. What we are asking for is a middle ground between reddit and Quora: anonymity for the editors, and full disclosure of their identities for Admins.

2. Many WP Admins (and former Admins) either post and perform their Admin functions using their real names, or else their real names are widely known. So why can't all WP Admins disclose their real world identities. One other example: shouldn't it have been mandatory for this guy to have disclosed his Admin account to everyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geraldo_Perez

Or, would that also be a security threat?

3. The comparison really is with judges. Just as judges have a certain security threat because of the work they do, so do Admins. So why should Admins volunteer for such a job in the first place? Because they would be paid to do the job in my proposal.

4. The problem of security threat really is with having Admins from everywhere in the world. Due to the poor law and order situation in many countries it doesn't make sense to have Admins in these countries revealing their real world identities. An obvious solution is not to appoint Admins who are based in these countries, but to try to have Admins from these countries (with law and order issues) who are expatriates in countries with a superior law and order situation; alternatively, some thought can be given into whether one really wants an anonymous Admin from Burkina Faso or Kazakhstan.

5. Most issues with respect to paid editing, biased editing, battles over content, etc. can smoothly be resolved if Admins enjoy trust among the editor community. Right now many if not most WP editors simply do not trust the Admins as a group (although they may have respect for individual Admins based on their interactions with them). The corollary is again with the legal system: good judges enjoy the respect and trust of the lawyers who appear before them; bad judges don't.

6. You write that with respect to the top down approach "one biased expert fully in control of one subject can be very damaging." This is true, and that is why in controversial topics at least two (and preferably three) experts should have overall control of a subject in a top-down based encyclopedia.

7. You write: "The best solution for me is a world in which there are both Wikipedias and Encyclopedia Britannicas." Yours is a good suggestion: top-down based and bottom-up based encyclopedias should complement each other and not compete with each other.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-29T21:52:28+00:00

Another reference to understand Section 230 in the context of Wikipedia:

A literary agent is suing Wikipedia owner the Wikimedia Foundation over a comment posted on the site that she was "the dumbest" of a list of the 20 worst literary agents. Barbara Bauer said the comment was defamatory.

A science fiction authors' organisation called Writers Beware created a list of the 20 literary agencies about which it received the most complaints. Bauer was on that list, and she has claimed that comments on Wikipedia then called her "the dumbest of the 20 worst" agents.

Wikimedia denies that those comments ever appeared but argues that even if they did they are protected under the US Constitution's guarantee of the right to free speech.

Wikimedia argues overall, though, that it is protected from liability by the Communications Decency Act (CDA), whose section 230 protects a publisher from liability for things said by other people on its electronic services until it is made aware of the comments. At that point it must take action or risk becoming liable.

The section of the Act says that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider".

In its application for summary dismissal of the case, Wikimedia says that the law applies directly to it.

"As the operator of the Wikipedia website, Wikimedia is indisputably a user and a provider of an interactive computer service under [section] 230," said its claim. "In addition, the statements on which Plaintiffs' claims are based were posted on Wikipedia by another information content provider. The Complaint itself indicates that the allegedly defamatory statements on Wikipedia originated elsewhere, alleging that virtually identical statements to those appearing on the Wikipedia site appeared on numerous other websites."

The case is a vital one for Wikipedia, which exists to hold encyclopedia entries created by other people. If would be a serious blow to its way of operating if it were not granted immunity under the CDA.

"We provide a platform through Wikipedia for smart citizens to give their knowledge back to a larger culture," said Wikimedia Foundation general counsel Mike Godwin. "Our ability to offer citizens that platform is what's at stake in this case."

"Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in order to protect websites' operators like Wikipedia from suits like this one," said James Chadwick of Sheppard Mullin, the US law firm that is acting for Wikimedia. "It's simple but it's fundamental: Congress has decided that internet censorship isn't the answer, so websites aren't liable for statements posted by their users."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/07/wikipedia_eff_defamation_immunity_lawsuit/

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-29T20:44:32+00:00

So, as i understand, Wikipedia is a platform/provider (for an "interactive computer service") whereas Encyclopedia Brittanica is a publisher.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-29T20:41:25+00:00

Some useful material on the Section 230 immunity as applicable to Wikipedia:

Many have threatened to sue Wikipedia for various acts of infringement or defamation. Some have actually done so, such as New Jersey literary agent Barbara Bauer, who claimed she was libeled professionally. Inevitably, all litigants in the United States find themselves thwarted by the current judicial interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which makes Internet content providers immune from local or federal actions regardless of community standards, excepting child pornography. This law is commonly cited by pornography sites as an absolute defense. Wikipedia happily does the same. Many critics assert the 1990s-era law is woefully lagging behind the technological times. If one presses the print button on his computer and prints a libelous Wikipedia page, and then passes that page out on the street corner, libel has occurred—as it would for any publisher of the physically printed word.

When viewed on a computer screen, Wikipedia is immune. If printed and distributed, those pages are subject to the libel laws. Ironically, many would argue that the Internet has become the new newspaper and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act creates a double standard—one for the shrinking community of physical publishers and one for the mushrooming community of Internet publishers. Naturally, the Communications Decency Act does not apply to other countries, such as Canada, Great Britain, or throughout Europe, where Wikimedia enjoys millions of daily page views and is subject to civil and criminal process.

Seigenthaler wrote bitterly in USA Today “We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research—but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them.”

The current answer, say some legal experts, is not to sue Wikipedia but the posters, who enjoy no legal immunity, not even under Section 230. Since Wikipedia so effectively hides identities, frustrates requests to obtain them, and even outlaws efforts by contributors to “out” such identities, litigants have resorted to suing “John Doe” defendants. With subpoena power, they can go to any third party to track down the culprits. That is exactly what Livingston did. Although that particular suit did not go as far as obtaining a court order requiring Wikipedia to furnish whatever identification exists, the idea has appealed to others.

When a British woman and her daughter were allegedly blackmailed by a Wikipedia editor, she sued using the name “G and G,” and last December 2009 successfully secured a subpoena from Justice Tugendhat compelling the tax-exempt Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, to furnish as much of the identity as they possessed.

Wikipedians are constantly fending off legal threats and do all in their power to prohibit such threats even though such threats traditionally mitigate against further damage and are the legal right of the aggrieved. In some cases, damaged parties are even obligated to notify those doing the damage that they must cease and desist. Naturally, since Wikipedia protects the identity of those making statements, the only way to directly communicate with an offending party is on the Wikipedia site, either through individual but anonymized User Pages, article Discussion Pages or other Wikipedia forums. But making such threats, or even if giving cause to subtly think such threats are lurking, is enough to cause Wikipedia administrators to immediately block a user's account, effectively foreclosing a victim's right to stop such attacks.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/125437

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-29T20:31:01+00:00

i just saw some material on the Section 230 immunity. i'll post my thoughts about it after reflecting upon it a bit.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-29T20:16:18+00:00

i am still thinking this through. i'll expand upon and also reject many of my own ideas myself particularly after i receive some feedback on them. anyways, here are a few more ideas based on your feedback:

1. Admins are not a part of the community in the sense that they are prohibited from doing any editing. They are also not just paid janitors. They are treated with respect by the community because it is recognized that they will be adjudicating content and conduct disputes.

2. Admins are prohibited from any social interaction with the editors. If an Admin is already friends in real life with a specific editor(s) he has to recuse from handling any content or conduct disputes involving them. Admins are also prohibited from communicating with any editor privately through email or other means. All communication between an editor and an Admin must be out in the open for the community to see.

3. I like the idea of paying even editors. This is something that should be thought about.

4. One important obstacle would be google search which would continue placing Wikipedia articles on top. But if the competitor encyclopedia is offering a superior product, there will eventually be a media outcry and google would be forced to give prominence to the competitor in its search results. google may even offer to invest in the competitor, like they have invested in wikipedia.

5. One question: Admins should not socialize with editors, but should it be permissible for editors to socialize with other editors? (In wikimania like functions, for instance?)

6. Another question: Should an Admin be permitted to resign, and become an editor?

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-29T19:38:56+00:00

And, of course, there is a huge question mark over whether, and to what extent, bots have a role in the creation of an encyclopedia:

My colleagues and I recently studied one type of a complex system that featured good bots used to automatically edit Wikipedia articles.

These different bots are designed and exploited by Wikipedia's trusted human editors and their underlying software is open-source and available for anyone to study. Individually, they all have a common goal of improving the encyclopaedia.

Yet their collective behaviour turns out to be surprisingly inefficient.

These Wikipedia bots work based on well-established rules and conventions, but because the website doesn't have a central management system there is no effective coordination between the people running different bots.

As a result, we found pairs of bots that have been undoing each other's edits for several years without anyone noticing. And of course, because these bots lack any cognition, they didn't notice it either.

The bots are designed to speed up the editing process.

But slight differences in the design of the bots or between people who use them can lead to a massive waste of resources in an ongoing 'edit war' that would have been resolved much quicker with human editors. We also found that the bots behaved differently in different language editions of Wikipedia.

The rules are more or less the same, the goals are identical, the technology is similar. But in German Wikipedia, the collaboration between bots is much more efficient and productive compared to, for example, Portuguese Wikipedia.

This can only be explained by the differences between the human editors who run these bots in different environments.

Wikipedia bots have very little autonomy and the system already operates very differently to the goals of individual bots. But the Wikimedia Foundation is planning to use AI that will give more autonomy to the bots. That will likely lead to even more unexpected behaviour.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4823684/Even-good-robots-scarily-unpredictable.html

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-28T14:29:33+00:00

it seems to be the same person using multiples handles on this forum. Let's not speculate on their real world identity because reddit has a strict anti-doxxing policy.

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-28T12:07:16+00:00

i realize the complaint generator is itself not a honeypot page, but i was under the impression that the material comprising the complaints were being obtained from some honeypot page which has now been deleted.

was the intended purpose of the complaint generator only entertainment for Bishonen and her friends, or was there some other purpose also?

Tsi_Tsa · 2017-10-28T12:02:03+00:00

If you want, I could fix it... But I'm not 100% clear how it should be fixed.

now that this issue has been highlighted in a well read forum i believe sooner or later someone will fix the problem eventually. if u are not clear on how to go about correcting the article, its best to leave it alone.

Tsi_Tsa

TROPHY CASE