User talk:Kim Bruning/Archive 8

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Delegable proxy

Please consider undoing your closure of the page, per these statements. From [[1]], and I quote: "However, if a proposal is not serious or is disruptive it can be nominated for deletion." and [[2]]. This proposal WAS created to be intentionally disruptive, and as such has no merit. The MFD was perfectly appropriate and should not be closed preemptively as such... Please consider reopening it. Thank you. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 13:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I don't want to cause any more wiki-drama, but I think there may be a WP:COI consideration regarding the DP essay. Given the evident sock WP:SHENANIGANS that went into creating the page and the fact that MfD prerequisites don't seem to anticipate this type of behavior (i.e. backdoor for promotion of fringe ideas), perhaps the closure was premature? I'm not fussed one way or the other but I thought I should mention it. Ronnotel (talk) 13:47, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the correct course of action in all cases is to mark as rejected anyway, right? Is there a compelling reason not to mark as rejected, and/or is there a compelling reason why merely rejecting would be insufficient? --Kim Bruning (talk) 13:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, reject is clearly the consensus. However, there is a concern that the proponents of the proposal have a vested, off-wiki interest in pushing the term Delegatable Proxy for whatever reason. There is also the suspicion that this was an attempt to create a real-world laboratory to try out this idea. I think there is a definite taint of promotion at work here. An article with a similar title would almost certainly be considered for AfD. Ronnotel (talk) 13:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it would be :-) : Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Delegable_proxy --Kim Bruning (talk) 13:59, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I did check for that before my post, but I used the wrong spelling. Thanks for the pointer. Ronnotel (talk) 14:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I first thought like you, Kim, but I must admit that considering the sockpuppettry involved here, I think the deletion is appropriate. -- lucasbfr ^talk 13:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, also see [3] where the sockpuppets are the only ones voting keep for teh article on Delegable proxy. The project space essay was created specifically by a sockfarm and specifically to be disruptive. This has no purpose even to exist. Even existing with the rejected label is not what consensus was at the MFD; the consensus was clearly to delete, and the MFD#Prerequisites clearly allows for disuptive essays to be deleted by consensus... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 14:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

This will all come out in the wash, but... the above claim about Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Delegable_proxy is not only false, it's irrelevant. Wikipedia can try something new. We can, and frequently do, coin neologisms for our own use. As to sock puppets, there are none involved in this case, to my knowledge, unless Yellowbeard is a sock (he is an obvious SPA who appears with substantial knowledge in 2006, only nominates and participates in AfDs until I rained on that parade, when he turned himself exclusively to attempts to disrupt processes involving me or someone cooperating with me on projects, in this case Absidy, and is clearly disruptive). There is one user, Absidy, who twice abandoned an account (apparently scrambling the password), was very open about what he was doing, did not vote twice, did not hold a conversation between socks, and the only possible source for a charge of sock puppetry would be that what initially came from one account, with frequent edits, came later from another, with frequent edits. In Talk. If he was inappropriately operating sock puppets, he was not warned about it, and was not blocked for it. There was an attempt made to connect me with him, and checkuser showed no connection. (And, in fact, review of edit histories confirmed that as well.)

Keep votes on the AfD came from Absidy the only active account in this series at the time, openly a continuation of prior accounts, explicitly acknowledged with the account creation, and Jossi (an administrator!). I only commented, being a COI editor in this case. Another user initially voted Delete, but changed to Neutral, and merge and redirect was also suggested (which I'd support if I had a vote). I never claimed that DP was sufficiently notable to warrant an article here. When I originally created Liquid democracy, as a stub, I thought it notable, personally, but had never read notability guidelines and was totally unaware of COI rules. And then I never touched the article again, all work on it was done by others. They, apparently, thought it notable enough to work on, but, as I'm sure you are aware, Kim, the likelihood is high that they aren't even aware of the AfD. In my view, the notability is at this point marginal, there is independent source, for starters. My goal here has been to do what I can to help keep rejection or deletion from being based on false assumptions. Not to prevent rejection or deletion, those are admin decisions, in theory, or, often, in practice, decisions by the participating community.--Abd (talk) 16:12, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It's ironic that the delete supermajority -- that's what it is -- was based on a claim that we don't vote on Wikipedia, rather, it is cogency of argument that prevails. Yet, here, there is a complaint that the administrator applied independent judgment, contrary to "consensus" -- i.e., vote count. The rejected proposal, again and again, stated that vote count was not what it was about, that it involved no policy or procedural change, that proxies would not be voting on behalf of clients, that decisions would remain as they are, the judgement of the one making the decision with the power to implement it, etc. Yet the MfD was a chorus of "No Voting Here!". The unstated part, "Unless We are the Ones Voting!" Enough. This is indeed disruptive, some editors are clearly seriously exercised about this, enough to put, for example, serious effort into trying to exhaustively find sock puppets and connected IP edits, when no disruption is taking place through any such action, and, more darkly, there has appeared some level of threat of blocking for daring to question administrative decisions in a civil manner, and not persisting beyond consent. The only possible exception about my claim of "no disruption" from Absidy being what was quite openly a single user, acting within guidelines - though sometimes at the edge, never far enough to be actually warned, except for his final suicidal actions which took place only on Talk pages (of ArbComm members, a couple of administrators, and very few others). The disruption, at this point, is coming from users who, quite plainly, want to eliminate as much trace of the actual proposal as possible. Yes. Interesting. And not to be discussed extensively at this point outside of specific user Talk pages and dispute resolution process, where, hopefully, the light will outshine the heat.--Abd (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

People occasionally make the mistake of trying to delete project pages like this one using MFD. Just because people are all saying 'delete', doesn't suddenly change the laws of physics or the way wikipedia pages are stored. You state that you *explicitly* would like to see this page permanently removed from the public record?

I understand that you are angry now, but by deleting the page, you are creating a catch 22: you might find it hard to find future support for:

• A permanent ban of the puppetmaster
• future documentation/ guidelines/ best practices prohibiting such behaviour.

Are you sure that that is what you want? --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

As I said above, not a huge deal either way. However, this has a taint of fringe promotion about it that is distasteful. I urge you to reconsider but this is the last I feel the need to say on the subject. Ronnotel (talk) 14:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm yeah, I'm getting some really odd vibes off of this, it's not cut-and-dried... I won't be adamant if someone comes with a well reasoned alternate plan. --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Not angry. The only thing to get angry over is if someone tries to assign emotions to you when the clearly have no right to do so (how's THAT for a catch-22). However, the process page you specifically cited as the reason you preemptively closed the debate says, and I quote, "However, if a proposal is not serious or is disruptive it can be nominated for deletion". This proposal clearly meets that criteria, and is eligible to be deleted. To sum up:

1. Not angry about the proposal being closed
2. Am angry that you called be angry for the propsal being closed.
3. Nomination for deletion was perfectly legal per [4], because, to quote that policy page, "However, if a proposal is not serious or is disruptive it can be nominated for deletion".

That is all. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 14:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank goodness you aren't angry :-)... or weren't at least. :-/

It's a bit ironic to state that the MFD was "legal". The proposal was nominated in part due to its excessive legalism. ;-) Also, what one person finds disruptive, another person might find useful, so using that particular exception is a tad iffy. It'd have to be pretty obvious disruption, I reckon, else I could nominate WP:NPOV next time it makes my editing difficult ;-).

I shan't do procedure for procedure's sake of course, but that said, is there any reason to suppose that the page as it stands -with a clear "rejected" tag-, would still cause (further) disruption?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 14:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Kim - I may quibble about your decision to close the MfD without deleting Wikipedia:Delegable proxy, but I have a different issue. I believe that this proposal has been so firmly rejected that the subpages of that proposal [5] do actually need to be deleted. Mangojuice^talk 15:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I have copies and have no objection. --Abd (talk) 15:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC) Actually, they should remain. If there is some reasonable fear that the project will be disrupted if someone actually edits them (some do seem to fear this), they could be protected. The Table currently contains two proxy pages transcluded, and only one is currently visible because one of them has been administratively deleted: mine, without notice to me, which is merely one more little anomaly about this whole affair. That "odd vibes" is a sound intuition. But what it all really means is for the future to determine.--Abd (talk) 01:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations, Kim. Brilliant. Seriously. You have actually shown what has been argued all along, votes don't count, but cogency of arguments. By existing process and precedent, the proposal -- whatever it was, the MfD was really about something other than the actual proposal -- was rejected, and whether I or Absidy/Ron Duvall/Sarsaparilla (legal account continuations, though odd) don't like that is irrelevant. When I removed your initial rejected tag, it was because the proposal had not been considered, it had not attracted enough attention to merit a rejection tag, and the fact that you anticipated rejection (based on analogy which does actually apply, but not in outward resemblance) was not, in my view, sufficient to allow placement of the tag. In my view, it was still improper when later placed, but moot because of the rapid filing of the MfD. But given the MfD, it becomes totally appropriate. Contrary to the above, there were several votes who suggested closure as you closed, and certainly I did not object to that. Abisdy is a brilliant political strategist, in fact, one who knows Wikipedia like the palm of his hand, even though he's very young, and his goals are very long-term. He's now working off-wiki, and it's not about Wikipedia, and certainly not about disrupting Wikipedia, au contraire; rather, he actually saw that, if this were tested, and then used -- a separate step --, it would solve many tenacious problems here, including some that have manifested in connection with this situation. As to the "odd vibes," your intuition is correct. Very odd, yet very predictable. I'm glad to have had a chance to see some of your work. --Abd (talk) 15:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Eh, you're probably right Kim. Preserving the page, at least as an example for what NOT to do at Wikipedia, is for the best. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 16:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It is probably the least disruptive closure. A true delete closure would possibly have triggered dispute resolution (in this case deletion review) from me, simply putting a rejected tag on it leaves me with nothing to contest. It's blatantly true that, by current standards, this proposal was rejected. I may think that what was rejected wasn't what was proposed, but that is not strong enough to warrant any further fuss about the MfD itself, nor about the project page. There are other aspects of this, such as all the charges of sock puppetry (actually false), all the WP:ABF claims, the indef block of the proposer, Absidy (last active name) for what would have been a minor offense (24 hour block if that), arguably done improperly in violation of block policy, that may lead to further wikifuss, but this particular piece of it is closed off by this decision. However, it could still be disruptive, if users continue to contend with it, which is improbable. I hope. At least I can't be blamed for that! --Abd (talk) 17:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that its a good thing that Kim decided to do it "your" way, because if she didn't you were going to do your best to be disruptive. Well, THAT'S a productive attitude to have. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is above. AGF, please. --Abd (talk) 21:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Kim, about your questions here:

Is there a compelling reason not to mark as rejected, and/or is there a compelling reason why merely rejecting would be insufficient?

is there any reason to suppose that the page as it stands -with a clear "rejected" tag-, would still cause (further) disruption?

Please see WP:V:

The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material.

The statements at the policy you cited contradict that. Policy proposals, essays, etc., even if they are not going to be disruptive in the future, should still be deleted.

Technically, if I made a page containing blatantly attacking Jimbo, at some point in the distant future it will be "old news" and cease to be disruptive, but that is an absurd argument for keeping such an article because it's the fact that it's created in bad-faith that matters. Particular bureaucratic policies and guidelines don't trump the quality of the encyclopedia or the intentions of the editors.

On second thought, though, yes, I guess it would be good to document, in case this puppeteer returns (and they always do). ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 20:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I am continuously amazed by your ability to do so, but you missed the link to the actual relevant documentation on the very MFD page itself. :-)[6] . Your reference to Jimbo is completely out of thin air. Your "on second thought" is the only relevant thought you had. Would you please consider thinking your statements through in future? At least those you make to me? --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I know it contradicts the MFD text. And I'm saying that I think WP:V's lead > some obscure section of WP:MfD. That was my original argument, but yes, on second thought I think you're right. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 20:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah! Do you see? Verifiability and Misc for deletion refer to different namespaces. --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:05, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't get this one for the life of me. As pointed out above, disruptive proposals can be deleted. This thing is still being pushed on the talk page, so there's obviously an obvious reason for deleting it - namely to stop people from pushing a patently bad idea. There was an overwhelming consensus to delete and the reasoning was that the proposal was disruptive (a procedurally correct reason to delete a proposal). An early close and a close against consensus is inappropriate. I have requested that this action be overturned at deletion review. --B (talk) 05:05, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

See WP:WIKIDRAMA Thespian Seagull (talk) 17:51, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

DRV was closed, MFD re-opened, and finally terminated as "rejected". See resolved tag in next section for more detail --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Refusal to be open for review

I'm extremely troubled by this, Kim. Your interpretation of MfD policy is that this proposal cannot be deleted. However, there is certainly wording in the policy people have pointed to that make deletion appropriate. Feel free to endorse your own closure and explain yourself; the community may agree with you or they may not. But closing down the DRV of your own action is inappropriate: at the very least, you should let someone else call the DRV inappropriate, but I really don't think it is inappropriate to review your decision. Mangojuice^talk 15:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and as per WP:DRV: After five days, an administrator will determine if a consensus exists. You didn't wait five days, and you're not an administrator. Added to the fact that you closed the original MfD, I think this was done out of process. Ronnotel (talk) 16:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

As per GRBerry, I understand you are a former admin and should be regarded as one with respect to review closings. Ronnotel (talk) 19:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• Kim, I've generally agreed with you on this issue - and pretty much everything else - but I really think you shouldn't have closed the DRV when you were the closer on the MfD; I think you should re-open it to allow someone else to close it so there's no appearance of conflict of interest.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 16:23, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
• This is highly irregular. No user should be able to use policy to circumvent process. The MfD close may have been wrong, the DRV one was worse.--WaltCip (talk) 16:38, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, that's not right. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. People don't get to pick and choose which policies are most convenient (or those which cause the most wikidrama when combined ;-) ). But that said, I believe I've followed process fairly closely, see also below where I explain how. --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• • Kim's closure of the original MFD may have been in good faith, but I find the closure of the subsequent DRV highly irregular and not at all in keeping with process. I have started an ANI discussion here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Conflict of interest at DRV to seek additional input on this most unusual sequence of events. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

*scratching head*. I'm a bit confused as to why people are confused. I've been completely consistent in this, afaict.

MFD does not allow deletion of proposal pages. All "delete" opinions are typically counted as "reject" in such a case. (note that you are actually not allowed to reject a page per MFD either, but there have been exceptions, and my interpreting as "reject" is actually just me being nice!)

Technically on DRV, your options are "endorse", "relist" and "overturn" ("list" does not count here). In this case "endorse" would leave the page as rejected, "relist" would relist it on mfd, and "overturn" would unreject the page.

As B wants the page rejected anyway (or so I assume), going to DRV is a little strange.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 17:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to hand over the DRV portion to GRBerry, who appears to be an experienced DRV-er. Better to leave things in the hands of an expert. :-) I could probably handle the DRV either way (including relisting), but I also need to do some coding sometime this weekend ^^;;. I hope that this conclusively shows that I actually *am* open for review. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC) I just wish people could discuss more nicely, and not immediately start bureaucratic procedures all over the place. Often people don't realize that cleaning up bureaucracy costs a lot of time that many people simply don't have.

I was writing this when, damn, I realized you were actually right:

Kim, you were right about the odd feeling you were having. My opinion is that it was incorrect for you to close the DRV -- I haven't even looked at it, so what I'm saying is pure process consideration. Whether or not you are an administrator is irrelevant, the tools can't be used to promote one view or other, but only in service of consensus and policy. You can be right as rain, right as the sun shining, but a user may not close a process where they have a conflict of interest, and when there is a deletion review based on an allegedly incorrect decision to close, the one whose decision is being appealed may not close it. There are indeed severe process issues involved in all this, but there is WP:DR to follow over all of it. It will happen anyway, I believe, but you should withdraw your closure of the DRV. It was incorrect, not matter how totally correct you were in closing the MfD.

And why have I now concluded that you were right? Your closure is an ordinary editorial decision. They may revert it if they like, but they cannot demand that you revert it or withdraw your opinion. I assume you will not edit war, but, if you care, pursue dispute resolution. Being correct -- as I believe you are, though I have not reviewed your actual decision here, so I could be wrong about that -- is no reason to edit war. Let them edit war if they like. If I look at the case and decide to intervene, by, say, reverting a reversion of your closure, it will be as a totally independent decision, and, under current conditions, I'd say that we are under 1RR conditions. Maybe tighter than that.

I've been waiting for the smoke to clear before addressing the myriads of issues that have arisen here, one at a time, in an orderly fashion. While I could say, "it's beyond me why they want to make so much fuss," it actually isn't. I do understand it, and it does not require ABF. Rather, it requires understanding that there are unwritten rules, and violation of the unwritten rules is punishable by deletion and blocking. There is, in fact, oblique reference to this in the written rules. "Thou shalt not mention that the emperor has no clothes, it may cause a riot," isn't there, but "disruption" and "trolling" are prohibited, and trolling, quite specifically, is defined to cover violation of unwritten rules. Good luck. --Abd (talk) 17:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

And just one more thing: I'd like you to take the time to learn the Wikipedia mantra: "Kim is always right. I will listen to Kim. I will not ignore Kim's recommendations. Kim is God. And, if this ever happens again, Kim will personally rip your lungs out!" ... Have a nice day! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:30, 29 February 2008 (UTC) With apologies to God... and Ivanova, of course. People could save themselves a lot of pain if they listened to me earlier :-/

Well, never felt better in my life.... which is saying a lot. Thanks for the thoughts and the reference, it certainly distracted me from the drama here for a couple of hours, laying on a bed with my daughters who like company when they go to sleep, and a Palm with WiFi access, reading it. I wasn't aware that you made a recommendation; rather you placed, immediately upon the creation of WP:PRX a rejected tag. However, this proposal had not been rejected yet. In spite of quite a few claims to the contrary, this was not WP:Esperanza or WP:AMA, nor was it, as many have claimed, contrary to WP:NOTAVOTE, it wasn't about voting at all. I'll address what it was elsewhere, but, given that what is being rejected is clearly described in the MfD and now as a proposed summary in the DRV, I'll feel free to make the real proposal in the future, or somebody else will. That proposed summary is remarkable. WP:PRX is so hot, so disruptive in its mere expression, that it cannot be left for people to read; instead, an official summary is to replace it, something on the order of "A ludicrous proposal was made under this name to destroy all that is good and sacred about Wikipedia by allowing representatives to vote for them, and, besides, they were sock puppets and trolls and blocked (banned?) so don't even think about making any proposal like this in the future, it will be considered disruptive and don't say we didn't warn you." And, since no blind voting, as this has been called, was suggested or imagined in the proposal, and it wasn't about voting at all, the opponents of the idea will have created all this fuss to accomplish nothing. This is typical with Rule 0 violations. Now, Kim, if you have any actual recommendations, I'm all ears. Or eyes, or whatever. Perhaps I'd have inquired more deeply if you had presented your credentials at the outset, instead of waiting until now.

I'm in, however, the same situation as User:Absidy was, only I'm over twice his age. He apparently needed to see for himself what would happen if this was proposed. Contrary to all the wild accusations about alleged bad faith and deliberate disruption, he actually thought that (1) this was not merely a good idea, it was an essential idea, addressing the growing problems of scale and the inefficiency of the status quo (situations which will kill the project if not addressed; the collapse will come far more rapidly than imagined possible for something so successful, it's like a pyramid scheme, it can look really good until shortly before the end, when it is too late to restructure), and he thought that (2) more would recognize it than actually have. He's very new to the ideas, I think his first contact would be a couple of months ago. I've seen such bursts of enthusiasm before in "early adopters." It took me about five years of almost full-time trawling (not trolling) for those who might understand these ideas before *one* person got it sufficiently to be able to restate it and explain it to others. Elements of the concept, yes, they have been picked up and spread about; for example, delegable proxy can be used as a voting method. This is not the application I recommend and study; but it is considered by some of the best-known election experts in the world as the ideal voting method. Totally impractical, of course. Why? Because it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted politically; it would shift the system toward almost total equity, and those who don't want that to happen will quite successfully resist it, unless something else changes first. But for them to state this as the reason for opposing it would be a Rule 0 violation, so plenty of other reasons will be invented, and there are many handy, mostly all the old bugaboos about democracy.

When Absidy -- who is, from my understanding, a four-year veteran of Wikipedia, with, I'd guess, about 10,000 edits, much of which I've verified -- saw the vehemence of the rejection, coupled with the total unfairness of it (what was being rejected wasn't what was being proposed, the gap was drastic; plus there was continual assumption of bad faith, often coming from users who really should know better, administrators), he decided that the ideas were more important than Wikipedia, so he would leave to work on them off-wiki. But he also knew that he's a wikipediaholic. So he made it hard for himself to come back. He committed wikisuicide by admin, was blocked as he could have predicted, and he has not requested that it be lifted. He has urged me to also leave, to avoid being distracted by the drama here. However, it is not over until the paperwork is done. My judgment that this project is very important, overall, for humanity stands. If this project does not do the work that is needed, it will be replaced by something more efficient *and* deeper. But that will introduce delay, and delay costs lives. There remains a possibility, in my view, that a more correctly framed proposal or action will be accepted here, and, until rejection of such is explicit, I continue to have an obligation to present it, though I'm not obligated to tenaciously argue, only to be clear. Further, it seems that, in any population, at this time, there is a small number of people ready to see beyond the limitations of the status quo. Those who read these discussions (even in wikiprojects and proposals) are a very small number, so, indeed, it might not be worth the effort, not worth the fuss it triggers, but I don't know that for sure. My project is to serve humanity, not the project specifically, but it happens that I believe that the project can serve humanity and its own stated goals far better if, at least, the ideas that I developed over the last twenty years (and which have been developed in parallel by a number of different people and groups around the world, at around the same time), are considered and either implemented or something better comes out of that consideration.

As I mentioned, those ideas are not about voting. My proposal for consideration consists of two wings (in general, not just on Wikipedia.) The first wing is what I call the Free Association concept. FAs are organizations which follow certain principles; the model FA is Alcoholics Anonymous, but Wikipedia, as I began to read the policies and guidelines and essays turns out to be almost pure FA in concept. In practice, it's sometimes quite different. Among the concepts: in an FA, decisions are made by community consensus, not by vote; but even more to the point, decisions, even by consensus, don't bind members, who cannot be coerced into any action. Actual execution of decisions is by individuals, either as such, or as "trusted servants." These servants are not bound by any vote; they may, in fact, disregard even a unanimous vote, if they don't accept the arguments given as controlling. However, they may wish to be advised by the community, and, as part of that, to have an idea of what the actual community consensus is. In small FAs, this is trivial. Generally most of the community may participate, and they might be polled, on occasion, though often decisions are obvious from discussion, as opposition fades away when compromises are proposed, or cogent arguments are accepted by dissenters. The goal is consensus, but there is no specific rule; nevertheless, these organizations will expend quite a bit of effort to find *total* consensus. They know that if they neglect even a single member, that member may literally die from the resentment. Here, editors don't usually die, literally, but they may indeed commit wikisuicide, or simply go away angry and frustrated.

The second wing is delegable proxy, which creates, from the bottom up, without central control or compromise, a network of members based on some level of mutual trust, or at least some attempt to test that. These networks may be used to estimate consensus, based on assumptions about the relationship between true consensus and that project from analysis of the participation of a few members by proxy connections, but the real work is in the formation of consensus. And exactly how that works is known in theory, but only a little in practice (very little. It worked in Demoex in Sweden, but that trial, as regards delegable proxy -- known there as "delegated voting," was very short. That was a political experiment and it was actual voting, and my criticism of the Demoex project is precisely that. They'd have been more successful if they had stayed away from voting, in my opinion, as well as from control. The application of delegable proxy in Free Associations is little-tried; there are numerous startup efforts, but none of major size. And a Wikipedia trial might be similarly small. Or not. I certainly do not know. What I do know is that the costs are very low. Creating a proxy assignment and adding it to a proxy table is very fast, and the rest of the effort is simply direct communication between editors, something that we should, in fact, generally encourage. None of it is wasted, and it's fail-safe, because of the nonbinding nature (in an FA).

Given this background, what was proposed here? Only that a file format be presented for use by those who wished to use it, to name "proxies." No specific function was created for proxies to fill, and it was specifically stated that no policies were being changed. Nothing that is prohibited now would become permitted, and meat puppetry and vote-stacking are prohibited. (Though I wonder why, if votes don't count.) No present procedure exists for one voter to vote for another, and this would not create one. It was explicit that no obligation to consider information from proxy expansion of poll results (as one possible way of using the proxy table) would arise. A thousand sock puppets being listed in the table as giving proxies to a user would not only accomplish nothing, since it would be ignored by *everyone*, but, in addition, it might be considered sock puppetry intended to exaggerate support for some position, and would be nothing but, itself, wikisuicide. Absidy named me as his proxy, and I him. This was only provisional, to be sure, the loop would not have remained, but what was the result, even though nothing was ever claimed using this information? Checkuser for him and I. It was pretty weird to see a checkuser request to verify that Absidy was Ron Duvall, given that the Absidy creation summary stated that Absidy was a continuation of Ron Duvall, but some sense existed for checking me, though it would have been the most devious sock puppetry scheme to date. But Rule 0 violations can put people who don't understand what is going on into a panic, and some very foolish things can be done. Admins, here, have taken actions that could, if precedent is followed and they continue to insist that what they did was proper, result in loss of the admin bit. Right now, they think that preposterous, because they are surrounded by others, particularly other administrators, agreeing with them, and two members of ArbComm have confirmed the blocks. Based on the false information fed them, as far as I can tell.

Rather, this was an experiment -- the project was labeled "experiment," and Absidy created a template and an essay specially for that -- and it did not propose anything that violated rules and policy; indeed, what it suggested doing could be done, any day, by any user. The community has never prohibited it. If nobody uses it, the only loss is that of the user's time and a trivial amount of disk space. However, the defacto "cabal" (there is no formal cabal, that's not how it operates) is not stupid, at least not in one sense. They know that the experiment might succeed, that it might start to have effects, and this indeed raises fears that Bad Things Would Happen. The question that remains, for me, unanswered, is how far they will go, how much they will destroy, to prevent the possible formation of spontaneous voluntary organizational structure, nonbinding, noncoercive, creating no bureaucracy, no vested power, nothing but the expression of some level of mutual trust between users, allowing efficient communication like a classic phone tree, that has all the possible implications detailed at beyondpolitics.org/wiki and elsewhere. Which are huge. But none of this would happen from the creation of a proxy table and proxy assignments, by themselves. It would only happen if the community, or some significant segment of the community, started to use the tools. This is the core of what has been happening here. A core segment of users, those who are comfortable with the status quo, believing that there is no problem, are attempting to prevent wider consensus from forming. FA/DP seeks wide consensus, whereas Wikipedia currently operates on narrow consensus. Very narrow. And those who are part of the narrow consensus, who know the mechanisms and levers and procedures and language, are very much afraid that masses of ignorant users will wreck everything. They won't, but they don't know that. And they want to make sure that the possibility could never arise.

However, what they do not realize (and similar groups throughout history in a similar position have generally failed to realize) is that if it does not happen openly, here, it will happen elsewhere, outside the control of the oligarchy, and the power structures generated might return here in a disruptive way, given the reservoirs of resentment and bad feeling that have been generated through years of process like that which Absidy used to commit wikisuicide. In some places, to give a police officer the finger would be suicidal, the officer might literally beat you to death. But I and most people don't want to live in a place where that would happen. Here in the U.S., if you give a police officer the finger, and he, without independent cause, arrests you, he's probably lost his job. What will happen here? If I knew the result, I would not need to find out, would I? Will the community follow its own policies and procedures? What will happen in RfC and Mediation and Arbitration, if this affair is not settled at each previous level? What I see is that an opportunity has been created to examine Rule 0. In my view, Rule 0 must become explicit, or must be explicitly abandoned; in either case it ceases to be Rule 0. Rule 1 should prevail, not Rule 0, which, in general, through history, has ended in destroying, ultimately, the communities that enforce it. It can take quite a bit of time, but not when conditions are rapidly changing. Here, I'd predict, a few years at most.

I hate to see waste, but the project under present conditions is hugely wasting human effort. For a time, there is little or no problem in this, that is, during exploratory phases, and Wikipedia is only beginning to come out of that stage. But for sustained operation, it must become efficient, it must stop "spending" ten hours of editor time for what would take a traditional encyclopedia an hour of labor. Because this labor is broadly distributed, it seems like it's not a problem. but that is due to lack of competition for that labor; it's considered recreation by most. However, as editors realize that there are other places where they could accomplish the same thing, except that it won't disappear down the AfD rabbithole, and article quality will only improve, and only rarely devolve, the balance will shift. AfD, in general, is a huge waste of effort, turning what is really an ordinary editorial decision about where to place information, in a hierarchy of notability, into battles between camps of users over an absolute and extreme decision. (Notability is intrinsically subjective or arbitrary, beyond a very basic definition which is far below the level that Wikipedia currently attempts to maintain). But that's merely my opinion. I really do wonder what would happen if true consensus was ever found. I have no particular belief that it would agree with me. But I can tell you, I'd certainly respect it! My respect for local consensus is provisional and sometimes grudging.

Thanks again, Kim. How about instead of a barnstar, I give you a real one? I don't have any, but I have a friend who does, and I could ask. --Abd (talk) 04:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

DRV responsibility handed off to another admin to prevent COI perception. DRV speedy resolved as "MFD re-opened" at this discussion, I disagreed with Xoloz's close reason, but I had handed off, so I can't actually criticize :-P . MFD discussion terminated as Keep rejected. Which was the the predicted outcome half a month earlier. ("Q.E.D.") --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC) (is adding Q.E.D. to a post a symptom of arrogant Adminitis? I may need to cut back ^^;;)

advice on RS requirements

Dear Kim,

I am in a prolonged dispute with admin User:Haemo. I want to add information to an article. The information is sourced. The information is not misleading. (It might ofcourse be wrong, as any info, but it is not suggesting anything that it should not suggest (SYNTH).) He now says it would violate SYNTH as well as neutrality (UNDUE) to include it, while there is no RS that says it is important. (He sometimes even claims it is not relevant, but that is completely intenable.) But the RS are not saying it is important (in fact they ignore it), because they are holding viewpoint A, whereas this info is stipulated by holders of viewpoint B. Viewpoint B is acknowledged to exist by RS, and has many prominent adherents. Can you give me advice whether Haemo is correct !?? PS I will ask one other admin these questions.  — Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 02:44, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Sigh

I really hate doing this, but would you be willing to open an RfC with me on User:Newbyguesses? He won't stop with the personal attacks, and it's to the point now where he's actively harming the IAR talk page. - Chardish (talk) 00:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

How about leaving the page alone for 24 hours and see what happens first? Sometimes people just get steamed up, and all it takes is to give them some time to blow it off again. If everyone is still steamed after 24-48 hours, we'll see what to do then. Sound like a plan? :-)--Kim Bruning (talk) 00:48, 4 March 2008 (UTC) As to which of you is steamed up ... hmm, perhaps both of you? ;-)

Perhaps. I don't really think I'm steamed up at all. It does irritate me considerably that I'm the target of personal attacks like this. I don't see how productive discussion can be reached in the face of incivility. - Chardish (talk) 00:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

It can't. But first, let's see if things cool down automagically. They often do, you know! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:58, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Allright, I'm taking the 24-hour break. You did see this, right? - Chardish (talk) 00:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Well it looks like this has all blown over. Thanks for keeping cool , KB, as i didn't really, Newbyguesses - Talk 05:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you think anyone will have a prob with this?

I thought it would be cool to start using Template:Prob immediately. The community will prob'ly be okay with that, right? Unfortunately, I am such a die-hard inclusionist that I couldn't find anything on new page patrol that seemed worthy of even being blanked. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty die-hard. :-P

I'm not sure why it's only "proposed blanking" though, that's an odd dynamic. See also WP:XD, which already had several blanking versions, IIRC. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh I see, it's a complete system, duplicating the deletion system? Why did you choose to do that? --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, well it can develop in parallel to the existing deletion system, and eventually deletion as we know it will "wither away," much as Lenin predicted the parasitic state would. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 01:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear. Isn't Lenin very very "industrial age"?

At any rate, make sure you provide a rationale on the PROB talk page, or your proposed process won't last very long.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 01:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Admiral Ackbar also said that at that range, the Rebel fleet wouldn't last long against those star destroyers, but that didn't stop them from winning the Battle of Endor. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 03:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not Star Wars. I think you have had an ample demonstration of my ability to predict and advise (see the delegable proxy situation). Else also talk with Abd. I don't want to see a repetition of moves. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Definitely we are more likely to be successful with God Kim Bruning on our side. I'd be careful about getting bogged down in details. I'm not sure that a new tweak on the AfD process is the most important item to be addressed. No harm trying, I suppose, just don't get caught in contention over it.--Abd (talk) 20:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Is "repetition of moves" a reference to a way in which chess games can automatically draw? Well, I held the prob template's purpose to be (like some truths) self-evident, but I guess not. Yeah, I better be sure to put a rationale, as I don't want this to end up at MfD. I have no choice. My cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude.

By the way, maybe CSD would be a better place to start. Instead of CSD, we would have CSB. I haven't had one of my articles speedied in awhile, but it sure is annoying when it happens. If I could have undone the blank, it would've been much better. Why don't we have a hybrid system, in which two editors can immediately blank an article that meets the criteria for speedy blanking, and after five days, it can be deleted permanently? That sounds like a reasonable compromise. Losing an AfD is frustrating, but at least the article has a chance to get a fair hearing before it goes. With CSD, it can get deleted so quickly you don't have time to react. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Aren't you thinking of Pure Wiki Deletion ? --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Kinda, but this would be temporary PWD. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 04:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

BAG and MEDCAB

A few weeks back, you mentioned something interesting at User:Thedagomar's page. Since he's now shown up at Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Approvals_group#Helping_out could you let me in on the secret of what was interesting and if it applies to non-DR things like BAG? MBisanz ^talk 02:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Basically he said he had grown up, and he says that he is now acting responsibly. I don't know how true that is (yet). We shall have to see, time will tell! :-) Up to you to decide what to do, I'm afraid. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

IAR in other languages.

A while back, you mentioned privately that Dutch Wikipedia was being "crushed under bureaucracy."

Well, I just noticed something.

Take a look at their version of IAR:

• Wikipedia:Negeer alle regels

Look similar? Yes, it's just like the silly English version.

I like the German version:

• Wikipedia:Ignoriere alle Regeln

And the French version:

• De l'interprétation créative des règles

Both are far more clear than the IAR stubs in English and Dutch Wikipedia. Possibly an overall trend? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[7] ... a start, at least... :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC) Though that was long ago!

Ack, no! AN EDIT !!

I can still read enough French to like the French version. I think we should have a page on other versions of IAR (with translations from other languages). I'd do it if I had time... --Abd (talk) 13:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

REVERT NOW ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

XD templates

I have undeleted all of the XD templates I deleted I think. If I missed one just point it out! James086^{Talk | Email} 07:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

A fun idea.

One main reason I don't edit the mainspace much -- I admit -- is because I'm really lazy.

I had a fun idea just now, though.

I think I'm going to categorize essays by content, in order to help people find essays for certain issues (since there are so many essays) and to avoid redundancy, since there are likely some duplicates with different names. I'll start in my sandbox, then dump what I create at WP:Essays. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I just realized that the following may seem like a total spinout; it's not. I'm riffing on the idea of categorization, an essential encyclopedic task.--Abd (talk) 14:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

My view is that AfD is generally silly (other than for copyright or libel violations or blatant, uncontested nonsense); what we need to be doing is categorizing articles. Categorization, the organization of knowledge into hierarchies, is a classic encyclopedic task, one which Wikipedia currently does not do very well, with the flat article space. There really should be a hierarchy of articles, starting with a brief summary that is at the top level and which should be uncontestably NPOV and clearly not only notable, but of primary notability, essential knowledge. This layer would always be protected, edits may be proposed (perhaps in a working version of the article), but would require admin approval. Under that would be more detailed explorations, leading to possibly many subarticles, under that would be a wild and wooly territory. But still categorized, and often still of interest. One of my laments is that, in the name of rigorous adherence to WP:RS, and fuzzy concepts of notability guaranteed to create dissension, lots of verifiable information is being lost, either through AfD, or, even more seriously, with notable subjects, a dumbing down of the text, which becomes pap. WP:RS is appropriate for the top layer, or the top two layers, in a hierarchy. Below that, WP:V should reign, in a realm where, for example, you can write anything that is uncontestably true if properly framed. I.e., "According to So-and-so, a math PhD from Rah University, simulations of the proposed method show significant improvement in social utility over standard methods." Sourced from his personal self-published pages. Yes, this layer would allow Original Research, of a kind. Verifiable. And So-and-so still could not, because of WP:COI create that. Indeed, a very basic rule I'd establish is that such marginalia require, if any objection appears, at least two Wikipedia editors (preferably in a trusted class, a whole other can of worms) to sign off on its appropriateness for inclusion.

Notability is not a matter for vote, for human knowledge is a fractal, with an access hierarchy, and one branch of the fractal may have no knowledge of what is important to another. We have articles on subjects that, because they were published in some journal that might be read by a few hundred readers, if that, can survive AfD; but there can be other subjects where the material is known to millions of readers, but nothing exists in RS. Which doesn't mean that it's not verifiable; in fact, I just saw an extensive article, with 260 edits from many different editors, bite the dust because almost every source was a blog or another wiki or some webcomic review site, none of it clearly RS and clearly showing notability. I found one mention in a newspaper. Because the subject was a webcomic, every fact in the article was rigorously sourced and was thus verifiable. A few hundred specialists establishes notability, hundreds of thousands, or more, readers, that's "fancruft." We need a clear definition of "sum" and of "human knowledge," because our advertising is, given current practices, misleading. Most people read that and think that what they and their friends know is "human knowledge," and they imagine that "sum" means "all."

Instead, our practice is that "sum" means "summary according to our POV of what is notable," and "human knowledge" means "reported by academics and reliable media." So then "that anyone can edit" becomes highly specified: you can edit it if you don't report from your own experience or primary source. At law, this is not the standard: basic principle of common law and often incorporated in statute under the Rules of Evidence or Procedure: testimony is presumed true unless controverted. This is somewhat found here as WP:AGF. We should, in fact, assume that an article is accurate unless there is evidence to the contrary. (However, raw alleged fact must be still be verifiable, which attribution does, i.e., the fact stated is that "according to...." and, if you look at this, it requires that two people be involved. "Human knowledge," quite reasonably, can be glossed as "shared human knowledge." However, this standard can be creative: I.e., someone can ask a primary source to verify or confirm, and then we have two.).

It is impossible, in my view, to retain the status quo, it is far too inefficient, unless some very basic principles are compromised. The pressure from those who think that if they and their friends know it, it is "human knowledge," will be far too great, the work of cleanup is just as difficult as categorization, and more difficult when there is any disagreement, will continue to increase. Instead, a reframe: not cleanup (i.e., tossing it all in one big trash bin), but categorize and sort for recycling and appropriate access. What isn't notable today may well be notable tomorrow, meanwhile, the article is gone, someone will probably recreate it unless they know to ask for undeletion, duplicating labor.

There are compromise solutions involving working with other wikis; in this vision, "deletion" really means "move it to MonsterKitchenSinkWiki." Hopefully into proper categories there. However, that's actually quite inefficient. For one thing, the disk space requirements almost double. Somewhere here I saw the reference to MeatBall, with the vision of one place for everything. I don't agree with that, because that's not secure; brains don't store information in one place, neither should we as a society. Still, if content is deposited here, the standards for what is kept should be such as to be uncontroversial among our community. That's not the case now, and this is a problem that will only get worse.

Anyway, the task Zenwhat has suggested he will do is an excellent undertaking. An essay index. One would think we'd already have that.... apparently not.--Abd (talk) 14:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it does make sense to categorize them. Perhaps we could start a wikiproject to do that. If we each categorize a few essays a week, we'll have them all done pretty soon. Of course, many essays would properly belong to more than one category. A good way to start might be to go to certain policy pages, e.g. WP:N, and click on "What links here". Many of the pages that link there will likely be notability-related essays. Once we have them all categorized, it will be easier for others to avoid reinventing the wheel when they think of a cool thought they want to write an essay about. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I created a new wikiproject. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Essay Categorization and/or Classification. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What a great idea!

Since I became aware that God Kim Bruning has an account and is actually a very experienced Wikipedia editor, many things have become even more clear. For starters, I just realized that I can take WP:IAR off my watch list, getting rid of a huge amount of noise. WP:SILENCE is actually very useful. Sure, if I don't speak up, my opinion might be presumed not to exist. But I can speak up later. After all the noise quiets down. There is a danger, but that danger exists only because we often disregard policy and guidelines, and I can confront that if the occasion arises. Simple. Do nothing. Let it happen. Then see and, if appropriate, act. --Abd (talk) 15:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm kinda confused here. At first, what you say sounds like sarcasm because you call him God, then cross it out. But the last part seems totally correct:

Simple. Do nothing. Let it happen. Then see and, if appropriate, act.

See Taoism and Zen. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 15:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Lectures (great idea!)

Great idea, I'd love to sit in and see if I learn anything. I saw someone asking if they needed any special software, and it occurred to me that providing a web-IRC client like this might be handy. I can set that up if you like (the linked one is mine, I can add the relevant server/channel you want to use to the lists there).

--_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 18:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Since we've got 6 people listed so far, I think we may need to start planning. :-) I was pondering starting on a weekend 1 or 2 weeks from now. --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You have time to give lectures? Waerth (talk) 05:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

AFTER I'm done being sick, doing Martin's (Gerard's) stuff , and after your stuff, of course. This is one of the too many promises I'd already made quite a while ago. (hence my moratorium on making ANY new ones :-p ) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC) in short: No. But I promised ^^;;

I set up a completely independent client at [8] instead, as discussed. --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 15:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Grey Knight++ --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggested changes in the WMF privacy policy

Hello,

I posted some suggestions for changes in the WMF privacy policy at the WMF site: [9]. The gist of the suggestions is to institute a requirement for notifying those registered users whose identifying info is being sought by subpoenas in third-party lawsuits. These suggestions are motivated in large part by a discussion that took place in January 2008 at the Village Pump (Policy) page [10] in relation to an incident where identifying IP data of sixteen Wikipedia users was released in response to such a subpoena. I also left a note about these proposal at Village Pump, WP:Village_pump_(policy)#Suggestions_for_changes_in_the_WMF_privacy_policy. Since you have participated in the January Village Pump discussion, I hope that you will contribute to the discussion of the current suggestions at the WMF website, [11]. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 12:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Reasoning about 'Ignore All Rules'

So far, I have reservations about the current version. I do not support any speedy or radical changes in the policy, and I would be more comfortable if we sought a broader consensus - reflecting a greater depth of experience than I can bring - if we came to a point where we were considering a change in the page that would reflect a definite change in the policy. In the immediate term, if there is an articulation of the policy which can be more explicit as to what is and is not meant by that twelve word sentence, that would address some of my reservations. 69.49.44.11 (talk) 17:26, 5 March 2008 (UTC) [as posted to Ignore all rules at the cited time.]

You feel that my position is self-contradictory [phrase bolding revenge time! :D ], which is possible, and I am curious as to why. 69.49.44.11 (talk) 18:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

"user69.49.44.11 said: <have reservations> <not support speedy or radical changes> <seek broader consensus> <if> had to bold something <there is an articulation ...more explicit> <would address some of my concerns> ". [see above]. There that is what is self-contradictory! "You" had reservations, then they became concerns! How do you expect us all to follow when you change your mind so often. HahA--Newbyguesses - Talk 19:47, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Revert at Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle

I am fine with that, well, I would like an explanation. A) Who says private communication is "essential"? I never use it. Lots never use it. I think it subverts to some degree the GFDL, transparency and centralized discussion.

As well, it allows for a secret channel for "meat-puppeting" in some instances.

I am a newby, wolud you care to try to inform me, so that I come to a more enlightened place. I do value your thoughts, though I have difficulty overcoming my perpetual confusion. I was only guessing, you see. But at this time, I find private comms, (even e-mail) to be potentially disruptive. How have I mis-understood? (Not a complaint at all, just, if you can help me out, if it's not too much trouble, Thanks --Newbyguesses - Talk 21:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Both private and public communications are used extensively by everyone on wikipedia and at wikimedia in general (note also that systems like IRC are public too!). It is also very very useful. The wikipedia-en-l (mailing list) is still officially a source of policy (though i doubt anyone still uses it for that ;-) ). I did just post my reasoning on the talk page at WT:BRD by the way. Take a look and see if you agree! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

+ In general, you can never have too many ways to communicate with each other. Good communication eliminates misunderstandings and ensures that everyone can get along with each other that much better.

In the case of talking about the wiki, all on-wiki action must also be documented on-wiki, so if you do discuss something on irc or per e-mail or what have you, summarize it on the wiki as well, so that other people can see your reasoning. :-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 21:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for replying so promptly. (I also posted to talk:BRD.) Q- how does a private comm. get documented on-wiki as you say it should? A summary, which may be inaccurate, or disputed, or simply neglected and not missed?

Also, if many, many editors do "not" use private comms, how is that then "essential", and what are they missing out on?

Could it be that the "plodders" actually set the best pace? (just thinkin' out lard.)

Also, see the confusion (if you interested) caused by the mere possibility that private comms. (600emails) are being taken into account, in secret, by some arbitrators, at Rfa/Mantanmoreland. For instance, a question I posed in my#evidence at /Evidence (section 13), over a fortnight ago, has not been answered, and many other Users have clamoured for such an answer to no avail. waiting to be enlightened--Newbyguesses - Talk 21:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Some of those are complex questions. I've answered the general case first, at WT:BRD. If that goes in the right direction, I'll answer some more specific cases once we have that covered. Especially the arbcom case looks rather tricky and may require some research which I'd have to make time for. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Are those IRC conversations logged and the transcripts put somewhere public? Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Depends. Some of those channels ban public logging. Which is silly. ^^; --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, Kim, thanks. I do not have the technical expertise to explore these issues on my own, just yet. Also, still rather busy. May we take this up again at a later date? I Will continue to watch 2 pages for any, and other replies. See ya at talk:IAR. (and Thanks to ALL.) --Newbyguesses - Talk 22:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

as a general comment on wikipedia-en-l, yes, it does discuss policy, among other things, but in general from a perspective not related to specific proposals. I find it a good place for a meta-discussion about how the community is proceeding on something or the general orientation of the project DGG (talk) 18:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well Kim, this was what I was thinking, too— "sure, it's faster to discuss matters between a limited group of people. What it does, though, is exclude the rest of the community. -per: DGG (talk) 18:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)—But, I am still thinking this out—

PS I am learning the Wiki Mantra! --Newbyguesses - Talk 19:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's why it's a cycle, right? You start with a limited group of people, and then you go back and talk with one more, and one more, and one more, until nobody else steps forward. That way, you are much more likely to talk with those people who want and need to be heard, and you are much more likely to find all of them. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:32, 10 March 2008 (UTC) ps. I should never have quoted Ivanova. OMG what have I started!?

Wikipedia:IP block exemption

You seem to be running the show here so I'll just ask you rather than reading a stack of talk pages...

Basically, how's progress on this? Has the usergroup been implemented? Is it possible to request an ip-block-exempt yet? dihydrogen monoxide (H₂0) 05:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Not yet. I'm taking it slow, since we've had some issues with previous proposals like this. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Skype comments?

Did you talk on the phone with someone, and are giving me some transcripts or a summary? Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:18, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Used skype chat. You have the chat log over a brief period where I was making a sequence of comments about Zenwhat's post. --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:26, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

MfD

Thanks, I commented there. My suggested resolution is for you to self-revert your close; it will be simpler than to go to Deletion Review. I do not use skype of chat, and would prefer discussion of this to be on-wiki. DGG (talk) 18:02, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Where is "there"? Oh well, I'll check your user contribs and find it. --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:18, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Great koan

Somebody sent this to me, recently. Thought it was great. I know you're a fan, so here...

The master went out [for a walk] and ran into an old woman who was carrying a basket.

The master asked, "Where are you going?"
The old woman said, "I'm taking bamboo shoots to Chao-chou (Joshu)."
The master said, "When you see Chao-chou what will you do?"

The old woman walked up and slapped the master.

The old woman ignored all rules! She actually slapped a Zen Master? How rude! ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 18:36, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

(S)he asked, and the lady answered truthfully. "What more do you want, mermaids"? ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The Peanut Shell Award of Excellence

Earlier today, I mildly vandalized the "Assume Good Faith" page, replacing "Nutshell" with "Peanutshell" for no particular reason. Rather than chew me out when you undid my change, you responded in good humor and rightfully pointed out that peanuts are indeed tasty. As a result, I present you with this award. Congrats!!!-- Talk 06:44, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The Peanut Award of Excellence Presented by IowaMutt

Wow, I have never had a peanut award before! I shall treasure it forever. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

For this diff I guess. :-)

Barnstar Survey

Hi Kim, I replied to you by email but i'll post the reply here as well.

As a comment on section II in general: I find that none of the criteria really have anything to do with my barnstar granting behaviour. I tend to only give barnstars for single actions above and beyond the call of duty in a particular area, as opposed to any particular numeric criterion. For some of the criteria listed: I will actually tend to take users less seriously if they display userboxes or wikiproject memberships. :-/ What are you basing those criteria on?

This is really helpful feedback. The problem with researching gift\barnstar granting behaviour is that it is difficult to understand the process by which it happens. Certainly many of the barnstars that we've seen are of the spontaneous variety, or barnstars that commend a very particular action that is not represented in the survey. However, we've seen many others that were given out very impersonally and seemed to have been based solely on the edit count of a user or some exact achievement such as number of FA articles.

Think of the information exposed in this survey as a very crude approximation to what might possibly be appropriate in giving a real barnstar, and not as necessarily the perfect case. After all, the experiment needs to control for many factors, and I can't include all the possible factors that might influence your decision. Are there particularly important characteristics that your found missing and would help if they were included in the survey? Were there any that were completely useless? I found it interesting that you considered userboxes or wikiproject membership knowledge of little significance. You haven't found these characteristics to ever positively influencing your judgement of other editors? Bestchai (talk) 04:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I liked your Comment!

I liked your comment in response to Benjah-bmm27 request for adminship. You seem to understand the differences between policy and human judgement, a skill that only great leaders have!Thright (talk) 05:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)thright

g'day kim....

I thought I'd drop you a note to let you know that having made a start on meta a while ago, I've now copied some of my ideas about ways to research article quality over time here - I chatted with OverlordQ about creating a bot to help, and she or he has produced a useful starting point already! (somewhat embarrassingly putting my efforts thus far to shame!)

I sense an appetite for taking a good look at this stuff at the moment amongst many, and wondered if I might solicit your views /ideas about what I'm thinking of doing.... it's nascent at the mo, but I hope the gist comes across, and it'd be cool to hear what you thought! (or better yet, you may be up for diving in and helping out!) - either way it was nice to chat on IRC a while ago, and it's nice to say Hi now! best, Privatemusings (talk) 02:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi looking for assistance

Hi, i had noticed you left a note in my request for mediation regarding to Dodo's case on abusing of his administrator powers. And you pointed out that i may expose my case on Wikipedia:Editor assistance, can you explain to me a little bit about this? . I would appreciate you do so. Thanks. --HappyApple (talk) 11:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes Dodo, seems to speak english as i can see from his page at WikiCommons. It is quite sad to see he blocked me from making edits on spanish wikipedia. I am considering placing my concern about this in Editor assistance. However since it is another language wikipedia, it seems it is few things can be done from here. Still looking for help. Thanks. --HappyApple (talk) 18:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You I are

WP:UIAR - I rewrote the last paragraph again, and a few other things. Does it work for you?--Father Goose (talk) 11:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Another great idea. Let's have an "Understanding..." page for all policies! :-) (Actually, that might not work so well, though I have suggested in the past keeping the main policy pages simple, and putting interpretation, guidance and examples on subpages). Carcharoth (talk) 18:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

And/or an FAQ page. Lots of work though! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I wrote UIAR because IAR in its current form ("If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it") is not all that... easy to understand. Other policies go beyond a nutshell and try to provide detailed rationale and guidance. IAR's been trapped in the Phantom Zone for too damn long.--Father Goose (talk) 03:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Not a vote, nosiree, we don't vote around here.

If it were not for the tragedy of so much time wasted, I'd be amused by [12]. We saw this before with the MfD for WP:PRX. Most Delete votes were based on "we don't vote," but when the result didn't match the not-vote, thanks to your closing, so many were outraged wasting more time. How can a closer ignore the numbers of our not-votes?!?! Now, we have similar arguments being presented on WP:RfAr. There is no clear definition of "consensus," nor any clear method of judging it, and this is going to continue to dog the community. WP:PRX would not have supplied a definition, but it would have -- if used, a very speculative affair -- provided quite a bit more information. One commentor on the RfAr page suggested looking at the !votes vs. length of time on Wikipedia, which would be a rough correction for participation bias. Wikipidia is running into problems that have been faced many times before by organizations of various kinds. Many don't survive that phase, most of the rest adopt traditional solutions that give up, essentially, the true democracy of free associations. The only solution I've ever seen that, according to my analysis, could succeed and keep fundamental policy intact, is, quite predictably, rejected immediately. However, that rejection isn't the end of it, because, by nature, it doesn't depend on central acceptance. It's built from the bottom up, from the periphery in, not from the top down. And it only takes a very few recognizing the possibilities to start. Having known this for about five years, it's fascinating to see how difficult it is to find one person who gets it. It took me a few years to accomplish that. One person. Now there are, at least, a dozen or so (only a couple are involved with Wikipedia.) Little by little, we go far.--Abd (talk) 18:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This is the first I've heard of the delegable proxy system. Might be worth mentioning around a few more places. Carcharoth (talk) 18:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Absidy "mentioned" it on the Talk page of every member of ArbComm, and a couple of other places, and got blocked for it (allegedly, or was it for sock puppetry? or for trolling? the record is a tad unclear); however he did complicate things by replying to the predictable "Stop canvassing" warning with "Too late, I'm done," and popping an image of an upraised finger next to it on the Talk page of the warning administrator. He's back, now, tempers having cooled, with a brand-new and properly linked username.--Abd (talk) 20:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I swung by to see if Kim had had a chance to take a look at my ideas for some research (see above) - and found this for the first time too. It looks very interesting, though sadly on first impression only has a bit of a 'could never happen' feel about it, despite its strengths. I'll take a closer look and think some more, but it certainly looks like some good work... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 18:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Let it mellow. This is an idea that gets better with age. It can take about a year to realize even the first layer of implications. In any case, if the goal had been to do something, the proposal would have been a mistake. What it proposed could be done without any community permission: create a file format for proxy files, and a format for a central table. Absidy created templates that supposedly made it all simple to do, but, from my point of view, complicated it, and the system he created requires a host of files, all vulnerable, centrally placed and thus open to relatively easy MfD, vandalism, etc. I proposed something different, files which can be placed solely in user space, one file per user and any number of proxy tables, placed anywhere. That's all that was proposed. It was deliberately avoided, specifying how the tables would be used, it was stated as an experiment. I.e., people would develop applications, and, indeed, some of these would require community consent. But the fact is, at least in my opinion, that the deeper proposal (i.e., what might be done with the tables) requires no changes to policy, does not, in fact, require community permission, and can work with a relatively small number of users participating. In other words, it starts whenever it starts. If the "cabal" -- I agree that there is no cabal in the blatant sense, there is something more subtle (usually) -- tries to stop it, and if they have the power to do that here, it shifts off-wiki and functions quite as efficiently. This possibility, I can imagine, could upset some. I can hear the cries of "meat puppetry." However, as I said, no changes in policy are required. What the proposal would actually do is make meat puppetry and sock puppetry irrelevant. If it's done on-wiki, it's useless for meat puppetry and sock puppetry. The quickest objection that always is made (I've been proposing this for years in various organizations), for on-line applications, is "sock puppets." That, however, requires "voting" to matter. Doesn't it? Now, suppose policy prohibits abusive sock puppetry, as it does. Does someone painstakingly build a network of sock puppets, all linked by proxy files? How long would such remain undetected? How much work would it take to maintain it? And, in the end, can such a network develop convincing arguments any better than the single user manipulating all the socks? Somehow, I think the reverse. I think that networks of real people, including people coming from many different points of views and backgrounds, will be able to argue more persuasively and efficiently.

If you google "delegable proxy," or "delegated voting," or "liquid democracy," or, most recently, a peer-reviewed publication under the rubric of "delegated democracy," most of what you will find will look like "voting" applications. But "FA/DP," my own neologism for Free Associations with Delegable Proxy, might as well have been designed for Wikipedia. In a Free Association (classic example: Alcoholics Anonymous), because consensus is valued (and necessary to get much done), voting is really only polling to measure the level of consensus, and actions are taken by "servants," who are not compelled to follow any particular standard. (The saying in AA is "All it takes to start a meeting is a resentment and a coffee pot," and AA harnessed dissent to create spectacular growth. Don't agree with what the secretary of a meeting does? Start your own meeting, and since no property accumulation is required, it's trivial to start a meeting. Just find a place and list it and show up. Coffee pot is actually optional.)

The untested element (at least on a large scale) is delegable proxy. However, the basic principles are quite old. Proxies are chosen representatives, not elected except in a technical sense, and the system proposed here would have given proxies no special powers, other than the power to advise. I wrote that, in fact, I'd oppose such a grant of powers. Quite simply, they are synapses in a communications network that can efficiently sense its environment and rapidly develop cooperative response. Ahem. I could, indeed, go on and on, I've been working on this for twenty years. I'd much prefer some small demonstrations, minimally intrusive; they wouldn't be offensive or disruptive at all except for something like the semi-hysteria that the MfD for WP:PRX generated. What I'm starting to suggest to those who express interest is, quite simply, let me know if you are interested in being informed about projects as they arise. I will personally participate in nothing that violates policy, nor will I encourage it. However, I will note that I don't have a patent on this organizational technology. Let me put it this way: if Esperanza or AMA had used this for organizational structure, they would have been bullet-proof. Esperanza, in particular, had lost momentum and seems to have not had sufficient support from its own members, but ... my guess is that this is because the bureaucracy created was too burdensome. Delegable proxy is different. It's designed to be extremely efficient. God help us if some substantial group that really wants to damage the project picks up on this first. (Fortunately, another of the characteristics of FA/DP organizations is that they can form very rapidly, if enough people realize the importance. Without that realization, progress does take place, but glacially.)

Ah, yes, the Wikipedia article on Delegable proxy was AfDd promptly when WP:PRX was proposed, as was the article on Mikael Nordfors, a European inventor of what is really the same system. The article, Liquid democracy was originally started, I think, in 2003 and AfDd. In 2005, blissfully unaware of the prior article, I recreated it as a stub, but never again edited it, others did, and there it stood until something like a month ago. In my opinion, by current standards, it was of marginal notability. (Absidy moved it to "Delegable proxy," a more descriptive name.) "They" really did try pretty hard to delete all trace of it. What a waste of time! "They" really should name a proxy to handle it!

My apologies to Kim for dumping all this on his Talk page, he can ask me to stop at any time. I just think he's brilliant, and he's got some nice friends. He, of course, is the one who first placed a Rejected tag on WP:PRX. He knew what would happen. I wasn't so sure, but did think it probable. Nice thing about experiments: if you pay attention, they never fail.--Abd (talk) 21:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind people posting here, but it is always nice if they can keep their comments somewhat condensed, if/when possible. O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC) Also, consider using links and diffs instead of repeating parts of your original text. Or edit the PRX page to include your arguments or some such, saves time, that. :-)

Thanks for that, Abd. Very interesting! Will have to think about it for a bit, but will try and keep an eye out for this if it ever comes to anything. Carcharoth (talk) 23:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Economist article

Hi Kim, I saw the link on your page to this article, I would have actually liked to have read Vice-presidents who have shot people and The role of clowns in modern society :-) --Fredrick day (talk) 23:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the VP one was a category. See here and the CfD of the real category here. The other one, The role of clowns in modern society was an article, and the AfD is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The role of clowns in modern society, and looking at the deleted article it is, unfortunately, complete and utter nonsense. However, this journey into the hinterland of Wikipedia brought me to Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 23:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Your approach at WP:CCC

Hey Kim, I was just watching your approach at WP:CCC and it seems like, while our overall wiki-philosophies have some similarities, we have opposite styles in handling stuff... I am all about, let's get something going, let's stir up the pot, propose a radical overhaul, and do it now, and if it doesn't meet success right away, start throwing inflammatory words around, all the while carelessly doing other erratic behaviors such as changing usernames, making strange edits, etc. Whereas, you chill out more and offer to wait 24 hours, mention you're eagerly awaiting their reply, and such. It drives me crazy to wait around like that. Yet, you have managed to be bold without people hauling you to WP:ANI (in the middle of that sentence, I realized, "Oh, wait a minute...") Well, you know what I'm saying. People respect you and work with you, even though they may not really get the philosophy of the wiki. It's kinda like you show them how it works. And people can watch your example and understand the true nature of WP:BRD as it is supposed to be.

Anyway, I get too impatient and easily discouraged, to the point where I throw up my hands and say, "Well what the heck, all is lost anyway, might as well throw in this parting shot" and then everything I said is discredited. I've probably sabotaged myself in that way on many occasions. Hmm, I'm not sure what to do, it seems like things move so slowly here, and I've been here for a lot longer than it looks. Sometimes I wonder, though, if it consumes such a large amount of time to successfully make even a small revision that will stay at WP:CCC, are there enough people like you to create the change we need? But maybe you will change the culture just by how you act. Well, I can give that a try too. Hmm, should I start anew under another username, and create this new persona? Nah, that just draws more suspicion, I guess.

Anyhoo, I'm not so stubborn that I'll keep trying stuff that doesn't work indefinitely. In fact, I've been known to radically shift courses and approaches on many occasions. Although sometimes, I just run out of patience and want to force the issue. It's like losing at chess. I'll typically do something suicidal, just to get it over with, where someone else might try to keep things as complicated as possible, patiently looking for an opening or for their opponent to make a mistake, which will allow them to turn the tide. Wow. Well, I'll think on these things. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 00:20, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding HappyApple

Hello! I was reading your last comment on this article [[13]], and its quiet sad to see Administrators behaving like that. Not only has HappyApple being blocked by orders of Dodo, but this is part of a long trend of abuses commited by Dodo and some of his friends, that have made Wikipedia their own turf. Do you know where can I denounce this? I'm sure that all of the Wikipedias have some sort of supra-national authority that can deal with this type of abuses. Messhermit (talk) 03:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Question

Hi, Kim, thanks for stopping by on discussion at mediation cabal. But since discussion is becoming larger and larger. Is there any way i could find a proper advocate soon?. I have been looking on Editor assistance, member's list. But almost everyone's users page, they seem to be taking long vacation (or being just too busy). If you know any good advocate who can be willing to take my case i would be glad if you could contact me with him or her. Cheers.--HappyApple (talk) 09:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi again Kim, thank you for your moral support. Although some of your words were quite few. =D

As for now it is my wish if you could let the case of Help me wikipedia is making me feel nervous, as a case near to be closed or near to be filed.

I was looking for some sort of supra national authority of where to go when InterWiki affairs turn to be in some sort of show trial. But it seems as you said, someone picked up the case (but in spanish wiki- i dont know who or how, but Dodo and petronas decided to walk away) and things went on, and it seems the dispute is quite over. But i wish you could store it on the records (the request for mediation cabal). can you spare this for a friend?. I also wish you could answer Messhermit's words, i really dont know if such thing happen, do wikipedians have a place to go where to solve their inter wiki affairs. Cheers =), i keep up with your breathe note =)--HappyApple (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi again, i dont want to be unpolite, but in my oppinion i think translation from Mushii_W on #wikipedia-es is a little bit biased. it can be accurate but i think, it is missing the point. (As the user in question . Gaeddal is no longer participating on spanish wikipedia. retired user. In my oppinion, i wish all of this could be solved assuming good faith.

My personal request, as i think you are active on mediation cabal, is to let this case closed. Like i said, it was an unconventional request (i didn't know what to do), but it seems that if i have a problem like this in the future (but i dont want to have it anymore), i would rather discuss it in the proper place. Like i said, i want to walk away from any kind of dispute and not extend the discussion. Cheers, --HappyApple (talk) 03:57, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I left a short statement in cabal mediation regarding your last post about gaedal's arguments against me. It is good to listen involved parts, isn't it?

I wish you could assist me in letting the case closed in english wikipedia as it has already been solved on spanish wikipedia. Dodo retired user, and the user who blocked me on the first place (petronas) retired user, are not participating on Spanish wiki anymore, and they seem to left the project.

You know, there are many words which can be said during discussion. (specially on cabal mediation). But i would appreciate if you can give me a chance regarding my reputation (as it is the first time i explained and discussed about it on cabal). As i dont wish my reputation could be subject of distrust in future. cheers --HappyApple (talk) 04:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC) p.d. i am pretty sure that if i look for help in the future, i would be very careful on what i say, and i will remain calm and wise.--HappyApple (talk) 04:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Nobody stopping you either way, I think. --Kim Bruning (talk) 09:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

You haven't addressed my point

Listing the characters that meaning absolutely nothing to 99% of our readers in a separate glossary ... Tony (talk) 02:36, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, that is the main problem, especially when taken to extremes as in the Guqin article; there, it's even worse because of the narrow column that opens the article, squeezed by the infoblot. I'm no monoglot philistine; I can transliterate Russian and Greek well enough. And I think east-Asian characters have a certain beauty. No, my concern is one of a functional reading psychologist who thinks that it's worth exploring better ways of doing two things at once: (1) retaining the utility of non-Latin script sources for specialist research; and (2) freeing the main text of clutter that has absolutely no meaning to almost all English-language readers (it is the English-language WP), and allowing people to focus more easily on the phonological information that is currently provided in the forest). Listing all original non-Latin-script items in one section (a solution I quickly arrived at after interactions concerning my rogue edit of Guqin) seems to be a solution to both, and might even assist the specialist researcher. I note that specialists also have a link bottom left to the equivalent article in the Chinese-language WP.

Compare this side by side with this. Which looks better on the page? Which is more accessible to the generalist readership? Which is easier to read and comprehend even for specialists?

The sample freed-up text would, of course, include a new section—probably at the bottom—listing all of the Chinese-character items and their equivalents. In addition, I think the two Wiktionary items that I retained should be removed and listed in a glossary as well. Tony (talk) 03:25, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

A topic too large for this margin to contain...

Something like Fermat's last theorem? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:31, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC) If someone asks me, I can certainly expand on that comment, but it's a bit of work and clutters up the page, and not worth it unless someone is really curious. :-)

Response to mediation and end to dispute

Hi Kim, sorry if i seem to pull out new words in your discussion page.

But i wanted to make an statement as i think it could be a good idea to put a message regarding this: -> the dispute is over, thus making the case closed.

I clearly understand you need to deal with many things and not just my case. But if you could spare this for me, i would appreciate it. (as it seems you are active dealing with things under that scope). (Further text, pending to be copied as the aftermath on mediation cabal discussion page regarding this subject including as requested)

i also want to let the following info plus statements i have made on Dihydrogen Monoxide's discussion page be part of the paper trial too (closing arguments and aftermath of the dispute), where i ask publicly apologies to all parts involved (including Dodo) and i made a commitment to do not cause any more incidents like the one ocurred at mediation cabal discussion page. (On the same thread i provided Dihydrogen_Monoxide with references of my arguments so my closing and final argument could be neutral and fairly balanced).

I also want to say, I am sorry if my words or actions (over these days) appeared to be looking for a place or forum shopping like you suggested. (At first had i didn't breathe as you said =S ). But well, right now, as you know, i have totally disengaged from discussion (per Disengage).

However i believe that (forum shopping) was not the case (i just were looking a place or trying to find an advocate who can be willing to take my case, however, i had to admit, it was not the place nor the way or proper manner to find one.

As you suggested me i could have contacted personally someone in editor assistance though. However as arguments, and evidences against me showed up, it is very little that me or advocate could have done to defend my case, and i have to admit, that i had being wrong. i admit over the course of the dispute i over reacted too and i acted paranoic.

Is my personal commitment to do not cause any more trouble or incidents of any kind. And since there aren't any previous incidents like this reported from me, i would ask you give me a chance about it (under assume good faith). I understand i can't excuse so easily myself from that, but i have to admit that although i am not a newcomer, I am still learning how to understand the way wikipedia experience works on. Next time i certainly be very careful and more politely on what i say, and how i should approach other users. Including any wikis (en, es, etc) [and final statement pending to be copied here on mediation cabal discussion page]

Finally i want to request, the following phrase could be added to mediation cabal discussion entry where i posted my case.

(Closing argument below, pending be readed by mediation cabal participants and copied into discussion page regarding HappyApple's entry)

The preceding statement made by HappyApple, closes the case. He asked for it to mediation cabal participants Kim Brunning and Dihydrogen_Monoxide (the user who picked up the case on the first hand).

Parties involved on the dispute already walked away from discussion and the creator of this thread, HappyApple has already addressed apologies to affected users[14] and has commited to do not let such dispute happen again.

Plus, in aims to let this matter be settled down and end the dispute, his attempts to gather or request assistance about such topic were dismissed by his own will, on the following pages. user Goodfriend100, user Hersfold User The_Thadman

Assuming good faith, as this is the first time and the last time (as HappyApple's commitment on Dihydrogen Monoxide's discussion page) that an incident from such kind had come from him. HappyApple's requests, the case be closed and his reputation be cleared. It is suggested that no other third parties continue this matter per HappyApple's request. Peace--HappyApple (talk) 14:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an open wiki; as long as you behave within the local community norms, and as long as you are honest about things; you are allowed to post whatever you like. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That's fine to me, i had understood it clearly. I am very sure all that mess and incident cascades will never happen again. At least i can say this for myself. Not for other users. :) --HappyApple (talk) 05:19, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No worries

Kim, no problem with the timing and the changes. I have tried to incorporate more of your suggestions while trying to keep the chart brief and simple. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of mediator

Kim, I don't remember where the discussion was held regarding the experience of a mediator. Probably one of the discussions I got into when working at 3O. I do remeber that it was a raging battle with some experienced wikipedians and a newbie had volunteered to mediate. --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

MedCab

• Hey Kim, can I have a word with you on the #wikipedia-medcab channel? Thanks. Steve Crossin (talk) 05:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Ni

As in the Knights who Say Such Things. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 21:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:USER

Thanks, but why not be bold and do it yourself? :) When a guideline is confusing, one of the best things that can be done to fix it, is to have someone that's confused by it, write it to be more understandable. :) Or if you're nervous about changing a guideline page directly, you could suggest new wording at the talkpage, and then if no one disagrees, you can go ahead to "make it so." --Elonka 20:59, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kim

Just a notification of what I just wrote: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat/Evidence#Kim Bruning's role --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: judgment etc.

Hello. In my post to that guidelines page, I was questioning your assessment of the situation on that page, not any actions you had taken. Firstly, Danny remains an administrator of this wiki, which is the fundamental initial requirement for admission to that channel. Whilst he may have said some things which make Board Members and employees of the Foundation uncomfortable, and whilst they may take it upon themselves to fling terms his way like "disgruntled employee", that is essentially irrelevant to his continued presence in the channel. To the best of my knowledge, he has not abused privileged information gained through his adminship on Wikipedia, or from his presence in the admins channel, and has not professed any intention to do so.

The question of whether what he has publicly said was privileged information gained as a result of his employment with the Foundation, and whether he has misused that information, is a matter between him and the Foundation. If the Foundation feels that his continued presence on the projects is unacceptable, then it is their prerogative to remove his adminship and/or ban him (in which case, then it would be prudent to remove his access). It is not the role of the IRC ops to take action in lieu of any action by the Foundation, especially not where the only behaviour complained of is neither in relation to IRC, or the English Wikipedia.

In relation to the example I gave of your access in the channel, and the language I used, I'm sorry, I let my annoyance show, and was rude. I hope you can forgive me. In any event, you still have access to the channel, despite no longer being an admin, because you have never shown any misuse of the channel. Danny, similarly, has never shown any misuse of the channel, yet he remains an admin. In the past, we have removed the access of former admins who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, but not current admins. In that light, this situation is unprecedented and not straightforward. - Mark 06:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see what's wrong with removing the access of an untrustworthy and current admin. He's a known leaker of information that should be considered privileged. You wouldn't let a known pedophile babysit your kids and you shouldn't let someone who is known to abuse his access to privileged information have access to, well, privileged information. John Reaves 07:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

personal opinion pieces in WP space?

I think not. But those clowns are committed to turning Wikipedia into an indiscriminate collection of trivia and are opposed to any kind of intellectual approach anyway, and they're in the majority (or at least make it appear that way), so I guess it doesn't matter. I'd prefer a project where articles and essays start out in userspace and first have to qualify for inclusion in the official canon, not the other way around. However, apparently I'm alone with this opinion. Dorftrottel (troll) 09:27, March 22, 2008

As I said, Wikipedia is hopeless anyway, so it makes no difference. There's no hope for intelligent divine intervention either, so yes, let's enable the idiots some more, in the hope the whole thing will break apart a bit quicker than it will anyway, thanks to those trivia-hugging shitheads. Dorftrottel (criticise) 09:37, March 22, 2008

Cool down! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Please stop with the smileys, they make me aggressive. :-) More to the point: I don't think I am very confused, but thanks for giving it a shot. Dorftrottel (warn) 10:31, March 22, 2008

AFAIK there is only one tag, {{essay}} which automatically catsorts based on namespace. Dorftrottel (canvass) 12:01, March 22, 2008

Personal attacks in the Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal page

Dear Mr. Bruning. Some time ago, while debating on whether the article [Spanish Wikipedia] should be edited by the Spanish Wikipedians or whether this was a conflict of interest (as I believe), I was arguing with a user that never said she was an es:wikipedian. When I discovered it and commented her, she reported ad hominem and personal attacks and I got a reprimand.

Now, after seeing how the freedom of speech of users HappyApple and Messhermit is restricted by means of sanctions in the Spanish Wikipedia (expressly accusing them for his writings in the Mediation Cabal page), a user is launching personal attacks and ad hominem against me (this and the two preceding editions). There are two aggravating circunstance: that user was created expressly to attack HappyApple (he didn't exist before), his "edit" didn't focus on the subject, neither apport any argument, only launch personal attacks. I believe he is an undercover user (maybe from the es:wiki) trying to provoke me. Please, do something. Best Regards.

PS. By the way, I do consider unacceptable es:wikipedians to be severely sanctioned in the es:Wikipedia for their claims in that page. They can't defend themselves. When users suffer (or even only believe they suffer, errare humanum est) an injustice, they deserve a better treatment and a friendly explanation of why their actions are unappropiated and how they should have done. When I was in the es:Wikipedia I even got that IP users who used unappropiated an offensive wording (as a matter of fact by an insulting article which I asked many times to change) deleted his own unpolited words and reword his edits more politely. Some in the es:wiki should learn instead of being so trigger happy. (In he es:wiki even HappyApple apologies have been deleted). --Dilvish 10 words (talk) 23:48, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

NPOV & negotiability

There used to be a link to a Jimbo quote, stating that WP:NPOV was absolute and non-negotiable.

Yes, my first edits to the WP:NPOV page were from before the Foundation existed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The Jimbo quote was, of course, also from before the Foundation existed. So please remove your rant from my talk page.

I'm busy with something else now. I'll try to find you the diffs when I have time. Why don't you go look for them?

There's only one policy (at least its underlying principles) that afaik always has superseded WP:Consensus. That policy is WP:NPOV. As it is written at m:Foundation issues: "certain [...] issues [...] are essentially considered to be beyond debate". Your refactoring of the boilerplate text of that page earlier today [15] doesn't change that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

BLP question

Hi. I wonder if you could perhaps weigh in on a matter regarding Tony Blair just above this section. Do you see that as a potentially problematic entry? Biruitorul (talk) 18:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Seeking a Moderator

You've previously had experience with a prior name change request for the article 666 Satan (Previously titled O-Parts Hunter). The one making the name change is a Wikipedia Administrator. For reasons of fairness in judgment and since you previously participated in mediation this new name change, I am asking if you can possibly do so once more. I ask for no sides to be taken in this, just fair mediation. Thank you. ⒺⓋⒾⓁⒼⓄⒽⒶⓃ② ^talk 20:01, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Joehoe

Who bist du?

Waerth (talk) 18:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Awarding Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		Aprils fools day was a blast. Loads of users lightened up to have good old fashion fun. I want to thank you for taking part in editing this page in particular and even though I may not know you, embrace the same talk pages, or even edit with you in the near future, I'd like to award you this Barnstar for making Wikipedia a fun environment in which to contribute. Until next year. :) SynergeticMaggot (talk) 14:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Yup. I actually awarded everyone that made an edit to the article one. I considered every edit to be of value toward the fun. So I figured I couldn't leave anyone out. Wouldn't have been fair. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

MedCab IRC

Hey Kim, can we speak to you on IRC? On the MedCab Channel. Me and Xav. Discussing some stuff. Cheers, Steve Crossin (talk to me) 14:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Removal of question

Just double checked the policy page and discovered that editors can remove topics they consider to be off-topic, though, in my experience, this is so rarely done, except in cases of drunks, children and vandalism, I had never seen it happen.Student7 (talk) 13:16, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Wikipedia:Signatures & Wikipedia:User page

I was called away from the computer before I could finish my comment at Wikipedia talk:Username policy. It was not my intent to revert you without a comment. I apologize for the delay. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:47, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

"Speedy close" abuse.

I just saw an example, just now, of why speedy close can be a serious problem. [16]

The ability to speedy close isn't intrinsically good or bad. Nothing is inherent. It depends on who is doing the speedy close and why.

It can be used to abusively shut down discussion just as much as it can be used to proactively shut down troll mobs. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 18:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

further to a couple of your comments at blp talk

Doczilla was recently made sysop (closed 92/1/1). Though Template:User anti-anon was clearly displayed on his user page at the time [17], the issue wasn't even mentioned. Nothing against Doczilla, I just thought that it was striking. 86.44.26.69 (talk) 18:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

RfA talk

Hello, Kim. I left a proposal in response to "ready aim..." at Another way in case you are interested. Best wishes. -Susanlesch (talk) 01:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Lectures

Hi Kim. Thanks for your reminder and my apologies for missing the session, not through forgetfulness as I'd feared but thanks to some surprise guests. I hope it was a success and I'm keeping the relevant page on my watchlist for any further news. Sardanaphalus (talk) 15:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Aee. I gone done bad. I'd meant to be there.  :( Real-life obligations have welled up, and I haven't coordinated things well enough to clear the time. I hope there was a decent showing. I apologize greatly for being a no-show. Interested in transcript. 69.49.44.11 (talk) 17:22, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

transcript now avaialable! --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Remember when I said my CPU fan was having trouble? Well, uhh...
Suffice it to say, sorry I couldn't come :-( Xavexgoem (talk) 03:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the lectures, and logging them. [18] Will try to pay some attention, maybe next week, when my time-machine returns me from the Cretaceous Era. --Newbyguesses (talk) 03:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Possible interest

You may be interested in this discussion. Vassyana (talk) 03:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

This may interest you as well. Vassyana (talk) 23:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Edits that are clearly against consensus

I know you have your own way of judging consensus, but even you must see that there is a consensus that Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars is an essay. You commented on the talk page so I know you saw the overwhelming agreement that the page is an essay and not a guideline. Please do not ignore consensus, or try to bypass it. You can try to change it, by do not declare what consensus is and ignore what other people have said. _(1 == 2)^Until 01:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, sometimes what people say and what people do is not the same thing. They could have been lying, pandering, or might simply have changed their mind at the last minute "based on the situation on the ground" (semper AGF).

Whatever the case, I always consider what people do in practice to be more important than what they claim they'll do. :-)

As I consider policy guidelines and essays to be documentation about what people do in practice that works (best practices), you might get an inkling about how I measure consensus.

By looking at consensus that way, I also don't get into too much trouble (knock on wood), and I want to share that approach with others, so they stay out of trouble and remain productive wikipedians too.

Now the poll you put on that particular talk page? That actually asked a subtly different question .. let me look it up "There is plenty of objection, and a lack of consensus to make this a guideline." . Right, that's not how Radiant et al designed the P/G/E system. Something either is a guideline or it isn't. You can't make it a guideline. Not even 50 people or 100 people can. It's the general consensus of the community that makes it so.

Now there are 1000s of regulars, and I figure that if I take any random sample of regulars and ask them if they like being templated, they will all say no. Some might even go further and actually remove such templates. Some will go further yet and punish those who use templates. Some might say yes, but then remove templates IRL anyway :-p

Now *that* is consensus. :-)

Your question didn't try to ascertain community consensus in that manner.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 11:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you know what consensus is enough to judge it. When there is a discussion involving many people, and they pretty much all come to the same conclusion, then consensus is not the opposite. It is not your place to invent your own ways of determining consensus when discussion has yielded a result you don't agree with.

Nobody, nobody, is blocked for for using templates on regulars. People are blocked for disruption or 3RR or for being a sock puppet, but not for templating a regular. The reason for the is it is not against the rules, and it never has been. The reason for that is that the is no consensus that it should be a rule.

The fact is that you brought up your strange theory on how consensus should be determined on that essay's talk page and it was rejected by others there. Oh, but wait, you probably have your own way of determining if your interpretation of consensus is accepted by the community which led you to believe you were right. Well, that does not seem to be the case so far.

Now you can twist reality all you want, but it does not damage my eyes and I can see that this is a consensus. If you can't see that then you should not try to judge consensus. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

<Shrug> So if I somehow POINTedly start a vote on WP:NPOV and all 20 participants there say that NPOV should be marked as an essay, would NPOV be marked as an essay? --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

First off, there is a rule against making a point is such a disruptive manner. Secondly, NPOV is a foundation issue, so no it required by the folks that pay our internet bill. Now if it was "No personal attacks", or "3RR" and the vast majority decided it should be an essay then that is what consensus does. This however, is not likely to happen. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well... I could tell you some more things about consensus and NPOV, but to avoid confusion, sure, let's shift to say WP:3RR ... if 20 people congregate on the talk page for that page, and collectively decide to mark the page as an essay. What consequences would that have, in practice? Could you revert them, for instance? --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

If you really need to walk me through a hypothetical rose garden to make your point, consider the possibility that a cogent point could be described without such effort.

We have already established that disruptive editing is against the rules and blockable, that includes getting 20 people to post at once. We have already established that people can revert your talk page.

What you have given me in the way of debate is the equivalent to showing a picture of a guy robbing a store with an orange sweater and then trying to convince we that orange sweaters are harmful. "Does not follow". The fact is that nobody gets blocked for templating the regulars, it is not our policy, and it is not our practice. - The preceding crossed out section was based on a mis-reading of the previous statement, I will try again. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry? You're veering off on a tangent here. You're saying that starting that poll at WP:DTTR is a blockable offence? Seriously? Hey wake up. Focus! ;-) I don't think you're trying to argue that you should block yourself for disruption :-P

Let's keep the two discussions separate as well, else we REALLY get confused.

Now, if 20 people show up on a page, (always assuming good faith!), specifically, let's say WP:3RR, and there is agreement among these 20 that Wp:3RR should be marked with the essay tag. What is the consequence for wikipedia, according to you? What will happen in future, after they reach that conclusion?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I misinterpreted "if 20 people congregate on the talk page for that page" as 20 people templating a regular at once. Hold on I will re-read. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

If 20 people all showed up at once then I would first look for evidence of canvasing or sock puppetry. The debate would go on for at least a day, and yes if the majority still thought it should be an essay then that is what it would be. If the consensus is that it should be an essay then that is what happens, of course that consensus can change. Of course such a consensus is not likely to form. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Alright, so, continuing... 20 people have arrived at 3RR over the course of one fine week, and now have marked the page as an essay. However, WP:AN3RR still gets posts, and people still get blocked for violations. Now one admin finally notices that the 3RR page is marked as an essay, and casually replaces the tag with policy again. Is he entitled to do so? --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Admins don't get to decide if something is an essay or not. The fact is that there is not going to be a consensus that 3RR becomes an essay unless Wikipedia changes drastically, therefore any hypothetical situation drawing on it, yet still assuming the rest of Wikipedia is the same is going to result in absurdity. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

To simplify, short of foundation issues, consensus determines if a page is a rule or opinion. Please apply that simple formula to further hypothetical questions. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, to continue the situation: 20 people together decided it should be marked as an essay, and 1 person reverted them (who for instance happened to be the "admin on duty" at AN3RR that day, thus knowing that people were still being blocked) . This is a statistically possible situation [*] (and becomes more likely as our number of editors grows). If you have some issues believing this situation is credible, imagine instead that there are only say ... 12 people in support of changing the tag to essay. This improves the odds of such a situation occurring considerably.

You are quite right about it being unlikely that 3RR would become an essay unless wikipedia changes drastically. Our admin in the example knows this, and that's part of the rationale he posts on the talk page, right after making his edit.

What happens next? Will these 20 (or 12 :-P ) people be successful in keeping WP:3RR marked as essay? Is WP:3RR an essay at this point in time? Why or why not?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 15:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC) [*]The odds of this occurring are actually larger than mere chance would suggest, because people tend to congregate in areas of interest. This is part of the flash crowd effect that makes wikis so powerful

heh, similar situation happening at NFCC as we speak ... 7 editors though, not 20 (and 2 admins rather than 1) . Still. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

MedCab logo advice

Hey Kim, Vassayana suggested I talk to you about the MedCab logg I've made, because it will require permission from the Foundation, can I speak to you on IRC? Thanks. Steve Crossin (talk) (anon talk) 15:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Kim, i can't sign back in to Mibbit, I'll keep trying. Just letting you know :) Steve Crossin (talk) (anon talk) 16:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Balloonman's drama

[19] I have no part in Balloonman's drama. I did not type in bold. It's not "us kids". Just to clarify what you already know. Dorftrottel (talk) 01:49, April 11, 2008

He was responding to you though. :-) *reads the comment he responded to* .. oh hmm, that's actually basically just policy. Carry on then. :-) At most, try see if you can be more diplomatic somehow. <scratches head> Though I don't have any specific tips on how, in this case. --Kim Bruning (talk) 09:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Good faith

Yes indeed, it would be best to assume that on both sides. BTW, it took quite a deal of my huffing and puffing to rewrite the 10 criteria clearly and in a well-formatted way (May 07), so I'm no stranger to intransigence and resistance on that page. They were in an amateurish mess before then.

I'm suprised that if the policy is treated so seriously (like cut crystal, it seems) and is swathed in legal concerns and is central to WP at the highest level, that people don't monitor the talk page more often. That is why I have little sympathy with arguments such as "I missed it".

So, perhaps you can respond to my last comment at the bottom, concerning the way ahead. It does look as though the long-unsatisfactory Cr 8 is coming to a head, and needs to be completely rethought in terms of the level of detail in which it is expressed. Tony (talk) 12:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

NFCC

Sorry, just got home from work. Yeah, no problem with that. Black Kite 16:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with that too. And Kim, I don't disagree with anything in your analysis. I should have reacted to the situation from the get-go with less alacrity on the revert button and more engagement on the Talk page. Best, Dan.—DCGeist (talk) 18:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Cool. Requesting unprotect! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Not NOR (and other double negatives)

How would you improve Wikipedia:These are not original research? Feel free to improve away if you feel the urge. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 06:12, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Talk page wrongly included in category

Can you help? this edit transcluded WP:BRD onto a Talk page in articlespace. Now that Talk-page appears (wrongly) at Category:Wikipedia supplemental essays. I dont know exactly how to fix this, be interested in how it should be done. Thank you --Newbyguesses (talk) 06:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The edit in question had "squiggly brackets" around WP:BRD instead of square ones. The squiggly brackets have the effect of "transcluding" the contents of the WP:BRD page, which imports the categories that were on the WP:BRD page. Something like that, it's late, I changed the squiggles to squares and it seems to have gone away. Mebbe Kim can explain it better... Franamax (talk) 07:50, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The BRD page starts with a call to the {{Supplement}} template, which has an includeonly piece where Category:Wikipedia supplemental essays gets inserted into the page, presumably that's how the super-tranclusion happened. Why the whole BRD page didn't get transcluded into the Ajax talk page is a mystery to me, but I'm happy to poke around the edges. Hopefully I haven't added Kim's page to any inappropriate categories, and please lord let the servers still work after I save this :) Franamax (talk) 08:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

(e-c)-OK, Franamax. I could have done that myself, I guess, but I thought there might be a trick to it. Yeah, it's late, I will double check before I finish up here, you just relax and put your feet up now. No need to wake Kim, mark this one resolved. <smiley>--Newbyguesses (talk) 08:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[20] FYI. --Newbyguesses (talk) 08:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Zucht

Kim ...... hoe ver is het? Ik begin te vrezen dat je echt aan wikipedia verslaafd bent en vergeten bent dat er een echt leven is. Waerth (talk) 10:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

NFC mess

Hi Kim—Your opinion here would be welcome. I really think the policy is next to unworkable at the moment and needs serious attention. Tony (talk) 15:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm Back

About a week ago we were on IRC and two, I say two, of my computers died. I had some time to think about a few things since then and found our conversation was leading toward an interesting turning point. Thats about as vague as I'll be for now. I just didn't want to appear rude in not letting you know why I left. <grin> SynergeticMaggot (talk) 22:38, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:Lectures public Skype chat

Xavexgoem was kind enough to establish a permanent public chat. The link is also included near the top at WP:Lectures. Dorftrottel (harass) 12:01, April 21, 2008

Thank you! You guys rock. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's the promised engraved invitation

See WP:VPP#Using a policy page as a scratchpad to develop a proposal. I didn't know the conversation was moving to VPP now, but this is actually a good time for it, I'll try to get everything on the table. Please invite folks that you think would be interested in the issue; I believe this is the kind of thing the WT:CONSENSUS folks like to talk about. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Wiki reform

I have responded to your comment. STORMTRACKER 94 ^{Go Irish!} 20:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I see now that you are being asked to use fewer smilies.

I'd suggest that the people who like to smile should talk to each other, and cooperate with each other, and, in fact, should organize independently. Those who want to bully and obstruct, let them bully and obstruct each other, the only ones who can prevent us from cooperating are us. We can't actually find consensus unless we have a method that reaches beyond participation bias. *Usually* the participants know better than those who don't participate -- that is why Wikipedia's "rough consensus" (or "local consensus") worked, but ... often enough, they don't, the bullies and fanatics and "ists" take over their areas by simply making it really, really unpleasant for almost everyone else. 'Nuff said for now, I'm working on a ... project. I'm either tilting at windmills, or I'm about to grab a windmill blade and rip the mill out of the ground, a mill that was grinding far too many editors into paste. Won't know which until I finish the paperwork. --Abd (talk) 23:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Smilies mean different things to different people; I think that Kim means them to show he is in good spirits, but I have to work hard to overcome my own bias that they mean he is not really engaged in the discussion. So it's just a favor to me to not use too many smilies in extended conversations with me, since then I can focus on what is being said. I asked because I have discussed lots of things with Kim before, and I wanted to be able to continue the discussion there. If I didn't respect Kim, or if I didn't want to keep talking with him, I would simply ignore the comments that end with smilies.

Kim, I think we actually are in violent agreement that normative policies ought to be avoided. My impression is that you are optimistic that this avoidance is possible. I am more fatalistic that a change is already underway, and unstoppable, in their favor. So the question on my mind is: if I am going to be stuck under these policies, how would I prefer them to be written?

By the way, on the bureaucracy front, you may want to see Wikipedia talk:Gadget. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh wow, that looks like Fun! That seems like a system that can very easily be made to scale, if you approach it correctly. Now I just need time to dive in sometime. --Kim Bruning (talk) 13:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC) And yeah, I smile rather often when on wikipedia. I constantly recognize interesting human behaviors, and find new fascinating ways-of-doing-things. It's totally fun, and totally addictive, and I apologize that I can't help smiling. :-) I'd try to frown more often, but that just wouldn't be sincere. *lost look*

Kim can you stop smiling so much? <grin>

Figured you might want to join in on a discussion and even see the first request for checkuser to be translcuded on RfA. :) SynergeticMaggot (talk) 13:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look! --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC) Ah, my tendency towards smiley abuse is once again discovered. O:-)

Nevermind Kim. Deskana removed it from RfA and blanked the request. I'm not sure if I'm bold enough to revert just yet. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 14:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't revert a revert, of course. Now's the time to talk with the people who showed up. Apparently this one still has a ways to go before it makes it to community consensus status. That's totally normal though. Do your best and have fun! --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:35, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Nope. There wasn't a first revert. I was pondering a revert of the blanking but I've decided not to. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 15:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

LOL. Ok "reversal" then. You're not going to wikilaywer, are you? ;-) <looks at you from corners of eyes> --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Never! (+/- maybe one day). SynergeticMaggot (talk) 15:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		Because big words really do have big consequences.[21] JaakobouChalk Talk 16:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: returning fire

I'd be perfectly happy to discuss things with you publicly. My (ongoing) travel has unfortunately limited my ability to respond to your points in the current discussion in detail, for which I must apologize.

But, to briefly answer your question: I would say that I hold such an opinion because I am an arbitrator—because, in other words, I spend much of my time dealing with the most odious examples of Wikipedian behavior, and because I tend to deal with practical policy enforcement rather than theoretical policy writing. With all due respect, I think you don't have enough exposure to the reprehensible activity that regularly occurs on Wikipedia.

It is all very well to argue about whether policy should, in general, be descriptive or prescriptive, and so forth. But the fact of the matter is that a significant number of key policies function indistinguishably from normative ones in practice, even if they are not necessarily written that way. "Thou shalt not, or else" is a fundamental principle that pervades administrative actions, dispute resolution mechanisms, and so forth. It's not that editors don't do X; it's that they do do X, and get banned for it.

More generally, it's my firm belief that some policy is much easier to understand for the average editor if it's written in an normative manner. "Don't proclaim that your fellow editors are vile sub-humans deserving extermination" is more obvious than some vaguely-worded non-normative variant thereof. ("Editors that proclaim that other editors are vile sub-humans are generally banned from the project"? But even that is merely a fig-leaf over a what is very much a prescriptive underlying policy.)

And once we have such essentially normative policy—deviation from which results in Unpleasant Consequences^TM—it becomes necessary that we have some reasonable way of modifying it other than deviating from it unilaterally. Kirill 18:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Kim, help me out regarding a recent non-vote on TOR accounts

I've got this vague memory reading through WP:VPP a month or two ago that a "vote" passed 1-0 to allow TOR accounts to register. True? One of them just got indef blocked after causing some trouble in our WT:MOSNUM discussions. None of us are particularly happy having to deal with this. Has there been any subsequent discussion that you know of? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:17, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Heh no. The Wikipedia_talk:IP_block_exemption (which was VERY adequately advertised , very much ahead of time! ), is about something else.

There's this corner case where you have a valid, unblocked account, and yet your ip-address is banned for whatever reason (this can happen if you're trying to use an anonymizing service, or if you are an editor in good standing editing from a particularly obstreperous school, for instance). Editors in good standing can request for the wiki to still allow them to log in, in that case. It wouldn't even visibly hurt if the wiki behaved that way by default, so it's rather uncontroversial.

In conclusion, if you've got one of them familiar trolls tooling around trying to avoid blocks via tor, ZAP 'EM! Have fun! ;-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 15:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I read the links from that page, I'm a little more clued in now ... a little :) Thanks. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Governance question

Would you object to any system that made it impossible for any minority to kill a change in policy development? That made all the individual personalities that currently dominate various policy areas completely irrelevant, as individuals? Why, or why not, if I can ask? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 22:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The question confuses me. How do you think that policy is currently "made"? --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC) I'm worried about the steamrolling the minority part there though ...

You and I are already in agreement in this, remember from last year? :) Policy is either someone writing down a practice that is already done, describing it, and the community supports both of those; or policy is a bright new idea someone pencils down, that the community supports it, and it becomes the law of the land as well.

As far as minorities, they get steamrolled constantly here; consensus is not intended to be all-inclusive and never will be. If a super-vocal 5 people oppose an RFA, and 80 support, does the RFA fail is the 5 can't be swayed? What if 80 support a block on a fellow, but 5 oppose? What if 80 support a modification to WP:N but 5 oppose? Does the proposed change not happen if the 5, or 10 can't be swayed? Should those 5 or 10 have the authority or ability to blockade the proposed change unless they can be swayed? We're no more an experiment in democracy than we are one in social interaction and negotiation/discussion... Lawrence Cohen § t/e 22:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) But all these community pages are not the bread-and-butter of wikipedia. Have you heard of these strange things called articles? :-) Though even on RFA and such pages where rough consensus is used, one or more people can turn things around, when that is warranted. Pages like WP:N , and recently when I edited on WP:NPOV, well, those pages work just like articles again, and a couple of clueful people can make a big difference. And that's a good thing! --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC) the strength of argument overrides numbers. From time to time people say I'm dreaming that fact... and then I have to go and prove them wrong again, when I really should be coding :-P<sigh>

Yes, they can turn things around with strong arguments, but strong arguments alone do not carry the day. I can have a strong view on a policy change for WP:N, that might be incredibly sound, and 10 people may agree with me. But if the other 70-90 don't, what then? Do I get to ram my change through? Thats the problem--consensus doesn't scale for this sort of thing, and most of these pages are unwatched by a wide variety of people. You get all the policy wonks and people that spend 85% of their time on project space only in most discussions. Putting it all in as visible a space as RFA or ANI would draw in a wide array of people with diverse views into a structured discussion to see what a "true" consensus from this site's user is. It depowers the policy wonks as they don't get to "decide" anything per se, but their views if sound can still sway all the new "voters". I think thats the point. This way, only true community consensus will fly, and no one small microcosm of editors gets power over policy in any direct way. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

70-90 people won't show up all at once. But say that they do. You need to convince each of these people about the merits of your idea (and get the other 10 supporters to help). If you fail, that's that. If you succeed, you win the day.

But 70-90 is a huge number, at which point any kind of wiki-activity becomes impossible (it's getting really close to Dunbar's number). Putting it all in a visible space like RFA or ANI would send you way past Dunbar's number. Dunbar's number is for people what critical mass for uranium, if you go past it without some kind of moderator ... BOOM! ;-)

So Don't Do That.

Now if you can get people to show up over time instead (as documented by WP:SILENCE), you can slowly but calmly work out your differences as per WP:CCC, in a calm, controlled way. But you don't need to foist all this work on everyone all at once in the first place. All you need is for some people to document what the actual policy already is in the community, and you're done. It only takes one person to correct a mistake, not 1000. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC) Note that by some lucky accident, the wiki seems to be one of the most effective moderator systems ever invented. Strange!

But this still assumes that consensus is dependent on convincing everyone to follow your lead. RFA is broken, but its format and structure are outstanding. 1) Here is my suggestion, and why you should go for it. 2) We have these questions about your suggestion. 3) Here are my answers. 4) I support this idea! 5) I oppose this idea! 6) Whats the final consensus? Done. Centralized, for Maximum Visibility. What is wrong with a wide array of people deciding on policy?

I keep asking, would you mind answering? Is there anything wrong with an idea that takes policy control away from the policy cliques that currently dominate them? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

RFA is broken, because the format and structure are broken. I used to give automatic support to anyone who reformatted their RFA, because it demonstrated they knew that fact. Then people began to frown upon that. Then I stopped caring about RFA.

I must have missed that question, because I've never encountered this clique you speak of... or have I.... hmmm Name names? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

We have to disagree then; I love the RFA format. Discussion for the sake of discussion is a waste of everyone's time. Discussion structured to achieve ends that benefit Wikipedia = good. I listed examples on the governance page. You still haven't answered my question. Let me rephrase it. Is there anything wrong with an idea that takes policy control and strictly places it in the hands of the community in a centralized location, to prevent any possible minority or small group from impeding the will of the wider community? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:34, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that discussion must go somewhere, that's what mediation always tries to achieve too. You state that RFA is broken, but then don't think to blame the system? Alright... it's your logic.

There are several things wrong with your rephrased question, yes.

• centralized locations should be avoided on wikipedia, for fear of passing dunbar's number
• The group of clueful old people on wikipedia is a rapidly shrinking group, as people leave and people join every day, you would be denying their input too. You would be denying input from groups of experts in diverse fields, those are cliques too. In fact, the wikipedia community consists entirely of small cliques, and locking out small cliques... who will be left to have a say? First_they_came...
• So who is this community that's left? Aren't you proposing placing policy control in the hands of some commission? :-)
• So you are assuming that the actions you propose would prevent the will of the wider community to be impeded. I don't think so. I think the medicine is worse than the malady here. You'd place the wider community into an absolute deadlock, and the will of the "wider community" will be unheard, and the will of the minority will be unheard.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 23:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Centralized discussion is key so that the policy wonks don't control all the discussion. Someone mailed me Radiant! as an example, yourself and Until 1=2 could be another. "Old hands" are not the best hands in all situations. How would this scenario possibly exclude anyone? I'm not advocating putting a "commission" in charge of anything. Read my example and please respond there. My interpretation of everyone's feedback, if I'm understanding everyone right, would basically de-power the policy wonks, and that would be the only drawback. If currently 5-10 "old people" tend to dominate control over a given policy page, this new sort of model would make them--you, Radiant, and Until, for example--just one of many. Everyone exactly equal in weight of your base voice, and base value as a contributor. Your history, my history: doesn't matter. Only the argument we present on the centralized discussion for others to digest. Kirill's proposal is actually rather clever as it's an enforced wiki-way, that would force all users to be exactly equal in policy decisions, unless they present a truly evocative and insightful commentary. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Centralized systems grant ultimate power to policy wonks (and giving them just 1 central place to control is handing it to them on a platter). Discussion of the canonical example might cause you to invoke Godwin's law (although IIRC Godwin says that this case would be permissible :-) ). A decentralized system is less prone to subversion. This is one of many reasons why modern governance texts support decentralized governance, and why centralized management is mostly discouraged, even in military circles, to a large extent. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Check here. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 22:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Supplemental question: would it be a bad thing if the so-called old-timers had no more policy weight or authority than anyone else? I think not. My voice is entitled to as much power as yours. Or Raul's. Or Slim's. Or Risker, or Jehochman, or Ned Scott, or Until, or Sidaway, or Giano, or anyone else on any policy matter. We are all meant to be equal on policy matters. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't have more weight or authority than you do. But I do have some bumps experience you don't, so it might be a good idea to learn from my mistakes wisdom.

People are all equal, but their ideas can have differing merit. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Interaction between avatars and the underlying personality

• NPR, Slashdot

Does the assumed persona/avatar of a user online affect the "real" personality? Where can one draw the line? I thought you'd be interested in this. ~Kylu (u|t) 22:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I haven't gotten any prettier... ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

Is editing the primary method of determining consensus, or is discussion? [22] Hiding T 11:34, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Both are important elements. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I think I covered it then. ;) Hiding T 19:25, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

\o/ --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

ZUCHT!

Ik weet het niet [[23]]. Begin April zou je voor 7 April alles gedaan hebben. Ik heb toen in een progress report aan mijn vader en de investeerder gemeld dat je alles half april af zou hebben. Het is morgen 1 Mei. De todo list is nog niet af, er is nog niets aan gedaan. Mijn vader vraagt zich af waarom. Ik kan geen dingen zelf doen voor die lijst af is, dat hebben we in Maart al besproken. Mijn vader eist een nieuw progress report met daarin progressie van mijn kant. Ik krijg anders geen cent meer. Wat dus betekend dat als mijn laatste geld nu op is, tegen aanstaande maandag. Dan ben ik bankroet. Nu meld je in je laatste mail dat je eerst ook werk voor Berto moet doen. En vervolgens hoor ik weer niets. Maar ik zie wel alle tijd die je op wikipedia besteed. Ik weet niet meer wat ik moet zeggen of doen. Ik zit nu helemaal klem. En ik ben niet blij. Absoluut niet blij. Waerth (talk) 23:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Lectures#Proposal

The above link will link you to a current event that should be addressed on the Lectures talk page. Oh and hi kim! SynergeticMaggot (talk) 02:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, Kim

It's AnimeFreak. What's goin' on? Give me a holler at general@afreak.ca with your ICQ or something. :) -- Colin 70.71.230.173 (talk) 06:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Lecture

Due to an immediate personal emergency, I will not be able to make the lecture. I am so sorry for the short notice. Circumstances are completely unexpected. Vassyana (talk) 14:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Rosalind Picard

Your name came up there as someone who has contacted the subject of the BLP article. I hate to keep asking you to look at things, but if you're already involved, any consensus-finding skills you can donate would be very helpful there. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Pssst

[24]. I reverted your change to BLP earlier. :) Lawrence Cohen § t/e 16:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

That's fine. I'll give folks 24 hours to come up with evidence that this practice is indeed helpful and not harmful. That should be pretty easy, if they do use it as often as they say. (I've just never observed it working so far, but that could easily be just me, right? :-) ) --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you consider "working," but 3RR or no 3RR, I will never allow a revert that I believe to be libelous, defamatory, privacy-invading, insinuating or inherently unfair to stay on this encyclopedia. If that means they pry the admin bit from my cold, deadminned fingers... then that's the day Wikipedia dies for me. The day "civility" and "fair play" outweigh the idea that our biographical subjects are entitled to fair and accurate treatment is the day this project jumps the shark. JMO. FCYTravis (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen at least one case in very recent history, where this 3RR exemption actually reduced the accuracy of a BLP, and I was biting my nails because people who have been in the news were actually invited to look over email, while the entire edit war was ongoing.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to show that the practice works to indeed ensure that BLPs are accurate (or failing to show this, cease the practice). If you are certain that it does, show me. Alright? --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Mea culpa

I am interested in your feedback and possibly collaboration on an essay I am working on. For some reason I think your special unusual creative way of thinking will be productive on this page: User:Until(1 == 2)/Mea culpa _(1 == 2)^Until 19:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Delay

This probably pushed things back considerably and will keep it locked for a bit longer. Maybe I am mistaken, but my impression was that things were well on their way to consensus, which was broken by that edit. Oh dear ... Well it will just have to progress along its natural path. Interesting to watch however.--Filll (talk) 22:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Could be, could not be, it's hard to tell. (And I'm not always after consensus at any price anyway.) It was worth a shot. We'll see what happens. <crosses fingers> --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

FYI

[25] Lawrence Cohen § t/e 15:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Can we talk?

On Irc that is. I'll be in wikipedia-en if you have time. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 16:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What's up?

Haven't said hello in a while, so I thought I'd just say hi! ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 03:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Updated IPEXEMPT

Over to you. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:IP block exemption/log

Hi Kim. Thanks for setting this page up. Can, I ask, though -- what does this mean? Thanks! Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 21:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It means that since use of the log is entirely voluntary, it does not provide a complete overview of all actions. So any statistics people might want to do on the log will be biased towards people who tend to enjoy writing reports to logs. --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

You had mail

Hi, Kim. Did my e-mail of May 6 get mislaid, or are you snowed under with them? Or ignoring me? Bishonen | talk 21:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC).

Is this already a statement in policy?

"Don’t close discussions that you participated in. This applies especially in community discussions that lead to administrative actions."

Is this already written down? Perhaps is has been too obvious (but apparently not!). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

CFD got fat

Thought you might find this interesting. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Urk. One at a time. Is it ok for me to look later? I also need to code these days ^^;; --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

Caution, you are edit warring. 3RR is a bright line, not an entitlement. This (second) revert is not a good idea, in my view. You may find yourself blocked if you revert the reversion of your removal again. ++Lar: t/c 01:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Eh? Today I made exactly one edit after long standing discussion, then reverted exactly once today. (check dates). :-) I have made a total of three edits to the page *this entire week*. If that's edit warring, I wish more people would edit war that way ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

*@#&@*# subst asploded!

They don't seem to handle external links very well =). xenocidic (talk) 19:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Gottit! Thanks :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:53, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey there

You might want to check your talk page on Meta. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 10:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Your suggestion of me being disruptive in the BLP discussion

I do not appreciate your suggestion that my participation in the BLP discussion constitutes being disruptive. I have been perfectly polite and patient thus far. I have proposed a staw poll to see if there is a current consensus for removing the 3RR exception from the BLP policy. The poll is ongoing and people are voting. There is nothing disruptive or untoward about that. If you think that the poll is irrelevant, you are free to say so and to start your own. But please do not try to strong-arm the discussion and make unfounded accusations against other editors. You are not making any friends this way. Respectfully, Nsk92 (talk) 17:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Flowcharts, again

Hi, Kim I posted some more about flowcharts at WP:CON. I was just wondering: inkscape, would that be 33.4 MB, and 4hr 43min to download? --NewbyG (talk) 01:34, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Yikes! You have a slow modem? :-( --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Correction. I just cancelled. It was up to 9 HR 6 Min 30 sec! That makes me feel rather ill. --NewbyG (talk) 01:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

:-/ I could snail mail it to you? (also , several browsers & soforth allow continuation) --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks, Kim. The thing is, I share this computer, it is not mine, and I am not really supposed to install programs anyway, even if they are freeware. I just thought I would try, if it was no big deal. But I wouldn't get time to look at the program and learn it, anyway, under these circumstances. (Browser just crashed now, drats. I am not all that fussed with this Hi-Tech gadgetry just now, anyway, I can tell you). (smiley) --NewbyG (talk) 02:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh wow. ^^;; I'm so used to broadband and free software by now, I never really imagined someone would still be on the other side of that particular divide :-/ --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:51, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

is it bad to let consensus form without gaming and manipulation?

In regards to my comments here: 1st, 2nd, 3rd. You did the same exact thing at Wikipedia talk:Governance reform.

Two questions for you:

1. Is there a problem with letting the masses decide without coaching and manipulation?
2. Do you have a problem with a solution that makes any one individual editor, no matter who they may be experience-wise, irrelevant to the end result of a discussion?

I am utterly baffled how anyone who professes so much love for consensus is so unwilling to let discussion and consensus form on it's own, without the equivalent of yourself sticking it's hand up it's rear like a puppetmaster. I'm sorry, but thats simply how I feel. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 03:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

My feelings exactly! I have not seen anything like this on WP before. Nsk92 (talk) 04:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen this situation crop up once before, at the governance reform page.

I've also seen it crop up somewhere else today. Someone in the Not The Wikipedia Weekly chat told me I was "making peoples heads explode".

Then he (unwisely) chose to demonstrate. He decided to explain the same thing I was trying to put forward , and he was going to explain it to the NTWW crew.

Before long, there was a huge amount of back and forth, with this person asking folks to please slow down each time, and no, that's not what he meant at all, and no, that was a side path, and...

So in an unrelated chat about the same subject, but between totally different people (I was just watching, and no one else from the debate was there ) , the same thing happened. <scratches head>

We totally should have recorded that and posted it on the wiki. Maybe we can try it again at some point.

I'm not saying that that doesn't mean the situation couldn't be handled better, because I can see that this is non-ideal. On the other hand, it's very strange that other people can actually replicate the circumstances so easily, with people flowing into similar roles. --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to say, and I mean it in the most friendly and respectful way I can, I understand the person who made the comment about their head exploding. As an experiment, I would suggest that you don't post anything to the BLP talk page for 24 hours. I would be very interested to see what will happen with the debate there during that time. Nsk92 (talk) 05:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh no, that one person actually got it pretty easily. Explaining it is what did him in ;-). People have been complaining about policy maintenance issues, and now I've clearly seen what they mean. You're probably right. That'll do for now. --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:20, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

...that doesn't really answer my questions... Lawrence Cohen § t/e 05:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

.... I plead the 5th on those questions, they're very leading. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Tangential question

What would you say or do if I spent the next 1,000+ edits of mine building Kirill's model of goverenance reform/policy committee in my user space--and I mean building it, the whole shebang, subpages, transcludes, workpages, everything that would be needed to make it work, a full-blown live Project, which is about 4-5 pages, and then move-dumped it all into project space when it was done to put it live, announced it, and a majority of users began using it? If no one used it, it would obviously be dead. But if suddenly a hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred users joined in: what then? What would you do? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 04:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I was actually trying to help you do something like that before, you know. I also think you won't actually need 1000 edits... that's quite a lot!

Just like any other project, as long as your project doesn't prevent other people from editing, I wish you good luck. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

So you would have no problem with such a project changing the way policy is determined and defined, then? And would accept a wide mass consensus to support it, if one formed? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 05:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be possible to compete. --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

If consensus shifted that policy be handled via that method, how would one compete? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 06:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't count your chicks before they're hatched. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 06:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Some help or advice please

Could you find the time to have a look at Wikipedia talk:Fiction and WT:NOT. Both pages have been protected, and editors are making comments to the effect that we shouldn't be editing them in order to build a consensus, we should be discussing until, I don;t what to be honest. I'm not really fussed on what the consensus ends up being, but it seems like both pages are getting log-jammed through actions I don't think are in keeping with WP:CONSENSUS. Maybe you can weave some magic or give me some advice. I don't quite have your zen like calm. All the best, Hiding T 13:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I happen to think that continued work on Wikipedia:Plot summaries is our best way forward on this issue. Wikipedia's guidance on plot summaries is painfully incomplete. No wonder people are edit-warring over it.--Father Goose (talk) 18:59, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Hiding, looking in, I think the problem is that there actually is no consensus. And unless people compromise, I don't see how there will be. Obviously, my view is that the other guys should move to a compromise near my position, but at this point I'll take the middle. FG, you are probably right to work from the smaller issues up, at this point. DGG (talk) 21:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm well aware of the problems. What is wearying me is that, as Kim and others have demonstrated, endless discussion breaks the consensus model. Protecting a page enforces discussion and thus breaks consensus making. I am also wearied by people who claim you cannot edit a policy page. Thank you, Kim, for looking in. Hiding T 13:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

Kim, I have definately moved closer to your position over the last several months. However, we are not and may likely never be perfectly aligned on many issues. However, I think that the distinctions are more subtle. I would like to spend some time cutting the bulk from the Consensus page, while retaining the meaning. Can we work together on that? Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 21:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Your last string of edits at Consensus

Good show! You hacked the crap out of the lead. This page is becoming so much more clear and concise. --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

3RR

No per my interpretaion I did not exceed the 3RR rule, but I would if I went further. She and I worked together in collaboration this morning but I edited her then you then you. Please see my message at the talk page. I'm off to crack open that IPA in your honor. I think that we've done some great work together today. --Kevin Murray (talk) 21:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

BLP

• (response:) I left a closing message on the BLP page. I hope you will take them in the spirit they were offered. I don't think it was a failure to AGF at all, but to point out that the changes (or whatever you choose to call them) weren't being properly defended. Thanks for the discussion. Faith (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

• (response:) Happens to the best of us. Regardless of current practises on other articles, policy revision (in general, and especially at BLP) should be more carefully considered (as it affects the wiki as a whole, rather than only a single article or its offshoots/parent article), and statistical review cannot be determined accurately on such a small sampling. The issue on BLP is so strong because staying within 3RR and not edit warring when the edit concerns "X blogged so&so's sweater in this movie was actually dark pink instead of red" is far less harmful to all concerned (especially the fictitious subject and WP), than technically violating 3RR to keep removing (until a "block and lock") "X blogged so&so (real person) was a paedophile (or w/e)". Even "X blogged a suggestion that so&so might be a paedophile" or "X accused so&so in his blog of being one" should be removed until the person is tried, convicted, and a RS reports it (and then only if it's WP:NOTE). Stronger issues need much stronger support for change, even if one editor thinks the change might be for the better. It has to be empirically proven above assertion, and the data just didn't do that at all, sorry. I honestly think if you approached this by having great statistics in hand, that spoke for themselves, you would have found far more consideration, if not support, for your changes, especially if you thought ahead enough to bring to the table an alternative (and better) mechanism to put in place of the exemption. The problem ultimately became that you found yourself painted into a corner defending a lack of evidence by turning the tables, something which became very obvious. Don't be completely discouraged; Regroup, re-examine, research, reapply :) Faith (talk) 06:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

• I don't know where you got "appeal to authority" out of telling him to check and see if there was an Arbcom decision; notice I said "most likely acting on the committee's decision", not that he was acting alone as a better than you committee member, which would be an appeal to authority. --Faith (talk) 16:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Might need your input and clarification

At this discussion of the place of AGF Challenge exercises and similar exercises as part of RfA here.--Filll (talk | wpc) 17:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Asset voting

Kim, there is some discussion here about guidelines, which I have seen interpreted with increasing rigidity. As I know this is an concern of yours, and that you are a highly experienced Wikipedian, besides being God Yourself, so I thought you might have something to say about the principles involved. This is an edit of mine where I bring up the guidelines vs. purpose of the project issue. This is not an attempt to canvass any sort of vote on the article itself, and I have no idea which way you would !vote if you decide to. I'm simply interested in your comment on the usage of guidelines as if they trump the mention of facts that are not controversial at all, and that can be verified, beyond doubt, and without any reasonable disagreement over interpretation, by reference to primary sources. (Mailing lists are a kind of primary source.) --Abd (talk) 19:12, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Lectures

I keep meaning to reply to your messages. Have been having some difficulties, and hadn't been on WP for a while either; I must confess I forgot about the IRC setup. :-/ If it matters, you can still access it here using the IP address... I need to get this sorted out properly. I'll let you know. Lectures going well, I hope? --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 12:42, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

non-admin-adminitis?

Oh Gott. Kann man daran erkranken, ohne jemals admin gewesen zu sein? I believe I display at least 90% of the listed symptoms. dorftrottel (talk) 04:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Ja, es heisst nur "adminitis" weil es zuerst in admins entdeckt werde. --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:13, 13 June 2008 (UTC) sorry for my awful german :-P

Are you still away?

Hi Kim, I just stopped by to tell you how much I appreciate the work you have done over the years at Wikipedia:Consensus. I stop by there every so often to see what is happening, and often leave thinking "Kim has it under control". If in fact, you are away and/or do not have the time to keep an eye on the page, please let me know, and I will make an effort to patrol it with more diligence. Thanks again. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 07:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Do please keep an eye on it. I'm slowly handing things off to different people. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:24, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

prefixindex'd!

Your version of GMN is slightly different than WP:GMN; both created on the same date ("how does it actually work in the background", in your version, has me worried I'll break something). I'm having really difficulty here. I've emailed Turnbull, but haven't gotten a reply yet... what is the system? I think I know the basics and some of the intricacies, but before I head out and start this, I need to know if there's something left out of the documentation on the GMN page. I'm having several problems with this, besides hidden bits of the system:

1. Everyone I know is tied up. I'm worried about taking this to the village pump, given the Taking Things Too Too Seriously culture that lingers in the air like a bad fart. "Guerrilla" has generated complaints; "medcab is terrible" say some, "so why another DR process?"; right now, some folks are complaining about the cheekiness of medcab (like the "cabal approved" stamp, or the "cabal" at all)
2. Even with people, how to build inroads? And there are a lot of inroads to be built. Even the first step...
3. Turnbull epitomized decorum. He's so good at it, in fact, that I'm afraid to touch anything for fear of coming across as crass :-p

And that damn template still worries me.

That said, I've been working on the project page, trimming the template (still renders), changing the max wording from 500 to 150 to 300 (I'm on a roll!)... past that I'm literally at a loss. Any info on the actual system, getting folks, and inroads is appreciated, time forgiving. Xavexgoem (talk) 06:27, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Seddon onboard, though :-) Xavexgoem (talk) 11:34, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Went bold. Removed historic template, have a few people... the template is invisible now, which seemed to be the consensus. We're still working out the hows, but it's looking good :-) Xavexgoem (talk) 12:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

++ --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on the arbcomm

Since it happens so rarely, it's worth noting. I strongly agree with you. Guettarda (talk) 17:05, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment

Would you consider weighing in with your experience and thoughtful opinions here: Wikipedia talk:Etiquette#A gamesmanship of inoculation? Thanks. — Justmeherenow (   ) 18:33, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Especially with regard any clarifications, refinements, or suggestions that come to your mind as to wording. — Justmeherenow (   ) 18:59, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Civility?

[26]? I don't understand your edit summary. The comment appeared to me to be designed to cause trouble, hence the removal. I don't know what you mean by "these circumstances" and "non-removal>>> civility". Can you please explain what you meant? Thanks. Acalamari 21:18, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

FT2 has some political difficulties to resolve at the moment. Generally in those cases it's much much more important to ensure that no messages get removed from a user talk page (even irrelevant or uncivil ones) than it is to ensure civility. It's a long story why (and I'm not sure I'm even sure exactly why), but in cases with similar circumstances, removing comments can cause a lot of embarrassment for (literally) no reason whatsoever.

I won't revert you again if you remove again, and if you're even remotely lucky nothing will happen. Or, if it's not your day (or FT2's) it can blow up, and you'll still be wondering what happened 12 months later. Better to be safe than sorry, imho. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:24, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the explanation; and no, I won't revert. Even if it didn't cause any problems with FT2, reverting you would be, in itself, unproductive. Thanks. Acalamari 21:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

God Told Me To Do It

Due to A Series Of Unlikely Explanations I've experienced A Distinct Loss of Gravitas and, whilst remaining a Congenital Optimist, I am forced to ask: What Are The Civilian Applications?

P.S. I changed my username. Again. --Jenny (recently changed username) 08:12, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts

After our conversation yesterday, and a long train ride today, I put some of my thoughts down at User:MBisanz/Arbcom, any comments you have are more than welcome. MBisanz ^talk 01:40, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

"OmbCom"

User:Bstone is poking at his WP:OmbCom proposal a bit more, considering its relevance to the recent brouhaha. You were talking there last time and usually have some good viewpoints on policy-related things, so thought I'd give a shout. I wonder if it should be re-announced on the Wikipedia:Village pump? I don't want the proposal getting a "rush job" because of a "we have to DO SOMETHING" impulse, as I commented on the Wikipedia talk:Ombudsmen Committee. Anyway, have a peek. I still want to see some sort of sample so we can see how it's to work, myself. --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 11:42, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Ottava Rima

I saw your comment on ANI, and I think you might be incorrect in some of your assumptions about Ottava.

Ottava may have the material in front of him when he writes, but he subjectively lifts passages and interprets what is being said by sources, instead of simply stating what the source says. See as an example Talk:A Song to David#What Rose States. Ottava tries to justify what he added to the article by ignoring the context of what is being said in the source in favor of simply taking the parts that suit his conclusion (as I show). His response is to claim that in the source, the author is "mocking" dissenters, and bases it on interpretation because he supposedly knows the author (which is COI), at which point there was no point in continuing the discussion.

Fundamentally, this started out as a question of whether or not Christopher Smart was a Freemason, and whether his book A Defence of Freemasonry was notable enough to be included in the WikiProject. As far as I can tell, Arthur Sherbo wrote many articles on Smart in the 1960s in which he definitively claimed Smart was a Freemason. Rose, writing in 2004 or 2005, is not as sure. Ottava claims records were lost (on what basis I don't know), and then suddenly "finds" sources he can't actually produce to verify his claim. What he's doing is flailing around in a subject area he knows nothing about (Freemasonry) and refuses to be corrected by people who have more experience in the field.

This is all evidenced in the thread noted on ANI, and it's the only way I can explain Ottava claiming a book I never heard of (Defence of Freemnasonry), which was related to an event I most definitely have heard of (the Antients-Moderns split in English Freemasonry in 1717), had an effect to cause another event 48 years later (the reunification in 1813). It's also the only way I can explain why Ottava claims an appearance of the book title in a footnote in a so-called "Masonic history" whose reliability is possibly questionable makes it notable, and the only reason I can think of why Ottava would claim "Phoenix Lodge No. 9 is authoritative on British Freemasonry" (a group I've never heard of) when in fact Quatuor Coronati 2076 has been researching Masonry for almost 120 years, and has an established record of requiring a scholarly background to write for them in the first place (they require an MA at minimum).

So it's definitely unrepentant, incivil, and tendentious editing on Ottava's part, and I don't believe there's anything to be gained in discourse. He simply will not take no for an answer if it isn't what he wants to hear.MSJapan (talk) 07:05, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, this will probably be the last time I look at a case for quite a while. :-)

I can't apologize for Ottava Rima's ham-handedness for him, of course, he's going to have to do that himself. Even so, I have been explaining to him where he's going wrong. He didn't want to listen to me before; now that he has been blocked by some rather experienced admins, he's starting to realize maybe he should have listened. I figure it's never too late to learn ;-)

Possibly this ham-handedness has made you prejudiced towards what he has been saying. It's always important to doublecheck oneself when one is irritated (which is wont to make one yet more irritated, of course :-P ) <scratches head> Let's see...

Which sources has Ottava Rima failed to produce? Unless I've been told stories (unlikely, but it does happen), perhaps I can obtain them for you?

You're telling me you haven't read one of the sources which Ottava Rima referenced. Could you get that out of the library and check?

Two sources you mention both did similar research to what Ottava Rima did, and one reported that Christopher Smart was definitely a Freemason, and the other reported he was uncertain, correct?

I'd take that to mean that the topic isn't quite cut-and-dried, but instead that there is some room for interpretation, at the least. It certainly means you can't dismiss claims that Christopher Smart was a Freemason out of hand. Am I reading this correctly?

I've gone and done some own reading, and the very first reference I find with some meat to it is The arcane schools, John Yarker, Page 478 (And checking John Yarker shows that he was a freemason in the 17th century) . I'm admittedly not an expert on the subject, but apparently the 1765 document in question was one of several that came out at the same time, criticizing certain practices and supporting others (ancients vs moderns?). Reading onwards a bit, it does look like people took the criticism to heart and set off some chain of events. Whether or not this is a chain of events that lead to (or contributed to) the reunification of 1813 you speak of, I do not know at the moment. But just from a random google search, it seems that at least some of what Ottava Rima is saying (and you are contesting) has some grounds in sources.

Oh, right. I'm sure that my answer wasn't quite what you wanted to hear from me, of course. ^^;; Sorry about that. Still, do you have access to a library where you can obtain the 1765 document? It seems central to the current dispute, and might be worth checking then.

In the mean time, I'll keep whacking Ottava Rima over the head with a cluebat. ;-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 12:57, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

There is some room for interpretation of Smart's status, yes, but I tend to put more weight on newer research that is uncertain, especially since the claims Sherbo makes are not provable reliably (because Sherbo's Masonic info is from at best a secondary source, and that source is not always considered credible by Masonic scholars. The problem with earlier Masonic scholarship is that it tends to be fanciful and uncritical. Yarker was a late 19th century Freemason, and an irregular one at that; I'd have to see the contents of the source to see if it's credible given what is factually known.

Given that Smart's contemporaries have records, if he was a member, he should have a record somewhere. Records are extant in England from the formation of the first Grand Lodge in 1717, so the idea that Smart's in particular were "lost" doesn't really hold water.

The book I can't get a hold of easily is the Masonic Records book, though it may be obtainable; I have to check the library next week. I know it has the 1765 work. I'll get back to you on these.

As far as books go, there have been all sorts of books written. I would need to find a paper on the schism itself (which surely exists) to discover the chain of events, though the records reprinted in Gould's History of Freemasonry seem to indicate constant growth until 1813 in both Antient and Modern camps, which would not be indicative of a change in opinion (which is what Ottava's claim rests upon). There are remnants of it today, however - the appellations AF&AM (Ancient Free and Accepted) and F&AM (Free and Accepted) for lodges are indicative of this. MSJapan (talk) 18:20, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

This is getting seriously out of hand - Ottava is doing whatever he can to create the impression that I don't know what I'm talking about every time I disprove his sources. If this isn't POINT, I don't know what is. MSJapan (talk) 03:19, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

"Don't disrupt wikipedia to make a point" is where you deliberately follow a rule in a manner that disrupts wikipedia, to prove that the rule is indeed broken. Can you show me how that applies here?

My personal view is that it looks like you're both convinced that you're right, but you're somehow talking past each other. That's why I proposed to at least postpone the discussion for a while. It might be helpful to see what other people have to bring in, for one.

Also, I should probably talk with each of you separately, to see where the discussion is going wrong.

It could be that the issue is all on Ottava Rima's side, or it could be something else. Either way, I can then report to Ottava Rima what he is doing wrong, and I can report to the wiki community which of you is actually right. :-). --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:37, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

That's fine, but I would request that the block remain in place for the time being; otherwise Ottava is simply going to revert everything to what he wants it to be. Either that, or topic ban him from Christopher Smart until the dispute is resolved, because it will solve the problem in the short-term while we solve it in the long-term. MSJapan (talk) 05:15, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to start a Wikiproject for 18th and 19th century Literature and you will help me. K? Kay. I'm glad thats settled. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 16:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

a bouquet

Here are a few flowers to cheer you up! Jkbaum (talk) 22:09, 17 July 2008 (UTC)