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Revision as of 08:10, 18 November 2006
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| This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BostonMA. |
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This is the user page for BostonMA. Please do not edit this page, except where invited. You are always welcome to have a discussion with me on my user talk page.
tips for the angry new user. (shamelessly stolen from Gamaliel.)
Consideration for others
"Words and images that might be considered offensive, profane, or obscene by other Wikipedia readers should be used if and only if their omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternatives are available. Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
Useful Links
Appreciation
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A Mediation Barnstar
A Barnstar awarded by Striver on 17 October 2006 to BostonMA for keeping his cool and staying on topic during a tough mediation on the Muhammad article talk page regarding the use of pictures on that article. Impressive and inspiring! |
Concerns
Industrial Sabotage of Wikipedia?
Industrial Sabotage is a well documented phenomenon. Industrial sabotage involves the intentional disruption of the business activity of an enterprise. The motives for industrial sabotage vary, but include labor management conflict, extortion, political conflict and commercial competition. It is the last two motives that concern me here. To make it perfectly clear, I do not accuse any individuals or organizations of committing sabotage against Wikipedia. However, it would be naive to assume that industrial sabotage could not occur against Wikipedia, that no organization would have the motive, or that no-one would stoop that low.
Without making any accusations, I would point out that a commercial enterprise, if its revenue were sufficiently threatened, might have an economic interest in disrupting the development of Wikipedia. Disruption motivated by commercial competition might take the forms of constant "churn" of the content of Wikipedia, in an attempt to prevent stable, high quality versions from emerging. It might also take the form of encouraging personalized conflicts with editors, for the purpose of diverting energies, driving editors away etc.
Again, without making any accusations, I would point out that governments, both in their historic practice, and in their proclaimed intentions, have conducted "information" wars. Wikipedia is in a significant position to influence the views of large sections of the world population. A key enhancing factor for that influence is the image of Wikipedia as an open forum, where mis-information may be easily corrected by anyone. This image promotes the perception that the information in Wikipedia is verifiable and ideologically neutral, or must rapidly become so. How could such attributes not be true if anyone is free to make corrections? A government, wishing to surpress critical information, or to add "spin", would thus have an interest in creating an atmosphere within Wikipedia in which frustrates editors, thereby reducing that actual corrective actions upon the content of Wikipedia without sacrificing the appearance of an Encylopedia that anyone can edit.
Neither industrial sabotage from commercial sources, nor from governmental or political sources, need express a consistant point of view. In fact, the promotion of a consistent point of view would likely be a hindrance to such sabotage. Rather, the personalization of conflicts, and arbitrariness and inconsistency in the application of policies would be more useful. Such approaches could both be used to prevent the emergence of stable, high quality articles, and to frustrate editors to reduce the breadth of influence of the general population upon the content of Wikipedia.
What to do?
While it be naive to assume that industrial sabotage could not occur against Wikipedia, that no organization would have the motive, or that no-one would stoop that low, it would be a foolish mistake to jump to conclusions, to assert that any individuals or organizations are engaging in such sabotage without proof. We must assume that editors are acting in good faith, even if we believe those actions to be counter-productive. What is needed is to strengthen the habits of all editors of working toward conflict resolution through dialog. Patient discussion should be used to explain the danger to Wikipedia posed by frequent resort to administrative actions, reliance on super-majority, intimidation etc.
One area that I believe ought to be treated with particular sanctity is the use of NPOV and Disputed templates. When bone-fide disputes exist, either with regards to facts or to neutrality, then NPOV and Disputed tags can warn the public not to assume that an existing text is undisputed. I believe it ought to be a right for any user to place NPOV or Disputed templates on articles, where bone-fide disputes exist. This right ought to be protected, and the placement of such tags on articles with such bone-fide disputes ought not to be used in any adminstrative actions against the editors adding such tags.
DISCUSSIONS
This section contains discussions that I felt needed a home other than the archives. Please do not edit this section. If you have any comments you would like to make regarding these discussion, please make these comments in my user talk page. The discussions may have been reformatted for clarity.
Items to Negotiate, Issues to Resolve
This section contains items that I wish to negotiate with other editors or issues I wish to resolve. The appearance of an item here does not mean that Wikipedia guidelines, policies or etiquette has been violated, nor does it mean that I am angry with the party or parties involved. It only means that I personally have an issue and wish to resolve it. Please do not edit this section. If you wish to resolve or negotiate an issue with me, please do so on my talk page. Resolved/negotiated issues will be removed from this section.
Dbachmann's use of ethnic, national and religious attributes of editors when making negative criticisms
I have an unresolved issue with the Dbachmann. Dbachmann is a very knowledgable and prolific contributor to Wikipedia.
I believe that:
- It is unnecessary to mention the nationality, culture or religion of editors when discussing edits. To gratuitously mention such attributes of editors in the course of criticizing edits has all the appearances of being an insult to those of the mentioned nationality, culture or religion -- it has the appearance of an insinuation that faults an editor may have are somehow related to that editor's nationality, culture or religion. Whether an insult was intended or not, civility dictates avoiding mentioning such attributes.
examples of such comments by DBachmann to be placed here if the issue remains unresolved for a period of time -- dab and I are in active communication at the moment so that may not be necessary.
The edit summary reads in part:
- "o ffs, what is it with this Hindu gerontophilia?".
"O ffs", according to Internet slang means "Oh, for fuck's sake". Gerontophilia in this case means, as far as I can tell, "love of old things". An editor had inserted an edit claiming that "Varanasi is the oldest living city in the world", which is factually incorrect. DBachmann was correct to remove the claim, but it is not only Hindus that love old things.
This comment reads in part:
- "It figures that you should feel so strongly about my comment about "clueless Indians" since you are obviously one of them. This has nothing to do with anti-Indian sentiment, since I obviously recognize that there is plenty of cluelessness in any nation on earth. But I happen to find, empirically, here on Wikipeida, that in few other fields is cluelessness force-fed to people quite as obstinately as in India-related articles."
It is hard not to read this other than as a personal attack on another editor, essentially calling that editor a 'clueless indian'. This comment is rude and insulting to the editor involved. DBachmann acknowledges that there are clueless people of other nationalities. However, even under the assumption that the editor involved is clueless as alleged, it is unnecessary in Wikipedia to make such direct insults, and so it is equally unnecessary to mention the nationality of the editor involved.
Regardless of intent, a reasonable person might surmise that such comments could be interpretted (or 'mis'-interpretted) as an offense. People who insist on their "right" to use language that is likely to be offensive to some, when that language is quite unnecessary for the purposes of communication, show a lack of respect for the feeling of others at best, and contempt for those who may be offended is hardly ruled out.
This comment reads in part:
- "too often I am accused of being a clueless meddling whiteboy by Hindus for being involved in areas where I do have expertise."
I believe that a reasonable person might infer when someone accuses another of being a "clueless whiteboy", that the accuser is consciously or unconsciously racist. I believe that it is therefore not unreasonable for someone to read dbachmann's comment as an accusation that Hindu editors on wikipedia are racist.
Dbachmann has in fact been the target of defacement of his userpage. I don't recall whether the term "whiteboy" was used, but such a term would have been consistent with they type of defacement to which the userpage was subject. There, is thus, at least one person who has thown racial insults at Dbachmann. Based on the content of these defacements, it is also not unreasonable for Dbachmann to assume that the perpetrator was Hindu. (Although one might keep an open mind to the possibility that the perpetrator had some other agenda, and merely seized upon a convenient pretext for his or her actions.)
Dbachmann has been the subject of attack. However, he references this attack as coming from Hindus (plural), and presumably, from the context, he means Hindu editors of Wikipedia. I personally believe that the vast majorities of both Hindu and non-Hindu editors would agree with me that a) Dbachmann is not "clueless", but is highly educated, and b) that the color of his skin has no bearing upon the quality of his contributions. I thus take objection to his comment which could not unreasonably be construed as suggesting that Hindu editors of wikipedia are racist.
I would also like to point out that if Dbachmann suffers from a negative image among some editors, that he might be able to attenuate that negative image by accepting that it is inappropriate behavior for him to make comments such as his "It figures that you should feel so strongly about my comment about 'clueless Indians' since you are obviously one of them."
When administrators and major editors give the impression that it is OK to refer to the ethnicity of of editors when making negative comments, the result is that ordinary editors feel entitled to do the same. For example, in this edit the ethnicity of the previous editor is used in the negative edit summary.
This is a User Page
This is the user page for BostonMA. Please do not edit this page, except where invited. You are always welcome to have a discussion with me on my talk page.