Now and then I tell myself that I can stop whenever I want to. Then something happens to prove how ridiculously hooked I am.
There's even a test for Wikipedia addiction. I'm afraid to take it because I don't want the bad news. Although I speculated about "burnout" a few entries ago, that's only fantasy. Somebody bashes around an article, and off I go.
Last Saturday an admin with 88 gazillion edits suddenly decided the Criticism of Wikipedia article wasn't up to snuff. So he started dumping "citation needed" tags with challenging edit summaries all over the entry. If I could really walk away from WP whenever I want to, I would have ignored the tags. Maybe I would have gotten around to answering the requests after a week or four.
Instead, I feverishly hunted down references to eliminate all the tags. I slapped one reference after another into the article, anxiously trailing behind the admin's requests. Finally, I got everything cited that he wanted cited, and he even left me a thank-you note on the talk page. Which was very nice of him (honest!)
Luckily, it's all too easy to find references for every imaginable criticism of Wikipedia. The Internet is loaded with whines about the encyclopedia. Almost all those whines come from sites with Alexa rankings nine miles below Wikipedia's. Net green eyes, you might say.
A less frantic but still convincing proof of my addiction was the latest article I picked from the wikify list: A Maid of Constant Sorrow. The title intrigued me, because I wanted to know which maid was constantly sorrowing and why.
Turns out it was the title of Judy Collins' first album. I don't even like Judy Collins. Her stuff doesn't rock anywhere near hard enough for my headbanger tastes. But I plowed through many edits to raise the article to acceptability. I even uploaded an image of the album cover. And uploading a file nowadays is real proof of addiction, because you have to jump through nine hoops to dodge the WP copyright police.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
My way and the highway
After my sour japes on the begging notice, which still bugs the Hades out of me, I'll be sweeter in this entry. A few posts back I mentioned my forays into highway articles on Wikipedia. The encyclopedia offers scads of articles about those things your car rumbles over. A typical example of my efforts in this little-known patch of WP territory is Alabama State Route 21.
I don't think I've ever travelled this Alabama thoroughfare. In fact, I can't remember spending a minute in the Sweet Home state. But I couldn't resist a road that passes near the Talladega Superspeedway. Down home with NASCAR is where I wanna be - on Wikipedia, anyway.
These articles have acquired a rigid set of Wikipedia conventions. They have to be written just so, with the correct infobox and title and road symbols. Otherwise, irritated messages start turning up on your talk page. There was actually an ArbCom case about the naming of these articles. Hilarious edit wars had erupted over whether "Route 21 (Alabama)" or AL Route 21" or "AL 21" or "Alabama State Highway 21" or "Fred Flintstone's favorite road" was the proper naming convention.
Once you understand such arcane technicalities, the articles are seductively easy to write. Just haul out a road atlas and start tracing the route through its various windings and intersections. There's usually some helpful material on the web, especially from state transportation departments. Those are the people who (very) eventually fix potholes.
It's also fun to find photos of the roads on the web. For some highways you can find an entire page of down-home pictures. I found a site for AL 21 that tracked the whole route in photos, right down to the Florida border. The web gallery honestly made me feel like I'd been there and done that.
I don't think I've ever travelled this Alabama thoroughfare. In fact, I can't remember spending a minute in the Sweet Home state. But I couldn't resist a road that passes near the Talladega Superspeedway. Down home with NASCAR is where I wanna be - on Wikipedia, anyway.
These articles have acquired a rigid set of Wikipedia conventions. They have to be written just so, with the correct infobox and title and road symbols. Otherwise, irritated messages start turning up on your talk page. There was actually an ArbCom case about the naming of these articles. Hilarious edit wars had erupted over whether "Route 21 (Alabama)" or AL Route 21" or "AL 21" or "Alabama State Highway 21" or "Fred Flintstone's favorite road" was the proper naming convention.
Once you understand such arcane technicalities, the articles are seductively easy to write. Just haul out a road atlas and start tracing the route through its various windings and intersections. There's usually some helpful material on the web, especially from state transportation departments. Those are the people who (very) eventually fix potholes.
It's also fun to find photos of the roads on the web. For some highways you can find an entire page of down-home pictures. I found a site for AL 21 that tracked the whole route in photos, right down to the Florida border. The web gallery honestly made me feel like I'd been there and done that.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Begging
If you've looked at Wikipedia lately, you've seen the irritating, ugly, and utterly-without-redeeming-social-value begging notice. Wikipedia wants your money, again and again and again. These fundraisers are endless because Wikipedia won't sell a few ads to raise the few bucks truly needed to keep the site running.
Florence Devouard, an apparatchik appointed by Jimbo to some highfalutin position, huffs: "Advertising is out of the question: it’s a moral issue for us." Of course, morality is relative. Florence doesn't mind the obnoxious advertising for the fundraiser on top of every WP page. After all, that advertising pays her travel expenses.
And it pays a lot of other expenses. Wikipedia's budget has exploded to $4.6 million. In 2004 the budget was $79,200. Yes, the encyclopedia is bigger, but it still gets almost all its real labor for free, from saps like me. What's happened is that a sizeable bureaucracy of people like Florence has growed like Topsy. Right now the WP bureaucracy is moving to San Francisco, a ridiculously unnecessary expense that will chew up hundreds of thousands of dollars better spent on hardware to keep the encyclopedia running.
If I sound like a pinchpenny curmudgeon, that's because somebody should start pinching a few pennies at WP. The most recent audit suggested, very mildly, that the organization develop "basic year-end bookkeeping and accounting" skills. Amen, brother auditor. It might help if a green-eyeshade guy began holding down expenses.
All that said, I chipped in fifty bucks anonymously - though I guess it's not anonymous anymore. That makes $175 I've given in three different fundraisers. I shouldn't encourage them, but I do. Just don't tell me about that African kid we're supposedly writing the encyclopedia for, Jimbo. I'll pay an extra $50 if you promise to shut up about that kid forever.
Florence Devouard, an apparatchik appointed by Jimbo to some highfalutin position, huffs: "Advertising is out of the question: it’s a moral issue for us." Of course, morality is relative. Florence doesn't mind the obnoxious advertising for the fundraiser on top of every WP page. After all, that advertising pays her travel expenses.
And it pays a lot of other expenses. Wikipedia's budget has exploded to $4.6 million. In 2004 the budget was $79,200. Yes, the encyclopedia is bigger, but it still gets almost all its real labor for free, from saps like me. What's happened is that a sizeable bureaucracy of people like Florence has growed like Topsy. Right now the WP bureaucracy is moving to San Francisco, a ridiculously unnecessary expense that will chew up hundreds of thousands of dollars better spent on hardware to keep the encyclopedia running.
If I sound like a pinchpenny curmudgeon, that's because somebody should start pinching a few pennies at WP. The most recent audit suggested, very mildly, that the organization develop "basic year-end bookkeeping and accounting" skills. Amen, brother auditor. It might help if a green-eyeshade guy began holding down expenses.
All that said, I chipped in fifty bucks anonymously - though I guess it's not anonymous anymore. That makes $175 I've given in three different fundraisers. I shouldn't encourage them, but I do. Just don't tell me about that African kid we're supposedly writing the encyclopedia for, Jimbo. I'll pay an extra $50 if you promise to shut up about that kid forever.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Sad bit of editing
"Sad" is meant in the literal, not the ironic sense. Last night I noticed on a game show web page, of all places, that an actor named Lee Patterson had died in February of this year. For some reason the death wasn't widely known until just a few days ago. In the sick way I have about such things, I looked Patterson up on Wikipedia. There's nothing like the grim reaper to get me scrounging around WP.
Patterson already had a reasonable bio on Wikipedia, which concentrated on his career as a soap opera actor. The date of death was in the article, with a rather pathetic "citation needed" tag. Seeing the chance to pile up my edit count, I went to work on the entry.
All right, I'll confess to a slightly more sentimental interest. I had seen Patterson recently on reruns of an ancient 77 Sunset Strip knockoff called Surfside 6. The show surfaced on a tiny cable outlet - owned by the Moonies, of all people - which rather grandly dubs itself AmericanLife TV Network. Now and then I'll peek at the channel for nostalgic reasons. They feature TV shows from my all-too-distant youth. I've worked a lot on the network's WP entry, too.
Patterson was hardly a great actor, and he didn't fancy himself one - at least as far as my inexpert self could tell from his natural, unpretentious acting style. But he was versatile and professional, with some maturity and screen presence. Which enabled him to pile up a formidable IMDb page, spanning over four decades of work in movies and TV.
So I rewrote the WP bio with a lot more on his career besides the soap operas. One thing I wondered about was the delay is his death becoming widely known. The hints from Google indicated that he was something of a loner, never much interested in the limelight or in schmoozing Hollywood reporters. I wanted to slip a little of this personal stuff into the entry but resisted.
The grimmest part of the rewrite was changing the "Living people" category to "2007 deaths". Sooner or later, we all get that category switched.
Patterson already had a reasonable bio on Wikipedia, which concentrated on his career as a soap opera actor. The date of death was in the article, with a rather pathetic "citation needed" tag. Seeing the chance to pile up my edit count, I went to work on the entry.
All right, I'll confess to a slightly more sentimental interest. I had seen Patterson recently on reruns of an ancient 77 Sunset Strip knockoff called Surfside 6. The show surfaced on a tiny cable outlet - owned by the Moonies, of all people - which rather grandly dubs itself AmericanLife TV Network. Now and then I'll peek at the channel for nostalgic reasons. They feature TV shows from my all-too-distant youth. I've worked a lot on the network's WP entry, too.
Patterson was hardly a great actor, and he didn't fancy himself one - at least as far as my inexpert self could tell from his natural, unpretentious acting style. But he was versatile and professional, with some maturity and screen presence. Which enabled him to pile up a formidable IMDb page, spanning over four decades of work in movies and TV.
So I rewrote the WP bio with a lot more on his career besides the soap operas. One thing I wondered about was the delay is his death becoming widely known. The hints from Google indicated that he was something of a loner, never much interested in the limelight or in schmoozing Hollywood reporters. I wanted to slip a little of this personal stuff into the entry but resisted.
The grimmest part of the rewrite was changing the "Living people" category to "2007 deaths". Sooner or later, we all get that category switched.
Monday, October 22, 2007
From scratch and elsewhere
It's been a while since I wrote a WP article from scratch. When I first started as a mostly anonymous nerd in 2005, I created lots of articles about Henry James' works. I also wrote various articles on baseball, highways, and other riffraff from only the blank page WP gives you for a new entry. It was sort of like writing this blog, where you get only an empty box and no particularly helpful instructions on filling it in.
Maybe I've gotten lazy in my WP old age. Now I almost always work only on articles that already meet a reasonably high standard. That's what I like about the wikify list. The articles on the list aren't in hopeless shape. They just need a little work, which is all the work I fell like putting into Wikipedia any more.
Burnout? Could be getting close. I found myself in a shouting match on the talk page for the Criticism of Wikipedia article. All right, "shouting match" is a little strong, but the argument was still more heated than I like.
Seems that censors are ripping out every mention of Wikipedia Review, a harmless whine site about Wikipedia that sometimes offers useful and valid criticism of the encyclopedia. I should just keep things in perspective and let the censors rip. I can still read WR whenever I want. But I've allowed the idiotic censorship to bug me. One admin in particular is scouring many links to WR from Wikipedia. The site has retaliated with giggles about the admin's editing of articles on porn stars.
Such silliness would never have concerned me before. I would have gone on editing articles about my areas of interest and ignored all the nonsensical wikidrama. Maybe I should start writing articles from scratch again. There are still lots of Henry James stories that need entries, and even a few highways remain article-less.
Maybe I've gotten lazy in my WP old age. Now I almost always work only on articles that already meet a reasonably high standard. That's what I like about the wikify list. The articles on the list aren't in hopeless shape. They just need a little work, which is all the work I fell like putting into Wikipedia any more.
Burnout? Could be getting close. I found myself in a shouting match on the talk page for the Criticism of Wikipedia article. All right, "shouting match" is a little strong, but the argument was still more heated than I like.
Seems that censors are ripping out every mention of Wikipedia Review, a harmless whine site about Wikipedia that sometimes offers useful and valid criticism of the encyclopedia. I should just keep things in perspective and let the censors rip. I can still read WR whenever I want. But I've allowed the idiotic censorship to bug me. One admin in particular is scouring many links to WR from Wikipedia. The site has retaliated with giggles about the admin's editing of articles on porn stars.
Such silliness would never have concerned me before. I would have gone on editing articles about my areas of interest and ignored all the nonsensical wikidrama. Maybe I should start writing articles from scratch again. There are still lots of Henry James stories that need entries, and even a few highways remain article-less.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Keep those cards and letters coming
My user talk page is pretty sleepy compared to many others on Wikipedia. Read Jimbo's talk page for a perpetual yellfest. Maybe I'm not doing enough to p.o. other editors. And I'm trying so hard! Still, enough complaints have rolled over the electronic doormat to fill several archives.
Not everybody writes to whine. I once got a very large flower (okay, a very large picture of a flower) for removing some goofball hoax articles from the encyclopedia. And most of my tag-team partners on the talk page have been cordial even when they disagreed. The orange bar announcing that I've received a new talk page message is usually a pleasant change from the monotony of editing article after article.
The latest note on my talk page, for instance, was an excruciatingly polite discussion about, of all people and things, Lee Harvey Oswald. I'm still not comfortable with the "alleged" in front of "assassin" for Oswald, but the quibble wasn't worth fighting over. Which is why most of my talk page disputes die quickly. I just don't want to holler back-and-forth for very long.
Makes for a boring talk page...and for significantly lower blood pressure.
Not everybody writes to whine. I once got a very large flower (okay, a very large picture of a flower) for removing some goofball hoax articles from the encyclopedia. And most of my tag-team partners on the talk page have been cordial even when they disagreed. The orange bar announcing that I've received a new talk page message is usually a pleasant change from the monotony of editing article after article.
The latest note on my talk page, for instance, was an excruciatingly polite discussion about, of all people and things, Lee Harvey Oswald. I'm still not comfortable with the "alleged" in front of "assassin" for Oswald, but the quibble wasn't worth fighting over. Which is why most of my talk page disputes die quickly. I just don't want to holler back-and-forth for very long.
Makes for a boring talk page...and for significantly lower blood pressure.
Friday, October 19, 2007
It's all about the...something
Remember those vaguely creepy ads for Overstock.com? The ones with the brown-haired girl cooing, in a glazed-over spacey way, that "it's all about the O"? The ads have mostly vanished now because Overstock.com has run into rough financial waters. But it a weird and wonderful way, it's still all about the O...on Wikipedia.
Seems that Overstock.com's worst enemy is a financial reporter named Gary Weiss. He's constantly bashing the company, which oddly enough has seen something of a recovery in its share price as its fortunes have improved.
So how does Wikipedia get into this corporate picture? A Wikipedia account called Mantanmoreland, considered by some though by no means proven to be Weiss himself, supposedly forged an alliance (sounds like Survivor, no?) with powerful people on Wikipedia. Weiss' critics charge that the alliance enabled Mantanmoreland to gain at least some control over the Wikipedia articles on Weiss himself and on naked short selling, a stock-market practice that Overstock.com's chief exec alleged was used to bash his company's share price.
Meanwhile, Weiss' enemies at Overstock.com were exiled from WP for various crimes and misdemeanors. They retreated to whine sites like Wikipedia Review and Antisocialmedia.net, where they complain about the unfairness of their treatment by the encyclopedia. In particular, Judd Bagley, an Overstock.com official who runs Antisocialmedia.net, has played some cute tricks on the Wikipedia hierarchy in revenge. Much of the recent BADSITES hoohah was about Bagley's site and how aggrieved the Wikipedia poobahs feel about it.
Yes, it's a hilariously tangled web. Which happens to be the title of this blog entry from an observer who seems slightly inclined toward the Gary Weiss side of the spat. As the entry points out, the New York Times took note of the dispute but didn't fill in many of the details about Wikipedia. Now you know the rest of the scrambled story.
Seems that Overstock.com's worst enemy is a financial reporter named Gary Weiss. He's constantly bashing the company, which oddly enough has seen something of a recovery in its share price as its fortunes have improved.
So how does Wikipedia get into this corporate picture? A Wikipedia account called Mantanmoreland, considered by some though by no means proven to be Weiss himself, supposedly forged an alliance (sounds like Survivor, no?) with powerful people on Wikipedia. Weiss' critics charge that the alliance enabled Mantanmoreland to gain at least some control over the Wikipedia articles on Weiss himself and on naked short selling, a stock-market practice that Overstock.com's chief exec alleged was used to bash his company's share price.
Meanwhile, Weiss' enemies at Overstock.com were exiled from WP for various crimes and misdemeanors. They retreated to whine sites like Wikipedia Review and Antisocialmedia.net, where they complain about the unfairness of their treatment by the encyclopedia. In particular, Judd Bagley, an Overstock.com official who runs Antisocialmedia.net, has played some cute tricks on the Wikipedia hierarchy in revenge. Much of the recent BADSITES hoohah was about Bagley's site and how aggrieved the Wikipedia poobahs feel about it.
Yes, it's a hilariously tangled web. Which happens to be the title of this blog entry from an observer who seems slightly inclined toward the Gary Weiss side of the spat. As the entry points out, the New York Times took note of the dispute but didn't fill in many of the details about Wikipedia. Now you know the rest of the scrambled story.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Draggin' the line, watchin' the list
The page I call up most often on WP is probably my watchlist. I'd give you a link, but the watchlist is hidden behind my super-secret, super-strong, really nifty password. (As the announcer on the ancient game show Password might whisper: "The password is...super-secret, super-strong and really nifty.") My watchlist shows the latest edits on about 500 items I've selected from the encyclopedia. That way I know when something awful, something great or something in-between is happening to various pages I'm interested in.
This can get to be an addiction. A sadly confessed wikiholic shivered over the temptation of "just one little peek at my watchlist." I've got the same problem, Jorge. When the watchlist items have piled up very high, trudging through them can make One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich look like a beach party with the Playmate of the Year.
But I do it because I'm hooked. Checking the watchlist is the easiest way to eliminate really lame vandalism from the encyclopedia. And believe it or not, the changes are sometimes worthwhile and get me off my cyberduff to add more content to articles.
As I type, the latest change on my watchlist is a note that Henrik Ibsen has an article on the Hindi Wikipedia. Or at least I think it's Hindi - my knowledge of the script isn't reliable. No doubt the note would have enormously amused the permanently p.o.ed Norwegian. If you're wondering why I watchlisted Ibsen, I once added some verbiage to the article about Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder, two of his plays that I can endure.
Now and then I clear an item off the list when I've lost interest. Ironically, the blog article got the ax because I don't care that much about other people's blogs. Uncharitable, I know.
This can get to be an addiction. A sadly confessed wikiholic shivered over the temptation of "just one little peek at my watchlist." I've got the same problem, Jorge. When the watchlist items have piled up very high, trudging through them can make One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich look like a beach party with the Playmate of the Year.
But I do it because I'm hooked. Checking the watchlist is the easiest way to eliminate really lame vandalism from the encyclopedia. And believe it or not, the changes are sometimes worthwhile and get me off my cyberduff to add more content to articles.
As I type, the latest change on my watchlist is a note that Henrik Ibsen has an article on the Hindi Wikipedia. Or at least I think it's Hindi - my knowledge of the script isn't reliable. No doubt the note would have enormously amused the permanently p.o.ed Norwegian. If you're wondering why I watchlisted Ibsen, I once added some verbiage to the article about Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder, two of his plays that I can endure.
Now and then I clear an item off the list when I've lost interest. Ironically, the blog article got the ax because I don't care that much about other people's blogs. Uncharitable, I know.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Birth of the blues
We all have to start somewhere, and on Wikipedia I started with Henry James. If you follow the link to the article, you might notice the little star in the upper right-hand corner. This denotes a "featured article," which means the HJ entry is supposedly one of Wikipedia's best. You can decide that for yourselves.
I made my first edits to the article, and to Wikipedia in general, in February, 2005. I made the edits anonymously because I'm such a shy, retiring type. That's an alleged joke, of course. In fact, at the time I'm not sure that I even knew about creating an account under my real name. It just seemed so weird that I could edit the article and see my changes immediately. How does this encyclopedia work, anyway?
The earliest edit under my user name, a.k.a. my real name, occurred on March 10, 2005 at 14:13 WP time, which is five or six hours ahead of my local time. It was this note on the talk page of the Henry James article, where I bashfully confessed to having made recent edits to the entry anonymously. I continued editing mostly anonymously for the next several months. Finally, about the start of 2006, I decided to edit all the time under my real name, unless I forgot to login.
Besides the James article itself, I wrote or revised dozens of articles about his novels, tales and nonfiction. If anybody on WP noticed me much, which was difficult as long as I stayed anonymous, they probably thought I was a harmless HJ-obsessed nerd. They were right.
Henry James ain't exactly the most controversial subject, though his sex life (or lack thereof) has attracted plenty of speculation. So my debut on Wikipedia was relatively low-key. Which is probably the best way to slip into any Net community.
After a while, I started to branch out: other literature, baseball, TV, business, pop culture...you can read all about it on my user page. Two-and-a-half years and about thirteen thousand edits later (including the anonymous edits) I'm still at it. One thing I've tried not to branch into very much is the huffing and puffing on WP's policy and dispute pages.
I keep track of how many edits I make outside the encyclopedia's actual entries. If I find myself dallying too much on other pages, I pull myself back to what most people read Wikipedia for, those interesting little things called articles. Though I admit that I've been active on several articles that are Wikipedia-related.
One more note on the Henry James entry: I finally pulled the article up to the coveted "featured article" status I mentioned above. The process went pretty smoothly compared to what many other articles endure to get FA status. But it was still a genuine pain, as I had to listen to various reasonable and unreasonable suggestions for improvement. I'm mostly a reasonable guy (chuckle) and I eventually pushed the entry through.
I'm thinking of running the gauntlet again with the article on James' biographer, Leon Edel. But that will have to wait until I find enough time to improve the article substantially. And until I summon enough courage to face the FA inquisitors one more time.
I made my first edits to the article, and to Wikipedia in general, in February, 2005. I made the edits anonymously because I'm such a shy, retiring type. That's an alleged joke, of course. In fact, at the time I'm not sure that I even knew about creating an account under my real name. It just seemed so weird that I could edit the article and see my changes immediately. How does this encyclopedia work, anyway?
The earliest edit under my user name, a.k.a. my real name, occurred on March 10, 2005 at 14:13 WP time, which is five or six hours ahead of my local time. It was this note on the talk page of the Henry James article, where I bashfully confessed to having made recent edits to the entry anonymously. I continued editing mostly anonymously for the next several months. Finally, about the start of 2006, I decided to edit all the time under my real name, unless I forgot to login.
Besides the James article itself, I wrote or revised dozens of articles about his novels, tales and nonfiction. If anybody on WP noticed me much, which was difficult as long as I stayed anonymous, they probably thought I was a harmless HJ-obsessed nerd. They were right.
Henry James ain't exactly the most controversial subject, though his sex life (or lack thereof) has attracted plenty of speculation. So my debut on Wikipedia was relatively low-key. Which is probably the best way to slip into any Net community.
After a while, I started to branch out: other literature, baseball, TV, business, pop culture...you can read all about it on my user page. Two-and-a-half years and about thirteen thousand edits later (including the anonymous edits) I'm still at it. One thing I've tried not to branch into very much is the huffing and puffing on WP's policy and dispute pages.
I keep track of how many edits I make outside the encyclopedia's actual entries. If I find myself dallying too much on other pages, I pull myself back to what most people read Wikipedia for, those interesting little things called articles. Though I admit that I've been active on several articles that are Wikipedia-related.
One more note on the Henry James entry: I finally pulled the article up to the coveted "featured article" status I mentioned above. The process went pretty smoothly compared to what many other articles endure to get FA status. But it was still a genuine pain, as I had to listen to various reasonable and unreasonable suggestions for improvement. I'm mostly a reasonable guy (chuckle) and I eventually pushed the entry through.
I'm thinking of running the gauntlet again with the article on James' biographer, Leon Edel. But that will have to wait until I find enough time to improve the article substantially. And until I summon enough courage to face the FA inquisitors one more time.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Neutral and neutered
NPOV is not the Soviet secret police, as one anti-Wikipedia wag once semi-humorously suggested. It's "neutral point of view," a supposedly "absolute and non-negotiable" pillar of Wikipedia.
Trouble is, people tend to use this pillar as a club every time a dispute, however trivial, arises on the encyclopedia. I've been given an NPOV lecture on such life-and-death issues as whether a minor poet named Rosemary Tonks can be fairly described as "disappeared." (She hasn't written anything for a long time and has dropped from public view, though her publishers seem to be in contact with her.)
And when the NPOV club starts swinging, people get their blood pressure up, because an accusation of POV-pushing is fightin' words to any self-respecting Wikipedian. Everybody likes to think that their contributions to the encyclopedia are utterly unbiased, though some will make the ritual confession that everybody and everything is biased to at least some degree. That ritual confession is actually true, but tends to get forgotten in a hurry when the feathers fly in an NPOV spat.
The safest bet is to balance everything that could conceivably be labeled opinion with a vigorous opposing opinion. I've often tried this trick on the Criticism of Wikipedia article. Which, as you might suspect, is an especially acute test case for the famous Mr. Npov. So far the trick has worked pretty well. At least I haven't been blocked, banned and executed.
And make no mistake, insufficiently neutral or neutered (ouch) editors are banned every day on WP. The result is too often bland or waffling prose in articles, as editors run scared of the ban-hammer if they offer any opinion about anything. Sure enough, a criticism of such waffling prose can be found in Criticism of Wikipedia. We get you coming and going.
Trouble is, people tend to use this pillar as a club every time a dispute, however trivial, arises on the encyclopedia. I've been given an NPOV lecture on such life-and-death issues as whether a minor poet named Rosemary Tonks can be fairly described as "disappeared." (She hasn't written anything for a long time and has dropped from public view, though her publishers seem to be in contact with her.)
And when the NPOV club starts swinging, people get their blood pressure up, because an accusation of POV-pushing is fightin' words to any self-respecting Wikipedian. Everybody likes to think that their contributions to the encyclopedia are utterly unbiased, though some will make the ritual confession that everybody and everything is biased to at least some degree. That ritual confession is actually true, but tends to get forgotten in a hurry when the feathers fly in an NPOV spat.
The safest bet is to balance everything that could conceivably be labeled opinion with a vigorous opposing opinion. I've often tried this trick on the Criticism of Wikipedia article. Which, as you might suspect, is an especially acute test case for the famous Mr. Npov. So far the trick has worked pretty well. At least I haven't been blocked, banned and executed.
And make no mistake, insufficiently neutral or neutered (ouch) editors are banned every day on WP. The result is too often bland or waffling prose in articles, as editors run scared of the ban-hammer if they offer any opinion about anything. Sure enough, a criticism of such waffling prose can be found in Criticism of Wikipedia. We get you coming and going.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Two pundits named John
Most of the articles I edit on WP are low-temperature and non-controversial. But I'm not completely shy about warmer subjects. A couple of biographies, John Podhoretz and John Derbyshire, are on my WP resume, and they haven't exactly been quiet oases of cybernetic peace and brotherhood.
In fact, old versions of the Podhoretz article were frankly disgraceful. The entry once asserted that this married father of two is an "admitted homosexual" and that he "wrote a novel on the mating rituals of horses". Very slightly more amusing was the claim that his rapper name was "Jonny P". These were just more sad examples of the crap that Wikipedia splattered on people in the pre-Seigenthaler days.
So all that had to be cleaned up, and it eventually was before I ever arrived at the article. Podhoretz has even joked about the bad old days of his WP bio, as now mentioned in the entry. I've added lots of material to the article on his various political opinions and provided extensive sources and a bibliography. There are other things I'd like to add, but reliable sourcing rules forbid them.
For instance, after watching his frequent tangles with Derbyshire at the National Review website, I'm inclined to believe that he can hardly abide the other John in the title. But maybe they're big buddies, and I can't find any evidence for personal dislike beyond their political disagreements on issues like Bush, immigration and the VA Tech massacre. So no comments about personality clashes have crept into the article.
Derbyshire's entry hasn't endured quite as much nonsense. Maybe that's why he's become a big fan of Wikipedia, after earlier denouncing the encyclopedia as a crock that should be sued out of existence. Still, his idiosyncratic, self-identified "racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one" views have attracted more than a fair share of hot-blooded edits. I'm not a Derb fan by any means, so I try to "write for the enemy" and keep the article as straight-and-narrow as possible. Extensive and exact quotes from Derbyshire's own writings help keep things reasonably balanced.
In fact, old versions of the Podhoretz article were frankly disgraceful. The entry once asserted that this married father of two is an "admitted homosexual" and that he "wrote a novel on the mating rituals of horses". Very slightly more amusing was the claim that his rapper name was "Jonny P". These were just more sad examples of the crap that Wikipedia splattered on people in the pre-Seigenthaler days.
So all that had to be cleaned up, and it eventually was before I ever arrived at the article. Podhoretz has even joked about the bad old days of his WP bio, as now mentioned in the entry. I've added lots of material to the article on his various political opinions and provided extensive sources and a bibliography. There are other things I'd like to add, but reliable sourcing rules forbid them.
For instance, after watching his frequent tangles with Derbyshire at the National Review website, I'm inclined to believe that he can hardly abide the other John in the title. But maybe they're big buddies, and I can't find any evidence for personal dislike beyond their political disagreements on issues like Bush, immigration and the VA Tech massacre. So no comments about personality clashes have crept into the article.
Derbyshire's entry hasn't endured quite as much nonsense. Maybe that's why he's become a big fan of Wikipedia, after earlier denouncing the encyclopedia as a crock that should be sued out of existence. Still, his idiosyncratic, self-identified "racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one" views have attracted more than a fair share of hot-blooded edits. I'm not a Derb fan by any means, so I try to "write for the enemy" and keep the article as straight-and-narrow as possible. Extensive and exact quotes from Derbyshire's own writings help keep things reasonably balanced.
Friday, October 12, 2007
God-king
I've referred to Jimbo Wales so much on this blog, it's time that I should give my unvarnished on the WP god-king. That mock-title might make me look like a Jimbo-basher, but I'm really not. After all, he got the whole ball of [fill in nice or naughty noun] going, and I'm having fun contributing to it.
By and large, I have no complaints with Jimbo's hands-off style. A micro-manager would be a horrendous misfit for such a free-wheeling project as Wikipedia, which literally depends on the kindness of strangers. Sorry for the invidious comparison, but Larry Sanger's tight squeeze, a la Citizendium, would drive me to figurative drink and literal vandalism. Jimbo usually sits back and lets the good, bad and indifferent times roll at Wikipedia. He seems to be a lot more interested in Wikia nowadays, and that's oh so fine with me.
I once partially reverted an edit by Jimbo, with some trepidation. He screwed up a bunch of footnotes, and that had to be fixed. (Yes, I've done the same thing myself.) I almost reverted the entire edit but decided that discretion was the better part of saving my ass. You can read my sorry hemming and hawing on the revert here.
Jimbo did step hip-deep into it with the Essjay hoohah, and I haven't been kind to him in my edits on the WP article about the mess. At least he recovered and did the Right Thing...eventually. Wales also gets a bee in his bonnet about Larry Sanger's claim to be Wikipedia's co-founder, which doesn't make either gentleman look good. I wish they would both laugh off the silly spat - because lots of other people are laughing at them over it.
The most convincing complaint about Jimbo is that he often expresses an airy wish for something on Wikipedia, and then lets others do the dirty work of carrying out the semi-command. For instance, after the Seigenthaler disaster Jimbo mouthed platitudes about better sourcing for WP biographies. But it took a lot of effort by other people to improve the encyclopedia's treatment of those pesky persons who get upset when their WP articles announce that they're baby-killers or Carrot Top fans.
I'd still rather have Jimbo play aloof monarch instead of nagging boss. He gives great interview, can laugh at himself, and handles the media well. He makes a nice figurehead most of the time, and a competent manager when necessary.
By and large, I have no complaints with Jimbo's hands-off style. A micro-manager would be a horrendous misfit for such a free-wheeling project as Wikipedia, which literally depends on the kindness of strangers. Sorry for the invidious comparison, but Larry Sanger's tight squeeze, a la Citizendium, would drive me to figurative drink and literal vandalism. Jimbo usually sits back and lets the good, bad and indifferent times roll at Wikipedia. He seems to be a lot more interested in Wikia nowadays, and that's oh so fine with me.
I once partially reverted an edit by Jimbo, with some trepidation. He screwed up a bunch of footnotes, and that had to be fixed. (Yes, I've done the same thing myself.) I almost reverted the entire edit but decided that discretion was the better part of saving my ass. You can read my sorry hemming and hawing on the revert here.
Jimbo did step hip-deep into it with the Essjay hoohah, and I haven't been kind to him in my edits on the WP article about the mess. At least he recovered and did the Right Thing...eventually. Wales also gets a bee in his bonnet about Larry Sanger's claim to be Wikipedia's co-founder, which doesn't make either gentleman look good. I wish they would both laugh off the silly spat - because lots of other people are laughing at them over it.
The most convincing complaint about Jimbo is that he often expresses an airy wish for something on Wikipedia, and then lets others do the dirty work of carrying out the semi-command. For instance, after the Seigenthaler disaster Jimbo mouthed platitudes about better sourcing for WP biographies. But it took a lot of effort by other people to improve the encyclopedia's treatment of those pesky persons who get upset when their WP articles announce that they're baby-killers or Carrot Top fans.
I'd still rather have Jimbo play aloof monarch instead of nagging boss. He gives great interview, can laugh at himself, and handles the media well. He makes a nice figurehead most of the time, and a competent manager when necessary.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Laugh riot
Not sure exactly how it happened, but I've gotten sucked into editing the recreation article. You'd think this entry would be a quiet backwater that receives little attention and less vandalism. You'd think wrong.
The problem is that "fun" is redirected to this article. Sure enough, various jolly souls drop by to share their ideas of fun. These often involve hot chicks and unusual sex positions. Nothing wrong with them, as Seinfeld might say, but they make the article a little less authoritative.
An especially persistent jolly soul named Erudecorp has shown up at the article. His major, actually only, contribution: "An example of fun could be that some people are having fun viewing this article, amusing themselves over the fact that this article even exists." This is not rib-tickling material, at least to my ribs, but Erudecorp gets touchy over any attempt to remove it. See this edit summary if you don't believe me.
The article already lists "using the Internet" as a form of recreation. This would seem to cover any amusement a reader might get from the existence of the recreation article. I've pointed this out to Erudecorp on the talk page, to no avail. He's blitzed me with acronyms to show that his opinion on the article's amusement value is protected by Wikipedia policy, the Bill of Rights, and Billy Mays' money-back guarantee.
So I've surrendered. In fact, I kind of like Erudecorp's irreverent attitude towards WP. Oh sure, nobody's really going to get any chuckles over the existence of an article on recreation. By objective standards, Erudecorp's edit is nonsense.
But the sheer goofiness of his idea is a helpful corrective to the solemnity of much Wikipedia rhetoric. I cringe whenever Jimbo invokes the famous African kid that we're supposed to be writing the encyclopedia for. Maybe we need a little nonsense sprinkled here and there.
UPDATE: Another editor removed Erudecorp's attempt at humor. I have to agree with the removal, though I still think WP could lighten up a little.
The problem is that "fun" is redirected to this article. Sure enough, various jolly souls drop by to share their ideas of fun. These often involve hot chicks and unusual sex positions. Nothing wrong with them, as Seinfeld might say, but they make the article a little less authoritative.
An especially persistent jolly soul named Erudecorp has shown up at the article. His major, actually only, contribution: "An example of fun could be that some people are having fun viewing this article, amusing themselves over the fact that this article even exists." This is not rib-tickling material, at least to my ribs, but Erudecorp gets touchy over any attempt to remove it. See this edit summary if you don't believe me.
The article already lists "using the Internet" as a form of recreation. This would seem to cover any amusement a reader might get from the existence of the recreation article. I've pointed this out to Erudecorp on the talk page, to no avail. He's blitzed me with acronyms to show that his opinion on the article's amusement value is protected by Wikipedia policy, the Bill of Rights, and Billy Mays' money-back guarantee.
So I've surrendered. In fact, I kind of like Erudecorp's irreverent attitude towards WP. Oh sure, nobody's really going to get any chuckles over the existence of an article on recreation. By objective standards, Erudecorp's edit is nonsense.
But the sheer goofiness of his idea is a helpful corrective to the solemnity of much Wikipedia rhetoric. I cringe whenever Jimbo invokes the famous African kid that we're supposed to be writing the encyclopedia for. Maybe we need a little nonsense sprinkled here and there.
UPDATE: Another editor removed Erudecorp's attempt at humor. I have to agree with the removal, though I still think WP could lighten up a little.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Money, money, money
Lots of people chip in lots of free labor to Wikipedia. Okay, it's not really labor, just a nice hobby for people who like to tap keyboards. Still, nobody's getting paid, or at least nobody's paying me. There are a few salaried employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia and related sites. There are also for-profit sites that scoop up Wikipedia content and repackage it with ads sprinkled in, like Answers.com.
And then there's Wikia, the for-profit operation set up by god-king Jimbo Wales and his queen consort Angela Beesley. Their idea was, frankly, to cash in on Wikipedia. The company hosts specialized mini-Wikipedias for a cut of their advertising revenue. Wikia has attracted a lot of venture capital from investors hoping for the next big Internet thing.
Wikia has also spawned predictable complaints about Jimbo and Angela and their nefarious cabal living off the hard work of unpaid Wikipedia drudges. Seth Finkelstein, prominent Wikipedia basher, has been particularly vocal about this evil and awful and not nice exploitation. (I had originally written "injustice", but Seth tells me that he likes the e-word better.) As an unpaid peon, I really don't mind Jimbo making a buck from Wikipedia's reputation. Wikia is a separate operation from the encyclopedia, though it undoubtedly exists only because Wikipedia has been so successful. But Answers.com and others are already selling the deathless prose I've splattered on WP, and I'm not seeing any of those pennies, either.
So sleep is not being lost, at least at my house. If Wikipedia ever becomes a job like my real work as an actuary, then I'll expect a check. But for now WP is still fun, something I want to do and don't have to do. So I'll continue to do...without the money. And I don't plan to invest in Wikia, either.
And then there's Wikia, the for-profit operation set up by god-king Jimbo Wales and his queen consort Angela Beesley. Their idea was, frankly, to cash in on Wikipedia. The company hosts specialized mini-Wikipedias for a cut of their advertising revenue. Wikia has attracted a lot of venture capital from investors hoping for the next big Internet thing.
Wikia has also spawned predictable complaints about Jimbo and Angela and their nefarious cabal living off the hard work of unpaid Wikipedia drudges. Seth Finkelstein, prominent Wikipedia basher, has been particularly vocal about this evil and awful and not nice exploitation. (I had originally written "injustice", but Seth tells me that he likes the e-word better.) As an unpaid peon, I really don't mind Jimbo making a buck from Wikipedia's reputation. Wikia is a separate operation from the encyclopedia, though it undoubtedly exists only because Wikipedia has been so successful. But Answers.com and others are already selling the deathless prose I've splattered on WP, and I'm not seeing any of those pennies, either.
So sleep is not being lost, at least at my house. If Wikipedia ever becomes a job like my real work as an actuary, then I'll expect a check. But for now WP is still fun, something I want to do and don't have to do. So I'll continue to do...without the money. And I don't plan to invest in Wikia, either.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Getting violated
Writing is hard and stealing is easy. Or at least stealing on the web is easy enough for people to scoop up large swatches of other peoples' prose and dump it into Wikipedia. This is called copyright violation, for all you would-be ambulance-chasers out there. And WP occasionally seems to specialize in it.
Not that an ambulance-chaser would get rich in this racket. Suing a nonprofit for swiping a few paragraphs of nondescript prose will not bring millions, or even dimes and quarters, in contingency fees. But the obvious filching still irritates and embarrasses. Long-time WP foe Daniel Brandt made a big stink about it a few months ago, which got five minutes from the mainstream media.
Wikipedia polices itself halfway decently on plagiarism, and even runs a page full of examples unearthed by snooping editors. I once got involved in a minor scuffle on this page. Not for anything I did, but for a silly mix-up on the article about writer Steven Millhauser. This time the plagiarism ran in the opposite direction: a used-book site borrowed a few lines of blurby prose from the article and used them to plug the novelist's work. I helped straighten out the goofiness.
The reason I'm chatting about copyvio is an article I picked up from the wikify list today: Elba, Alabama. The title intrigued me because it seemed to tie Napoleon to Sweet Home You-Know-What. In fact, there was a connection, though tenuous and long-ago-ish. There was also a huge swatch of stolen prose from the town's web site, dumped word-for-word into the article's "History" section.
I did a complete rewrite to eliminate the obvious copyvio. Coincidentally, the section received a more encyclopedic tone, whatever that means, because I cut a lot of gushing about cutesy twists of town legend. The kid (and his mail bag) who got rescued from the flood is still in there, though.
Not that an ambulance-chaser would get rich in this racket. Suing a nonprofit for swiping a few paragraphs of nondescript prose will not bring millions, or even dimes and quarters, in contingency fees. But the obvious filching still irritates and embarrasses. Long-time WP foe Daniel Brandt made a big stink about it a few months ago, which got five minutes from the mainstream media.
Wikipedia polices itself halfway decently on plagiarism, and even runs a page full of examples unearthed by snooping editors. I once got involved in a minor scuffle on this page. Not for anything I did, but for a silly mix-up on the article about writer Steven Millhauser. This time the plagiarism ran in the opposite direction: a used-book site borrowed a few lines of blurby prose from the article and used them to plug the novelist's work. I helped straighten out the goofiness.
The reason I'm chatting about copyvio is an article I picked up from the wikify list today: Elba, Alabama. The title intrigued me because it seemed to tie Napoleon to Sweet Home You-Know-What. In fact, there was a connection, though tenuous and long-ago-ish. There was also a huge swatch of stolen prose from the town's web site, dumped word-for-word into the article's "History" section.
I did a complete rewrite to eliminate the obvious copyvio. Coincidentally, the section received a more encyclopedic tone, whatever that means, because I cut a lot of gushing about cutesy twists of town legend. The kid (and his mail bag) who got rescued from the flood is still in there, though.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Criticism of Criticism of Wikipedia
A cute bit of software called WikiDashboard reveals that I'm the most frequent editor of the Criticism of Wikipedia article. I first heard about this compendium of fair and unfair swipes at WP from the god-king himself, Jimbo Wales. He called the it "a fine article" in a debate with some Encyclopedia Britannica functionary. I checked the entry and started correcting some footnotes. I've been hooked ever since.
Others don't think so highly of the article. It has survived five attempts at deletion by non-fans. As you might expect, the article is regularly vandalized by "editors" announcing that Wikipedia sucks, blows, or sucks and blows. Every assertion in the article also receives a lot of legitimate scrutiny, since some people just don't like Wikipedia getting criticized on its own dime. Which is okay. Those legit questions keep me on my toes to find good sources for every bit of prose.
I'm not sure what it says about me that I spend so much time on this article. Maybe I'm basically skeptical of WP myself, and working on the entry assuages my conscience. Trouble is, I disagree with lots of the anti-WP whines quoted in the article. A Britannica ex-staffer's comparison of Wikipedia to a filthy john is typical of the weird and unjust criticisms splattered heavily throughout the entry.
Maybe I like the challenge of remaining unbiased on such a controversial subject. If I can edit this article extensively without getting blocked, banned and executed, maybe I'm doing something right. Or maybe I'm heading for a bloody crash and don't know it.
Others don't think so highly of the article. It has survived five attempts at deletion by non-fans. As you might expect, the article is regularly vandalized by "editors" announcing that Wikipedia sucks, blows, or sucks and blows. Every assertion in the article also receives a lot of legitimate scrutiny, since some people just don't like Wikipedia getting criticized on its own dime. Which is okay. Those legit questions keep me on my toes to find good sources for every bit of prose.
I'm not sure what it says about me that I spend so much time on this article. Maybe I'm basically skeptical of WP myself, and working on the entry assuages my conscience. Trouble is, I disagree with lots of the anti-WP whines quoted in the article. A Britannica ex-staffer's comparison of Wikipedia to a filthy john is typical of the weird and unjust criticisms splattered heavily throughout the entry.
Maybe I like the challenge of remaining unbiased on such a controversial subject. If I can edit this article extensively without getting blocked, banned and executed, maybe I'm doing something right. Or maybe I'm heading for a bloody crash and don't know it.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
SlimVirgin
This title has always been one of my favorite WP user names. Maybe FatVirgin would be even better, but such self-deprecation might get too cloying if it showed up repeatedly on Wikipedia. SV (another cutesy acronym) has been one of the most active contributors and admins on the encyclopedia, with 4,572,398 edits and 8,945,661 admin actions. These are only slight exaggerations.
SV has also become the favorite target of the anti-Wikipedia websites that have proliferated as the encyclopedia has crawled up the Alexa rankings. She has shown a tendency to edit extremely controversial and heavily politicized articles, such as New antisemitism. Her legion of critics charge that she is trying to push her dreaded POV (another cutesy for "point of view") throughout Wikipedia, and that she's not above using her admin power and connections to other important people on Wikipedia to get her way.
Wikipedia Review, in particular, has become Internet Central for SV-hate, though other sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica and Anti-Social Media have gotten in their licks. WR has concocted an elaborate story on who SlimVirgin really is, involving the Lockerbie bombing, a Cambridge education, a name change, possible intelligence agency connections, and getting fired by Pierre Salinger. That last one would be a solid plus in my book, because Salinger was a paranoid idiot. Whether any of this long, strange trip is true is impossible to decide. There's little or no evidence for it beyond the speculations of SV's sworn enemies.
I've had few run-ins with SlimVirgin because we rarely edit the same articles. She did yank a link I had posted in the Criticism of Wikipedia article to a harmless thread on Wikipedia Review, citing the idiotic BADSITES policy. But I found another source, suitably impeccable, for the article.
The oddest twist is that SlimVirgin has been almost completely inactive on WP for the last month or so, making no edits to articles and only posting a few comments on Wikipedia policy pages. Her admirers and detractors both speculate that she's editing under another account, which may or may not be true, depending on whether you know or care. She's no bother to me. I'm not a friend or foe. But she does generate drama on the encyclopedia even when she may not be around much.
UPDATE: Even though SlimVirgin still isn't editing Wikipedia, at least under that account name, there's more hoohah about her. Seems that Slate published the allegation that she's an intelligence agent of some sort. Which has set off predictable huffing and puffing about BADSITES and whether Slate should be banned as a source on WP. I've had my say on this ruckus, so I'll pass on the latest round.
SV has also become the favorite target of the anti-Wikipedia websites that have proliferated as the encyclopedia has crawled up the Alexa rankings. She has shown a tendency to edit extremely controversial and heavily politicized articles, such as New antisemitism. Her legion of critics charge that she is trying to push her dreaded POV (another cutesy for "point of view") throughout Wikipedia, and that she's not above using her admin power and connections to other important people on Wikipedia to get her way.
Wikipedia Review, in particular, has become Internet Central for SV-hate, though other sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica and Anti-Social Media have gotten in their licks. WR has concocted an elaborate story on who SlimVirgin really is, involving the Lockerbie bombing, a Cambridge education, a name change, possible intelligence agency connections, and getting fired by Pierre Salinger. That last one would be a solid plus in my book, because Salinger was a paranoid idiot. Whether any of this long, strange trip is true is impossible to decide. There's little or no evidence for it beyond the speculations of SV's sworn enemies.
I've had few run-ins with SlimVirgin because we rarely edit the same articles. She did yank a link I had posted in the Criticism of Wikipedia article to a harmless thread on Wikipedia Review, citing the idiotic BADSITES policy. But I found another source, suitably impeccable, for the article.
The oddest twist is that SlimVirgin has been almost completely inactive on WP for the last month or so, making no edits to articles and only posting a few comments on Wikipedia policy pages. Her admirers and detractors both speculate that she's editing under another account, which may or may not be true, depending on whether you know or care. She's no bother to me. I'm not a friend or foe. But she does generate drama on the encyclopedia even when she may not be around much.
UPDATE: Even though SlimVirgin still isn't editing Wikipedia, at least under that account name, there's more hoohah about her. Seems that Slate published the allegation that she's an intelligence agent of some sort. Which has set off predictable huffing and puffing about BADSITES and whether Slate should be banned as a source on WP. I've had my say on this ruckus, so I'll pass on the latest round.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Kelly Martin
Wouldn't you know. Just after I write that Wikipedia admins have to get blasted out of the job with a tactical nuke, one of the blastees shows up to try to get her adminship back. Kelly Martin is seeking adminship once again.
You might call Kelly controversial. You might call the sun hot. Kelly has managed to p.o. countless editors on Wikipedia, who are now lining up to deep-six her request for adminship. The RfA (Wikipedia specializes in these cutesy acronyms, and I use them too damn much myself) stands no chance, of course. Which is good, because giving Kelly Martin the power to block people and delete their stuff is not the greatest idea.
Kelly runs a blog where she waxes indignant over various Wikipedia personalities, policies, software glitches and dandruff flakes. The latest blog entry, as I write, is about how unfair her request for adminship is becoming. Obviously, she could have saved herself the trouble, but Kelly likes trouble because it gives her something to wax about.
Wikipedia Review, one of the anti-Wikipedia whine sites, used to trash Kelly all the time. Lately, Kelly has started a feud with WP admin SlimVirgin, an even more favorite hate-object on Wikipedia Review. So the site is actually warming towards Kelly, which isn't going to do her reputation on Wikipedia any good.
Kelly once held all sorts of important positions on Wikipedia beyond simple adminship. It's not surprising that she wants a return to the glory days. I'd advise Kelly to stick to her software work for the encyclopedia, which she apparently does quite well. But my advice is worth exactly what it costs.
UPDATE: Kelly's request for adminship got the plug pulled. Of course, this decision generated more unintentionally hilarious argument. Wikipedia is a funny place, in an unintentional sort of way.
You might call Kelly controversial. You might call the sun hot. Kelly has managed to p.o. countless editors on Wikipedia, who are now lining up to deep-six her request for adminship. The RfA (Wikipedia specializes in these cutesy acronyms, and I use them too damn much myself) stands no chance, of course. Which is good, because giving Kelly Martin the power to block people and delete their stuff is not the greatest idea.
Kelly runs a blog where she waxes indignant over various Wikipedia personalities, policies, software glitches and dandruff flakes. The latest blog entry, as I write, is about how unfair her request for adminship is becoming. Obviously, she could have saved herself the trouble, but Kelly likes trouble because it gives her something to wax about.
Wikipedia Review, one of the anti-Wikipedia whine sites, used to trash Kelly all the time. Lately, Kelly has started a feud with WP admin SlimVirgin, an even more favorite hate-object on Wikipedia Review. So the site is actually warming towards Kelly, which isn't going to do her reputation on Wikipedia any good.
Kelly once held all sorts of important positions on Wikipedia beyond simple adminship. It's not surprising that she wants a return to the glory days. I'd advise Kelly to stick to her software work for the encyclopedia, which she apparently does quite well. But my advice is worth exactly what it costs.
UPDATE: Kelly's request for adminship got the plug pulled. Of course, this decision generated more unintentionally hilarious argument. Wikipedia is a funny place, in an unintentional sort of way.
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