Funny thing, just a week or so ago I checked on the chances for any wikimeetup in the San Francisco Bay Area, and didn't see an impressive showing on the wiki -- looked like I'd have to push for it, myself, if I wanted anything to happen. But then today, on wikien-l, Eloquence mentioned he'll be stopping by this weekend, and suddenly things are falling into place.
Notice how things magically come together when a trustee is in town.
Yes, this is short notice, but if you're near SF and free this Saturday, you should consider making an appearance. See wikien-l for more coordination details.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Drama lamp
With thanks to SPUI for the post title.
The Register ran a rather quaint piece about OTRS, the other day. En.wikipedia's article on the lava lamp was stubbed for about two weeks, pending legal concerns. According to writer Cade Metz and interviewee John Barberio, there was no explanation.
It's rather apparent Metz didn't put much effort into researching the issue, and I'm a little perplexed why Barberio, described as a seasoned editor of Wikipedia, wasn't able to point him in the right direction. With just one click, we can take ourselves to the article's talk page, where we see numerous references to trademark concerns, all made shortly after the OTRS action. Inside another minute, we can use the whatlinkshere function to find this thread on the admin noticeboards, which in turn links to numerous user talk page discussions, including this one on the acting volunteer's talk page. This has been discussed a few times on IRC, including on public channels, and most or all of those discussions quickly reached the conclusion that legal concerns were afoot.
Now, I don't expect the vast majority of web denizens to immediately find and process this information. But I would expect that a Wikipedian with two years of experience, or a reporter hoping to investigate their story, would be more than able. That neither of them bothered to notice they were swimming in a sea of explanations seems to indicate they couldn't be bothered to check.
We can debate all day whether the aforementioned legal concerns should have led to the blanking of the article. As I write this, the article has been restored, and the legal complaint has evaporated (I'm told they stopped responding, when it was pointed out that a search of the US trademark database yielded no results, and they were asked to provide specific evidence of their claim). OTRS actions can always be discussed, and other OTRS members can (and did) participate in these discussions, to great effect. At the time of the incident, the Wikimedia Foundation was lacking a designated legal counsel -- with no one to fall back on, for legal matters, can we really fault one volunteer for playing it safe?
Hopefully, with Mike Godwin hired on as counsel, this sort of thing will be less problematic, now.
I'm still at a loss to figure how this ever became an issue where "censorship" was a rallying cry, or why one possible overreaction, from one volunteer, at a bad time, in a project which has been running for several years, somehow constitutes doomsday.
In closing, I do think this has demonstrated a need for improved communication, within the community, and is one more downfall of the foundation's recent staffing issues -- both of which are quite serious issues -- but I don't know if we should take it as any more than that.
The Register ran a rather quaint piece about OTRS, the other day. En.wikipedia's article on the lava lamp was stubbed for about two weeks, pending legal concerns. According to writer Cade Metz and interviewee John Barberio, there was no explanation.
It's rather apparent Metz didn't put much effort into researching the issue, and I'm a little perplexed why Barberio, described as a seasoned editor of Wikipedia, wasn't able to point him in the right direction. With just one click, we can take ourselves to the article's talk page, where we see numerous references to trademark concerns, all made shortly after the OTRS action. Inside another minute, we can use the whatlinkshere function to find this thread on the admin noticeboards, which in turn links to numerous user talk page discussions, including this one on the acting volunteer's talk page. This has been discussed a few times on IRC, including on public channels, and most or all of those discussions quickly reached the conclusion that legal concerns were afoot.
Now, I don't expect the vast majority of web denizens to immediately find and process this information. But I would expect that a Wikipedian with two years of experience, or a reporter hoping to investigate their story, would be more than able. That neither of them bothered to notice they were swimming in a sea of explanations seems to indicate they couldn't be bothered to check.
We can debate all day whether the aforementioned legal concerns should have led to the blanking of the article. As I write this, the article has been restored, and the legal complaint has evaporated (I'm told they stopped responding, when it was pointed out that a search of the US trademark database yielded no results, and they were asked to provide specific evidence of their claim). OTRS actions can always be discussed, and other OTRS members can (and did) participate in these discussions, to great effect. At the time of the incident, the Wikimedia Foundation was lacking a designated legal counsel -- with no one to fall back on, for legal matters, can we really fault one volunteer for playing it safe?
Hopefully, with Mike Godwin hired on as counsel, this sort of thing will be less problematic, now.
I'm still at a loss to figure how this ever became an issue where "censorship" was a rallying cry, or why one possible overreaction, from one volunteer, at a bad time, in a project which has been running for several years, somehow constitutes doomsday.
In closing, I do think this has demonstrated a need for improved communication, within the community, and is one more downfall of the foundation's recent staffing issues -- both of which are quite serious issues -- but I don't know if we should take it as any more than that.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Noticeboard bloat
Noticeboards are multiplying on en.wikipedia faster than I can count. There's the admin noticeboard, the incidents subpage, the 3RR subpage, the ArbCom enforcement noticeboard, the community sanction noticeboard, six sections of the Village Pump, a noticeboard or two for many WikiProjects, in addition to the WikiProject's talk page, active talk pages for several key policies and processes, including articles for deletion, images and media for deletion, miscellany for deletion, redirects for deletion, stub types for deletion, categories for deletion, and now even user categories for deletion -- all of these filled with active discussions and, more often than not, subpages.
This doesn't yet factor in the various abuse boards, including admin intervention against vandalism, ISP abuse reporting, long-term abuse profile pages, suspected sockpuppet cases, requests for checkuser, open proxy checking, and now a seperate usernames for attention page.
Don't forget dispute resolution! We have wikiquette alerts, requests for third opinions, requests for comment, straw polls, the mediation cabal, the mediation committee, the arbitration committee, and of course countless user and article talk pages.
This is before we even consider addressing the issue of mailing lists. wikiEN-l, foundation-l, wikipedia-l, announce-l, unblock-en-l, wikitech-l, and who knows how many others. Let's not even talk about IRC, for the moment.
This is all from memory, by the way. I'm probably forgetting a few.
If memory serves, the admin noticeboard's header template linked to about ten pages, when I first came to en.wikipedia. Since then, the conflict of interest noticeboard, the biographies of living persons noticeboard, the usernames for attention noticeboard, the community sanction noticeboard, the fair use galleries noticeboard, and now today the fringe theories noticeboard have all been added to that list. Only one has been closed, that I can recall, and there's sixteen linked, currently. That's a 60% increase in "central" noticeboards in about a year.
I get the feeling I'm really beginning to see what people mean, when they say it's difficult to get things to scale, at this level.
This doesn't yet factor in the various abuse boards, including admin intervention against vandalism, ISP abuse reporting, long-term abuse profile pages, suspected sockpuppet cases, requests for checkuser, open proxy checking, and now a seperate usernames for attention page.
Don't forget dispute resolution! We have wikiquette alerts, requests for third opinions, requests for comment, straw polls, the mediation cabal, the mediation committee, the arbitration committee, and of course countless user and article talk pages.
This is before we even consider addressing the issue of mailing lists. wikiEN-l, foundation-l, wikipedia-l, announce-l, unblock-en-l, wikitech-l, and who knows how many others. Let's not even talk about IRC, for the moment.
This is all from memory, by the way. I'm probably forgetting a few.
If memory serves, the admin noticeboard's header template linked to about ten pages, when I first came to en.wikipedia. Since then, the conflict of interest noticeboard, the biographies of living persons noticeboard, the usernames for attention noticeboard, the community sanction noticeboard, the fair use galleries noticeboard, and now today the fringe theories noticeboard have all been added to that list. Only one has been closed, that I can recall, and there's sixteen linked, currently. That's a 60% increase in "central" noticeboards in about a year.
I get the feeling I'm really beginning to see what people mean, when they say it's difficult to get things to scale, at this level.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
On IRC chanops
Close on the heels of the recent #wikipedia policy shift and access list shakedown, yet another argument over whether Blu Aardvark is (or should be) banned from Wikimedia IRC channels came to light. The full history here predates my participation in Wikimedia projects, I think; the vast majority of my experience with Blu has actually been in blocking a fair number of sockpuppets or imitators, on-wiki, and that's only one chapter in a long story.
A chapter which may be coming to close. Maybe. I'm not holding my breath, to be honest, but if there's a chance of redemption, I don't see why we can't give it a shot and hope for the best.
Currently, several channel operators will kickban Blu on sight. While I'm not sure if this is the wisest course of action, I feel my place in the majority of these cases is to let my voice be heard, and avoid using what access I may have to overturn the established will of the community. Petty squabbling isn't the right way to solve these disagreements.
There is one exception: the new community in #wikipedia-social. This channel was established in the past week or two, and is still getting started. I happen to have a high access level, in this channel, and I feel I should do what I can to help establish the best community possible, in it. In part because the channel is intended to be a distinct and informal forum, in part because the forum isn't serious and is unlikely to contain sensitive discussion, in part to give Blu one foothold where he might be included if he can play well with others (which seems to encourage redemption, in my view), and I must admit in some small part to get the new channel on the map, I've specifically declined to ban Blu from #wikipedia-social until he causes problems in the channel. I would prefer to use chanop tools for preventive, rather than punitive purposes.
If this goes well, maybe over time other bans can be released. If not, then I can at least say I've tried and learned my lesson.
For the most part, people don't seem bothered by this move. Some people seem to be upset over it. Earlier today, someone who has not been a regular face in the channel, and who does not have operator access was opped, in channel (by someone who does have access), and kickbanned Blu. When I asked about this, the acting user disconnected from IRC. A few accusations flew, but in the absence of evidence, I removed the ban in that channel. While I would like to assume good faith (one person may not have been aware of my prior decision), I'm a bit disappointed that someone felt the need to go behind my back by acting anonymously.
I have my suspicions, of course, but voicing them here seems inappropriate.
This entire scuffle could springboard into yet another discussion of the officially unofficial nature of Wikimedia IRC channels -- do on-wiki policies matter? What repercussions do on-wiki actions have, on IRC? What repercussions do IRC actions have, on-wiki? Does authority reside with freenode staff, the Wikimedia Foundation, channel users, channel owners, or even the Wikimedia community as a whole? What are the implications of these questions, and of their answers?
A chapter which may be coming to close. Maybe. I'm not holding my breath, to be honest, but if there's a chance of redemption, I don't see why we can't give it a shot and hope for the best.
Currently, several channel operators will kickban Blu on sight. While I'm not sure if this is the wisest course of action, I feel my place in the majority of these cases is to let my voice be heard, and avoid using what access I may have to overturn the established will of the community. Petty squabbling isn't the right way to solve these disagreements.
There is one exception: the new community in #wikipedia-social. This channel was established in the past week or two, and is still getting started. I happen to have a high access level, in this channel, and I feel I should do what I can to help establish the best community possible, in it. In part because the channel is intended to be a distinct and informal forum, in part because the forum isn't serious and is unlikely to contain sensitive discussion, in part to give Blu one foothold where he might be included if he can play well with others (which seems to encourage redemption, in my view), and I must admit in some small part to get the new channel on the map, I've specifically declined to ban Blu from #wikipedia-social until he causes problems in the channel. I would prefer to use chanop tools for preventive, rather than punitive purposes.
If this goes well, maybe over time other bans can be released. If not, then I can at least say I've tried and learned my lesson.
For the most part, people don't seem bothered by this move. Some people seem to be upset over it. Earlier today, someone who has not been a regular face in the channel, and who does not have operator access was opped, in channel (by someone who does have access), and kickbanned Blu. When I asked about this, the acting user disconnected from IRC. A few accusations flew, but in the absence of evidence, I removed the ban in that channel. While I would like to assume good faith (one person may not have been aware of my prior decision), I'm a bit disappointed that someone felt the need to go behind my back by acting anonymously.
I have my suspicions, of course, but voicing them here seems inappropriate.
This entire scuffle could springboard into yet another discussion of the officially unofficial nature of Wikimedia IRC channels -- do on-wiki policies matter? What repercussions do on-wiki actions have, on IRC? What repercussions do IRC actions have, on-wiki? Does authority reside with freenode staff, the Wikimedia Foundation, channel users, channel owners, or even the Wikimedia community as a whole? What are the implications of these questions, and of their answers?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Tarnations of Mediation
The web, in general, is hardly a land of polite discourse and respect for one's fellow denizens. While Wikipedia's culture tends to do a good job of weeding out obvious trolls ("UR MAMA SO FAT"), users who are more subtle -- even sometimes quite productive -- but nevertheless problematic, can pose a significant difficulty.
Raul, I believe it was, had a lot to say on this subject at the Arbitration Committee panel of Wikimania 2006.
I've had a bit of a mixed bag, on this. I saw one Mediation Cabal case over linking to a school alumni group's website -- it had a wealth of source material, but the link was seen as promotional in nature (the main advocate of the link was involved with the group). After a week or two of tense negotiation, people had more or less agreed to link the site specifically as a source, and I thought things were going okay. Copyright concerns about the site were the last thing to sort through. And then a party in the mediation suddenly started trolling, accusing another party of anti-semitism, and all sorts of things -- out of the blue, as far as I could tell. I even remember asking them, "You're starting shit. You know you are. Why?" Guy never came back, and the whole agreement imploded.
So, that's one lesson: as a mediator, don't advocate. You're not there to see any person or any conclusion come out ahead, within the frame and goals of the project -- and if you are, you probably shouldn't be mediating. There's two important aspects, here: first, you have to be a neutral party, and second, people need to see you as as a neutral party. Unfair mediation should suck for obvious reasons, but if people don't think they'll get a fair "hearing," they won't bother to show up unless they have to. On a volunteer project, there's really no way you can force people into mediation (or anything, for that matter) unless they want to be there.
Then there was a time I responded to a request for third opinion, on whether a particular author qualified as being Jewish-Hungarian. Being an obvious outsider to the argument, I was actually perceived as a neutral party, and things were resolved quickly. Both parties accepted my opinion, by some strange miracle, since all they seemed to want was a tie-breaker. That was a good one.
I remember another case, also with MedCab, where somebody was offended that their article was deleted, and also hurt at the behavior of the users advocating deletion. I tried a sort of "fireside chat," talking things over with them for a bit. They only asked for an apology from one user, who -- once they became aware of the mediation request -- stormed in and continued the name-calling. Again, the newcomer left the project.
There's a few lessons I could draw, from that. One I usually try to look at is: encourage giving, get all sides in a dispute to make concessions, however small. This encourages people to play fairly, makes people see that everyone is committed to the mediation, and creates a feeling that progress is being made. Another lesson might be optimism: people need to believe that the mediation can work, and is working. If one person doesn't believe that, it's of the utmost importance to find out why, and fix the problem if at all possible. Users can almost always fix problems and arguments on their own; the trick is getting them to believe this, first.
Also be watchful for discussion. There are a lot of pages. People don't always run and grab the mediator(s) before arguing, so be proactive.
In a face-to-face mediation, people can't easily leave the table. In Wikipedia or any other online setting, doing so is not only easy but even sometimes difficult to notice. The biggest tip I've yet figured out is this, I suppose: get people at the table, both mentally and emotionally. Get them to vocalize this, encourage them to negotiate. Act as a middleman when they aren't willing to talk to each other.
And, of course, be careful with blocks, if you're an administrator. All too often, everybody in an argument wants everybody else blocked. If you ever accede to one of these requests, a lot of things can go wrong: (1) the blocked user feels wronged, and may not trust you to remain neutral as a mediator; (2) other users may see a chance to "win," and will probably badger you to block again and again; (3) while the user is blocked, circumstances may change dramatically -- be careful that their absense will help, rather than hinder, the mediation. Blocks can be necessary, to get someone's attention, to stop edit warring and attacks, but always be careful with them. We can afford to hurt a vandal's feelings, but good contributors are hard to come by. Be gentle.
Remember why you got into it -- with all the trials and tribulations, people yelling back and forth, and generally squabbling and refusing to work together until the most ridiculous concessions are made, it's important to keep your eye on the prize. Keep things together, keep the project together, and work for the best interests of the project.
This has been a bit of a ramble. More for my sake than a reader's, I suppose, just to get a few thoughts in order. But if you get anything out of it, all's well and good.
Raul, I believe it was, had a lot to say on this subject at the Arbitration Committee panel of Wikimania 2006.
I've had a bit of a mixed bag, on this. I saw one Mediation Cabal case over linking to a school alumni group's website -- it had a wealth of source material, but the link was seen as promotional in nature (the main advocate of the link was involved with the group). After a week or two of tense negotiation, people had more or less agreed to link the site specifically as a source, and I thought things were going okay. Copyright concerns about the site were the last thing to sort through. And then a party in the mediation suddenly started trolling, accusing another party of anti-semitism, and all sorts of things -- out of the blue, as far as I could tell. I even remember asking them, "You're starting shit. You know you are. Why?" Guy never came back, and the whole agreement imploded.
So, that's one lesson: as a mediator, don't advocate. You're not there to see any person or any conclusion come out ahead, within the frame and goals of the project -- and if you are, you probably shouldn't be mediating. There's two important aspects, here: first, you have to be a neutral party, and second, people need to see you as as a neutral party. Unfair mediation should suck for obvious reasons, but if people don't think they'll get a fair "hearing," they won't bother to show up unless they have to. On a volunteer project, there's really no way you can force people into mediation (or anything, for that matter) unless they want to be there.
Then there was a time I responded to a request for third opinion, on whether a particular author qualified as being Jewish-Hungarian. Being an obvious outsider to the argument, I was actually perceived as a neutral party, and things were resolved quickly. Both parties accepted my opinion, by some strange miracle, since all they seemed to want was a tie-breaker. That was a good one.
I remember another case, also with MedCab, where somebody was offended that their article was deleted, and also hurt at the behavior of the users advocating deletion. I tried a sort of "fireside chat," talking things over with them for a bit. They only asked for an apology from one user, who -- once they became aware of the mediation request -- stormed in and continued the name-calling. Again, the newcomer left the project.
There's a few lessons I could draw, from that. One I usually try to look at is: encourage giving, get all sides in a dispute to make concessions, however small. This encourages people to play fairly, makes people see that everyone is committed to the mediation, and creates a feeling that progress is being made. Another lesson might be optimism: people need to believe that the mediation can work, and is working. If one person doesn't believe that, it's of the utmost importance to find out why, and fix the problem if at all possible. Users can almost always fix problems and arguments on their own; the trick is getting them to believe this, first.
Also be watchful for discussion. There are a lot of pages. People don't always run and grab the mediator(s) before arguing, so be proactive.
In a face-to-face mediation, people can't easily leave the table. In Wikipedia or any other online setting, doing so is not only easy but even sometimes difficult to notice. The biggest tip I've yet figured out is this, I suppose: get people at the table, both mentally and emotionally. Get them to vocalize this, encourage them to negotiate. Act as a middleman when they aren't willing to talk to each other.
And, of course, be careful with blocks, if you're an administrator. All too often, everybody in an argument wants everybody else blocked. If you ever accede to one of these requests, a lot of things can go wrong: (1) the blocked user feels wronged, and may not trust you to remain neutral as a mediator; (2) other users may see a chance to "win," and will probably badger you to block again and again; (3) while the user is blocked, circumstances may change dramatically -- be careful that their absense will help, rather than hinder, the mediation. Blocks can be necessary, to get someone's attention, to stop edit warring and attacks, but always be careful with them. We can afford to hurt a vandal's feelings, but good contributors are hard to come by. Be gentle.
Remember why you got into it -- with all the trials and tribulations, people yelling back and forth, and generally squabbling and refusing to work together until the most ridiculous concessions are made, it's important to keep your eye on the prize. Keep things together, keep the project together, and work for the best interests of the project.
This has been a bit of a ramble. More for my sake than a reader's, I suppose, just to get a few thoughts in order. But if you get anything out of it, all's well and good.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Republic of China (Taiwan)
Without delving too much into politics, let's just start off by saying that Wikipedia has two articles, one on Taiwan, the island, and another on the Republic of China, the country ("wayward province," if you're into the hilarious PRC interpretation).
In any article that mentions either of these topics, there's an incessant edit war over the link. One group obessively changes any mention of "Taiwan" to "Republic of China." The next group stops by and changes it to "Republic of China (Taiwan)." Then it'll usually get reverted back and forth between those two, until somebody eventually changes it back to "Taiwan" and starts the whole cycle over again. What's more, it seems to me that every fool who gets into these little wars is absolutely convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is evil.
The arguments clutter up page histories; instead of talking things over, people edit war. Instead of setting up a central discussion forum, people feel the need to re-hash the same battle across countless individual pages.
This is just one more case of ridiculous nationalism. Instead of having the argument they clearly want to be having ("Is Taiwan a country, or isn't it?") they waste their days away arguing over what we're going to call the thing. As with any discussion involving issues of international strife, every side wants the other sides banned for trolling and "POV-pushing."
Remember, the only neutral opinion is mine.
I suppose this is one example of an area where Wikipedia hasn't scaled so well -- it's prohibitively difficult to get everybody together into a forum of the nature that solves this widespread of an issue, and once they're all there, the discussion becomes difficult to manage. It becomes the proverbial tl;dr. Many Wikipedians helpfully respond to such wordy exchanges between large numbers of people by saying, among other things, "Oh, consensus is difficult to call, on this one. I see lots of productive discussion. Keep it up!" Off the top of my head, deletion debates on Esperanza and Fromowner were reaching this level. Certainly RfA reform has already passed it. Which isn't too surprising, really -- get a hugely visible website, pick an issue a lot of people at that site care about, and presto, you'll get a huge discussion with (left unchecked) little in the way of direction or conclusion.
It's all enough make me long for a few more Pastafarians, terribly offended that we're calling their deeply held, personal beliefs a "parody" religion.
In any article that mentions either of these topics, there's an incessant edit war over the link. One group obessively changes any mention of "Taiwan" to "Republic of China." The next group stops by and changes it to "Republic of China (Taiwan)." Then it'll usually get reverted back and forth between those two, until somebody eventually changes it back to "Taiwan" and starts the whole cycle over again. What's more, it seems to me that every fool who gets into these little wars is absolutely convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is evil.
The arguments clutter up page histories; instead of talking things over, people edit war. Instead of setting up a central discussion forum, people feel the need to re-hash the same battle across countless individual pages.
This is just one more case of ridiculous nationalism. Instead of having the argument they clearly want to be having ("Is Taiwan a country, or isn't it?") they waste their days away arguing over what we're going to call the thing. As with any discussion involving issues of international strife, every side wants the other sides banned for trolling and "POV-pushing."
Remember, the only neutral opinion is mine.
I suppose this is one example of an area where Wikipedia hasn't scaled so well -- it's prohibitively difficult to get everybody together into a forum of the nature that solves this widespread of an issue, and once they're all there, the discussion becomes difficult to manage. It becomes the proverbial tl;dr. Many Wikipedians helpfully respond to such wordy exchanges between large numbers of people by saying, among other things, "Oh, consensus is difficult to call, on this one. I see lots of productive discussion. Keep it up!" Off the top of my head, deletion debates on Esperanza and Fromowner were reaching this level. Certainly RfA reform has already passed it. Which isn't too surprising, really -- get a hugely visible website, pick an issue a lot of people at that site care about, and presto, you'll get a huge discussion with (left unchecked) little in the way of direction or conclusion.
It's all enough make me long for a few more Pastafarians, terribly offended that we're calling their deeply held, personal beliefs a "parody" religion.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
09 F9... 88 C0
As I imagine the few readers I have are pretty well "into" net culture, you've probably heard of this already; the few of you who haven't, I've probably mentioned it to in person or otherwise. For those of you who haven't yet heard of it, let's suppose the EFF's summary is as good a start as any: "09 f9: A Legal Primer"
I wasn't actually aware of this until somewhat recently, and I hadn't thought too much of it until just the other day, when it was suddenly exploding all over the place. I don't know exactly what prompted it -- possibly the MPAA & Co. sending out a series of takedown notices got some attention, or else that was a reaction that only got more press. It's hard to say. One way or another, the story was frontpaged on Digg, taken down, frontpaged again, and a perfect storm came together. I heard from a Slashdot admin that they were responding aggressively to the issue. On 4chan, of course, the key was up and down the threads (but we should've seen that from a mile away -- it's /b/, for chrissake). Couldn't say what was going on, as regards Fark or Something Awful.
Now that some of the preliminary dust has settled, the big story seems to center on Digg, where the staff have announced:
As far as my take on this as a Wikipedian, Gmaxwell has posted an essay at Wikipedia:Keyspam, and I heartily endorse this product or service. I was pretty directly involved in the efforts to cut down on the keyspamming; didn't participate directly in the on-wiki discussions regarding the key, just tracking down and cleaning up after vandals and spammers.
To those and a number of people, I can only expand on something I said on IRC, last night: oh, how I wish I were so noble as to put somebdy else's servers in legal limbo to show off how anti-censorship I am.
It always amazes me, the sense of entitlement some people have, and this incident has been no exception. They fully expect hundreds, thousands of people to just lay back or even cheer, as they put entire communities directly in the path of lawyers, subpoenas, and takedown threats. When the communities take steps to protect themselves, they're decried for selfishness and censorship. Never mind that articles like The Live Album, Gareth Batty, or Astronomical transit (to name just a few) have nothing to do with the issue -- we've got the key! We've got to spam it!
I lost track of how many people I blocked from editing. Some of them were abusing dynamic IP addresses to come back again and again. It reached the point I was literally checking every edit from some wide IP ranges. To be honest, I'm a little surprised I haven't been mentioned as some Nazi conspirator, given the tone and methods these spammers seem to favor.
Unfortunately, it's very easy to put someone else in danger, very easy to risk damaging or disrupting a community you've never contributed to or been a part of. It's very easy to take risks when you won't be anywhere near the people may have to deal with the consequences.
Now, a number of people have presented legitimate arguments for posting the key; these are people open to debate as to whether Wikipedia can fairly cover the subject with or without direct mention of the numbers themselves. These people are acting responsibly and in good faith. These are the people who have come out of the woodworks to improve Wikipedia, and I do appreciate those efforts.
To these spammers, though -- there's really no point in what you're doing. You're only damaging the situation for so many people. If you want to take risks and make stands, do it on your own dime, on your own behalf, and for a good reason.
I wasn't actually aware of this until somewhat recently, and I hadn't thought too much of it until just the other day, when it was suddenly exploding all over the place. I don't know exactly what prompted it -- possibly the MPAA & Co. sending out a series of takedown notices got some attention, or else that was a reaction that only got more press. It's hard to say. One way or another, the story was frontpaged on Digg, taken down, frontpaged again, and a perfect storm came together. I heard from a Slashdot admin that they were responding aggressively to the issue. On 4chan, of course, the key was up and down the threads (but we should've seen that from a mile away -- it's /b/, for chrissake). Couldn't say what was going on, as regards Fark or Something Awful.
Now that some of the preliminary dust has settled, the big story seems to center on Digg, where the staff have announced:
...after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.Chilling Effects has posted copies of two takedown notices (linked above). I've seen some interesting stuff written about this, so far, including one blog calling it "Web 2.0 vs. The Cartel" -- I knew it was love at first sight when somebody linked me to iowahawk's take on things.
As far as my take on this as a Wikipedian, Gmaxwell has posted an essay at Wikipedia:Keyspam, and I heartily endorse this product or service. I was pretty directly involved in the efforts to cut down on the keyspamming; didn't participate directly in the on-wiki discussions regarding the key, just tracking down and cleaning up after vandals and spammers.
To those and a number of people, I can only expand on something I said on IRC, last night: oh, how I wish I were so noble as to put somebdy else's servers in legal limbo to show off how anti-censorship I am.
It always amazes me, the sense of entitlement some people have, and this incident has been no exception. They fully expect hundreds, thousands of people to just lay back or even cheer, as they put entire communities directly in the path of lawyers, subpoenas, and takedown threats. When the communities take steps to protect themselves, they're decried for selfishness and censorship. Never mind that articles like The Live Album, Gareth Batty, or Astronomical transit (to name just a few) have nothing to do with the issue -- we've got the key! We've got to spam it!
I lost track of how many people I blocked from editing. Some of them were abusing dynamic IP addresses to come back again and again. It reached the point I was literally checking every edit from some wide IP ranges. To be honest, I'm a little surprised I haven't been mentioned as some Nazi conspirator, given the tone and methods these spammers seem to favor.
Unfortunately, it's very easy to put someone else in danger, very easy to risk damaging or disrupting a community you've never contributed to or been a part of. It's very easy to take risks when you won't be anywhere near the people may have to deal with the consequences.
Now, a number of people have presented legitimate arguments for posting the key; these are people open to debate as to whether Wikipedia can fairly cover the subject with or without direct mention of the numbers themselves. These people are acting responsibly and in good faith. These are the people who have come out of the woodworks to improve Wikipedia, and I do appreciate those efforts.
To these spammers, though -- there's really no point in what you're doing. You're only damaging the situation for so many people. If you want to take risks and make stands, do it on your own dime, on your own behalf, and for a good reason.
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