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?

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.

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.

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:

...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.

Wikipedia's (Sin)bad

Apparently, people got very excited when the Wikipedia article on Sinbad erroneously reported his death. As reported in the Washington Post's AP story, the story generated hundreds of calls, emails, and other condolences. I'd have made a few more news links, but I realized when looking to do so that it all seems to be just the one Associated Press story with a slightly different headline.

I thought Sinbad's reaction was interesting:

When asked if he was upset about the mix-up, Sinbad, whose real name is David Adkins, just laughed.

"It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

Level-headed guy. Though I suppose being in the public eye for awhile more or less forces you to take on a sense of humor about these things, I appreciate the leeway he seems to be affording us. The next line in the article, though, caught my attention:

Sinbad, who is currently on the road doing stand up, said he hasn't received an apology from the Internet site.

I have a feeling he was prompted -- they probably asked him specifically if he had or hadn't. My initial reaction was to wonder if Wikipedians as a whole owed him an apology, but I think it's the least we could do. It'd be a bit of a stretch to say we're directly responsible for the mix-up, but if we the editors don't take responsibility for Wikipedia, who will? With that in mind, a belated apology to Mr Adkins -- I can't speak for everyone in the Wikipedia community, but I'll remember this incident, and will do my best to learn from it.

Judging from edit times, the fake death was up for about two hours before being removed; that's an awfully long interim period, and it managed to prompt this whole storm. I'm reminded of a post Kelly Martin made not too long ago, about article rot:

Rot gets in when an article is vandalized twice and the reverting patroller only reverts one of the vandalisms. This is relatively common, and is increasingly more of a problem as vandalism patrol has become even more of a "point and shoot" game for the people who play it: these people have such a sense of urgency combined with a lack of interest in actually reading the articles, that they often don't look to see if they've reverted to a vandalized version (or even look at what they've reverted at all).

And KM's right on that count, I think. I put in a lot of time on recent changes patrol, and I need to remind myself every so often that, while we're pretty good at what we do, we're not as good as we sometimes like to think. I didn't know anything about this affair until a very close friend linked me to a news report on Yahoo; sure, it's a big wiki, but when RC patrol slips up, I feel at least partially to blame.

It may be silly, but it keeps me motivated.

I think, ultimately, the best thing we can do in response to this sort of thing is to educate our readers. This sort of false report is all too common -- just the other day, I reverted the same sort of nonsense at Will Smith's article. So, people need to think critically about what they read, and we need to give them the tools to do so.

So, when you see any suspicious report on Wikipedia:

1. Remind yourself that anyone can edit Wikipedia, and their changes will be visible immediately.
   
2. Check for sourcing. Any report of that nature should be attributed to a reliable source.
3. Check the history tab. This will show you a list of every change to the article, allowing you to quickly tell who changed what, when they changed it, and what they changed.

And please don't forget to make sure the celebrity's sudden death actually makes sense. For nearly half of the two-hour period mentioned above, the article reported that Sinbad had died on 14 March 2009 -- two years after today's date. That, at least, should throw up a few red flags.

Tila Tequila and feminism?

I'll hesitantly admit that I bought Tila Tequila's recent single, "I Love U". It was featured on the iTunes frontpage and packaged such that the video came free, so I figured, "how bad can it be?" I'm really more of a rock person, by and large, so a few little baby steps outside my usual territory can be interesting. Apparently, being the most popular person on Myspace (which is quite a feat!) doesn't imply you're all too good of a musician. She can certainly wiggle well, as demonstrated in the attached video, but the people have spoken, and here's what one thoughtfulsilence had to say:

She sings that she's got no shame. But I think sometimes, people should have a bit of it, to realize the toleration meter of humans has a limit. This is so over the limit. So embarassing!!

Based on some voting procedure I believe is similar to that of Urban Dictionary, this comment is currently ranked third out of 538 reviews. On reflection, that may be about all there is to say on the matter.

But I'm still listening to the song. As with My Humps -- I couldn't say why, it's a curious thing.

I'm reminded of something I remember reading a few years ago, along the lines of, "Hollywood has embraced pre-feminism, post-feminism, and even post-post-feminism, without ever actually really getting the point of feminism." I could've sworn it was the late Molly Ivins -- not her biggest fan, but I read her stuff, which is more than I could say for her right-wing counterpart (interesting thread on the Least I Could Do blog, by the way), but now that I'm thinking about it, it may have been Ellen Goodman. Woman writes brilliant editorials, in my opinion, but too rarely gets the sort of attention some other columnists manage to bring on through sheer dumb force of quotable controversy.

More to the point, are Cup-o-Noodle instant celebrities like this, cashing in sex appeal for their 15 minutes (or seconds), advancing or hurting the feminist cause? Some people might say she's being taken advantage of by the Evil Capitalist Boys' Club; others might say she's fighting The Man by getting while the getting is good. The point as I see it isn't that Hollywood (or the media) are in favor of or against feminism, but more that they're quite fully aware of these two tenets: (1) sex sells, and (2) they need to make money. Aspiring starlets like Tequila, likewise, crave attention and have figured out a very direct way to get it. They're not thinking about the political or social implications, at least not in the long term -- talk about Smith's invisible hand.

So, the question then becomes: how do we, as a society, look at this? How do we deal with it?

I've long said that, as with racism, feminism should emphatically not be a question of men against women. It's a question of people who want empowered women on equal terms with men, and those who don't, and why they do or don't. The "Battle of the Sexes" metaphor is tired, done, and long overdue for burial. It's not about empowerment for superiority, it's about empowerment for equality and even ground.

Browsing around, I've realized that I consider myself every bit a sex-positive feminist. I don't think all porn is inherently evil and degrading women, or to society. I don't even understand how someone could think that. I don't think sexuality is evil. I don't think everyone has the same wants, and with that in mind, don't see why we should all be expected to make the same choices about what we do or don't enjoy. That's one beauty, there: your sexuality is yours, and it is what you make of it. I, for one, would hope that everyone enjoys it as they please.

So, at what point is a wiggling starlet celebrating her form, and at what point is she being objectified? The line, as far as I can tell, falls here: is she valued for other aspects, the admiration of physical beauty among them, or is a quick peek at her ass the sole value seen? Does she have a character? Do we care what she thinks? Do we know how she thinks, for that matter?

Ten people looking at the same picture will have twelve opinions on it. But I'd like to think that's a workable guideline. We can celebrate sexuality without letting it be the sole aspect of a person. At least, I'd like to think so.

And in the meantime, this brief experiment is over, and I'm back inside my musical shell, listening to some Supertramp.

City of Largo firing transsexual manager?

I first ran across this in my local paper; here's the MSNBC version. In brief, Steven Stanton, Largo's city manager for 14 years, was recently pressed into announcing his intention to undergo a sex change. In the week following that announcement, city hall leapt into action, striking a swift blow for justice and equality by...

...oh, wait, they plan on summarily firing him.

Suddenly hundreds of people emailed, called, and wrote to Largo's City Hall. Around 500 people (in a city of 76,000) attended a meeting and demanded that the city fire Stanton ASAP. According to this story from the St. Petersburg Times, one Baptist Pastor, Ron Sanders said:

"He's not going to be a man, and he's not going to be a female. He's going to be an 'it.' It's going to be the most sorrowful decision he has ever made."

Thank you, sir, but I'd like to ask if this question ever stepped into your mind: is he running the city well? Of this mob, 500-strong, how many of you had ever even heard Stanton's name before? How many of you care that he's dedicated nearly two decades of service to you and your city, 14 of which as its manager? You've trusted him with over 1,000 employees and a million dollars, but the moment he makes a personal decision with no impact on his professional ability, he's to be taken out and fired?

What in the blazing hell does this have to do with Stanton's ability to do his job? Or her job, for that matter?

Thankfully, I managed to find some more rational voices pretty quickly -- Shakespeare's Sister seems to have a pretty good read, from my point of view, even pointing out a survey by the same paper that outed Stantion, where the majority of Largo's citizens believe he's been treated unfairly.

Likewise, this fellow had something to say:

Friends, it really shouldn't matter. The man has been the top administrator for 14 years in the Pinellas County city of 75,000. Noone stays around that long without racking up an excellent record at the job. As long as Stanton continues to do the job he was hired to do, it shouldn't matter if the name if Steven or Susan or if he wears a suit and tie or dresses.

Steven Stanton, soon to be Susan Stanton, is quoted in his interview with MSNBC (linked above) as saying:

The city commissioners [who voted to fire me] said I have no followers. Who the hell has been hugging me all week?

Well, Stanton, count me among your supporters. I think it's appalling and bigoted, that so many people are spitting on your years of service to your community. It's one thing if you're corrupt, it's one thing if you've damaged the city, but I just don't see how this has anything to do with your ability to manage a city well.