#wikimedia-ops going private

For those who aren't familiar with Wikimedia IRC on freenode, #wikimedia-ops is described in meta-wiki's channel listings as a place to "Contact Wikimedia channel operators for assistance." In practice, this generally means people will come and ask for help keeping people out of a channel, or help getting people into a channel -- setting and releasing channel bans is the name of the game. Other business includes sporadic discussion of troublesome users or policy matters which affect multiple channels. Each channel is operated independently, for the most part; but there are still cross-cutting concerns.

Many channel operators from various Wikimedia channels idle in #wikimedia-ops; they're set apart from other users by having a voice (+v). Recently, I saw a "regular" user asked to leave the channel because they had no "current business" being in there. I was not aware of such a policy existing, and argued that anything to that effect would be a flawed idea. I was told by several people that the channel needs to be "private" because we don't want trolls listening in on our discussions of how to deal with them; this does seem to be a legitimate concern, but I asked why anyone would consider having private discussion in a public channel anyone can join at any time. I was told that the channel is private, and that people are allowed to join only so that they can appeal channel bans and such. When I asked whose idea this was, I got a bunch of circular logic.

As with the blanket prohibition on public logging, it seems that it was always "someone else's idea" all along. Wonderful how people can make decisions without any risk of accountability, this way.

Now, this bothers me: the assumption appears to be that non-ops are bothersome twits who will only get in the way, and who have no business caring -- much less seeing -- how these channels are run. Governance issues are important to everyone in a channel or group of channels; it strikes me as malevolent or corrupt to suggest that regular users have no right to participate or opine in such matters.

Certainly there is some need for privacy, but that need does not include every discussion, every decision, by any means. As I said in the discussion on IRC, "I'd rather we not take care of private affairs in the public channel, nor public affairs in a private one."

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Update 2007-12-29: From the #wikimedia-ops topic, today: "seanw would prefer it if people were not removed from this channel for idling..." Seems the group contact(s) have spoken on the issue.

Free hugs; or, not

Now that I'm done with finals week, it's time for a mad blitz of shopping before Christmas rolls around. Getting so many thoughtful gifts on short notice is no joke!

One of my numerous stops included the Sunvalley Mall. While walking through the common area, I saw a cheerful-looking young woman holding a simple sign stenciled with, "FREE HUGS." Didn't see anybody take her up on the offer, but I could see I wasn't the only person looking on with a smile. It was cute; it was an earnest thing: a good thing.

Lo and behold, the next time I walked past she was getting a stern lecture from mall security. Couldn't get close enough to hear what was said, but she looked rather nonplussed, and immediately folded her sign before leaving the premises in a hurry. Was she asked to leave? Can't say that reflects well upon mall staff, in my eyes; what's the harm in spreading a little cheer?

Wherever you are, sign girl, I salute you.

Clothes make the man

Considering how often I do this in a robe or something, it feels intensely odd to edit Wikipedia while wearing a suit and tie...

Now there's a thought

I realized something, while keeping tabs on the Durova and Jehochman (and Giano?) arbitration case: this is, I believe, the first time I've been consciously glad of both Wikitruth and Wikipedia Review. Not to say I've ever had any strong opinion on them – a few episodes aside, I've usually been more apathetic, I think, wondering why some people on both sides are so caught up and overheated in an apparently pointless battle for whatever; figuring it's only natural that a site as large and prominent as Wikipedia will get (and sometimes deserve) a lot of criticism; wishing these and similar sites spent less time focusing on drama, and more on providing some sort of neutral community oversight. So much of the effort is targeted at specific people, it's bewildering. Perhaps if I'd been more involved in past incidents, I'd feel differently.

Of course I periodically go and check if I'm mentioned. I'd appreciate some useful, evenhanded feedback, to be honest. Far too rare, on and off the wiki.

But getting back to the point I started on, if you're curious to see alleged copies of the infamous email, or lists of people who might have been on the wpCyberstalking mailing list, you're just not going to find them on Wikipedia. Readers can and should judge the sources and messengers on their own.

One other lesson, the outing of this list has helped me to better understand some of the objections I've seen to the #wikipedia-en-admins channel on freenode. Old problems aside, there are key differences: in the case of #-admins, the community at large is aware of the forum's long existence, aware of its membership and of the people in charge, and there are fairly clear qualifications to get in. Accountability is a concern, but no longer as rampant as it used to be, thanks to some community oversight. I certainly have never hidden the fact of my participation in the channel. In the case of this wpCyberstalking list, however, none of those seem to hold even remotely true. The community was not aware of chilling, highly controversial administrative decisions being made behind closed doors. The community had no hope of input, and no way of holding the people making those decisions accountable. The community was not – and still is not – allowed to know who was making these decisions.

The few who have come forward to identify themselves as (sometimes former) list subscribers have, as far as I can tell, denied any list-side participation in or responsibility for these recent events. Aside from Durova's candor, the only people giving straight answers have no answers. What does that say for the rest of them?

Metapedian, 2007-11-29

ArbCom elections underway (but you probably already knew that); self-nomination period ends tomorrow. Voting begins December 3rd.

Current adminship candidates: thedemonhog, Hbdragon88, Dlohcierekim.

New bureaucrat: WJBscribe.

A software bug lasting approximately 20 minutes caused many errors while saving edits to pages including tags such as , , and . More information, including cleanup effort, can be found at [[User:Splarka/UNIQ list]].

Seven cases currently before ArbCom. In the evidence phase: Anonimu, Episodes and characters, Winter Soldier 2. In the voting phase: Durova and Jehochman, Macedonia, Asgardian-Tenebrae. Current motion to close on Privatemusings.

Core Contest aims to encourage article improvement; offering $100 to authors of articles which see the most improvement before December 9th.

The Ombudsmen Committee, charged with investigating alleged violations of the privacy policy, has three new members; more information on foundation-l.

This doesn't quite feel like what I'm going for, but it's a first shot at it. May take me a bit to get into the swing of it. Feedback, comments? Feel free.

Scaling discussion: The Metapedian

Anybody who's spent even a small amount of time on Wikipedia could tell you that there's a huge number of discussions going on at any moment, between dozens of noticeboards, a hundred or more deletion debates per day, and a countless multitude of user talk pages and dispute resolution processes. It's easy to get lost, or have difficulty keeping track of some important discussions which have wider relevance across the project, or sometimes even across multiple projects. Over time, as the project grows, and more users become involved, this problem will only worsen.

People need to be able to find important discussions, so that they can offer their input, or just keep an eye on things. This, in turn, can lead to a second difficulty: scaling individual discussions to allow for more participants, so that the signal-to-noise ratio doesn't get too bad, and important comments are seen.

To put it more directly, there's two problems, here: people need to be able to find the most relevant discussions, and they need to be able to extract keystone comments from those discussions. The forum itself must scale, as must the discussions within that forum. That second problem is probably the harder one to deal with.

On Wikipedia, we've scaled the forum by splitting up discussions among multiple pages (more traditional forums do the same, organizing discussions into topical subforums), and while users can watch individual pages, that clearly doesn't solve the problem of sorting through thousands of discussions. We have some wonderful efforts at the Wikipedia Signpost, providing general project news on a weekly basis, or the centralized discussion linkbox, offering a quick peek at a dozen or so discussions at a time. But what about timely discussions which get some attention, without quite reaching that level of long-term, project-wide concern? At that sort of level, there's not really much more than keeping your own eyes and ears wide open, as far as I can tell.

Links passed around in mailing lists, IRC, and other areas can help us find discussions, but there's a bit much noise mixed in with the signal. Is there a more complete solution? I'd like to think a link aggregator of some sort might help. That way, at least, we're increasing the availability of these links to a wider audience, so that more people can see them, and reducing the amount of noise surrounding those links, so that they're easier to find.

So, yes, something vaguely akin to Fark or Slashdot, focused on Wikipedia. It seems to me like it could scale, if managed by the right people. Lacking the resources to do anything like that, at the moment, I suspect I'll be blogging about it. Call it “The Metapedian.” If people are interested and feedback is good, it could continue or grow, but we'll see what the future holds.

Startle me!

Something I've realized, after seeing the new Resident Evil film, even if it's not so much specifically about that: there's quite a range of films in the "horror" genre. Some of them achieve this horror by reaching deep into the human psyche, capitalizing on fears and anxieties we may not have realized we had, applying subtle technique to gradually build up a sensation that will truly stick with an audience. Others just take cheap parlor tricks, putting in dark room after dark room, always using the same quick music, always suddenly tossing something into the camera frame to startle us, time after time. We might as well call them "startle" flicks.

Could even make it a section at movie stores. Comedy. Drama. Startle.

There's no deeper feeling, no deeper meaning or realization to it. It's just a temporary adrenaline rush. Once you walk out the theater, nothing's changed. Nothing for me to wonder or worry about. No revelations. The basic adrenaline rush is over, and that's all I got out of it.

Such simple tricks may work once or twice. Used appropriately, they could certainly be part of a masterpiece. But if there's nothing to back them up, they only become tiresome and obvious. The craft of a film shouldn't be obvious -- if a movie doesn't stay a step or two ahead of the audience, it's in trouble. I don't want to have time to decide whether some gore and blood was put in for the sole purpose of grossing me out; it'll be obvious enough whether it has a purpose, but the fact that I have time to think about it means the content of the movie is getting too thin.

Work in layers. Stay ahead of the audience. Give us the right sorts of information so that we can get a rough understanding, the first time through, but make sure there's enough there for us to think about and watch again and again, and then you'll have something that might be more worth those millions of funding.

That, and people who talk in theaters are damned annoying.