User talk:Michaeldsuarez/Archive01

Welcome to Meta!

Hello Michaeldsuarez, and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). If you would like, feel free to ask me questions on my talk page. Happy editing! --Abigor talk 13:13, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Referendum report

Hi, about to publish the story at en.WP's The Signpost (within 12 hours, probably). Can you remind us what the voters were told the numbers from 1 to 10 meant? [1] Tony1 12:24, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment

I can see your point about people blocking others on meta. As I said in my unblock of Ottava an indef block of a known user should be a very, very rare occurrence on meta due to our mission. If you'd like to know more about me you could ask a few people over at the Simple English Wikipedia where I'm considered a soft-touch when it comes to blocking established users, I am sometimes moaned at for giving 5th and 6th chances. As for a kindness campaign there is no such thing, but now that you've brought it up perhaps there should be; it's better than a hate campaign yes? fr33kman 17:38, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you!

I just wanted to stop by and tell you that I appreciate your preserving those two threads from automatic archival at Talk:Terms of use. :) I had thought just leaving it unsigned would do it, but evidently not! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Global bans policy discussion

At Requests for comment/Global bans, where you have commented in support of Option 2, a third option has recently been implemented. The first two options did not prove a way for respondents to indicate that they oppose global bans entirely, i.e., that it is not possible to write a meaningful global bans policy that would attract their support. Option 3 is intended to provide that opportunity, and to aid in distinguishing between people who oppose the proposed policy because it requires improvements and those who oppose the proposed policy because no policy permitting global bans should be adopted.

Because the third section was added late by a respondent, it is possible that some people who responded early in the RFC have commented at option 2, but would really prefer to support option 3, or support both. If so, you may voluntarily choose to move your original comment or to or strikethrough your original comment and add new comments. This is a courtesy notice of the change, and there is no requirement that you take any action. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

enwiki ban

So it would seem that the ArbCom has started banning people for stuff that happens off-wiki, as in your case and mine? I think in many cases, SilkTork is behind this. It's clear, from his comments at Wikipedia_talk:Child_protection#Sex_Offenders, that he favors getting rid of people whose off-wiki conduct could, in his eyes, harm the project's reputation. So that opens it up for more witch hunts, and encourages people to narc on their fellow users by saying, "Hey, I just dug up a bunch of dirt on what this guy did off-wiki." That doesn't sound like a very helpful practice.

What I don't like about how my case was handled was that, after I cooperated fully and admitted that I was a reincarnation of a banned user (having returned after a 21-month wikibreak), they gave me no benefit for doing so. They went ahead and deleted all the articles I had created, reverted my edits, and told me that I would probably not be allowed to come back. See http://libertapedia.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte/SilkTork%27s_message .

So, what was the point of cooperating? I could have just denied being Sarsaparilla, and probably gotten away with it, because the IP evidence was stale. As soon as a sockpuppet investigation was filed, I could have just stopped using that account, and quit while I was ahead. I was actually punished for being honest. Then again, so was Jesse Washington.

It's sort of like how you get no benefit if you confess immediately to the police after they call you in for questioning. You get punished more harshly if you make their job easier by signing a confession than if you lawyer up and make them go to the effort of proving you broke the law; in fact, if you say nothing, there's a good chance you'll get off scot-free in many cases, because a lot of times, they lack the evidence to convict without your admission of guilt. Hence this video.

Oh, and his allegations that I made legal threats are unfounded, incidentally. But it doesn't matter, because there's no way I can tell the community that I'm being railroaded on trumped-up allegations, since the ArbCom proceedings happened in secret, and I'm blocked from saying anything to the community. It's a bit of a catch-22. Leucosticte (talk) 03:53, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Poetlister RfC

I just got done reading the RFA you mentioned. Sounds like it got blown out of proportion. That type of incident would never happen on my wikis, because we don't make decisions by voting; therefore, there is little incentive for sockpuppetry. We use a strictly hierarchical system, with each level of officers having accountability to the level above them. There would be no point in having, say, one account with Lieutenant status and another with sysop status, or two accounts with Lieutenant status. It would not confer any extra authority, since all of those accounts' actions would be subject to veto by a Captain.

Nor are the officers elected; rather, the Captains hire and fire the Lieutenants, and the Lieutenants hire and fire the sysops, so there is no potential for rigging of elections by sockpuppetry. Since there's no reason to sock, we don't need, and don't use, CheckUser. Therefore, there is no opportunity for abuse of CheckUser. Therefore, the Poetlister incident would not happen on my wikis.

Jimbo's mistake was resorting to a mobocracy rather than establishing, and keeping, a top-down hierarchy with as many levels as needed to provide the necessary oversight and put each officer in a position appropriate for how trustworthy he were deemed to be. Of course, that raises the question, who keeps the head honcho (i.e. Jimbo) in check? That leads us to the other mistake that Jimbo made, which was setting up WMF as a nonprofit. A for-profit entity's management is subject to all the checks and balances of a consumer and investor democracy. See also commercialization. Leucosticte (talk) 05:29, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Inclupedia

Rather than try to fight the power here, why not create our own power? Obviously governance on WMF projects, particularly enwiki, the largest and (arguably) most important of those projects, is badly broken, and the prospects of fixing it aren't good. Since the wikisphere needs Inclupedia anyway, now is a good opportunity to try a different and better system. I'm going to set up a hierarchy, once the site is established.

How are your programming skills? I could use someone to bounce ideas off of. For example, right now I am attempting to figure out, what is the best approach to take in writing mw:Extension:MirrorTools? See mw:Extension:MirrorTools/Development. Leucosticte (talk) 11:49, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Unable to reach a decision

When a judge or jury is unable to reach a decision that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (or whatever the standard is), isn't the default to vote to acquit, rather than to abstain and make no decision? It's either proven to the person's satisfaction in accordance with the standard, or it isn't; there's no "I can't decide."

But in any event, the fact that he didn't conclude that you had engaged in off-wiki harassment doesn't mean that if he had found sufficient evidence to find that you engaged in off-wiki harassment, he wouldn't have banned you for it. Your situation was a bit different than mine anyway, because there was actually a rule governing off-wiki harassment (even though what you did probably wasn't harassment, and therefore shouldn't have been considered punishable under that rule). There is no rule that I know of that says that if you get convicted of a crime off-wiki that had nothing to do with wiki users, you should get banned for it. Nor is there a rule against making philosophical arguments about violence, or against expressing aesthetic appreciation for lone gunmen, much less a rule saying that you can get banned for it. That's just the ArbCom making up rules as it goes along. The ArbCom is not supposed to be a policymaking body, but it does so anyway.

SilkTork says he, or the ArbCom, wants to get rid of people who are a distraction to the wiki. Well, once we start down that road, what other behavior might be considered distracting? What if someone has 500 userboxes; might that not be considered distracting to a person inclined to get distracted by such things? Anything can be distracting. Leucosticte (talk) 15:37, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedians in Exile

Hi, I created Wikipedians in Exile. If you have any ideas for the agenda, feel free to add them. Thanks. Leucosticte (talk) 16:24, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I created Wikipedians in Exile/Data on granting and denial of standard offer requests as a place to record data on ArbCom and community practice concerning implementation of the standard offer. I notice you've been banned from enwiki for going on a year, maybe longer. That makes you (or made you, if you already exercised the right recently) eligible to apply for a unban. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Ban Appeals Subcommittee states, "Most banned editors should have been banned for more than six months before submitting an appeal to BASC. . . . . We do not accept appeals from one editor more often than once in every six months. When an appeal is decided, we will not reconsider it until a further six months have passed – except at the request of a sitting arbitrator, who have a veto of subcommittee decisions."

I notice that it also says, "Any appeal may be included in statistics about subcommittee business and activity. We would not include in these statistics any information we consider confidential." Regrettably, Category:Wikipedia_Arbitration_Committee_statistics contains no statistics since 2011. I'll check to see if there are any arbitrators at meta I can ask about that data. This is an important matter for banned users, because without the standard offer, we're pretty much hosed since we can't undo past behavior. There are steps that could be taken if we were to determine that the standard offer is not being implementing much anymore; but rather than speculate, I'd prefer to just find out.

Anyway, if you had an appeal turned down, feel free to add yourself to the list. If your appeal gets granted, I'll probably notice but you can add yourself to the list in that case too. Leucosticte (talk) 07:14, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

The expectations

I've noticed that on some wikis, e.g. RationalWiki and RationalWikiWiki, they will sometimes say, "You're banned, but if you want, you can come back under a different account. We don't want to unban you under this account, though, because of all the drama it would cause to openly let you return." When the enwiki ArbCom bans someone for life, is that the same sort of situation? I.e., will they not mind if you come back, as long as you maintain plausible deniability as to who you are? Otherwise, it would seem that a lifetime ban is a pretty draconian punishment, unless you did something extremely bad, like abuse checkuser. I would ask the ArbCom, but they don't seem interested in communicating with me. Leucosticte (talk) 05:16, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

No. On en.wp, you (and all your account[s]) are banned for the length of time specified, or forever (if not specified). However, they are moderately generous about unbanning people, so long as you wait a while (officially a six-month minimum, but more frequently specified as at least one year), don't just create a new account (which is almost always checked and always results in a long extension of the ban), and make a polite request to be unbanned after you've waited long enough. It's called the "standard offer". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

http://libertapedia.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte/SilkTork%27s_message – The enwiki ArbCom isn't comfortable with communicating with Leucosticte. Nevertheless, I agree with WhatamIdoing about ArbCom being generous about unbanning some people. Jack Merridew is a recent example, although he or she ended up being banned again. Concerning returning under a new persona, read wikipedia:Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Difference_between_bans_and_blocks. Banned users can't return under a different account. A "block" applies to an account, while a "ban" applies to the person behind the account(s). --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 00:41, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. For the benefit of others, I've noted this information over at Wikipedians in Exile/Handbook for banned users. Cheers, Leucosticte (talk) 01:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 21:10, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I put in a request with Reckless Noise Symphony asking for my RationalWiki userpage to be either blanked or soft-redirected to mw:User:Leucosticte. It's no wonder they have so much drama over there. They basically say, "Let's devote our website to coverage of some of the most controversial, emotionally-charged issues out there, such as politics, religion, and other belief systems that people hold with a quasi-religious fervor. However, let's also kick anyone off who might be a cause of drama."

Of course, any attempt to suppress drama, especially pre-emptively, tends to also cause drama. It's just that the drama spills out of the site onto other sites (where people can express themselves more freely), or goes underground (e.g. in the form of sockpuppetry). Then it becomes necessary to try to suppress those other sites to the extent possible (e.g. by initiating reprisals on RationalWiki against those who post their dissident remarks elsewhere in the wikisphere) and try to root out sockpuppets (which, to be successful, often requires cultivating a paranoid mentality in which any new user who takes up a similar cause as the old user is suspect; this results in false accusations). We've seen Conservapedia go down that road, and to some extent RationalWiki has too. It's all done in the name of maintaining respectability, avoiding distractions, upholding sound values, etc. but the result speaks for itself.

They want to basically say, "Let's not allow anyone to cross this particular line of advocating what will harm the naive and vulnerable." Well, that's always been an excuse for suppressing victimless behavior. Influential people used to say that we needed to suppress illegal drug use because it put certain young people at risk of sexual seduction: "Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy". At least in the case of illegal drugs, it's usually very clear what's being prohibited: a certain chemical for which there's a definitive laboratory test (although there was some dispute over whether to apply the prohibition to non-psychoactive hemp products).

Child pornography often is much more of a grey area, hence Larry Sanger's accusations. This is the problem with the concept of exploitation in general — it's inherently very subjective. If taken to its extreme (aka its logical conclusion), you'd have to totally keep everyone else away from the part of the population that's vulnerable to exploitation, because any joint activity between that group and the dominant group could be considered a form of exploitation, even if the more vulnerable person did not raise any objection to the interaction. There are power imbalances throughout society (especially if you consider wealth disparities a form of power imbalance), and so theoretically any of us could feel afraid of a person who asks us to do something, and feel exploited if we succumb to the perceived pressure to do it. There are even more opportunities for accusations of exploitation if concerned onlookers are allowed to make the accusation of exploitation against the expressed will of both of the parties involved.

Ironically enough, people (usually leftists) who say that the power imbalances between the different races create exploitative relationships would, in order to have a logically consistent philosoophy, say that interracial marriage is exploitative and therefore bad. In fact, to some extent they do say that; that's why they passed the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. The whole theory was that desperate filipinas and so on are vulnerable to being enticed into exploitative marriages with Americans, and that therefore some restrictions needed to be put in place on what consenting persons would be allowed to do with each other.

It's a new (and milder) form of Jim Crow, in a way, except this time it's people from the other side of the political spectrum pushing it. It's the same way with children; the people who say they want to protect them feel they need to disempower them in order to do so by depriving them of opportunities to exercise self-determination. A certain faction of so-called feminists, who were some of the main people who pushed for the current age of consent laws, want to replace what they regard as patriarchy with paternalism, as though that were better. It still boils down to the individual not being able to choose his own destiny.

Anyway, if I'm not going to be allowed to keep my userpage up-to-date, the information there (e.g. wikis I currently edit) will get out-of-date; at the very least there should be a notice saying that I'm banned, so that people know that I'm not able to keep it up-to-date. Amusing, by the way, that they say that my "mainspace edits were ... inserting ardent rebuttals into any article he perceived as an affront to his personal politics". What do they call what they do all day? Leucosticte (talk) 23:53, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Edit warring

I have blocked you for 24 hours for edit warring on Talk:Wikimedia Chapters Association/Elections/2013 Chair. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 20:19, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Email

You will have to ask someone else to assist you there; my focus on Meta at this time is the election and I defer all other matters to regular participants and administrators of Meta. Risker (talk) 15:50, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Dont want

to write everything twice. So look there: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WorldTraveller101#I_dont_like. Btw. Im not blocked here, so Im allowed to write sth here, right?--Angel54 5 (talk) 19:40, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Standard offer

What do you think of my reasoning here? I notice that there wasn't much at Wikipedia talk:Standard offer, even though the page has tons of backlinks. Leucosticte (talk) 16:53, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Board elections

Moved to Talk:Wikipedians in Exile/Board prerequisites. Leucosticte (talk) 03:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Reply

You have new messages

Hello, Michaeldsuarez. You have new messages at Kubura's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

You have new messages

Hello, Michaeldsuarez. You have new messages at Kubura's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

You have new messages

Hello, Michaeldsuarez. You have new messages at Kubura's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

You have new messages

Hello, Michaeldsuarez. You have new messages at Kubura's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

So, who is it, I thought, that left four undated talkback templates on Michael's talk page, when one would do, if even that is necessary. (I get email notification of all meta changes for my watchlist, my guess is that you do, too.) Some newbie, obviously. Maybe he needs help. So I looked.

Oh! My!

Michael, are you getting into trouble again? Well, so am I. I left a comment there. Apparently, it takes all kinds .... --Abd (talk) 15:20, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Party-pooper :D. I wasn't expecting Jimbo to show up to the discussion anyway. Thanks for helping to settle things. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 18:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Gad, even I know not to dump stuff like that in a useless space. If Jimbo is watching the page, I.e., getting email notification, he'll see it if he wants to. My guess is, he doesn't. Hence his notice at the top of the page. I've had correspondence with Jimbo, and a meta Talk is not where I'd go to contact him. Maybe I'd use the WP talk page, except you know why I wouldn't. I'd email him. And I'd be the soul of brevity and wit. And if I didn't have that direct address, I'd find someone who does and convince them they should forward it. But this wan't an issue for Jimbo at all. --Abd (talk) 19:47, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

You can try asking questions about Jimbo or Wikimedia projects on Quora and see if he bites. He already answered this one and this other one that I asked. Leucosticte (talk) 05:29, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I've forwarded your advice to Abd in case he isn't watching my talk page any longer. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 19:55, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Diff links in edit summary

Hi. You may not know this yet, but there is a new Special:Diff page for diffs, so instead of putting the URL of a diff as you did in the edit summary of Special:Diff/7433319, you can just use a link. It makes it slightly easier to follow diffs in summaries, but obviously either is fine. Regards, PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:06, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, for use in edit summaries, nice, sometimes. For use in general wikitext, I don't like it. I can't see what page is involved in the wikitext or in hovering over the link. It is also faster to copy the link, from a diff display, or from history, than to put together the special:diff link. --Abd (talk) 01:29, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Depends on the situation. You can, by the way, view source and look for the wgCurRevisionId, wgRevisionId, wgArticleId, etc. if that makes it faster for you. Leucosticte (talk) 14:07, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom turnaround time

The good news is, the ArbCom's turnaround time on appeals is apparently now only a few hours. Leucosticte (talk) 22:06, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

You're apparently on their "list of users to never allow back into the community". I wouldn't be surprised if I were recently added to that list due to the recent incident at Commons. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:54, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Interesting that they don't officially say I'm on the list, or that any such list exists. They still say it's okay to apply every year for an unban. Leucosticte (talk) 01:25, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Governance problem

I think one of the problems with wikis like this is that justice (or "good management", we might say) depends on other users' sticking their necks out to defend users who need to be defended, and yet there's not much incentive for doing the research needed to find out what the heck happened (usually these incidents of alleged misbehavior are pretty complicated, requiring diffs from all over the history of many different pages to show who said and did what) and getting involved. When there's a request for comment (or its equivalent) about someone's behavior, or an unblock request, or whatever, therefore, people tend to base their decisions on their personal likes or dislikes of that user, and vote accordingly, rather than actually looking very deeply into the facts. The same goes for requests for adminship and so on; it's very much a popularity contest, and certain kinds of user (not necessarily those who would make the best sysops) tend to prevail at such contests, while others don't.

As the Project:WikiDragon article notes, vocal dissidents tend not to form politically strong alliances that would help them fend off those who do; as a mutual acquaintance of ours put it, "Wikidragons tend to be loners, wikiknights organize together to fight wikidragons. That's why wikidragons lose so often. Isolated. Wikidragons also have a bit of a problem with the fire-breath. "Hey, I was just breathing. How come you turned black, fell apart, and blew away?"

enwiki politics unfortunately infest the other Wikimedia wikis as well, because if you try to become a sysop here, people will probably say "He can't be trusted; he's banned on enwiki." So the same kinds of people, with the same mentalities, who do well on Wikipedia often end up in charge here too. Leucosticte (talk) 03:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Commons

I attempted to reply to your message, but it said "Editing and uploading from Leucosticte was disabled by HJ Mitchell for the following reason: banned by ArbCom on enwiki; using Commons to circumvent This block (ID #216729) is set to expire: infinite." How odd. Anyway, I was going to say that the breakup has been a very humbling experience. It may be too late to save that relationship, but the lessons learned may make the next one (if there is a next one) more successful. Leucosticte (talk) 03:21, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Inclupedia

Tell me all your thoughts on Inclupedia. I've decided to focus more of my efforts on that project. However, as noted in this post, it can be hard to get MediaWiki reviewers to pay much attention to the core patches necessary for a clean implementation. Care to be put on my list of people to be notified of every Inclupedia-related core patch I submit, so that you can review and +1 them? Thanks. Leucosticte (talk) 23:01, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Warning

You were warned not to interact with me again. Take your disruption elsewhere. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Warned how and by whom? He did not drop anything on your talk page, Ottava. Are you claiming that you have some sort of badge that makes your arguments immune to comment on all pages? You are being highly disruptive here, doing on meta what would get you banned on en.wiki. Of course, you are already banned there, but ... if meta adopts a sane CP policy, it will prohibit what you just did. You would properly email stewards-l with concerns, if you have them. --Abd (talk) 03:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

The issue with Ottava was settled when Sj archived the discussion. I agree with Sj when he says that the argument shouldn't be resurrected. There isn't any benefit to having another Ottava vs. Abd fight. The fighting at Wikiversity didn't end well for either of you, and it probably wouldn't end well for either of you here as well. Nevertheless, I appreciate your support. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:13, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

All is well that ends well, Michael, and it ended on Wikiversity, for sure. Times have changed. Once upon a time, a certain user believed that he ran Wikiversity, but he didn't. When he went down, he needed someone to blame, and made it a mission to get even. That's ancient history. I just reviewed more recent activity on Commons. It's amazing what some people get away with. In any case, Wikiversity is humming along, and I'm happy as a clam.

As to Sj's action, that was fine, though the attacked user has a request in for oversight, which would be proper. This is *not* about the discussion on the CP page. It's about what was on Sj talk, beyond the pale. --Abd (talk) 01:54, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Problem solved, although like many bureaucracies, there are apparently some issues with indecisiveness. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:56, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Nah, "indecisiveness" = "wiki." That was pretty quick, and well-explained by Billinghurst. The "indecisiveness" may have been a result of the offense not being a red-lights-flashing, siren-wailing kind of emergency. Just a boundary best maintained. --Abd (talk) 14:23, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 04:23, 15 December 2014 (UTC)