User talk:Jtneill/Archive/2010

Hi, thanks and welcome back! I can't think of any questions or anything right now, but if something comes up, I'll let you know. --AFriedman (talk) 21:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jtneill,

Hope you're good. My one month trial period for probationary custodianship is over, and would you please nominate me for full custodianship if you think I'm deserving?

A summary of what I've done: On January 4, I created alternate account User:JacobFrank, named after an 18th century Jewish historical figure. I tested the "block," "protect" and "delete" tools on his Userspace. In addition, on 20 January I semiprotected Hitler's Germany and changed the settings of an Ottava Rima block--see User talk:Ottava Rima. During my probationary period, I made over 100 edits to this wiki.

Thanks, AFriedman (talk) 17:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Can you comment on The Near Death Experience as Possible Evidence for any Afterlife? Can you put me in touch with others who can comment here? Proxima Centauri 19:57, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hey Jtneill, I was wondering whether you are interested in joining Appropedia; we currently need someone with experience in the wiki-software; see http://www.appropedia.org/User_talk:Chriswaterguy#Members More precisely, we need to add some extensions/semantic updates to automate a few things (ie member listing, ...). Let me/us know if you're intrested or if you know someone that might be intrested. KVDP 12:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi, hope you're having a good week. I'll be very busy for the next 2 weeks (midterm exams in some of the hardest classes I've taken yet). So, I'd like to know if we're on the same page for when my probationary period would end. I will have more time after March 12 or so. Perhaps we could start the voting for full custodianship on March 13? Best, AFriedman (talk) 13:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Jtneill. Thank you for the info I was not aware of the control+ trick I just use the zoom feature on my pen tablet. so I might try it sometime. --PalmdaleHermit 23:05, 2 March 2010 (UTC)--PalmdaleHermit 23:05, 2 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have undone the removal of the ethics section. Ethics are part of any research process. I'm trying to consolidate information in a useful way with this page, so that people can quickly learn and get up to speed on how to do research on Wikiversity. I left the changes you made to Wikiversity:Research ethics intake though since what I wrote is relevant and useful there as well.

I have thought about changing the research ethics page into a redirect as well. Depending on how much correlation the research ethics page ends up having with what I end up writing on the research process page. -- darklama  13:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Just saw your change to Wikiversity:Original research. I think linking to research ethics as you did is definitely better for now. The research process is intended to serve as an alternative option to original research as well. -- darklama  14:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

No worries with all of the above, thanks, sorry I hope I didn't get in your way. I think its the wiki way ;) I agree with 99.9% of your edits - keep going! -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity has more research projects than people thought huh? I think I have created a monster! Keep up the good categorization work ;) -- darklama  00:19, 12 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi, thanks for the advice. I wouldn't normally do this, but JacobFrank is my alternate account. BTW, what are your thoughts about making w:Jacob Frank (and User:JacobFrank) one of Wikiversity's mascots? He seems to have more educational value than the current mascots, given that he was a real person and he illuminates several aspects of European history and philosophy. Then we could tie him and WV in to the relevant articles and Wikipedia's WikiProjects that he would be part of. --AFriedman (talk) 14:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi, sorry about the Jacob Frank confusion. I didn't realize it would lead to this much incovenience. This was the only place I edited a space other than his Userpage with this account, and I just changed the signature over there so it reads "AFriedman."

Also, I've just developed Jacob Frank as one of the random mascots. See the new User:JacobFrank Userpage, and Template:JacobFrank. Although the previous mascots are quite cute, I notice that none of them, in themselves, have any educational value as far as I can tell. Mascots that represent real aspects of actual topics might provide an additional opportunity to educate Users of Wikiversity and to engage them in creating content--much as "Featured Articles" and "Did You Know" hooks help accomplish this purpose on Wikipedia. For example, Jacob Frank can be used to teach people about the philosophy and the side of European history that he represents, which most people are unfamiliar with. Also, I hope it comes across that I've used his doctrine of "purification through transgression" to introduce the Wikiversity policies of "Be bold" and "ignore all rules." What do you think of the mascot? --AFriedman (talk) 03:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity:Candidates_for_Custodianship#Nominations_for_Bureaucratship --mikeu ^talk 14:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Congrat! :) Absolute support! Is this thing the same as Custodianship, i.e. 4 weeks probationary? --Gbaor 10:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Gbaor - it seems the time frame for probation is not clear/decided - Wikiversity:Bureaucratship. Longer may be appropriate? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 11:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

I thought more about an immediate voting procedure. I don't really have an insight to this topic, but as I imagine you should not use the "fancy new tools" as a Bureaucrat too often, and as a long term Custodian you are already well known. So I don't see a problem to vote now. --Gbaor 12:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

I wanted to update the MediaWiki:Sitenotice but then I realized that I am not able to do it. Maybe you can insert your nomination there? --Gbaor 12:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, done, thanks for your help. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 12:14, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Do you think lost position can go back directly (i.e. without a mentorship process). I still see all three guys who were blocked, desysopsed or abdicated, where assuming a good faith and were pro the openness of Wikiversity. They will only step in swamps. But they are not responsible for those swamps as swamps are as natural as arable land. So once the Founder will understand that condemn to death children, who left home to the prohibited area was to big punishment, can we offer these guys to come back home directly and forgive their "sins"?--Juan de Vojníkov 05:51, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi Juan - thanks for helping out - I really hope the answer can be "yes, its possible". Sadly, I haven't seem many "comebacks" - it seems to be deflating to be shut out even if the door re-opens later on. Until this point community review + consensus could lead to action to enable or disable levels of access. I hope this can still be our way. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 06:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Speaking about social experiments, for you as someone involved in the topic this could be interesting --Gbaor 12:41, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the welcome back and tip. One of my favorite things about this place is the kindness everyone shows when making suggestions for improvement or pointing out errors :). It makes me want to contribute because I feel valued as a human.

I was wondering about the category to add, and will be adding the stuff to religious studies and an topic specific category. Please let me know if you see any other categories i need to use, or a more specific one. Geoff Plourde 02:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

from here:

• is not 16 mins with my browser ice weasel (3.0.6) under debian. It stops at: ".. on projects as such as WV"
• and in google chrome (5.0.335.0 dev) I hear audio, but video does not move at all.
• and in: gnome Web Browser (2.22.3) it stopped at "... several key"

I guess you could ask around more people to try. Perhaps it is just my system playing weird. ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 22:40, 21 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

It is ok for me in Firefox 3.5 on WinXP. But I have similar problems in Google Chrome and IE8. So, problems for both of us it seems with .ogv and Wikimedia platform. I'm also uploading to youtube to provide more reliable external links. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 01:31, 22 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the blast from the past. Maybe a checkuser search would reveal the dozen or so other accounts I have made and forgotten about. In the absence of checkuser data, I'm sure that there is some Wikipedian with free time who could hunt down all of my lost user accounts. --JWSchmidt 01:17, 22 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

• CrossActivity
• CrossBlock
• Global account status

These tools are of use for a number of custodian tasks, but in particular I use these before considering a request for account renaming. For example, see [1] which shows username usage cross-wiki. --mikeu ^talk 13:22, 27 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

These tools are also handy for bot requests, to verify which other projects a bot is flagged on. ie. [2] You might also want to check Global bot user list en-wv does not allow the global bot flag, but you might get a local request from a bot account that is already flagged as global. --mikeu ^talk 13:35, 27 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think we should come up with some sort of VQ Wiki honorary award for professors who do extensive coursework with their students on Wikiversity, in honor of VQL. Perhaps borrowing from the 'VQWiki' logo on his U.Florida wiki homepage. –SJ+> 07:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

That's a very nice idea; it prompted me to make this {{Barnstar Scholar}} which is more generic - or do you think a custom-dedicated one? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 09:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I note that you've recently imported some revisions from Wikipedia for this template. Unfortunately, it appears that may have broken some other templates in the process. I've fixed Template:Unblock denied but there may be others. Adambro 17:05, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Tx for fixing, I was a bit concerned with the import of {{notice}} and associated templates because it broke e.g., {{ambox}} too. See also Colloquium#Template imports. Let me know if you notice anything else. I had visions of a trout-slapping. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that is an interest of mine. The need to protect wiki content from those who delete rather than improve pages is why Wikiversity was created as a place where weak contributions were welcomed and allowed to remain until they were improved. However, about a year and a half after Wikiversity started, deletionists started ignoring the rules of Wikiversity and playing their smash and bash games. By the end of 2008 the hostile takeover of Wikiversity was complete and to this day the deletionists remain in control. --JWSchmidt 12:43, 16 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Your tutorial examples of Explorative Factor Analysis with SPSS have links for data files in ucspace.canberra.edu.au.

That requires an account and a password. How to get the data files without logging in? Or, can you make the Wikiversity account linked to the site? Otherwise, having the links for data files is useless for general users of Wikiversity.

Alternatively, if you can replace the data files with widely available sample data, I can practice using them with SPSS.

I am familiar with Factor Analysis and SPSS but that was some years ago. I need a practical brush-up.

Thanks

Yoichi 02:12, 25 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

If you have sample SPSS data files (I am actually using PASW 8 for Mac OS X) that I could use for practicing Explorative Factor Analysis, Excrcises 1-3, that would be appreciated.

Yoichi 04:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I just noticed that the Portal sidebar link was broken, and created a redirect for it. Can you update the sidebar so that it points to the properly capitalized page? Cheers, –SJ+> 12:19, 25 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Jaes for tips on adding a pretty box on my page. V happy. U118827 07:44, 26 August 2010 could you block this guy 202.45.119.10, for vandalizing and delete his 'contributions' please? Thanks. --Diego Grez 02:22, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thankyou - I wasn't watching recent changes. Still need to follow through - later. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 02:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

By the way, could you tutor me on How_to_be_a_Wikimedia_sysop? =) --Diego Grez 02:28, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

It would be a pleasure, Diego. Still learning myself and I suspect you can probably teach me more plenty . Maybe add some info about what you know already know or what questions you have on your user page. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 02:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. I have added more info about myself on my userpage =) --Diego Grez 02:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks again. I have replied on my talk page Cheers =) --Diego Grez 03:02, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Replied =) --Diego Grez 13:47, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Congratulations on your promotion to Bureaucrat! :) I want to ask you: When should I use RevisionDelete and when not? :p --Diego Grez 18:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Let me answer, subject to review by Jtneill, of course. Normally, not. It reduces transparency. However, there are occasions where transparency should be reduced! The most common is to remove from public visibility an edit that can cause harm, such "outing" an editor, revealing real-life identity and, worse, things like location and telephone number, employment, etc., and other kinds of harm may be possible as well. Theoretically, copyright violation could be a possible reason, but I've never seen it done on Wikipedia. Because anyone can link to a Wiki history, if the wiki is being used to host seriously problematic material, such as codes to crack copyright protection, through a link to page history, it could be quite appropriate to revision-delete it.

Normally, even gross incivility remains in the history, as well as vandalism etc. Serious libel could be another exception that might be possible. It's better if edit history is there, usually, so that the problematic contributions of an IP or registered editor can be reviewed if needed. Revision deletion is more work than mere reversion or whole-page deletion, and can make a mess of the logs. There should be a good reason for it. If you think someone is being immediately harmed, in real life, then you might be obligated to act in advance of review, but if a matter is serious enough to warrant deleting revisions, I'd recommend discussing it with others, openly (without directly revealing problem content, of course, but pointing to the location so any admin can read it.)

Users may ask you to revision-delete edits that reveal their IP address, due to autologout, as an example. Generally, this should be honored, and promptly, but I'd say there should be a record of it, say on the user Talk page, so that admins can notice if it's needed later. (The tool allows simply hiding the identity of the editor.) If there is seriously problematic information revealed, it may be appropriate to ask for oversight, and how to do this without creating a big red flag in the meantime is beyond the scope of this answer....

Was there some specific situation you had in mind, Diego? --Abd 19:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I was thinking of serious libel or highly offensive material. Thanks for the explanation Abd :) Also, what do you both think of my last admincustodianship actions :o http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=Diego+Grez&page=&year=&month=-1&hide_patrol_log=1 --Diego Grez 23:22, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

General rule, if there is any reasonable possibility of controversy over an action that involves you, it's better if some other admin does it. Not a rigid rule that would prevent you from protecting yourself as you see necessary. You can ask for confirmation from another admin after the fact. Transparency is very important for the community to have confidence that administrators aren't just protecting themselves and abusing the privileges.

As to the deletion of Back Garden Tennis and the blocking of the user with the same name, that was premature, I'd say. Blocking for an offense by a registered editor should only be begun after an editor ignores warnings. It is possible that the editor could create a useful learning resource on the subject. But I have not researched it. Blocking with no explanation on the user page of a registered editor is not a good idea, either. Blocks should be a last resort. This might simply drive the user away. On the other hand, if there is a history of promotion, say by IP, where this is obviously the same editor, then you might start with a block. But make a comment on the user page and allow the user to respond. When someone registers an account, there is then possible communication and negotiation, and some value might result from it. Otherwise it's all a dead loss and a waste of time. I'll place a comment on the user page and explain the situation. --Abd 15:21, 10 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Rereading the article, you definitely made the right call about deleting the article. Joke article, I wasn't paying enough attention the first time I saw it. I still think that a warning to the editor might be better, but given the user name, my guess is we are not going to see this user again, and it's no loss. Still, you never know. I'll leave my Talk message there. --Abd 23:59, 10 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Excellent question and replies by Abd about RevisionDelete. I have looked into RevisionDelete a bit more and have copied this thread for broader discussion to Wikiversity:Colloquium#RevisionDelete. Can we continue talking about it there? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. Apparently this stopped clock may still be right twice a day. That was one. I may get another yet. --Abd 23:59, 10 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jtneill. Sincerely it has been a pleasure to work with you this month! It has been an incredible learning oppportunity I just couldn't let go! :) Do you think I am deserving of full custodianship? Diego Grez 20:47, 12 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I would recommend extending Diego Grez's probationary period by 2 or 3 months. There is precedence from that, and I think that some of the current matters right now should be resolved first before we can get a clear and open analysis of how Diego Grez has handled ops and other matters. I view his actions positively so far. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:08, 12 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I like the last option too, mainly for the reasons you pointed out :) Diego Grez 17:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Good day James, replied on http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Diego_Grez#Probationary_custodianship . Cheers. :-) Diego Grez 18:14, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

You are now a Bureaucrat per community consensus. --Mav 00:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Congratulations, Jtneill, and thanks, Mav. Broke a logjam here. --Abd 13:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Abd and Mav for getting things moving; hopefully we can get on now with a new and productive phase. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry James, I had meant to get back to your bureaucrat nomination, but other (brick-and-mortar) university stuff got in the way, and I was on holidays when Abd pinged me as a reminder. My hearty congratulations on being bureaucrat - this is great for Wikiversity. :-) Due to my recent inactivity, I don't feel completely confident to sign off on other current bureaucrat-dependent decisions. If you'd like, and time-zones permitting, we could set up a Skype call to chat about general Wikiversity stuff. Otherwise, we can work together on-wiki. All the best. Cormaggio ^talk 14:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Congratulation for THE new status :) --Gbaor 22:39, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

My comment about an action of your mentored admin. Please let me know if I step out of bounds. Thanks.

Diego, there was nothing terribly wrong about your action there, but actions in the future that might seem similar could be a problem, and there is WP:DNFTT, WP:INSULT, and meatball:DefendEachOther. If other editors handle that kind of stuff, it diffuses the conflict and it will normally dissipate. Even vandals understand when ordinary people clean up the mess they make. If an editor has a legitimate grievance with you, there are other ways to approach it, so continuing in this way will just pit him against the entire community, which will be boring, when he is simply reverted and there is no sign you even saw it. Don't let him engage you here by responding personally, particularly as an admin. My suggestion. --Abd 20:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I agree. After all, I'm here to learn :-) --Diego Grez 20:17, 11 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Diego. Little by little, we go far. And with that attitude you will go very far, and quickly. --Abd 20:52, 11 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Agreed all round, thanks for both of you - the boldness, the open feedback, and the responsiveness to that the feedback are most encouraging. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:50, 11 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Is there a way to make this appear on everyone's talk page? I bet new users often make a mess of talk pages (as I did recently!) and this "Leave message" button completely fixes this. With an additional addition of a magic "reply to this comment" type of button, it would basically allow the wiki to have forum-like capabilities.

Daviddoria 19:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I was inclined to grant the request from Sj, and delete, but noticed you created the page. Did you notice the sd tag? Would you mind either deleting the page or removing the tag? My sense is that this page doesn't improve content adequately, it would just lead to page-view chase. --Abd 13:16, 14 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks - See if this helps - it's a quick stub to explain the intent - Individual differences psychology. It is a bit of a placemarker. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Much better. My main goal here was just to get rid of the pesky speedy tag.... Sj did some helpful work trying to clean up and I didn't want to ignore it. After all, he is on the WMF board! (And we should respond to those tags much more rapidly.) --Abd 14:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, agreed; thanks for following these up. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I've given the 5 pillars of open academia a 3D makeover. Does the aspect ratio still look alright to you?

BTW I have been tempted to put open software at the bottom because arguably open software follows an open management approach, provides open access, uses an open license, and uses open standards too.

-- darklama  13:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thank-you for this new version - I like the 3-d layout - looks fabulous. This is the kind of quality image I want do more of for resources I've got past stub/1st draft level (not many!). Regarding the labeling, this is still very much open to consideration. Here's where I'm currently at:

• In recent talks and recordings to fellow academics, I've been starting with open access - share, make things available to others. Then move to open licensing to say, allow people to re-use content. Then to open formats to say share the files in formats that do not require proprietary software to edit or view. Which seems to lead naturally to saying using free software when creating and encourage the use of free software amongst students and the public. Finally, standing back from these specific details, we also need a commitment to open governance which would maximise transparency in leading, guiding and developing academia and academia institutions. I imagine in different situations, a different order may make sense - e.g., I think one could start with open governance.
• I've been using the labels mentioned above more recently -
  • Open formats - Open standards - What do you think? I've still been using Open formats but am interested to consider open standards - would the latter be broader or essentially the same? What other standards besides file formats might it include?
  • Free software - Open software - What do you think? I have to date gone with free software, with intention being to emphasise the FSF definition of freedom. I know there is much debate/discussion about free vs. open terminology. I have sometimes being tempted to skirt around this somewhat by referring to free and open software. Interested to know your thoughts. Really, I just mean striving to use software which exhibits the greatest freedoms.
  • Open management - Open governance - I seem to have shifted for example from open management to open governance (seems broader) - what do you think?

Thanks for your engagement with this - it helps to have someone on wiki to bounce around the ideas. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:05, 17 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think open standards is broader than open formats. When I think of open standards I think of files, hardware specs, internet protocols, communication protocols, conventions, and other things that can be standardized and anyone can use.

Indeed there can be differences between free and open software, both are probably worth a mention. Free can refer to freedom or to cost. Some software may provide more rights or freedoms to do as you wish. Software can still be free to use and distribute at no cost to you while still being closed to review and being modified without permission.

I am not sure whether there is any difference between governance and management.

Yesterday I was toying with and changing the wording for the 5 pillars on my computer. I think we both are actually leaning towards the same thing. I think the current 5 pillars might be the wrong approach. I was thinking an open academia is an academia that is open to 1) sharing, 2) review, 3) adoption, 4) adaptation, and 5) communication. By accident I realized this could possibly be understood rather well by academics, since if they have ever published any works, they know they are openly sharing their work to be reviewed by their peers, their peers may adopt and adapt the published work, and this may in turn encourage open communication.

This model lacks two things software, and anything about management or governance. I think I am willing to urge all aspects of an academia needs to be open, including what they do, and what they use, in order to be considered an open academia.

I think I will upload the new wording I got for the pillars, though it does not reflect all these changes yet. -- darklama  16:05, 17 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Another question. Why and when should I block? I feel that I have been very punitive with some of my blocks on mediawiki.org, so it's better to have a third-party opinion. Thanks :) Diego Grez 00:14, 17 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

It should go without saying that any admin should be ready to listen to the opinions of others, and seeking those opinions is even better. I'll outline some of principles, assuming your permission, Jtneill. I have substantial experience, originally in reviewing blocks and bans of other editors, then in dealing with being blocked and banned myself. I have less experience, but some (not on WMF projects), on the admin side. My primary long-term study has been of large-scale community consensus process, and ready exclusion of participation typically is quite harmful to consensus, creating, sometimes, an appearance of consensus because one side has been excluded!

• The purpose of blocking is to prevent damage to the project, which includes the waste of time necessary to find and undo inappropriate additions, alterations, or deletions of material. However, the rebuttable assumption should always be that contributions that are not obvious vandalism are intended to improve the project, even if mistaken, so blocking is, for such edits, a tool of last resort.
• Blocking should never be punitive, only protective. If someone has behaved outrageously, but it appears unlikely to repeat, or, if repeated, it can quickly be handled, blocking is inappropriate. Since people often repeat behavior, the issue arises of how one would know that it won't repeat, and, in fact, it isn't always possible to tell. In addition, a user may behave in ways that are difficult to understand and predict. Under those conditions, some are inclined to block, which can then exclude some of the most knowledgeable and possibly most productive editors/students/teachers. The real issue, however, should be the level of damage that might be caused by failing to block. Rarely is this truly large. Unless there is a history of clearly violating promises not to repeat action, acknowledgment of error and promise not to repeat should generally be enough, and many admins will readily unblock if there is such an acknowledgment and promise. Difficulties arise when an editor doesn't believe that he or she did anything wrong, and it can get quite complex.
• As an admin you have the right to act as you see fit for the welfare of the project. Do not assume that this means that you are right and an offending editor is wrong; therefore, demanding that a user agree with you as a condition of not blocking, or of unblocking, represents an abuse of power. Rather, you may require that a user follow clear and specific behavioral limits pending resolution of a dispute, such as not editing specific pages or in specific areas or in specific ways. I may think a police officer is wrong to stop me for, say, speeding, but if I defy the officer and refuse to stop, I'll end up in jail, and properly so!
• Key to wiki practice is the general undoability of all actions. Blocking is problematic not because it is undoable, it is, but because it can be experienced so negatively by the one blocked. In theory, a short block for 24 hours should be no big deal, but it often is a very big deal to the blocked editor. Hence when an admin considers a block necessary, it should always be done with courtesy and even apology. We should develop block templates that reflect this. The temptation is to become angry if a user defies us, which, then, gets us involved.
• Unless there is an emergency, never block while involved, whether because of some previous dispute or a strong personal position or because you have become angry or offended. Recuse, and report a problematic behavior to other admins, preferably on a noticeboard, such as Wikiversity:Request custodian action. If you do consider the situation an emergency, something spiraling out of control and likely to cause widening disruption, you may go ahead and block and then consult, disclosing the nature of your involvement and why you did not recuse, and agreeing in advance to reversal of your action by any administrator. Never argue with someone you are blocking! (Until and unless you have recused, in which case it may still not be a good idea!) Let the community handle any debate. The point of good recusal policy, which can include block-and-recuse, is to convert any dispute between you and a user into a conversation between the user and the community, depersonalizing it. The issue, then, is never whether or not "the admin is biased." but rather "is there a need to maintain this block? Does this block protect the community more than it harms it? Telling a member of the community to shut up can be necessary, but can cause more harm than good if it inflames a dispute.
• If a user thinks you are biased, you need not undo anything, but I recommend recusal, because, if we assume good faith, the user will then be very offended by being blocked by you. If a user burns through a couple of admins in short order, well, the real situation will have become obvious! Recusal protects you from useless and stressful debate. "Disclose and drop" might be a good motto. Trust the community and the community will trust you.
• Always, except in an emergency, seek alternatives to blocking. Suppose a user is attacking another user. It is possible to warn the user, something like, "Regardless of the nature of your dispute with X, the language in (diff) is unacceptable, and, to protect the wiki from behavior like this, and in lieu of blocking you, I'm asking you to voluntarily abstain from comments on this situation, completely for 24 hours, except here on your Talk page as might be allowed if you were blocked, and please consider whether or not that's necessary, sometimes users lose their rights to edit their own talk page if they abuse the privilege. Any dispute can be resolved properly, and if you need help with this, please see (our dispute resolution process page). I am hoping by this request to allow you to continue to edit this project otherwise, and to manage your own user space, which would be prevented if I block you. Please understand that I'm not taking any side in your original dispute, and I will take disruption or incivility by other users as equally harmful, and I'm not judging that you are "wrong." It is normal to become angry sometimes, it is even justified sometimes. If you have any questions about this, please do not hesitate to ask me, here or on my talk page or by email, and I will attempt to answer you or refer you to other resources. Note: these are my own ideas, this is not necessarily how actual practice has evolved on WMF wikis, but it is compatible with basic wiki theory
• I recommend developing and using standard templates for blocks that cover all the bases. There is a "Do not template the regulars" guideline on Wikipedia, but that really only applies to routine templates, and to the sole use of a template with no clear explanation of the details of the warning.

Thanks for the opportunity to review this. Jt, I think we should develop our policy pages to reflect a solid understanding of block and recusal policy, and we could turn questions and answers like this into a FAQ, easily. I intend to review some of the recent discussions to propose such as edits to policy or associated pages, and anyone may use and mercilessly edit whatever I've written. The information below about how to review deleted pages would have been, in fact, useful to me. I spent some time experimenting with the tools, afraid that I'd accidentally undelete something objectionable.... Wikis were originally developed to provide system user support, and it's one of the things that we should, in theory, do very well. Some of what I've suggested here has been, at times, controversial on Wikipedia, but I've only seen that happen when there wasn't time provided for careful and deep consideration, and there were some who, rather openly, appeared to want to be free to violate recusal policy (for the welfare of the project, of course, I never abandon AGF). We can take the time here. --Abd 00:05, 21 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jtneill, I have a humble request. A friend of mine became an admin earlier today, and he would like to get some advice, because he's afraid to do something wrong. Should I create a subpage for him? (I'll tell him to write something here). --Diego Grez 01:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I am a new Commons admin who hasn't touched the buttons. Or at least something hasn't come up. I'm just asking in particular, how do you "preview" a deleted page without having to undelete it? As an OTRS member I find this often necessary but I haven't gotten around it yet. I'm afraid if I click undelete it will actually undelete. ZooFari 01:07, 20 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi Zoofari. Well, to see a deleted page, it's easy and doesn't do any harm. By example, I have on my MediaWiki logs:

• (show/hide) 11:14, 19 June 2010 Diego Grez (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Category:HTML" ‎ (Test page: Please use the sandbox: content was: '<input type="button" value="hola" />' (and the only contributor was '85.53.172.77')) (view/restore)

Click 'view/restore'. It will appear a page with two sections and a box. Put your atention on the "Page history" one. Then, click any of the timestamps on there, and that will show you the wikicode of the page. Below the box, there are two buttons. If you want to see how does it looks, click "Show preview". Of course there's no need to restore the page as you can see ;) --Diego Grez 01:19, 20 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Diego, got it. ZooFari 02:57, 20 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jtneill,

I am trying to form a panel for this conference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference to discuss the ideas that I've been trying to push lately. Would you be interested in being a panelist?

Daviddoria 17:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I see now that you are in Australia - I don't think this would be worth flying across an ocean for!

Daviddoria 15:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have added new comments to Wikiversity:Changing username.

Thank you very much for all your help. I look forward to wiki-ing under my new username very much. all the best =Benjamin= 12:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hey there James,

Two things,

I was looking through the wiki and found that the main page title looked a bit wonky. I have left a comment on the talk page for this template. I was unsure whether the title was meant to be left or center aligned, so I centered it. I cannot edit the main page because I lack these privileges, this is probably a good thing because I may have come across as being brash rather than being bold.

I was also hoping you could do me the favour of deleting this blank page. I relocated it to this page to include the more fitting "Topic:" namspace. Sorry to put this burden on you.

All the best, Ben =Benjamin= (t)·(c)·(e) 06:18, 22 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Excellent, I have redirected the page. Didn't know this was possible! Thanks very much for all your help. As you can tell I am pretty new to all of this. Take it easy, =Benjamin= ( t ) · ( c ) · ( e ) 02:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

you may want to check out the IP 217.23.231.86. Looks like blatant vandalism to me. =Benjamin= ( t ) · ( c ) · ( e ) 11:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, sorry I wasn't around, but the IP has been blocked for a week: User:217.23.231.86. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 10:23, 25 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry to be late to respond to your comment at Wikiversity:Colloquium#Proposal to create a Cite namespace. --KYPark (talk) 06:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi James, how is it going? I hope you are well. I have a rename request for you. I want "Moulton" renamed to anything else, and then please rename the "anything else" back to Moulton. This way, the global lock impossed over him will be invalidated here in Wikiversity, and he will be able to edit his talk page again. Thanks in advance! Diego Grez 22:05, 6 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I was away for a few days and I see you are on a wikibreak. In any case, I think this discussion should take place on a community page somewhere. Perhaps this has already been taking place, if so feel free to point me there and we can continue. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 04:05, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Well, I was hopeful for a moment that we had a possibility of re-integrating both Moulton and Thekohser. Thekohser is cooperating, at least reasonably. Moulton, however, seems to be not ready to work collaboratively, which requires respecting social norms, including civility. I think there is no harm done by having tried, and if Moulton ever wants to reconsider, he could offer to avoid behaviors that lead to his rejection even by people who'd like to see his contributions. Diego was perhaps a bit premature, moved more quickly than I did with Thekohser; Moulton actually didn't want to be unblocked, I'd say, he explicitly denied any such wish in multiple places, whereas Thekohser had been asking for help getting unblocked on Wikipedia Review. So I think, in any case, that there is nothing that needs to be done right now about Moulton. If there is a way to allow Thekohser to return to his original account, that might be desirable, but since we have not yet had time to consider Thekohser's unblock request, which is now standing on User talk:Ethical Accountability, that could wait as well.

FYI, Moulton was briefly active as User:Caprice while permitted by Diego. That's where the offensive behavior, in particular, took place. There may or many not have been socking elsewhere. These editors have enemies who might present straw puppets, so anything other than Caprice can't be trusted, for sure, as being from Moulton, unless we do more analysis than it's worth. I'm assuming that Caprice was indeed him, though, a rebuttable presumption. --Abd 04:39, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Abd is right. Adambro and Ottava Rima conducted themselves in a gallingly offensive manner, and neither of them exhibit the slightest tinge of remorse.

But more to the point Diego's idea doesn't work. I can log in just fine as User:Moulton, despite the SUL lock. But it does no good because the SUL lock prevents editing even if one is logged in, and the MediaWiki:Titleblacklist prevents anyone (except a local Custodian) from leaving messages on Moulton's talk page. And without the ability for others to leave messages, the account is functionally unusable. I'm afraid to say that Jimbo and Mike.lifeguard have prevailed, and local community has nothing to say about it and no option to override the global locks. --Barry Kort 04:53, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the updates, Abd and Barry. So "User:Moulton" is currently "broken" - with a potentially long and uncertain road to "fix", along with associated accounts and IPs, due in part to an understandable lack of trust that developed (along with WMF technical constraints)? Another path to explore maybe is editing via something like User:Barry Kort who seems to be able to dialogue with the host of characters and the rest of the WV community? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:24, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

That Barry continued his tendentious fight with Adambro and Ottava, when I see everyone as having gotten on board the suggestion to at least allow Barry the dignity of negotiating a possible return, means to me that the time for it isn't ripe, at best. I did not criticize the behavior of Adambro or Ottava. However, I'll note that we do not certainly know that the IP posting above is Barry. It probably is, or he'd have told me, I assume, through PM at Wikipedia Review. He's claiming that he's not "the IP from the Isle of Mann," which would be Special:Contributions/217.28.5.247, which didn't claim to be Barry. But my concern was with this edit logged in as Caprice which was not what he'd have done attempting to negotiate an unblock. Ottava was making one offer he was willing to support, it would be fine for Barry to refuse that and seek something else. But attacking Ottava, seeking to irritate him by disregarding his request about his personal RL name, remains beyond the pale. And surely he knows that. I conclude that, indeed, he prefers to remain blocked, and he has more or less confirmed that.

I'm not concerned with whether or not "Jimbo and Mike.lifeguard have prevailed." I'm concerned with the rights of this community to make its own decisions, and certainly we can do that, regardless of what anyone else does. I do not see further intervention coming from Jimbo, I think he has better sense than that, and likewise Mike.lifeguard, while not reversing his global lock, doesn't seem to be moving further against Thekohser, and I very much doubt that he would choose to defy a clear local consensus here. If he did, which I doubt will happen, we can then appeal through normal process, there is no emergency. But one step at a time! I'm hoping that discussion of the unblock request of Thekohser can proceed in an orderly fashion, and I'm quite hopeful that this will resolve with consensus all around. --Abd 05:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I suppose you can characterize it as a "tendentious fight" if you like, but from my perspective, it was a good faith effort to have an honest, collegial discussion with them. But instead of responding as I had hoped and expected, they rudely reverted my posts and blocked my access. Elsewhere, off-wiki, they generally do conduct reasonably cordial dialogues with me. But for some unexplained reason, they feel compelled to treat me rudely here. I'd really like to know why that is. It's almost as if, when I come here, I enter a game world with combative players in costume, rather than sober scholars discussing topics of mutual interest. —Barry Kort 06:18, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Barry "Captain Renault" Kort; I'm shocked, shocked to find that game playing is going on in here! - WAS 4.250 13:28, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

For several years now, I've edited as an IP and manually signed my name. That was easier than trying to untangle the Gordian Knot of the convoluted MediaWiki obstacle course. Before I would consider registering yet another account — especially one in my real name — I would await the negotiation of a functional social contract setting forth the rights and the responsibilities of all members of the community. And I would also await the certification that anyone with Custodial tools had completed and mastered a basic course in managerial ethics. I've seen way too many abuses of Custodial tools to have any faith in the system as it has operated here for the past two years. Absent the establishment of such a culture of scholarly ethics, I see little hope for this site fulfilling the goals that were set forth in its original charter. —Barry Kort 05:42, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

You were allowed to use User:Caprice until you abused it. Sorry, Barry, you've lost whatever moral superiority you might have had at one time. We will develop policies, including "ethical guidelines," with or without you. I was hoping that it would be "with," but until you are willing to recognize that ethics might require you to restrain yourself as well as to criticize others, it ain't gonna work. I am distressed to be forced to come to this conclusion. Perhaps you will reconsider and apologize or at least promise to respect community norms until they can be improved. --Abd 05:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

What are you talking about, Abd? Caprice is a legendary storybook character designed to teach a complex lesson about scape-goating. Or are you still playing in-character with respect to the dramatic function of Caprice — The Fantastic Flying Scape-Goat for Azazel? No one is forcing you to rush to erroneous or ill-considered conclusions. These are not easy issues to wrap one's brain around. They demand conscientious and deliberate scholarship, not knee-jerk reaction with a silly banhammer. —Barry Kort 06:18, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

You demonstrated nothing with Caprice other than your own disinterest in the academic function of Wikiversity. There are, indeed, non-academic forms of education, but ... you don't need to be unblocked to practice them, you know that. What did Caprice teach us? That an admin would delete contributions of a blocked editor? But that's normal, like, what kind of surprise was this to anyone? One doesn't have to be an admin to do it. That an admin would block IP of a blocked editor who is editing? Again, SOP. It's a wiki, it's all reversible, and anyone who wants to have your contributions show can revert them back in.

There was a far higher lesson that could have been exemplified here, but I'm afraid you were not up to it. Others may be. Moulton, you are not the center of the educational universe, nor am I. The world will go on without us, perhaps, in some cases, even better than with us. You have not been scapegoated here, recently. You have simply been treated routinely by some, and with some special care by others. So you have taught us that you are playing a senseless game that you don't yourself understand. That, again, is okay, perhaps you are trying to figure this out, but ... what other kinds of responses do you expect? It's totally predictable, boring. I'll be watching NetKnowledge to see if you can come up with better than an extended whine. Definitely there was lots of abuse. But some of us tend to focus on our own suffering, and neglect the suffering of others.... and, in the end, endlessly rehearsing the damage of the past is useless unless applied to preparing for the future, for something better. Can you demonstrate something better? --Abd 03:35, 9 July 2010

I have revised the block of Caprice to allow Talk page editing, and have warned Caprice that usage of that account for other than cooperation with Wikiversity and Wikiversity editors could lead to prompt reversal of that opening. I'm requesting that others not close that Talk page access except for Caprice misbehavior there. Moulton considers it a fundamental and necessary right that he continue to comment as IP, and we cannot prevent that without doing greater damage. Allow Moulton, I'm suggesting, to have two personalities, one carrying on his old war against the "oppression" here, and the other cooperating with what's left of this community. Caprice cannot, practically by definition, sock: the IP edits, if they continue, are Moulton socks. Moulton gains no advantage by having Caprice, as to his prohibited IP edits. So Caprice does no harm. If he uses Caprice to do harm, to provoke a block of Caprice, perhaps to prove some point, it's his choice, Caprice will be purely history. But if he keeps that door open a crack, by keeping Caprice behavior within the offered "truce," we too are keeping the door open a crack, I hope. Can he coooperate? Can we cooperate? His view, expressed many times, is that it's impossible, bureaucracies never repair. Is he right? We can only control our side of this.... --Abd 18:48, 12 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Anyone can start and/or participate in a Community Review <-- The Wikiversity Community Review system has interesting historical origins, particularly in the context of policy development at Wikiversity. When Wikiversity started, community members used the Colloquium as a central page for community discussions. I've never thought it makes any sense to put important community discussions (about things like imposing bans on Wikiversity participants) on another page (Wikiversity:Community Review), but if important community discussions are to be hidden in that way, then there should at least be sensible rules (for example, you can't run a witch hunt against a wiki participant unless you at least let the victim defend himself). In 2008 a few Wikipedians started disrupting Wikiversity by imposing Wikipedia's procedures, rules and policies on the Wikiversity community. The main force behind this shift in direction at Wikiversity was Jimbo, who banned Moulton. Rather than let folks like Jimbo arbitrarily block and ban Wikiversity participants, I believe that Wikiversity should have a few key policies such as policy for bans. User:SB Johnny decided that, rather than collaborate to develop needed Wikiversity policy, he would attempt to impose topic bans on me (by making use of the Community Review system, see Wikiversity:Community Review/Topic bans for User:JWSchmidt). Of course, I was not allowed to fully participate in that community discussion; I was subjected to a two week long block. I objected to the block but Adambro enforced it. While I was blocked from editing, starting near the end of August 2009, User:SB Johnny created a new policy and rushed it along, making it on "official" policy before I was unblocked. I certainly would have participated in the drafting of that policy, but User:SB Johnny had engineered a block on me, making sure that I could not participate. This sorry story of policy manipulation is just one example of how policy development has been disrupted at Wikiversity. I'm not happy about what has been done to Wikiversity by invading Wikipedians and I intend to continue objecting. Lately. User:Darklama has continued the process by which policy development has been disrupted during the past two years. Rather than edit collaboratively to develop needed policies, User:Darklama prefers to make threats and impose blocks (User talk:JWSchmidt#24 Hour Block). I will, of course, continue to object to such disruptions of Wikiversity. Maybe some day we can get Wikiversity and policy development back on track. For now, a few folks from Wikipedia and Wikibooks prefer to continue abusing their sysop powers so as to impose the rules of those other communities on Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 14:43, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for this background - I appreciate it - I seem to recall that WV:CR came about quite quickly? The policy talk page could be used to discuss improvements? Colloquium or talk pages etc. should be preferred I think. When an issue outgrows those places, then consolidating in something like a Community Review page would seem preferable at least to Request custodian action. I'm not particularly fond of person-focused "community reviews" - esp. if the person in question can't edit - I'd prefer the focus to be on content and process. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:19, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

In the specific case of making needed modifications/improvements to WV:CR, I believe that a good approach would be: invite User:Emesee, User:Thekohser, User:Moulton (and any other Wikiversity participants who have been unfairly excluded from participating) to help develop the WV:CR policy. --JWSchmidt 16:17, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

WV:CR did indeed come about quiet quickly. WV:CR got used before there even was a policy in place for it. WV:CR got created because people felt there was a need for it. WV:CR policy came later because people felt there was a need to document and have a common understanding of how it should be used. WV:CR policy when it was developed and gained consensus already included a requirement that people use talk page and other means to deal with problems first before bringing it up there. "I need help with a problem. I tried to deal with it myself here. I need the community's help because ..." is pretty much how I think WV:CR is expected to be used. WV:CR got used the last time Jimbo Wales came by and did some things people didn't agree with for example. -- darklama  20:45, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

"people felt there was a need for it" <-- In practice, the review process was misused by people who wanted to impose practices from other websites and who disrupted needed policy development at Wikiversity. Bogus "community review" witch trials are a tool developed at Wikipedia. A hit man was sent to Wikiversity by the gang at Wikipedia that had harassed and blocked Moulton at Wikipedia rather than fix a policy-violating biography about a living university professor. That hit man was allowed to participate in orchestrating a "community ban" of Moulton with the assistance of User:SB Johnny and others who were reacting to a threat that Wikiversity would be shut down (Wikiversity:Community Review/Moulton's block). Fearing that I would wheel war, I was subjected to an emergency desysop procedure when no emergency existed. I was subjected to an absurd block "until guidelines are agreed upon". I was removed from participation at Wikiversity so that Wikipedians including the hit man could take control of Wikiversity. The deceptively titled community review (Wikiversity:Community Review/Moulton's block) was improperly closed as justifying a community ban of Moulton. To this day, Jimbo's foot soldiers continue to enforce the ban. Two years ago my attempts to develop needed policy to deal with use of real world names were sabotaged by people who did not want their take-over of Wikiversity to be inhibited by community rules. The hit man from Wikipedia also disrupted the attempt to examine Jimbo's bad block of Moulton. The hit man was rewarded for his massive disruption of Wikiversity by being made a Custodian. Another similar witch trial could be imposed on Wikiversity at any time using the community review process. --JWSchmidt 02:08, 9 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

What happened to Moulton happened almost two years ago here. The "rewarded" custodian isn't any more, that whole situation having been finessed. Moulton would be back if he wanted to be. He doesn't. Temporary blocks are just that: when a wiki administrator believes a user is disrupting the community, the admin generally asks the user to stop. When the user doesn't stop, the admin blocks. Such blocks are not bans, they exist to protect the community. Sure, they can be abused, but so can anything, including the editing privilege.

Now, what's happening here? JWSchmidt has been on a rampage of complaint since 2008, it appears. Anything that seems to him to be even remotely abusive he complains about, at length. He doesn't seem to understand that there are other sides to issues. He takes friendly warnings as insults and stronger warnings as abusive threats and bullying and he takes actual blocks as proof that the jackboots are in charge. It's gone on too long. Now, I tried to warn JWS about excess, when I first became involved with Wikiversity. I'm no stranger to admin abuse, I successfully confronted it at Wikipedia. But this had gone way beyond any legitimate attempt to restrain administrative power, and there was no sensitivity to how problems could be addressed non-confrontively, and no sensitivity to how his own behavior was regularly uncivil and thus disruptive. I confronted admin abuse at Wikipedia and, I hope, never did so uncivilly. I'd question an admin's action and the normal response was civil and respectful and frequently the admin would apologize or acknowledge that something could have been done better. It was only a few who insisted on abuse, those were the cases that ended up at ArbComm.

In any case, I'd tried to point out to JWS that his archiving practices were uncivil, as were other contributions. He argued tendentiously. When he was short-blocked for premature policy tagging after being warned, he complained bitterly. There were legitimate and non-disruptive ways to do what he wanted to do. I came largely to the conclusion that he was seeking to be blocked, which was definitely the case with Moulton yesterday, not that JWS is responsible for what Moulton does nor the reverse. But because he and I had disagreed over his behavior, I would normally consider myself obligated to recuse. I did not start a community ban discussion. I saw behavior that was endangering the wiki, by extending and preserving conflict. So I went, not to Community Review, but to the Custodian Request page. That's an early intervention measure. I'd already tried to solicit third-party intervention, without success. I am not arguing for a ban for JWS. I'm arguing the following, and it is very simple:

JWS has been warned about various behaviors, and has continued with them and has insisted on them. He's been blocked and then unblocked, but without displaying any recognition of the problem. After some history like this, it is completely unreasonable to assume that he will change unless he actually tells us he will. I'm asking a neutral admin to look at his behavior and assess if it should be restrained. If so, that admin could warn and request voluntary compliance with reasonable restrictions. If JWS refuses to agree, and continues the behavior, then this admin would block.

Problem is, there may not be any neutral admins left, except maybe the newest, Diego. In which case, we will have no other recourse than a Community Review or the like. I dislike using the Colloquium for this, but a major review could certainly be announced there. This whole thing could be avoided if JWS would start fairly considering his own behavior. He was originally offended, greatly, by some quite offensive behavior. But he's still fighting those battles, when the "enemy" isn't even in sight.

If I'm wrong, fine. I'll drop it. I'm not about to engage in some extended battle, my job, generally, is to anticipate consensus and stimulate it. I saw a specific uncivil action that JWS took. He has not refactored or reversed that action. It stands, and it's offensive. That's what I pointed out at the Custodian Request page. JWS does not have to go "on trial." It could simply be this one action, is it justifiable or permissible? Should Wikiversity permit this kind of usage of user space? He's persisted in spite of warning. Should that be allowed?

Suppose I started a page here about the misbehavior of an admin on Wikipedia, making very personal accusations. I could certainly do that! Would this be allowed? Should it be? I'd say that, outside of carefully established ethical guidelines, and for clear educational purpose, we should not permit this wiki to be used in this way. JWS's abusive archives are not educational except to demonstrate how great offense can be taken from small or even non-existent offenses. I could, as well, delete them or seek to have them deleted, depending. But JWS will, it seems, continually present us with these provocations. He sees them, I think, much as Moulton sees his own activities, as speaking truth to power, as confronting abuse. But incivility and excessive confrontation are themselves abusive.... --Abd 03:22, 9 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

My personal view of these matters in general is that some edits by some people make some other people uncomfortable. We have some rough, incomplete guidelines and policies to help guide our behaviours in such situations, but the more we revert to relying on such policy, the less it seems we are relying on the more basic trust that makes a wiki world go around - and we can end up with pettiness. If we could cut each other a little bit of slack and get on with creating educational content, then I suspect we might have a healthier community. The reality in the meantime is that we have a messy history and present and we are each imperfect in our efforts to deal with that. Let's not forgot that each page has an edit button, so it can be improved and there are an infinite number of new pages which can be created - wiki can be a library of babel. I am not wanting to sweep things under a carpet, but I am concerned sometimes that we might be missing the forest for the trees. Owners of blocked accounts can demonstrate a case for unblocking for community consideration - or can try a different account or anonymous IP. Editors using accounts with sysop tools should IMHO be spending as much time as possible thinking and behaving as normal editors and content creators and relatively little time using or thinking about using delete/block. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:47, 9 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

James, the reason I edit here as an IP and manually sign my edits is because the User:Moulton account is subject to a global SUL lock. Even on sister projects where I can log in just fine, I cannot edit any page as User:Moulton because the SUL lock overrides all local options. So there is no point in "demonstrating a case for unblocking" as the Custodians and Bureaucrats here have no power to re-enable the User:Moulton account, even if it were their unanimous desire. If some Custodians here wish to consider my defiance of Jimbo's decrees to be an act of Civil Disobedience, I am fine with that. But please do not promote or countenance the practice of equating Civil Disobedience with common vandalism. My edits are expressly designed to facility the learning process, especially on topics of such liminal importance as Due Process, Scientific Reasoning, and Managerial Ethics. —Moulton 03:14, 14 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

James, Adambro previously reverted the above comment as he blocked the IP. As this is your talk page and you may wish to have such comments unreverted, I am leaving this replacement comment, though I did also block the IP, which was also used to revert war with me and Adambro. Moulton has an open path to return to regular editing, but he's openly stated, as well, that he doesn't want it. His argument above is specious, and he really should know that. If we unblock any identified, open Moulton sock, and, as well, unblock Moulton, and this is clearly community consensus (at least it stands!), then we have a clear basis to ask for unlock, and, given the overall political situation, I strongly suspect it will be granted. But short of that, it would be a waste of their time, with success questionable. Moulton believes that he's "teaching" due process, but he's not following it, classic example. He has a path to editing here if he wants it. The problem isn't IP editing, per se, nor is it the content of most of the IP edits. It is a declared and pursued agenda that can hardly fail to be disruptive, no matter how originally justified it might have been. If Moulton will respect the right of the community to set behavioral boundaries, the community, I predict, will respect his contributions. It could be easily done, if he is willing to negotiate, instead of simply demanding that he be treated "ethically," while neglecting his own ethical violations. I have seen no initiative at all from Moulton that would resolve the situation, and he has been deliberately disruptive and gratuitously confrontive, as with Moulton, under the flag of truce that User talk:Caprice represented, pointedly referring to Ottava by his real first name in the presence of clear and repeated objection. That is rude and uncivil in any environment, it is the very definition of trolling. So I'm standing with Adambro in enforcing the block, and attempting to avoid collateral damage at the same time. If Moulton continues reverting removal of his comments, power-cycling his router(s), either range blocks or reprotection of certain pages may become necessary. I'm quite willing to allow him to make self-reverted edits signed Moulton, anywhere, without even blocking the IP. That would be him cooperating with the community, he is already cooperating to some degree by signing the edits, at least it can be seen that way. In that case, I'd only block for truly disruptive edits, such as outing (even if self-reverted). If he reverts himself, he's creating no disruption, and any other editor may revert it back in, taking responsibility for it. It's a path to cooperation. --Abd 00:20, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Moulton responded to this, but, unfortunately, repeated what he knows we will not permit, the use of an editor's real name when he knows the editor does not wish to permit that, and there is no necessity. So I removed it and revision-hid it. John, it's completely up to you to permit this discussion here or not. I disagree with Adambro's removal of Moulton's edits here, and on other Talk pages where it seems they are likely to be welcome (such as User talk:JWSchmidt) unless you specifically approve of that. I regret that it was necessary to remove the "outing" comment, but I do not believe that you would want that to stand. --Abd 01:24, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

The following is the text of what I reverted. I have redacted the name.

I am not aware of any functional "open path" consistent with 21st Century norms of an authentic democratic learning community. I frankly do not respect bullies. I am amenable to mutually agreeable terms of engagement. I am not amenable to Ottava's "my way or the highway" approach to organizing an authentic learning community. I proposed an initiative, first on Wikipedia and later on Wikiversity, to evolve from the anachronistic governance model of Wikipedia to one more suitable for an authentic modern learning community. I called [redacted Spanish phrase for "The Chief"] by his real first name because he was engaged in a bullying practice, which I consider rude and incivil. I routinely sign my edits, even if I have to tediously construct a manual signature that points to an unvandalized version of my user page. Moulton 01:43, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ottava made an offer to unblock Moulton on stated conditions. Ottava did not threaten to punish Moulton if he did not accept the offer. It was only an offer, not bullying. There was absolutely no "my way or the highway," that was entirely Moulton's invention. Bullying would involve actual action to harm or threat to harm, to coerce. Ottava did none of this. The bully here is, in fact, Moulton, who insisted -- and continues to insist -- on using Ottava's real name, and here, in the last edits, trying to play, eventually, with forms of it, while, across the wiki, he's revert warring to keep his edits in instead of allowing any other editor who accepts them and wants them to do that, and generally causing as much disruption as possible, hoping to trap someone into excessive action. With JWSchmidt, unfortunately, tracking it all and complaining about censorship instead of, say, reverting back in something from Moulton that he is willing to take responsibility for. I'm certainly not going to monitor this all night.... --Abd 03:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Moulton has not requested to be unblocked for reasons that I will recite yet again if others have not yet learned them. I'll let a candid jury decide if Ottava's non-negotiable demands amounted to bullying. Ottava's own words will speak for themselves. And Ottava knew (from previous conversations with me) that I would make it a practice of calling out admins who engaged in corrupt practices. Moulton 04:08, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have semiprotected this page, 24 hrs., until Jtneill can attend to the matter. The above edit, which made it through just before protection, would not have been objectionable, though. If Moulton had confined himself to discussion, leaving out the insistent outing and provocation, this mess would not have been necessary. --Abd 04:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks all for your communications and efforts. Let's see what others might have to add as well, but I think to take these issues further, please raise them at Colloquium, Request for custodian action, and/or Community Review and let's see how we go at working through them. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 04:25, 15 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please see. I am contacting regulars and admin so we can start going through our proposed policies and establish some. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Is this a correct assessment? If the proper entry was put into the block log for User:Moulton (saying that he was originally blocked against Wikiversity consensus) then a responsible Steward would perform the account unlock. --JWSchmidt 23:52, 16 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Do we really know that though? I think it would be more responsible for a steward or a crat to only act if they are sure that consensus supports an unblock. That the original block might have lacked consensus doesn't mean the community doesn't support the block now. I'm also not clear about the significance of putting such a note in the block log. Adambro 00:02, 17 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Suggestion - could we pursue this at Wikiversity:Request_custodian_action#Moulton_unblock? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:06, 17 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

After usurpation target account has been renamed to the Jackie (usurped), but current account don't rename to the Jackie. I don't want re-create new local account Jackie for my SUL - rename, please, my current Jackie-ru-ru-new to the Jackie. Thanks. Jackie-ru-ru-new 07:50, 17 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

May I ask you your POV on the titular question? Please help me help us. -- KYPark [T] 02:57, 19 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

As of this juncture, Adambro has blocked some 70,000 IPs in Eastern Massachusetts, plus the entire IPv6 network (2^128 IPs worldwide), plus a Class C SubNet at Utah State University School of Journalism and the main host computer at the MIT Media Lab. It is my view that these actions are contrary to both WMF Policy and local WV Policy. His corresponding reversions have seriously disrupted conversations among the serious scholars here. Moulton 04:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

These matters are under community review. As described in the review, Sysop behavior in the Wikiversity chat channel has been also been disruptive. --JWSchmidt 00:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

A fine idea for everyone involved in [any] gridlock policy drama. Just reading too much drama makes me want to go edit a dozen articles :-) –SJ+> 10:58, 20 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

It makes me want to write atrocious song parodies. --Barsoom Tork 00:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I saw your profile on the Wikiversity page for University of Canberra staff, and thought, by chance, you might like to come to this:

RecentChangesCamp, Canberra is being held at the University of Canberra, Building 7, Room 7XC37 on 11 August 2010.
ABOUT | REGISTRATION | SCHEDULE

Hope we'll see you and friends there. Leighblackall 00:23, 21 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hey hi! Could you ossibly take a look into [this http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Changing_username#SUL_for_User:Anshul] and guide me as to what I need to do next. Would really appreciate your help. 120.138.117.230 13:42, 21 July 2010 (UTC) (Anshul)Reply

Please take a look at Wikiversity:Changing_username#Usurpation_of_User:Grillo. It's been over 14 days now. /Grillo sv 22:13, 24 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please see Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion#Music and learning and Wikiversity:Request custodian action#Bad block of Beetlebaum and Wikiversity:Request custodian action#Block of Son of Beetlebaum. Thanks. --JWSchmidt 14:45, 26 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have added you under the growing list of Custodians who fail to reply at the community review on problematic actions. I personally have no problem with any failure to reply in the current situation, I only mentioned our brief interaction as to make sure everyone was held to the same bar. Thenub314 06:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Horrors! The shame of it all! Let's dock a day's custodian pay from their custodian salary of $00,000.00/year for every day that they don't respond. That'll teach 'em. WAS 4.250 20:33, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hey, I make quite a bit of money from this gig, thank you very much. :P Ottava Rima (talk) 20:48, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the laugh! WAS 4.250 21:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the prompt - have responded here. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jt, you might be the only custodian on-line besides myself. I've blocked Ottava Rima for incivility, see Request_custodian_action. I only blocked for two hours, but with no independent review and no assurance from Ottava that the behavior will not continue, I'll probably extend that to 24 hours, to give time. If you can look at this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. --Abd 00:50, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Per Abd's agreement, I have 100% authority over his previous admin actions. That would be to remove log entries also, as they are an easy way to abuse. Before, a steward would have to be requested by rev del is available to admin now so that is no longer required. His action was to make a point, a point that only exists while visible. My undoing would also make him look bad as it points out that he overstepped the line, thus prejudicing him in the future. So, there is no reason for either to exist and it is within policy for me to do so as I have control over his admin actions as part of the mentor relationship. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:44, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

From what I can gather, the point of Abd's warning and block was to request greater civility from you towards SB_Johnny? For you this was over "the line" (abuse?), leading to you undoing Abd's edits (warning and block note), undoing his block of you, and revising the block log? One reason I can think of for such edits should be left intact is to allow community members to decide for themselves whether Abd's edits and actions were over "the line". I guess I'm inviting you (and Abd and others) to involve the community more in helping to resolve such disputes. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

As a probationary custodian, it is within policy that the mentor has absolutely authority to decide what crosses the line or not. Community discussion cannot touch that, especially when the actions by Abd are not those by an admin but by an extension of the mentor's adminship. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I respect your right to terminate a mentee's probationary custodianship. I remain unconvinced of the merits of removing content and logs that offered critique about your edits. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:52, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Good or bad, still in my right and ability, and Abd knew that going in. He promised fully that I had the right to compltely overturn any of his actions without any reason, statement, justification, etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

"Community discussion cannot touch that" <-- A few misguided sysops have decided that they are free to do anything they can get away with. As long as other Custodians let them get away with misuse of Custodial tools and misuse of IRC channel operator tools, there will be no changes, no improvement in the problematical behavior being documented in the community review. --JWSchmidt 15:07, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

[3] "During my probation, I consent in advance to any reversal of my administrative actions, by Ottava Rima, and by any other administrator who has supported this nomination". I was free to do anything I wanted regarding Abd's ops and how they are used. That is part of the mentorship process and done to ensure that the mentee listens to the mentor and does not act out. Abuse can only happen when you are not given the right and power to do such under policy. Abd was not a real admin. He had no authority except my authority to act. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:10, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jtneill, I agree with all that you've written here. Ottava had the right to request the removal of my tools, unconditionally. However, the "reversal" mentioned in my agreement did not contemplate erasure of the record! It was that he could, for example, act to reverse any of my actions where otherwise it would be wheel-warring. However, as an editor, I expect the record of my actions to remain, to my credit or otherwise, absent a need for oversight or revision deletion, which requires something pretty offensive!

Ottava's interpretation that his reversal right included erasing all trace of the action, or trying to, was certainly creative. If true, it would then leave the community with no basis to judge my actions if and when it considers a full adminship request. But he didn't actually go that far, for the warning and block notice remained in history for his Talk page, and so did my Request for custodian action. I think he realized pretty quickly that this could not be hidden. The reversal right of a mentor -- which should be policy, by the way, if it isn't -- is to protect the wiki, not the mentor! A mentor may communicate off-wiki with a mentored sysop, for sure, but ... we didn't until Ottava sent me a notice that he was yanking my ops.

That I gave my consent to an action does not make that action proper, because there can exist independent reasons from policy or consensus or other judgment that the action should not be taken. What made Ottava's removal of my tools certainly within his rights was that he was my mentor, even without that promise making it explicit in my Custodianship request, and extended it to all supporting administrators. But had he respected the block -- as we all are required to do by policy, absent emergency -- it would have been better, he'd have been setting a good example. He lost that opportunity. And then compounded the loss with other actions, as you have noted. My action was grounded in an increasing observation of a sense of ownership of the wiki on the part of Ottava, which I'll document if it becomes necessary. That's a serious loss of perspective. As custodians, we are all servants of the community, not of our own opinions, and every servant is bound by that. We are not masters, we are servants.

Ottava could have, at any time, have said to me, "under current circumstances, I request that you refrain from all use of tools until further notice," and I would have done that. He did not request this. Instead he disagreed with me, but did not intervene as a mentor. He called my warning on his talk page a "fake warning," that was his only response to it. Warning him did not require admin tools, but he removed the warning without response in situ. Any editor could have warned him. Whether or not I was right to go ahead and block is up to the community to decide, and, I'll point out, I immediately referred this not only to the community but specifically to you, as you were the only sysop I saw active at the time, other than Ottava and myself.

I did have another option: having warned him, I could have gone to WV:Request custodian action, noting the warning and the disregard, and asking for immediate custodian review and response. I will explore and explain my choice later if it's necessary. (That is, I both blocked, to stop immediately incivility and continued response from the attacked editor, and took the matter to the noticeboard. This is precisely the kind of action I recommended, on Wikipedia, to administrators faced with what they saw as a developing emergency, heading for increased disruption, but a possible conflict of interest or recusal requirement. I did not actually have a recusal requirement, but, obviously, there was something there that was almost certainly going to require review anyway!) Even if improper, promptly reviewed sysop actions will be mostly harmless.

And then, hey, the original reason for which I blocked. My view was that Ottava's behavior as cited in the Request for custodian action was utterly unbecoming of a custodian, and a blockable offense for any editor. Lesser behavior has been recently blocked. Ottava, again, could have recovered from all this by a simple means: stop and think and respond with acceptance of what was true and proper. Was he uncivil? Was it outside policy? Was it disruptive? SBJohnny was more amused than anything else, but that view of it as being limited in impact neglects that this is part of a constellation of actions, it's merely the tip of an iceberg. To properly determine a deep response may require much more attention. Except Ottava could avoid all of that by simply saying "Oops! Guess I lost it there. Sorry. I won't do that again!" For some reason, though, this is extraordinarily difficult or impossible for some people. Who should probably not be custodians. --Abd 20:10, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Abd, your posts, especially the length and rate, make a lot of people call you disruptive. Do you want to be blocked for two hours of a time? Would that be just? Fair? Right? We don't just throw around blocks and warnings randomly. Many people read what I said and completely disagreed with your interpretation. You were also corrected many times during your mentorship that your actions were wrong and you were acting inappropriately. As a mentee, you don't have the ability to judge those things, which is why there is a mentee process. You are supposed to listen to what your mentor says, abide by their statements, and recognize that the only ops you have are an extension of -their- ops. You are making a mountain out of a molehill, which is exactly JWS's problem, Moulton's problem, etc. You haven't been building any actual content or working in areas we need. JWS is at the end of his line. If/When he goes, will you think that it would then be your right to act like him as you are currently doing? You don't have 4 years of good will built up to really justify that. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jtneill, let me know if you wish any further comment from me here (or anywhere), and thanks for your attention so far. I'm not JWS and I see no purpose in endless argument that never seeks consensus. --Abd 20:51, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I had not noticed it before, but Ottava violated [Wikiversity:Custodianship]]Custodianship policy by immediately requesting my desysop and not allowing me 48 hours to find a replacement mentor. He had the right to demand immediate cessation of use of custodian tools, per my agreement in my request, but not to bypass the 48-hour period, that would only be bypassed if I continued to use tools after "request by a supporting administrator," which, of course, included Ottava. I'm not appealing that, because it is not a necessity for me, but the violation should be noted, it is another sign of his disregard of policy when he becomes personally involved. The request to cease never was made, and the desysopping was summary and immediate. I'm considering filing Wikiversity:Custodian feedback reports re both Ottava and Adambro, who have continued to violate, at least occasionally, common-law recusal policy, as I believe the community is likely to confirm on careful review. My goal, though, is not removal of custodianship, but simply an affirmation of recusal policy; removal would only ensue upon continued disregard, unless the community decides that failure is likely to continue and supervision is cumbersome. Recusal failure is, in my opinion, the number one problem that afflicts both Wikipedia and Wikiversity, because it causes disputes to become personal and entrenched. Imagine giving the campus police the right to decide who can speak on campus and who cannot!

On the other hand, Jt, you could resysop me because of this procedural violation, on your own authority as a bureaucrat. Because this would raise obvious issues, I do not advise this unless either you are willing to serve as a mentor (I'd be thrilled!) or another mentor is found, even though technically you could do it immediately to restore the proper status quo, giving me 48 hours to find a mentor. You could, as could any mentor, set any limits on my use of tools you wish, and, per my application agreement, you'd have all the rights that Ottava had, without question. Technically, Ottava has withdrawn his support, so he is no longer covered by that agreement. I had questions from the beginning about Ottava's suitability as a mentor, because of his behavior elsewhere, but for a long time, that did not spill over to Wikiversity. That changed, which was why I found it necessary to act.

Underlying this are serious structural deficiencies. Contrary to the opinion of some critics, they can be fixed, there are both classical and innovative solutions, some of the latter preserve the adhocracy while constraining it within true consensus/majority rule (normally, majority rule doesn't work on wikis because of participation bias, but there is a way around this.) --Abd 19:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The policy clearly says that people are only given 4 weeks. It is in bold. Jtneill cannot resysop you. No one can. Furthermore, your additional statement gave me the ability to go around anything else even if it was within the standard mentorship period. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for drawing my attention to this and sharing viewpoints and efforts to help Wikiversity. A suggestion, Abd, is to renominate for probationary custodianship - either starting a fresh page or unarchiving and continuing the previous one. If you don't want to renominate at this stage, then I'd suggesting leaving it archived with links to relevant discussion on the talk page. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 04:21, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

It got worse, Jt. I have filed Wikiversity:Custodian_feedback#Ottava_Rima to describe the events and seek resolution. The primary issue is not my custodianship, and the filing does not request restoration. The issue is Ottava's "creative" interpretations of policy in favor of himself, it's doing damage beyond my own situation. There is no urgency for me to regain tools. If a mentor appears before the 48 hours, it's possible that the most efficient procedure would simply be to reopen the improperly closed candidacy, but it's also easy to file a new one. I have no intention of filing a new candidacy unless a mentor is first identified, and I'm not undertaking strenuous efforts. I can think of some great jokes, though.

Okay, since you insist: A certain famous Wikipedia administrator once blocked herself to "see what it feels like." Apparently, she wasn't too distressed. When she was actually blocked some years later by Jimbo, and only for something like two hours, for blatant incivility, and it was during her inactive time of day, she was so offended that she, missing a great opportunity, created a huge stink, and there were megabytes of comment for and against Jimbo's action. Some administrators become, shall we say, vested. Jimbo himself was short-blocked once, and seems to have not even commented. The admin clearly survived as well, no retaliation as far as I've seen. So, now, I could advertise to WV custodians: Want to find out what it's actually like to be blocked? Mentor Abd.

Jt, you clearly could, I'll note, resysop me immediately on the appearance of a mentor, which could be yourself, whether through reopening of the former candidacy within 48 hours of formal termination, or through a new request, and there is no necessary comment period per policy. Ottava, above, claiming that "No one can" resysop me, is flying in the face of clear policy here. And the "additional statement" allowed him to do two things, neither of which allowed him to immediately desysop as he did. (1) He could reverse any of my custodial actions without it being wheel-warring, and (2) if he requested that I stop using custodial tools, completely or in some area, I consented in advance to being immediately desysopped if I disregarded that request. My promise did not allow him to do what was contrary to policy, it merely established a quick resolution in the event of an emergency. It did not waive the right to a 48-hour period in the event of mentor withdrawal or a mentor finding of unsuitability, allowing me to find a new mentor. Jt, I've seen this kind of tendentious argument, elsewhere from Ottava, and it's why Ottava has been blocked elsewhere, he argues beyond all reason, often with increasing incivility, and often with no support at all from others, and, here, we can see that he is not shy about threatening use -- or actually using -- admin tools to favor his own opinion. That's not tolerable, in fact. Whether I'm a sysop personally is of much less importance, we can work that out later, unless a mentor volunteers in short order. --Abd 06:18, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Jtneill, the policy makes it 100% clear (it is bolded) that a user has only one month for a probationary period. His probationary period ended. There is no second chance. Any resysoping or giving him a second chance will result in a Steward undoing it and a report filed of you violating community policy. My "request" at Meta was not an emergency desysop. It was pointing out that his probationary period was over. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:36, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
  • Hi Ottava - I think there are two parts for possible discussion here:
    1. I think where the unclear part with Abd's removal of custodian rights is for me is the greyness about whether Abd was in an extended period of probationary custodianship. If he was, then I think the 48 hour option for finding a new mentor should have been provided before requesting rights removal (unless there was emergency).
    2. Could you point me to policy which indicates that a failed probationary custodianship period disallows a Wikiversity member from undertaking another period with a different mentor? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:44, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
    • There is no policy allowing for extended mentorship so if anything community consensus would be needed. I put it up as a question and no one bothered to respond. The only ones bothering to respond were critical of Abd. Furthermore, if the above was true about extension, then that would mean that Abd would never have an end of his mentorship. That would go exactly against policy because it is a temporary sysops and not to be used to override community consensus. He stopped being a candidate 28 days following the start of his mentorship - June 9 to July 7. He was told that he would not be recommended for custodianship if he did it. Furthermore, [4] I never said I terminated my mentorship. I'm still his only mentor. I wont be giving that title up, so there is no way to replace me with a new one. He gets one chance for a recommendation and only one. No amount of trying to get around the policy or manipulating people by stating things that aren't in the policy will change that. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:58, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Unbelievable, one might think he'd just stop, and what is so important that it is worth threatening you with a violation report, in spite of very clear policy to the contrary? I doubt that there is a steward who would support that argument, once they are pointed to the actual policy instead of his creative interpretation. He is correct, though, that it was not an emergency desysop. It was an out-of-process desysop, misrepresenting to meta what the policy is, for policy very clearly provides that the mentor may withdraw or disapprove of custodianship, and then the probationary custodian has 48 hours to find another mentor or the original mentor may then request desysop. The trick is that he's adding "only" to the one month period. That's a minimum, not a fixed limit, as is obvious from standard practice and a consideration of the sense of the policy, which is great. Only once before have I see an argument that bolding was anything more than a convenience to improve readability. I was blocked on Wikipedia by an admin because I !voted in a poll -- allowed -- but a colleague of the admin had then removed the Support/Oppose bolding from all the comments, then the admin claimed that it wasn't a poll, just a discussion -- which wasn't allowed by my weird "MYOB ban."--Abd 14:05, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The Stewards were shown the policy, the lack of support for an extension, and the lack of a recommendation - the three things needed for termination of a temporary sysop. There is also no "minimum" period, an idea that Abd made up. If anything, it is a maximum period to ensure that there are no sysops running around without the approval of the community, which is why most other Wikis do not allow a mentorship period. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The greyness about the extended probationary period for me is in part due to Ottava Rima having requested an extended probationary period for Abd which was followed by little comment (either for or against), then (approx. two weeks later), Ottava claiming that there was no extended probationary period. Extended probationary periods have been provided for other probationary custodians. There is nothing explicitly about extended probationary periods in custodianship policy - this is under discussion at Wikiversity talk:Custodianship#Extending the probationary period. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:32, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm currently not understanding why Abd wouldn't be allowed another probationary custodianship if there was a willing mentor - WV:Custodianship says: "You may however reapply at a later date." -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:32, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Because we have no provisions for those not recommended by mentor to have a new mentorship. We only have provisions for those recommended and still fail. That statement that you quote has the full context is termination before 28 days and failure to find a new mentor. None of that applies here. I am still Abd's mentor and he had more than 28 days. You would have to completely rework the system and have it passed by the community first. But there was little support for his first mentorship and there is even more opposition now. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:45, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Termination of his custodianship is a termination of his mentorship as well. You can't still be his custodian mentor when he is no longer a custodian. He is neither a full custodian nor a probationary custodian. You can't have it both ways and expect other people to think the situation makes sense. Please explain how you are still his custodian mentor when he isn't a probationary custodian. -- darklama  15:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Darklama. Your analysis is completely correct in my view. The probationary period ended with desysop, whether the desysop was proper or not, I am not now a probationary custodian. Jtneill could decide to reverse that, but I would not advise it unless a new mentor volunteers, because I read the policy as then, with no new mentor, allowing Ottava, after 48 hours, to request removal without discussion. There is a good chance that no other mentor will appear within the 48 hours. But, wait, Ottava has now claimed that he is still my mentor, this makes my head hurt.

Above, Ottava directly contradicts policy, which contemplates and provides for a mentor to reject the custodianship, explicitly, and which also provides for reapplication later, and no minimum time is specified. Since during the probationary period, the probationer may obtain a new mentor, if there is a lapse of 48 hours and the probationer is desysopped, there is no reason for prohibiting even rapid reapplication, it is just that the current probationary period may be terminated after 48 hours. An actually denied application, upon !vote, might suggest some waiting period, but policy does not yet provide for that.

Ottava is trying to turn this into a judgment on my custodianship and relationship with the community. The original topic here was the block of Ottava for incivility, and it turned into Ottava's rash actions after that, and the rash actions are continuing, at least in the form of threats. I will allow a new mentor to decide what the new probationary period would be. It could be anything from immediately proceeding to a !vote as provided in the policy (by re-olisting the old candidacy page), to a completely new probationary period by filing a new candidacy. Ottava's position seems designed to give the mentor maximum power, even to the point that he is interpreting that he can unilaterally block all future applications by a former mentored probationer, simply by claiming that he's still the mentor, that's that, and nobody else can take his place. Which does, in fact, resemble certain other problematic behavior of his, which will come out in a Community Review if we have to go to that.

Existing policy is clear, in fact, there is no need for "reworking." The problem here is that Ottava has completely ignored the plain sense of the policy, to the extent of threatening others with block or ban for disagreeing with him. In a way, this is a blessing, because it exposes the serious personal bias that can intrude with him, a very dangerous tendency for a custodian. I think it's about time that the community warns him about this, at least. --Abd 16:26, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Abd, you had only a few weeks and very few edits before coming here. I was asked to join this community, had multiple mentorship offers, and not once had a major problem. You, however, had multiple people saying your interpretation of the policy is flawed and problematic. You have no room to pontificate or claim that you have secret knowledge of what anything means. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:41, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

It all seems to become personal with Ottava. Perhaps it's not important that I was working with on-line communities since before Ottava was born, or not long after, I don't know his exact age. Perhaps it's not important that I was one of the few non-administrators at Wikipedia to successfully navigate process, taking two administrators to ArbComm for recusal failure, in two separate cases, being confirmed as to admin abuse with both. One had been so long entrenched in recusal failure that I saw other admins give up in disgust and ultimately leave Wikipedia, but as a result of what I did, he made it plain and clear to ArbComm that he should lose his bit. In both cases, I was warned that I'd be banned and blocked. I'm not blocked, but as to the rest, long story. Now, Wikiversity is different, but recusal failure problems are pretty much the same across all wikis. I have no superior rights because of my prior experience, but Ottava is trying to pull experience-rank with someone with far longer and deeper experience than him. 'Nuff said, I hope, Jtneill, you'll let me know if you'd like further comment, I need to do Other Stuff. --Abd 18:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

User:Darklama improperly started a vote for making Abd a full custodian, in violation of Wikiversity policy. As a bureaucrat who is charged with evaluating votes for custodian candidates, you should terminate this illegitimate voting for a candidate who was not nominated for full custodianship by his mentor. Also, please revert the changes made by User:Darklama to the sitenotice. --JWSchmidt 05:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks - have commented here. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 06:28, 3 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

As usual, two policy violators who have greatly disrupted Wikiversity are ignoring Wikiversity policy and trying to force a bad procedure on the community. I don't understand why other Custodians allow these disruptions to continue. This is the subject of a community review. --JWSchmidt 14:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Terra's vote shows that there is precedence for this with his mentor being the first oppose. As has been pointed out, the Custodianship standard is based on "policy" that was not fully ratified by the community. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Bureaucrats, more than other custodians, are generally expected to follow settled policy. However, the role of a bureaucrat in creating custodians is twofold: approving and setting the bit for probationary custodianships upon an agreement between mentor and candidate, which is simply a confirmation that the agreement exists, which would include such details as confirming that the mentor is a custodian, and making a determination as a closing for a permanent custodian application.

Policy sets a specific path to custodianship. As a general wiki principle, there are always alternate paths. In the present case, an alternate path has been proposed and is under vote. The path itself is not under vote, just the custodial candidacy. I initially took the position that without an approving mentor, my candidacy could not proceed. However, Darklama finessed that, by stating that if the community consented, he would approve. We are therefore now in a process that bypasses policy, and the reason for this is efficiency. If the *purpose* of the policy is satisfied, on a wiki, then the means are far less important. Here, I expect, there will be no custodianship awarded without both community consensus *and* a custodial (mentor) approval.

The confusion over Ottava's resignation is a red herring. Policy clearly allows substitution within 48 hours. I have not sought a new mentor, beyond suggesting the possibility to you, Jt, and to Darklama, who essentially accepted *conditionally*. The condition was a community approval of me. I'd disagree with his setting that restriction, but it's his right. Procedurally, though, he should have simply accepted mentorship, and he could have included conditions, such as no further actual use of tools for anything remotely controversial or even no use at all. "Approval" in this case actually should mean, not a binding approval, but a recommendation that the candidacy is sufficient solid that the community should vote.

I pointed out, at first, that the community had not yet started to vote on the proposal. But then voting did start. It would be inappropriate to stop the community from voting once voting has started, that's a general principle, unless what is being voted on is actually offensive in itself. If the community sense is against my custodianship, we are done, no controversy, and how we got there is immaterial. If it is to approve my custodianship, and to avoid any conflict with policy, I will ask for a mentor to approve. If I have community support but can't find a mentor, we have some serious problems as a community! We'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

There is a special offer I made with my candidacy to ally fears about disruptive use of tools. It should be reviewed. I think that any custodian who understands the offer would see that there is no risk in providing me with permanent custodianship, provided that my offer stands and one or more custodians approve of the application. I will beef up the offer so that it is clear how it operates beyond initial mentorship, and I'd suggest it as a general standard, in fact. It provides for immediate desysop under certain conditions, conditions which would *always* accompany true abuse, as distinct from merely controversial actions.

Jt, I assume you know that you should not vote or comment on the candidacy itself, unless you prefer to vote and have another bureaucrat close, which could delay things, though that's okay with me. I trust that your judgment will be within what is required of bureaucrats. I have no aversion to a new candidacy, as JWS suggests, but only a recognition that Darklama is correct: the purpose of the policy is to ensure that the community has seen the actual activity of the person as a custodian, and that purpose has been quite adequately fulfilled by the period of my mentorship with Ottava, and therefore a strict adherence to policy about the *process* is unnecessary red tape. What is missing is the mentor approval, but that can be handled with substitution of another mentor before the close. I'm pretty certain one can be found, even if Darklama backs off, but I have not actively sought it by the means available to me. I don't have time right now.

JWS has expressed that he would want more opportunity to review and criticize my actions. He has plenty of opportunity for that. He can do it on the Talk page for the candidacy, or on the custodian actions page in my user talk space that I have linked from the candidacy page, and so can anyone. I've been asking for *specific* criticisms, and I'd want this process to continue whether or not the candidacy is closed, and however it is closed. Too often we have depended on shotgun, non-deliberated criticism, the very kind of defective process that gets us in to trouble. And Wikiversity has definitely been in trouble, and, I'll point out, if nothing changes, the trouble can be expected to continue. --Abd 15:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

There are plenty of reasonable arguments I think for both ways - and clearly there is disagreement. Thus, personally, I would prefer to see Abd re-nominate and start a fresh process with a new mentor (if Abd wants to and there is a willing mentor). However, I will respect community consensus if it establishes that it wants Abd as a full custodian through the current process. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I agree completely, Jt. I don't know how the vote will turn out. I haven't even looked at the current count for a while. However, there is on aspect which was deficient the last time I've looked. There are claims that I abused the tools, but no specification of what usages were involved. Where these common or rare? I created User talk:Abd/Custodian actions, a complete list of my custodial actions with my reasons for the possibly controversial ones, and invited comment there, in each section, so people could readily identify the problem edits. I can guess, pretty easily, one problematic action from Ottava's position. Lucky guess, eh? But he hints at others, though, as my mentor, if they were problematic, he could have an should have reverted them or at least pointed them out at the time. I'm left, now, with no specific guidance. It seems that most of Ottava's objection, besides that one obvious block which may have warped his mind a little, is about the arguments I made, the discussions, not use of tools. And I intend to do that no matter what, until and unless I see a community consensus otherwise. It has nothing to do with my use of admin tools for controversial actions, which was sparse. Anyway, I tried to encourage Darklama to close the voting before voting started, but I consider it rude to those who voted and those who may have been planning to, to close it prematurely now. You or another 'crat may close the voting after five days by policy, however, by recent tradition, you may well decide to wait longer than that, it's up to you. My suggestion is, if consensus is not clear, leave it open longer, and close when !voting has truly stopped. If it's clear, go with it. If it's clear, the mentor requirement becomes fluff. My mentorship acceptance established, I think, a kind of continued mentorship where every supporting custodian becomes a kind of mentor, indefinitely. I intend to review that and make it completely clear before close, and I'll probably ping everyone who voted for me to make sure that they are notified of the most recent version so they can change their !vote if they want. I'm less clear on whether or not I should ping negative voters. In the mean time, if a mentor comes up and accepts mentoring me, I could be resysopped immediately, if a 'crat agrees. --Abd 03:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

You were repeatedly told that your unblock of Thekohser was inappropriate and an abuse of your position, and you were warned against involving yourself in that matter from the beginning. Don't pretend that you don't know about any abuses of the privileges when you were told about this big one quite often. You didn't bother to get community support and you acted without any care about the community. You came up with your own ideas and started pontificating about what policy is when you don't have the experience to even determine such. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

People were too focused on whether proper process had been followed and not being able to agree. By starting the process for full custodianship, I hoped to get people to focus on what should happen next instead. The outcome may be that there is no consensus, which I think could be taken as there being a need to start a fresh process with a new mentor. I think at the end of the day by following through with the process for full custodianship, the current situation can be resolved where focusing on what already happened would not have. Once the current situation is resolved, My hope is that once the community has made a decision, that people will have clearer heads in which to think things through about how to resolve any future problems of a similar nature. However if people would rather focus on whether my solution is improper too I don't think people will be able to get to a point where things can be thought through with a clear head. By focusing on what has already happened with Adb's losing the tools, the issue could explode out of control like what has happened with other issues that have yet to be resolved. Wikiversity could do without more of that. I'm sorry that some people feel I violated policy, but I did what I thought was in the best interest of Wikiversity, getting the current situation resolved quickly. -- darklama  02:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

You said if it establishes him as a full custodian... but what about when it doesn't do so? When there is a large portion saying no? He already had 6 weeks of admin use. Having a vote saying no and then granting him another one would definitely be a run around of the system and possibly have us in conflict with WMF standards. After all, our process is based on very little community consensus now and probably wouldn't hold up to the WMF requirement that custodianship can only be granted based on community support. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't want people focusing on and worrying about what ifs now either. Lets focus on right now, and not on what has already happened and what could happen. -- darklama  02:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm asking about the future, as there is a very messy area that Jtneill seems willing to jump into. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

(edit comflict) I fail to see what the problem is. Bureaucrats have the discretion to define consensus, they could decide to deprecate certain votes, but, I'll issue a "ruling" here, there should be very sound basis to decide against an apparent majority. How far above majority a finding must be to be considered consensus depends so greatly on circumstances that no definitive rule can be established. It's combined discretion, the 'crat and the reviewing steward, if the decision is to award ops. Jtneill, I am sure, is not about to make a close awarding ops without a solid basis. As to the reverse direction, Jtneill may find No consensus or Rejection. And the difference between the two is not much. In both cases I could reapply with a new application and new mentorship period, presuming I could find a mentor. What's the "very messy area? There is a mess, all right, but it's not about this. --Abd 03:14, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think discussing the future at this point could cause disputes to arise for situations that may not come to pass and any dispute is not likely to be resolvable, just as disputes that arise from discussing the past have been. The present seems to be the one thing people have trouble discussing and is perhaps the only way Wikiversity disputes manage to get resolved. -- darklama  03:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Look, if I made mistakes in the first probationary period, wouldn't it be great if they are specified? What's been said so far is pretty vague. I intend to work to clear up the famous bans, if possible, but I can and will do that anyway, sysop or not, so much of the negative argument being given is simply off. The core issue with approving any custodian is whether or not the custodian can be trusted with tools. Until I blocked Ottava, I was still trusted with the tools, so it's pretty obvious what the basis for dropping mentorship was. Perhaps he was right, though I don't think so, but really the community should look at that block if they want to judge me based on Ottava's opinion. If the block was foolish and improper, contrary to policy, I shouldn't be a custodian. If it was some kind of difficulty, but within what a sysop may properly decide, it might be an open question. And if it was brilliant, a bold move to establish civility policy with some strength behind it, without actually doing harm (2 hour block? Piffle!), then I should be enthusiastically supported! Custodianship votes can be popularity contests, unfortunately, but Wikiversity policy provides a way around that, and we may end up testing that.

Ottava, if there is a clear consensus for rejection, excluding obviously biased participants, like yourself, I would not reapply for probationary custodianship. If not, it's an open question, but policy allows me and the issue really is the mentor. As to possible mentors, is the situation one down, how many to go? You could try again, if you wanted, I'm just guessing that you won't think that's a good idea. Lucky guess? Or not? --Abd 03:29, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Regardless of the fact that the Dinosaur page can't actually be anything like Crocdile, the page is a detriment to the project as a whole. It was started as a test copyvio, then replaced by a test edit. Having a small stub -discourages- people from our site in general and makes people think that there is someone who already made the page so they don't bother. What you do is effectively remove any future possibility to have educational content. We do not need a bunch of stubs around. Wikipedia already has information on dinosaurs. If we want to start something, we should wait until an expert comes with the time and energy to make a project. We should not discourage that by having a lot of test pages and copyvios left strewn about. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Since this is debatable, please nominate for deletion to allow community discussion. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

It was already deleted. Technically, you should have nominated it for undeletion. It was deleted twice in the past, you know, and both on solid grounds - 1. for copy vio and 2. for test edits. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't think 2. was solid grounds - I interpreted it as a good faith attempt at creating a learning resource which I was in the process of improving when you deleted it. Perhaps discuss on talk page first. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Good faith does not mean a random IP with no edits throwing up random stuff that has nothing to do with creating a structured learning project. By accepting that as a real learning process, you diminish our reputation and make a statement that we accept nonsense instead of real material. If an expert wants to come by to make a page on Dinosaurs and sees that, they will just leave. It has happened before. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for sharing your views. Personally, I suspect it may diminish Wikiversity's reputation to delete rather than improve upon potentially good faith edits. How can a resource become good quality if its deleted whilst in the process of being developed? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:20, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Are you serious? You must be joking. There is no possible way you can seriously make such a claim. You think that having 1000 crappy pages is somehow better than none? It is obvious that academics are discouraged from WMF projects because they do not want to be associated with junk. To junk up the project like that undermines everything we are about. It is not a learning resource. You undeleted it out of process and without a legitimate reason. What have you been thinking lately? You use to have standards and use to ensure that we didn't fall apart like that, and now you are going 180 for what reason? There is no "process of being developed" when it was a drive by IP that didn't produce anything. You know that. Why have you been acting this way for the past week? Ottava Rima (talk) 16:32, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ottava, I apologize for undeleting that resource (Dinosaur) without first discussing or proposing to do so. I was upset and angry that a resource that I had been working on had been deleted without discussion. I will endeavour to take a step back and cool off if I'm in the same situation next time. Thank-you for your feedback and sharing your views. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 01:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

If you want to know, I didn't see you working on the page and I am sorry for not noticing. What I saw was someone undoing Geoff's deletion after Juan nominated it for deletion and Geoff acted on it. I'm just tired of people reversing others actions without discussion. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:40, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict with above)Definitely it wasn't appropriate for you, Jt, to immediately undelete without a request to Ottava, you have correctly apologized for that. In Ottava's favor was that there was a speedy delete template on it, so he was really just confirming the opinion of another user, but that had been added only the day before. I'd have suggested so more time, probably at least a week. People don't check watchlists every day, necessarily. On the other hand, this isn't just a community for "academics," it is also for "learners," who may learn by putting a resource together that can then be improved. If it is discouraging for an academic to see something defective, imagine how discouraging it is for a learner to spend perhaps an hour writing something and then it is gone with no real explanation, no chance to improve it, nothing. The deletion itself was not a problem, but suggesting an undelete discussion isn't correct, it's (probably minor) disruption. Rather, the default here is to keep a resource unless there is a deletion discussion that concludes for deletion, and the exception is uncontested speedy deletion, for efficiency. --Abd 02:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

If you must know, I clicked on the IP's edit from the recent changes log so I didn't look at the history. I only saw that it was a recreation of Geoff's deletion shortly after and that the IP was a random IP from the Philippines without any previous edits on the WMF. Deletions of recreated pages are normally deleted, especially when it is something as nonsensical as the IP's one line about biggest and smallest, which if you look is clearly a failed test edit. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

General principle is that custodians may delete on their own authority something that they think is clearly inappropriate. However, my practice, for anything that was remotely possible to be a stub moving toward a useful resource, was to add a speedy deletion tag. My view is that except for obvious cases, a custodian should not delete on their own authority, they should behave just like any other editor, put up a deletion tag, and let another custodian make the final decision. Patrolling the tags, and before deleting, I always made sure that the editor had been notified, often they had not, with time being given for response. Then if a page is deleted without discussion, and unless there are solid reasons for deletion that can't be addressed by, say, stubbing, it should be restored on request by any apparent good-faith editor, with AGF being basic. And then nominated for deletion if the original deleting custodian still thinks it is important to delete. I see above that Ottava is not following this, and seems to be in violation of the proposed policy. If he thinks the policy, as proposed, is defective, he should modify it, because, until then, it's the only guideline we have.

Ottava's argument about the page would be answered by putting an appropriate improvement template on it, flagging that this is considered a marginal resource, inviting improvement. "Random IP' is offensive to our IP editors, and unless we establish some contrary policy, IP editors are generally entitled to almost as much consideration as registered editors.

We do accept nonsense, for a time, and I recently saw some real science called "nonsense" because the person commenting didn't understand it. If a page is nonsense in the view of an editor, it can be speedy tagged. Those tags shouldn't be truly "speedy," like a day, we can afford to take time. We don't have notability and reliable source policies like Wikipedia, it should be much simpler here. "Nonsense," when there is a recognized editor favoring keeping it, at least temporarily, is a slippery slope. I've been trying to get us on more solid ground. How about a page on "Jabberwocky"? What about a page on a contemporary "nonsense" poem with no reliable source like Jabberwocky? How about a page on an abstruse subject that Ottava doesn't have a clue about, doesn't know the terms and the known science, or the science is controversial, considered nonsense by some scientists and solid and proven by others? I know an example! Etc. --Abd 16:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity is not a stub database. It never has been. We are an academic community and it is well known that such actions would discourage and have discouraged academics. You have only been here for a few months and haven't even bothered to create a learning resource. Please don't pontificate about what we have here and what we do not. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The pontiff has decided to strike part of what was written above, because he had not noticed that a speedy deletion tag had been placed there previously, which certainly made Ottava's action much more justifiable. It was only a day, though, and the pontiff wishes to point out that probably a week should be allowed, minimum, for a user to notice a speedy tag and object to speedy deletion. Perhaps that should go in the policy. The pontiff looked at the policy today, but forgets whether time is mentioned there or not. --Abd 02:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC) Subsequent and more thorough examination disclosed that the story being told by Ottava was not a fair representation of the truth, see below. --Abd 21:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The speedy tag was put there for Geoff by Juan as part of his mentorship. I have been keeping an eye on it as I have also provided Geoff various other things to look for, hints, etc. It was a clear copyviolation page per the GFDL standards and we also do not carry copies of Wikipedia pages like that which serve no purpose at all (i.e. someone copies and dumps a page and vanishes). Ottava Rima (talk) 03:05, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

As is covered in excruciating detail in Wikiversity:Community Review/Jtneill#Dinosaur, the deletion for copyright violation by Geoff seems quite in order. However, the community review filing is based on Jtneill's subsequent undeletion, not of that original violating article, but of one that contained no copy vio, placed by an IP as a stub, and then worked on by Jtneill. It was this second deletion, by Ottava, that was quite questionable, and it is this one that Jtneill reversed. The reference to the copyvio is therefore a red herring, distracting us from the real issue, the deletion of a page where work was in process, that, indeed, could become a useful resource. --Abd 21:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

It was deleted by me as 3:53, 4 August 2010 Ottava Rima (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Dinosaur" ‎ (Test page....) This was true. It was an IP posting on a page deleted the day before and contained two proofs that it was a test edit: 1. factually incorrect nonsense statements and 2. "file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/MCG/Desktop/Dinosaurs/camarasaur.jpg", which shows that it was a test to see how the system works. This was an IP who never edited again [file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/MCG/Desktop/Dinosaurs/camarasaur.jpg on any WMF project]. These two combined show clear evidence that the page should have stated deleted, and that any defense, like yours above, represents clear disruption. Abd, you are hereby warned to stop with the disruption and if you try to claim that the IP's edits were some how appropriate, then you are not here to correctly participate in a learning community. Cut it out. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:08, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi James. I see you are working on a textbook project that explores Motivation and Emotion. As you may know, I have published some NSF-funded research on this topic, most of which is summarized in an article entitled Cognition, Affect, and Learning. Would you be interested in including or referencing any of the ideas or materials from that research? —Barry Kort 12:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Barry - this is a very relevant, appropriate resource - I've added a link in here for now: Motivation_and_emotion/Textbook#References and I hope we can learn from it. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 01:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I would be glad to work with your students on any of this material that they find of interest. Note that portions of it may have some daunting math, but I believe we can get past that with a little patience and some good metaphors. —Barry Kort 01:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

James, let me know if you need any custodial help with this course. Psychology always fascinates me and I'm pleased to see a spiffy new textbook will be coming out of this course!!! (Maybe next time you teach 102, we'll get a better introductory psychology wikibook :p) Geoff Plourde 06:28, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Barry and Geoff for your willingness and contributions already. Please feel welcome to join in - I'm pretty new to the topic myself - it will be a bit of an experiment, but in the past students have been amazed and appreciative of outside assistance via Wikiversity. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 07:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have got to say I find this incredibly inappropriate. Unblock Barry or don't, either way. But welcoming block evasion is just not acceptable. Thenub314 09:00, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I understand there's a long history here and that different people have different views, but from a personal point of view, I'm happy to work with good faith edits from any user. I'd be concerned about block evasion if it was vandalism etc. (I think it's a bit unnecessary when we undo/rollback constructive edits to Wikiversity). If/when the community and User:Moulton wish to undertake a community review to consider unblocking, then I would support this. In the meantime, a constructive edit is a constructive edit regardless of where it emanates from. If my intended approach is of particular concern then please share with me more about that - and maybe we can explore the issue in a wider discussion. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 09:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

There was a community !vote about Moulton in the past. The way I see it there are two possibilities, first JWSchmidt is correct that this was a show trial, in which case one should be making an effort to get a true community !vote on the issue. The other possibility is that the community actually felt he should be blocked, in which case it is a bit out of line to invite him to edit with out first starting a community discussion. In the mean time (to me) it looks like your side stepping involving the community. Thenub314 13:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

This is good food for thought, thankyou. Personally, I am in favour of a new review in which Moulton can participate. But it's not clear whether Moulton wishes this and it would require first community consensus to detach/rename his account from the global block in order to allow logged in participation. I'm open to developments in this direction, but I haven't yet sensed much interest (there are lots of diverse views). In the meantime, for projects I'm working on, if any anonymous IP makes productive edits, I am grateful for them. I realise that this might cause some unease when such IP edits emanate from a user who has one or more blocked accounts - a kind of cognitive dissonance, perhaps. It could be helpful to explore more about we feel about constructive edits by people with blocked accounts. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

OK. Lets open a new review. But do not break community consensus please. We were talking about ban, not block - it is something different. Its long standing. And if I have a look what is Moulton doing elsewhere I will support his block here.--Juan de Vojníkov 13:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jtneill, you were neutral at the time of the ban discussion. Geoff was against the ban. I did not post as I was the enforcing admin. SB Johnny did not vote as he was the closing admin. Moulton has still not agreed to the most basic of terms to ensure he can come back - agreeing to stop using real names and to drop what happened in the past. Looking at the numbers and people's responses, I do not think that there will be any future consensus to undo that previous ban and Moulton, when talking before, stated that he did not want to be unbanned. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

"a community review to consider unblocking" <-- Such a community review already exists. Moulton was never banned by the community. A few people decided, in secret, off wiki, to eliminate Moulton. The current block on Moulton was unjustified and a serious violation of Wikiversity policy. Ottava Rima has no authority to impose restrictions an Moulton's participation at Wikiversity. Ottava Rima, did you participate in the secret off-wiki decision to ban Moulton? --JWSchmidt 06:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The avatar "Moulton" was not banned. Barry was banned. The ban was fully justified by standard operating procedures on Wikimedia project. Those procedures are not adequately justified. JWSchmidt, it is generally helpful to the scientific investigation of something to be clear on one's terminology. WAS 4.250 06:31, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

"The ban was fully justified by standard operating procedures on Wikimedia project" <-- WAS 4.250, please describe the "standard operating procedures on Wikimedia project" that you are talking about. --JWSchmidt 07:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Official nomenclature is "consensus"; outside Wikimedia it is often called "mob rule"; on Wikipedia Review it is sometimes exaggerated (amusingly) as "Lord-of-the-flies". WAS 4.250 08:49, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

JWS, if you look above there were 7 supports, 1 oppose, 1 neutral, 2 regulars who were enforcing the ban and didn't vote. That is definitely a standard procedure even if, as WAS points out, it is unjust as a system. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

"if you look above there were 7 supports, 1 oppose, 1 neutral" <-- That was one person's summary of a discussion about a block, with numbers that are highly questionable. I want a link to a community discussion about banning Moulton. In that discussion about the block, the proposal to ban was withdrawn. The decision to ban was made off-wiki, in secret. Had the intention to impose a ban been openly discussed on-wiki, there would have been many objections. --JWSchmidt 17:26, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

[5] The proposal at the very bottom was withdrawn because it was already being voted on. Gesh. You know that. And you can say it was questionable, but it was based on what people bolded. If anything, there may have been 2 opposes. I would have supported the ban, and probably SB Johnny, so that is 9 to 2. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

"it was already being voted on" <-- What was being voted on? The page was called "Moulton's block". A community discussion about a community ban would have been called "Community ban of Moulton" and would have been widely advertised as such. Wikiversity policy describes only one basis for imposing a ban, and that was not applicable to Moulton. The ban that was imposed was not a "community ban", it was something dreamed up in secret off-wiki and imposed upon the community. Ottava Rima, did you participate in the off-wiki decision to ban Moulton? --JWSchmidt 17:56, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi James,

On the homework assignment for the course on the Motivation and Emotions Textbook, ask your students to consider all the characters in the "Indictment of JTNeill" (the indicting parties, the targets of the indictments, the bystanders, and other affected parties) and for each character (including themselves, as your students) ask them to hypothesize the affective state and motivation of each player in the drama, using the (growing or shrinking) List of Emotions as a guide. Then, after everyone has their hypotheses submitted, each player in the drama will be asked to candidly disclose their true affective emotional state and motivation with respect to the "Indictment Drama."

The results of this experience can then be used to enable the students to think about what they want to include in the developing textbook, as they craft it.

Moulton 13:17, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Moulton, how can you judge the emotional state of someone by reading their wiki edits? This seems like a kind of Turing Test. I'm often not sure if there is a person or a robot making the edits. --JWSchmidt 13:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Remember, John, that the Indictment Drama is an instance of drama with a cast of characters. In Drama Theory, we consider the motivation and emotions of the characters in the story, which are generally not the same as the actors who are playing the roles of characters they have been assigned to portray. Here, we are doing literary analysis of synthetic storybook characters in a synthetic drama. —Moulton 13:40, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• A good reminder might be to place Motivation and emotion or some of its subpages in Category:Literary analysis. Should we put the Wikiversity:Community Review/Jtneill page in Category:Drama? --JWSchmidt 14:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I would put the Motivation and Emotion Study Project in Category:Drama Theory and the Community Review of James Neil in Category:Dramaturgy, since the latter is a live laboratory exercise in the Dramaturgy Workshop. —Moulton 19:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC) this edit was reverted as a contribution of a blocked editor, by Adambro. Making the judgment that this edit is not damaging to Wikiversity, given its context, I have restored it.--Abd 20:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I would put the Motivation and Emotion Study Project in Category:Drama Theory and the Community Review of James Neil in Category:Dramaturgy, since the latter is a live laboratory exercise in the Dramaturgy Workshop. —Moulton 19:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Moulton, can you explain the distinction between "drama theory" and "dramaturgy"? Where is the "Dramaturgy Workshop"? --JWSchmidt 20:02, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Drama Theory encompasses theory and analysis of drama. It need not include a laboratory workshop section.

Dramaturgy includes lots of laboratory workshops in enacting drama, with less emphasis on the mathematical aspects of the underlying Drama Theory. You have to understand that Drama Theory includes a fair amount of mathematics. Dramaturgy usually doesn't go that deep into the analytical theory of dramatic structures.

The term "Dramaturgy" is widely used in Europe. In the US, we are more likely to use the term "Drama Theory" (which is an extension of "Game Theory").

There is also the term The Bardic Arts which is more about producing educational stories and dramas. Drama Theory, Dramaturgy, and the Bardic Arts are all very similar. It just depends on the focus or objective of the course. In Drama Theory, you would study Clancy's Theorem and the Vexagon Diagram. You might not spend much time on that in a Dramaturgy Workshop or in a course to develop the Bardic Arts. The Bardic Arts is more about StoryCraft and StoryTelling.

The Dramaturgy Workshop is synonymous with the English Wikiversity. About two years ago, the English Wikiversity was expanded and transformed from a traditional Online Learning Community into a Dramaturgy Workshop specializing in Post-Modern Theater of the Absurd.

Moulton 20:59, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Discussion of the Dramaturgy Workshop continues with Moulton's reply on another page. --JWSchmidt 22:31, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

That page, Dramaturgy was promptly deleted out-of-process, one minute later, by Adambro. There is a WV:Requests for deletion#Dramaturgy on this, current strong majority is Undelete. This is getting way out of hand. --Abd 02:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Not unless we want to provoke massive disruption! I find the proposal fascinating, actually, and it does not involve mind-reading, because, as described by Moulton, no actual inference is made of true affective state, but only hypotheses are advanced. They are then checked with the actual actors in the "drama." While this could theoretically be handled objectively, and while the fact is that we are all engaged in this process anyway when we read the "text of the drama," this also invites participants to make highly subjective judgments and make them explicit. I.e, "X is lying about the actual history because he is angry with Y and wants to strike back.' Thus site civility policy is quite likely to be violated. Hence, I suggest, such a study must be done off-wiki, and only linked from Wikiversity if there are adequate protections and framing. Otherwise this would be a formula for disaster here. Let me know where it's done if you decide to do it, and I'll help work on the guidelines, both for that study itself and for any mention of it here. By the way, a good facilitator would, in serious dispute resolution process, go through something like this, making sure that participants know how their actions were perceived by others, and digging out the underlying motivations. That's how genuine consensus process works. --Abd 16:52, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Abd, please explain how a collaborative analysis of a wiki-based discussion from the perspective of dramaturgy is a violation of the civility policy. How can a harmless learning project "provoke massive disruption"? --JWSchmidt 17:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

If you don't understand, I toss up my hands in despair at explaining it to you. I did not say that it would be a violation of civility policy. I wrote that it might "provoke" massive disruption." How about a repetition of the events of 2008 and March 2010? The proposal itself is marginally uncivil, implying that the participants in a Wikiversity Community Review are participating in a "live laboratory exercise in the Dramaturgy Workshop." I don't necessarily disagree, by the way. There are lots of things I could quite honestly and frankly do or say that might push the limits of civility policy, or even pass beyond them.

Okay, the scale of the disruption would likely be smaller than the previous events, because the roles being studied would only be those of a few (very few) Wikiversity participants. I have, in fact, studied, in personal conversation with you, as well as in some greater community discussion, the "role" you have been playing, long-term, in a way similar to what might be done in a workshp or study as Moulton has proposed. Tell me, how do you like it? I'm fairly regularly accused of incivility toward you, by one custodian, as a result of it. Do you think I should do more or less of it? Thanks, your answer could be helpful. --Abd 20:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Meanwhile, it seems I'm like the Lone Ranger here, reverting back in non-disruptive contributions of Moulton, as I have in multiple places. If you believe he should not be blocked, I presume you value his contributions. But if nobody joins me in this practice of bringing back non-disruptive contributions, I could be forced to stop. Your last comment made Adambro's revert not revertible, so I'd assume you saw it. Is this correct? What could I infer from this?

Jtneill, my procedure here is partly based on this being your Talk page. If you would prefer that I not revert back in removed contributions of Moulton, please let me know. I will not revert in any contributions that I consider, in themselves, violate Wikiversity policy, I take responsibility for my own actions. You could, if you like, ask Adambro to not revert contributions of IP editors here, even if apparently those of a blocked editor, but, my opinion, he is not obligated to remember who might want such contributions and who might not, and may revert them on sight. It might just be nice if he refrains. None of this consideration applies to obviously disruptive comments by any IP editor or apparent sock of a blocked editor. This is suggesting a middle way, one that was not considered before in the review of Moulton's editing that Ottava has referenced. I'll put this as a suggested clarification in policy, in short order. --Abd 20:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• You are not alone, Abd. I am also restoring constructive edits (and reverting non-constructive edits that disrupt the natural flow of the dialog). The edit summary which James posted when he unlocked this page makes it abundantly clear that he welcomes open dialog. —Moulton 13:47, 10 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Moulton, please do not ever revert-war over your contributions being reverted. It simply irritates custodians and others to no good effect, since it does not increase the availability of your text and, in fact, makes it more likely that edit collisions will make it more difficult to revert back in your positive or reasonable contributions. As you know, I've suggested that you self-revert as a gesture of cooperation, self-identifying in the edit summary, i.e, "will self-revert per block of Moulton." Otherwise every block-evading edit, whether positive or unconstructive, is increasing disruption to some degree, without benefit (compared to self-reversion). It does not help open dialog for you to revert war, and self-reversion will help open dialog, because it will reduce the level of legitimate complaint about your block evasion. A self-reverted edit, even if uncivil or otherwise objectionable, leaves behind no damage that anyone must fix, and if it's not objectionable, any editor, seeing it and considering it useful, may revert it back in. I will be arguing that IP that is only making self-reverted edits should not be routinely blocked, though it may certainly be watched. By self-reverting, with a policy allowing this in place, you will be assisting in block enforcement, actually, by using more stable IP, reducing collateral damage from blocks. I believe that you can understand the value of this, and it will tease out what is legitimate about blocking you from what is not. It is not legitimate for you to attempt to damage the wiki by diverting administrative effort from more useful purposes. Self-reversion is practically no-cost to you, so if you actually want to improve content and process here, I highly recommend it. It is not that self-reversion is truly necessary, particularly on this page, but doing it everywhere will make it clear that it is not your desire to complicate block enforcement, and a custodian interested in enforcing what he or she believes is a legitimate block should not be required to discriminate by page, that's unnecessary complication, taking up more time. Let the rest of us sort this out, Moulton, by making decisions to revert back in your contributions. You may always let me know that there is a contribution to look at, whether on my Talk page or by email. --Abd 16:22, 10 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ottava has now semi-protected your Talk page. That seems a tad rude to me, but it's certainly up to you! --Abd 02:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I see, Jt, that you have unprotected, to allow "open dialog." I was experiencing serious vandalism of my Talk page on Wikipedia, making it necessary to semiprotect my Talk page, and I opened up a page specially for IP, so that even blocked editors could communicate on-wiki with me. Nobody ever dinged me for allowing blocked editors to do this. I also sometimes reverted back in the reverted contributions of blocked editors. There was some grumbling, but, again, nobody ever successfully dinged me for it. It was clearly permitted there. Unless the edits were grossly uncivil, "muslim scum" seemed to be the most common, the IP making those edits was not generally blocked, because it wasn't disruptive. Of course, whenever IP suspected to be a blocked editor made some edit to my Talk page, people would look at the other contributions. If they were disruptive ... the IP would be blocked, and quite appropriately so. Thanks for all your consideration and your attempts to make it possible to negotiate solutions that will help the wiki and the community, lessening or eliminating unnecessary disruption, improving content. --Abd 15:38, 10 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Note: Moulton apparently reverted Adambro's removal of his contribution. I do not support this at all, and it fully justifies blocking the IP. Had I seen that this was what he had done when I restored his earlier contribution myself, I might not have done it. That is "extra disruption," and was unnecessary and impatient. He could reduce the disruption even more by self-reverting, but I have yet to see him do it. Disruption is part of his technique, and as long as it continues uncontained, he will remain blocked, and properly so. --Abd 03:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

See my response. Take a week off. You have already shown repeated questionable judgment. Your statement about the dinosaur page being a proper learning resource when it was proven to be deleted properly, when it was proven that it contained an IP putting up a factual inaccuracy, and that you didn't follow proper procedure and acted inappropriately is only the least problematic action. Your outright inability to follow the wording of our policy, your inability to respect Darkcode following community norms, your claims about my incivility when even -you- have been outright disrespectful, rude, and abusive of your position, is troubling. Your were made a crat because we needed one. Your protection of JWS's out and out abuse of system especially after a long track record documented here, of Abd's out and out abuse of system, your stance on Moulton and the rest, are part of a clear bias that makes your statements completely illegitimate.

The mere thought that you would dare to claim that Moulton should be brought back when you were in the severe minority then and now is extremely troubling. Your willingness to not even look at pages when claiming that they should be undeleted is troubling. The statements you are making that have nothing to do with our actual policies is troubling.

You need to take time off for perspective. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hell, the fact that you encouraged a banned user to edit around his block is abuse. You know that, right? You can be desysopped for that. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity:Community Review/Jtneill - Ottava Rima (talk) 17:22, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ottava has already threatened you with a report at meta if you dared to simply follow policy (by re-opping because of the disregard of the 48 hour period for me to find a new mentor when he withdrew his support). Now he threatens you with desysop for doing somewhat the kind of thing that I was attempting, to negotiate and test a return to normalcy, fully respecting consensus, not allowing actual disruption, only setting aside, very tentatively, technical obstructions.

There is already a Custodian feedback request pending re Ottava, and here Ottava has blatantly ignored a fair warning, quite in accord with policy, repeating the behavior with his gratuitous calling me a "hypocrite." (I could be Satan incarnate and it would not justify his incivility.) This is, in fact, known Ottava behavior elsewhere, it is practically identical to what he did in what I blocked him for, and it is fully unbecoming of a sysop, it is grounds for any of a number of decisive actions, including blocking, with emergency desysop if he should unblock himself, or placing strict restrictions, perhaps obtaining a mentor with a strong mentorship agreement. Ottava has worked hard to help develop Wikiversity, but it could also be argued that he inflamed the disputes with Moulton et al, and he is obviously unresponsive to warning. What's next?

I recognize there is a problem with a possible consideration that you are involved and should recuse, and I would generally recognize and address this in a developed recusal policy. In short, emergencies can justify recusal failure, and intransigent incivility is an emergency, it must be immediately stopped or further damage can ensue, damage that may not be repairable, that's what incivility can do. So when a sysop believes that action is necessary due to an emergency, the sysop may act (in fact, must act, to the extent that any actions are required), but is required to immediately consult with the community. With a block, any custodian should be allowed to unblock, being then responsible to the community for the actual consequences of that action. With desysop, emergency desysop, I'm sure you realize, would be you going to meta and asking a steward to remove the bit pending review, I presume you would provide a couple of diffs as evidence of the need, but normally they will respect you as a 'crat, particularly because any other 'crat could reverse the action. Sheesh! Something is broken in Ottava that causes this radical loss of perspective. I hope that he will be responsive to community guidance on this, he's not going to hear it from just you or me, apparently. --Abd 18:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

"intransigent incivility is an emergency" ... I fell on the floor laughing. WAS 4.250 22:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Just to clarify: my idea of an emergency is, oh I don't know, what can I use as an example?, hmmm. How about earlier this year when I went to the hospital in an ambulance and a doctor asked me how much effort I wanted them to use in saving my life. (Now the insurance company is in litigation with the hospital over costs.) WAS 4.250 23:04, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

How about considering context when interpreting language? Glad you got a good laugh, but "emergency" is here very specific, with reference to policy discussions we have been having: "emergency" means that failure to address a problem promptly can cause difficult to remediate damage, even possibly permanent damage, but this is only damage to the wiki and the community and its process, it's not a "life-threatening emergency," which would obviously trump everything we have been talking about. There is a reason for a civility policy, but WV civility policy was inadequate to address the problems that tore this community apart. I was talking about recusal policy, which could possibly inhibit Jtneill from acting, I don't know. There is an exception to recusal policy, i.e., "emergency," where failure to act can do more harm than acting with a reality or appearance of "involvement." That's all that it means. It does not mean that we should all start screaming "Emergency! Emergency! The sky is falling!" It means that we should consider the welfare of the community and the wiki. WAS, I have approaching 25 years of experience with on-line communities, and I've seen, over and over, what happens when incivility is tolerated, even enjoyed. There are, indeed, some people who enjoy watching flame wars. But there are plenty of others who will simply leave, or will stop reading the pages where that kind of thing takes place; in the present case the original involved page was the Colloquium, i.e., the central communication mechanism of this wiki, the place where the community is invited to meet.

This community did not have the coherence and strength to deal efficiently with cross-wiki incivility, so it was overrun by those who would not wait for action that might never come. In order to develop a strong community, we must develop and apply a strong civility policy, which means that it is enforced. How it is enforced is crucial, but it begins with simple steps. They don't include banning "uncivil" participants, generally, but they might include short blocks for incivility which continues after warning, with measured response and closer supervision. All this must be developed by the community; until we have clearer and more effective policy, we will continue to have a paradox: a community which disapproves of blocks, but with custodians who block or enforce blocks. We have a community with a civility policy, but an active custodian who is grossly and blatantly uncivil, and who has threatened someone calling him on it with blocking. Do you think this is acceptable? I'm not raising this because I was the one most recently attacked. It's because this will repeat if not addressed, next time it will be someone else. This did not start with me and it will not end with me, unless the community stops passively permitting what policy and common sense prohibit. --Abd 03:29, 7 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Abd, we don't toss around warnings like that first of all. Second of all, the Civility guideline states that if you thought it was incivil, the first thing you do is ignore it. Third, consensus was against you and Jtneill as it being anything that was problematic, and your own language and attacks on others, including JWS, is far more incivil and block worthy than all of my comments ever made. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

And Ottava has again repeated it. He's unclear on the concept of striking incivility -- or even alleged incivility, if it's not necessary to the project -- on request. He thinks that if he reverts his own specifically noted uncivil statement, he'd have to revert all my allegedly uncivil statements. I can think of one statement that was possibly uncivil about JWS, and on request, I immediately struck it. It was nothing on the level of "hypocrite." No, on request, we have some level of obligation to reconsider our own possibly uncivil statements. It is quite like the original problem of "liar." In spite of there being no necessity for that comment in situ, Ottava defended the statement because it was allegedly "true," thus repeating it. I don't think he is going to stop unless he's stopped, or unless someone he trusts finally gets through to him. He doesn't trust me, he doesn't trust you, he doesn't trust Darklama, whom does he trust? I know that elsewhere, all the advice in the world didn't slow him down until he was blocked or restricted. I thought I might have sufficient rapport with him because of prior history to let him know how deeply he was sticking his foot in his mouth, but apparently not. It would be sad to repeat that here. Again, is there someone he trusts? --Abd 20:25, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hey,

I've been asked by Leo de Penning about the effects of using wikiversity for writing up research would have on future publication in an academic journal. Do you know the answer? Geoff Plourde 03:33, 7 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

It depends on what form the paper takes here and the Journal. Most (but not all) journals in my field become the copyright holder for the work, preventing authors from legally posting the work on their personal web site (but most do anyways). Best advise: Check with the journal, posting it here will probably have some impact. Remember our license only requires a link. In theory a competing journal to also publish the work, provided they give a link to the material on wikiversity. Thenub314 07:49, 7 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

James, see Sue Gardner's blog and the ensuing discussion comments. —Moulton 16:08, 7 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• See also her subsequent article on Quaker models for building consensus. —Moulton 02:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't have much direct experience with Quaker decision-making process, but I have a lot of experience with consensus process, including with Quakers participating. Consensus is truly important on Wikipedia, because NPOV, which is fundamental policy, cannot be measured except by level of true consensus. (If there is complete consensus on text, without excluding any participants, we are as sure as we can be that the text can be considered neutral. Because of problems of scale, 100% consensus may not be attainable, but it should always be a goal if we care about neutrality. And Wikipedia should, very much, care.).

There are two sides to consensus. The positive side is that consensus, if found, unites communities. Even seeking it helps unite communities, if those who are in a minority opinion feel respected by the process. This unity then builds community strength.

The down side is that seeking consensus can take a lot of discussion! As a group grows larger, the work necessary to attain absolute consensus grows exponentially. However, there are fixes that handle this through hierarchical decision-making structure, that allow decision-making to take place in small groups and then expand from there, as needed. The most mature systems I know of are hybrids: they use majority rule, but only for temporary decisions, they continue to seek consensus, but in compartments, so to speak, that do not require that everyone participate in every tedious and painful exploration.

And this is, in fact, my major interest for the last decade or so, how to do this. Ironically, standard Wikipedia Dispute Resolution process, in theory, implements a big chunk of it, but DR process is more known for being ignored on Wikipedia than for being followed, and numerous community "actual practices" grew up that more or less blow it out of the water.

Wikipedia never figured out how to manage consensus discovery on a large scale, with efficiency, and when a piece of a method was proposed to them, as an experiment that would have changed or violated no policy, it was immediately rejected without any sign that it was understood. I wasn't surprised, exactly, though the vehemence of the rejection surprised me somewhat. It more than surprised my friend, who had proposed it; a long-term Wikipedian, much longer than I, it was something he had not expected, and it basically blew him away. He wasn't prepared for the viciousness with which a truly harmless experiment was rejected, he'd never encountered this side of Wikipedia so clearly before. --Abd 03:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

- Ottava Rima (talk) 22:49, 7 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sent a followup. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think my major point is that I know you have a lot of real life stuff (and I have a lot of real life stuff, so I know how that can interfere). Mostly, it is just that we have to make sure to view things as far from "omg end of the world everyone panic" as possible. I already made it so that no one will be blocked for the most part (and JWS's second account doesn't count as he can still use his first account even though that may or may not be "liberty" enough to do so) so there is nothing that can't really be discussed. Everyone knows that I hate blocks in general, so once we step back from that bothersome cliff and just discuss how we go about fixing our policies and the rest, then we can start to rebuild. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for asking after my Username change. Yes, this is what I intend. My real name is not AFriedman and I wanted to do something else besides using this misleading personal information. I see someone has moved the tools and contribs over to my new account and I appreciate that. BTW, I've been very busy for the past few months and was on wikibreak, but hopefully I now have some time to explore some new thoughts I've had about improving Wikiversity's research. BTW, may I please have permission to edit the sitenotice? I want to add a discussion/workshop about improving Portal:Research. --La comadreja _{formerly AFriedman} RESEARCH (talk) 02:20, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Logicaly as you just created new account (if I have noticed right) your rights werent moved. I recomend you to ask for changing names (e.g. Jtneil). Then you can also edit sitenotice. In other cases, you can leave your proposal in its discussion page.--Juan de Vojníkov 08:37, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry not to be camping down in Canberra today, and hope to make a future event. I do have some wiki time available this arvo however, and will try to follow a bit of any twitter feed, or IRC if any of that's happening :-) - I think Leigh mentioned the appropriate tags on the poster, so maybe 'see' you then :-) cheers, Privatemusings 03:02, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

"g'day"? Gesh PM. Is your excuse that a dingo ate your baby? You are such a stereotype. :P Ottava Rima (talk) 03:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please note that Mikeu has regranted SB Johnny custodian and crat status. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:20, 12 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

mmm.... just for information, meta:User talk:Jimbo Wales. --Abd 03:17, 12 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

mmmmm... (notice more 'm's', but one less '.') Jimbo knows what's up. He uses email, just like me :-). Hopefully he'll post on wikiversity, too, because (like it or not) we really need his involvement if this is going to work! --SB_Johnny ^talk 03:24, 12 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to make something very clear. As far as I'm concerned, Jimbo is more than welcome to comment at Wikiversity, to advise us or simply to discuss. I'd expect him to remain civil (please no "troll" comments, it's rude) and to avoid what might appear to be bullying ("I've been discussing closing Wikiversity"), but I suspect he has already figured that out, and his concerns are, I'm sure, my concerns. It would be pretty stupid of me to be seeking consensus and to leave him out! He might end up having more real influence here than with his tools, and without the disruption and division and collateral damage. --Abd 02:41, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I would welcome his comments on unanswered questions and unfinished threads from one of his previous visits. —Moulton 03:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Can you append your signature to this edit? --JWSchmidt 14:27, 12 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think you might like to review edits by Special:Contributions/141.154.72.229, which I have reverted as being, obviously, mainspace edits by a blocked editor. (He always signs Talk edits or Wikiversity space edits, but not mainspace.) They seem positive to me, but I'd prefer you revert them back in, I've been getting some flak for doing this. However, I will list these edits on a portion of my Talk page where I've started tracking this, and I'll look at them sometime in the next few days myself. Thanks for all you kind words and work. --Abd 06:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

These edits have been reverted back in by me or another editor, and I assume they are fine. Please let me know if I restore something that is a problem.

To let you know, I'm keeping track of such edits at User talk:Abd#Self-reversion and reinstatement of comments by block users and the subsections of that. So far, almost all edits that are involved are proving to be either good content, or reasonable contribution to discussion, or, in one case, a cogent complaint about an old problem (that required a different fix than what he wanted, but which did require some change. One edit only was blatant trolling, an edit of Adambro's comment on my talk page.[6]; but the edit summary was Moulton will self-revert this edit, except for listing it in the catalogue of unreverted self-reversions.) Frankly, this was hilarious, and harmless, if Adambro had simply left it alone, which is part of the point Moulton is making, I'm sure. Adambro reverted it within a minute or so,[7] not giving Moulton a chance, so Moulton just went ahead and placed the edit in the list (which, by the way, would have saved me some time putting together the diff and how it's displayed, if I'd noticed it.) Adambro reverted that as well, which is okay. Edits by blocked editors may be reverted without review of content.

It's okay that Adambro used rollback, as far as I'm concerned. it should be easy. --Abd 00:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hello Jtneill. I got a quick question regarding this deleted article (as it now appeared on the german Wikipedia). You deleted it for "non-english copyvio". I can see the non-english - part, but where was it copied from? (Right now, the text is marked as "copyvio, Wikiversity" on Wikipedia, but if it was a copyvio here already, I'd like to get the "real" source if possible. Thanks in advance, w:de:User:Guandalug / 93.131.235.92 05:47, 23 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for checking. --Guandalug 08:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm trying to start up a Wikiversity equivalent of the Wikipedia Signpost. Someone suggested that I ask you if you have any ideas or ifyou would like to write an article yourself. Thanks, Rock drum (talk • contribs) 11:48, 24 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi there James, I left another message before I realised that it probably wouldn't work. Thankyou for your feedback, I think after a couple of hours of fiddling with different things on wikiversity that I am finally getting the hang of wiki formatting. Ra.shell 11:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I put a plug for this course on Portal:Psychology. I hope you find it suitable. Please embellish it, if appropriate.Harrypotter 15:33, 29 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi there James, just wondering for tutorial two, the table you gave us in relation to the brain sturctures and their associated motivation/emotion responses, if there was anyone I could reference this from? Is it from Reeve? I am interested as I want to use the table in my e-portfolio, but do not want to create one unles I know the source. Ra.shell 10:22, 12 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

James, did you really mean to put this item in the Category namespace and not here in the main namespace? —Caprice 18:41, 9 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hello James!

I recently created a link from my user home page to a page I wanted to set up to display my e-portfolio. I notice that you have deleted that page (the e-Portfolio link), and was wondering why? I thought the layout for each of my assessments would be neater if they stood alone and weren't all on my homepage. Cheers! --MichelleK 23:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks James! The link you created for me is exactly what I was after. Cheers! --MichelleK 09:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Not sure how you would go about giving the password to me, but I enjoy using Twitter and have a lot of experience through my @mdesmondobrien account. I would be very interested in tweeting for Wikiversity. Thanks! =) --Trinity507 02:07, 30 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

how do you feel about unruly wiki editors such as myself gnoming (making small-ish edits) in the Motivation & Emotion textbook area? Is it really only supposed to be folk enrolled in the course who edit, or is general wiki ecology experience part of the intention? - I ask because I noticed the textbook on Recent Changes, and I was tempted to hop in by clicking a red link or two, and starting some subsections. Cheers, Privatemusings 01:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Is there any opensource analogue of the SASS software? Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 16:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Thanks. I have used R before but not SPSS. Do you know how different they are? Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 12:48, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

James, thx for your message. GajahGajah 09:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi James, I have taken your and others suggestions, done a lot more reading and have added to my original plan for the Motivation and Emotion textbook chapter. I was wondering (only if you've time) could you have a look and comment? Your feedback always helps point me in the right direction. The chapter is on student motivation theories by me (U118827), Kind Regards. --U118827 13:20, 9 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi James! I would appreciate some guidance on applying an open licence to my image on my User page. When I uploaded it, I just cut & paste the example text that was given, so assumed all the info needed was correct. I'm not sure what else to add?? Thanks in advance! MichelleK 05:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi James,

Thanks for the feedback on my procrastination page, it was much appreciated. I think I have made most of the changes. Cheers Sallybradford 00:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

I teach a foundations of education course at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. My students have been writing their own course textbook since 2006. http://www.wittieproject.org/wiki/Main_Page (It's In Our Schools - this semester's edition is Fall 2010).

I am interested in putting together a panel discussion at the 2011 ISTE conference and am looking for other educators creating texts with their students to join the conversation.

Would you have any interest in such an endeavor? If so, please give me a shout: jkidd@odu.eduJenniferjkidd 15:42, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Great - very keen to learn and participate more about student-authored open textbooks - will email. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:23, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Saw this this morning: Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship‎... Juan moved him down to candidates for full custodian but didn't add a recommendation, and Geoff seems to be busy doing other things. What are your thoughts on his status? --SB_Johnny ^talk 21:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

The process established normally suggests a recommendation from the mentor, though the candidacy can be considered without that. I'd suggest waiting for Juan to make a recommendation, the moving of the candidacy isn't quite it. There is no emergency, the concept promoted before, in my case, that probationary custodianship has some specific automatic termination date, was defective. It can take longer. When Juan makes his recommendation -- or declines or fails to recommend within some reasonable period of time -- then it would be up to Geoff to decide if he wants to go ahead with the full custodianship discussion, he has served the probationary period and the community can examine it if it wishes. Otherwise, I'd suggest, it should not be started prematurely, and probably it should be moved back until the recommendation issue is resolved. --Abd 15:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

		The Silver Barnstar
		Thanks again for your mentoring and dedication, and thinking of you. I was just revamping the Wikiversity:Barnstars page and templates so the Templates matched the links on the page. Then I was thinking that if anyone deserved a Barnstar, it would be you. So here is the most appropriate Barnstar of the ones I fixed. Hope you are doing well. --La comadreja formerly AFriedman RESEARCH (talk) 00:46, 17 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hey James. Hope you're well. I think I may have finished writing my chapter on student motivation theories, but would really value some healthy feedback at this stage to see if I have covered all bases etc. I would also love slide 28 from lecture one posted onto wiki commons if possible. However, I am using another slide to illustrate my point at the moment (its not as good as slide 28 from lecture one though). If there are any suggestions as to imprvoe the chapter to a HD standard I would welcome them:) Cheers, Rebecca (wiki user: U118827)

Hi!

Could you rename my two user accounts as requested at en.wikipedia? Thanks Helder 20:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hello Jtneill/Archive/2010, you can call me Jacob Frank. I'd like to be your mascot. Even though I was a plain and untutored man back in 18th-century Europe, that still didn't stop me from contributing my ideas to the world. Neither has it stopped you. As a religious leader who developed the doctrine of "purification through transgression," I tell people to be bold and ignore all rules—yes, these are two of Wikiversity's official policies!

Thanks for letting me be myself. Anyway, I had a question to ask you. Has there been a recent increase in activity on Wikiversity, and when would the increase have started? It sure seems like activity has increased a bit. This relates to my interest in publicizing Wikiversity. Best wishes, JacobFrank (controlled by La comadreja _{formerly AFriedman} RESEARCH (talk) 05:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC))Reply

Hi James,

my apologies, i did some editing on my textbook chapter without signing in. It was an oversight on my behalf.

Regards, Gajah

"unrepentant incivility and use of tools to serve his own advantage without community consensus"

This is a serious accusation without proof nor is there proof. Last time you made an accusation like this, it wasn't pretty. Are you going to make up stuff to back it up (as there is nothing) or will you retract it like proper? Ottava Rima (talk) 14:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it is a serious allegation (in the context of Wikiversity). Regarding incivility - I have posted on your talk page previously with feedback about incivility - please point me to where you've adjusted any actions accordingly in response to a civility warning? "Tools to serve advantage" - e.g., unblocking yourself, blocking someone who blocked you, deleting an IRC log. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:02, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, you posted on my talk page but do you remember how it was resolved? You took something absolutely minor and you then went on a break because your judgment was not clear. And did you forget that the unblocking of myself and blocking the other person was directly tied to mentorship, which is part of the whole setup? And the IRC log clearly violated the Privacy Policy. It would seem that your judgment is lacking when you want to justify the violation of our policies. If you don't like the policy, go to the policy's talk page instead of attacking people who enforce it.

I tried taking some of your advice and I took a break. Where is there evidence that you have taken any of my or any one else's advice? I didn't forget that the unblock/block was in the context of mentorship. In that case you were given a warning for incivility, were blocked, then you unblocked yourself and blocked the person who blocked you. That is using tools to your own advantage regardless of whether its in the context of mentorship or not. That the IRC log violated the privacy policy is not clear to me, but it is to you. I am interested to try to understand it from your point of view. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:25, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Where is the evidence that I didn't take anyone's advice? Did you even pay attention to what Abd and SB Johnny are going on about? They are trying to defend a user that stole material from copyrighted websites, who used outing and nasty attacks, who continued to do so after being blocked, and was blocked at Wikipedia for long term socking and making the same nasty attacks with the same problematic content. And, as I said, there is no such thing as "using tools to own advantage" because the mentor has 100% authority to override -any- decision by the mentee. That is the essence of the mentorship. I agreed to it when I did it, and so did you. You want to violate years of tradition at Wikiversity for what reason again? Ottava Rima (talk) 15:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I read through the Community Review and added my view on each key point raised. Maybe reply there to keep it in one spot? I think we might need to agree to disagree on the self-unblocking etc. scenario? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

The community did not agree that Abd deserved ops, deserved a new mentorship, or anything else. That is all that matters. You cannot then say I was in the wrong when the community verified it. It would seem inappropriate to bring up something a long time ago that the community reinforced my decision as some kind of current problem. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:49, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Deleting the IRC log is a current example of using tools without consensus to delete controversial material involving yourself. In the earlier example, the community decision to not grant full custodianship to Abd was not an endorsement that the community agreed with you ignoring a civility warning, unblocking yourself and blocking the account that blocked you. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 16:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

IRC logs don't need consensus to delete. The privacy policy bans them. We do not have a deletion policy that states that privacy policy deletions are not speediable, and it would seem that such would be inappropriate as we delete all forms of outing regardless, which falls under the privacy policy. And the community did endorse my actions as saying I had the ability as the mentor where Abd gave me full authority to undo any of his actions. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:05, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I see it's been undeleted now - thanks for doing that - I'll take another look over it later. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 16:13, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

And Jtneill, read the talk page discussion and you would see that IRC postings were heavily frowned upon. I gave permission to release it because, after being able to finally reread through it, it documents Adambro's lack of judgment and his willingness to use blocks against JWS to cause distress and harm. It was to the unacceptable level and he was told that if he didn't limit his blocks to 24 hours then a review would be pursued on the background of his blocks and their direct connection to a long term dispute between him and JWS. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Happy to discuss further, but I'd really need to re-read it since I'm working off a hazy memory from a while back. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

How about this go through this and come up with a percentage of how many problematic actions you see. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure about %s, but its the block and delete actions mentioned on the CR and the abrasive, accusatory tone on talk pages (examples of which on the CR page) which are of particular concern to me. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 16:04, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

None of those have been proven to violate any of our policies, which is the only matter that can be regarded. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:08, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Now, if you want to get into self-serving policies, your use of custodianship regarding your own students and various other conflicts of interest can be discussed. You provide many deletions and other things that I've seen that lack consensus and go around our policies. There are far, far more things there than I have ever done, and you have not done anything for the community outside of your own classes where I've been forced to pick up all of the slack. Do you really want to go down that path? Ottava Rima (talk) 15:13, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I welcome feedback and discussion about any of my editing, Ottava. Please expand on the issues you've noticed and let's see if we can work towards improving the situation. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:25, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jtneill, I don't see them as "issues" because I am not adopting some non-policy claim about "involvement". You are. If you want to put up a totalitarian wall regarding "self-serving" then you will be more affected by it than me. I don't have an issue with -you- because I don't have such draconian views that are clearly not part of our policies. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

OK - thanks for the heads up - hopefully if this is a concern shared by others they might add a comment and I'll see what I could do differently. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sigh. Jtneill, it isn't about what people can "do differently". It is about making claims about policies that don't exist and trying to force them while you, yourself, would fail if such enforcement would happen. The community did not agree to such recusal standards, deleting standards, etc. So you cannot unilaterally impose them, especially when you would violate the standards. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:08, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jt, one small point. Ottava did not block me as part of the sequence where I blocked him for incivility. He did block me much later, and it can be argued that the prior conflict, never resolved, should have led him to be more conservative in that, and the later sequence will be examined more deeply, I think, but it was not a mutual block-fest. He did do other problematic things at that time, and he threatened to block me, as I recall, but he didn't actually do it. He did take retaliatory action against you for having agreed with me about his incivility and stating that my block of him was within legitimate custodial discretion.

As to recusal, an ability to understand conflict of interest standards, i.e., the foundation for recusal, is essential for any administrator or trustee, by common law. If any custodial candidate were to express the opinions that Ottava has frequently expressed, opposing recusal requirements, the candidate would not be approved. Therefore it is appropriate to submit this to the community, making Ottava's position clear, and he will, of course, correct us if we state his position incorrectly, and, as well, showing the history of problems with alleged recusal failure, so that the reality of the risk is plain. Ottava has opposed attempts to clarify recusal requirements.

I do not believe there is much utility in direct argument with Ottava, he's impenetrable, and it is a long-term pattern, not isolated to a single conflict. --Abd 16:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Abd, you call me impenetrable, but you still go on and on about recusal when I pointed out that we lack policies that say such and even asked you to help with the promotion of the proposals to policies. You haven't bothered. You haven't done much except pursue me. If you really believed anything you stated you would have directed your efforts to something more useful to the project as a whole. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

What claims about policies have I made and tried to force while myself failing were such enforcement to happen? I am keen to learn about this so I can improve. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 16:12, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I put a break to make this easier to read. Here are the following examples: 1. You accuse me of violating blocking standards when I a) was given full authority as a mentor to undo all actions and b) there is no recusal standard. 2. You stated that I inappropriately deleted something when a) our privacy policy makes it clear it is unacceptable and b) there is no deletion policy and c) that it would clearly be a speediable matter as all privacy concerns are. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

- Ottava Rima (talk) 16:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. As per my email reply, would you give permission to make that email public? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

- Ottava Rima (talk) 00:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

[8]. I hope you know that I mean every word, and that your leap to accuse will only be destabilize the project. You accuse me without any policy. You demand standards you yourself do not follow. You exaggerated minor things into major events. When everyone else returns to being inactive and where it would just be me and you, it will just be you.

Make sure to close the door on your way out when you decide the loneliness is too painful to bear. Ottava Rima (talk)

Thanks for this feedback, Ottava. Hopefully the community will help guide me further about problematic aspects of my WV behaviour. I appreciate your contributions in this respect - you've given me more feedback than anyone recently. Fare well in your future endeavours whether with WV or otherwise. If you have any other thoughts or suggestions feel free to let me know. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 06:38, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

What community? If you read the RC logs, you would see that it was just me and you doing anything. Doesn't it worry you that so many inactive users popped up out of nowhere, voted on a discussion Abd admitted didn't have the backing yet and without any response from me? It will just be you. Juan is gone. Geoff for the most part wont be around. Pmlineditor is gone. Mikeu is gone. Countrymike is inactive. Cormaggio is gone. Leigh for the most part is gone. SB Johnny and Abd only appear for one reason. Adambro was gone. Darklama for the most part is gone. Erkan left a long time ago. Not even JWS has stuck around. In a couple days you will see that there is no one left. You make a few claims when it has nothing to do with the reality and just shoot yourself in the foot. How are you so oblivious to that? Ottava Rima (talk) 14:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry to cut in, but I have simply been busy in the real world. Custodianship should be "no big deal". I hope the doors at Wikiversity will always be open for people who want to develop learning projects and learning resources. Valued wiki community members like Erkan cannot deal with all the silly arguments, most of which have originated at Wikipedia. If the heavy-handed Custodial authoritarianism is subtracted from Wikiversity then the wiki scholars will return as before. --JWSchmidt 14:58, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

JWS, if you watched you would see that Adambro came back from inactivity to try and get rid of me, mostly for my being the only one willing to stand up against his abusive blocks of you done only to cause emotional harm. He then reblocked Moulton without any community consensus, especially when one person (me) is in support of the unblock and another (darklama) is no longer active on it, making a strong majority in favor of an unblock from the original discussion. What basically was done was saying that abusive tactics like Adambro's, where he does nothing to help the community and reappears when he can get rid of a person doing all the work for petty reasons, is now the norm. What happened is hat the heavy-handed Custodial authoritarianism has won. There are no wiki scholars left. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:09, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

By the way, I feel sorry for you that you wont understand the above or how your support of a desysop will only lead to the abuse that you decried against. At least Moulton knows better. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:11, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

There is a remarkable attitude being shown. I've been a custodian here and I've done Recent Changes patrolling here, so I'd see vandalism, etc. Custodian tools are a convenience, for having them, I could take direct action, but not being a custodian, I can be almost as effective, I simply report what I need done by a custodian. The labor saved is more the labor of other custodians, not so much my own, it's almost as easy to briefly report.

Ottava is asking for his resources to be deleted, claiming that they would be vandalized. But that would be true only if nobody else is watching (which can happen on Wikiversity, vandalism sometimes escapes attention), and Ottava could easily personally watch his own pages. It is as if he is assuming that he will not protect his own pages, when normally wiki process depends the most on users who have edited pages and who are familiar with them to protect from vandalism. The real sense here is that "If I can't be a sysop, I don't want to help Wikiversity." And, in fact, anyone who thinks that way probably should not be a sysop, ipso facto. Ordinary editors can do almost as much as sysops. And where I personally care about specific content, or have some strong personal opinion about a user or POV, I probably should not be the one to use sysop tools over it! I wouldn't be neutral. When we have an RCA page that is overwhelmed with unattended but urgent requests, then we definitely will need more sysops. Right now, what we need more of is users, and sysop actions that drive away users without necessity do harm. --Abd 16:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I want them deleted because they are incomplete, in subspace, and serve no purpose once I stop using Wikiversity. I am not sticking around without ops because of the backlogs that will come back. Please don't confuse my motivations like you did above. And if ordinary users can do as much as sysops, why is it that two nights in a row a user came to IRC to deal with IPs vandalising and no one was around? That is with all of the inactive people temporarily being active. It took 14 hours for obvious test pages to be deleted, what about the unobvious ones? There are already major backlogs. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:46, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

If they serve no purpose without you, i.e., no Wikiversity purpose, why did you add them in mainspace in the first place? "Subspace" is part of mainspace, for detailed examination of subtopics. Personal pages should be in personal user space. Sure, the loss of any sysop is a loss, in terms of speed of response. But speed isn't essential. Ottava, if you had merely agreed to follow the proposed recusal policy, if you had been responsive to criticism and avoided personal attacks, you'd still be able to directly act. I don't see that you are likely to do that, given the last two days, but you could always change your mind, I'd hope. If there are "unobvious test pages" to be deleted, that's not an administrator's decision, it's for RfD, anyway, or anyone can put up speedy deletion tags and can revert vandalism or blank pages of spam, etc. When the flow of spam becomes serious, there are also stewards who can be contacted in an emergency. And sysops could be emailed as well. We are still small, and with a handful of sysops, there will always be times when there are delays. It's part of being a wiki open to anonymous editing. You know, we could even have a phone tree. Ah well, so many ideas, so little time. --Abd 17:13, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

They were used in classes that I worked with. I filled in the gaps in classes. I never had the time to add the rest of the necessary information to allow them to make sense on their own. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:21, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Okay, but lots of Wikiversity resources are incomplete. We don't delete them for that reason, we normally leave them in place so that someone so motivated can improve them. I've seen plenty of such resources sitting around, and they might sit for years. If you have any specific concerns, Ottava, let me know and I'll help. I could, for example, put all those pages on my watchlist so I would likely notice vandalism even if it doesn't pop up and get caught in Recent Changes. Or, hey, what about this? You could occasionally check your watchlist here. You could even, as you might realize, keep your admin bit if you take certain simple steps that would not create an onerous burden, but ... that part isn't obligatory at all, or even necessarily desirable, for being a sysop is an often thankless task, we know that, and it is a constant temptation to act hastily, not good for some people. --Abd 21:23, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

The problem with "incivility" is that there is no standard, and people have stated they disagree with you about my statements being incivil and even said your statements have been incivil before. If you think such is worthy of damaging the project then fine. You won't learn better except through the hard way and I wiped my hands clean of it all. You have stuff to lose, I already made preparations so I have no attachment here to worry. This place stole 4 hours a day from my life doing basic work to ensure that those like you could focus on your classes. If you want to reward me with such, fine. As Moulton is fine to point out, governance models that abuse and destroy the workers don't work. Enjoy the system you want. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I was arrested by the obvious reference to washing one's hands, and the associated process of becoming emotionally detached from subsequent anticipated outcomes. I was thinking last night of the iconic image of Alfred E. Newman and his slogan, "What, Me Worry?" Earlier this week I heard a political pundit use the word, ataraxia, which means precisely that: free from anxiety, worry, or associated feelings of responsibility. As to being supremely confident of anticipated outcomes, I note that Sue Gardner highlighted that character trait on her newest blog post, just the day before yesterday. —Caprice 13:56, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Replied on User talk:Ottava Rima#Civility. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I saw. As I said, I don't care if you use ops not appropriately or you are incivil. That doesn't matter. What matters is getting in the way of educational work. Your priorities weren't focused and maybe you will learn from experience what really matters. Good bye. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:15, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

What do you think my priorities should be? What are your priorities? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

It doesn't matter anymore, now does it. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:30, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

On the contrary Ottava, IMO your priorities are very important regardless of whether or not you leave. --KBlott 19:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Not to Wikiversity, KBlott. The serious effect of Ottava's actions is over, you are unblocked, and Ottava unblocked you. If you need the deleted file contents, since you posted them, my opinion is that you can ask any custodian to email them to you as wikitext which you could then use as you see fit, if you need them and have not already done so. I believe that it is likely that your impression of bias here was in error, and that you confused matters by making such a claim.

(You have a stronger position about bias on Wikipedia, but even there, your reaction to that possibility damaged your participation, leading to additional support for blocking you that, had you sat on it, would probably not have appeared. It's also possible that bias on Wikipedia led to private communcation with Ottava that amplified his concern, but I see no evidence that this was about Ottava's personal POV.)

I highly recommend that you drop the assumption that opposition you run into is based on bias against you or your POV, even though there is always some possibility of that. The suspicion itself does damage. Steady on, KBlott, even if they are out to get you doesn't mean that you are not paranoid. Paranoia will poison your participation with the community, so ... recognize it and drop it, and, steady on! Your participation here is highly welcome, and I apologize again for the rude reception you got. But, for your part, please forgive Ottava for his possible misunderstandings, and let's move on. If you need any assistance, please don't hesitate to ask me. --Abd 21:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jtneill, the probable loss of Ottava as a custodian does present some risk of reduced ability to deal with the work load, so I believe it is incumbent on me to offer to serve. You are familiar with the situation that led to the failure of my mentorship with Ottava, and you are familiar with my history here, I think, and with how I conducted myself as a custodian in that extended mentorship.

You are also familiar with my position on administrative recusal, so you'll understand that I would not use the tools in situations that will present an appearance of problematic bias, and that, even if I should (sometimes I take actions that can be controversial, short term), I would not wheel-war with anyone, much less with a mentor; I rigorously avoided wheel-warring during my prior custodianship, in spite of some of my actions being reversed, improperly by my opinion. I took such situations to the community, as I would again if such situations arise again.

I intend to put up a candidacy, and hope you will consider mentoring me. I expect that I would consent to any restrictions you'd propose to place. I'm only offering this to help with the non-controversial work load. Thanks. --Abd 21:26, 25 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

This is not behavior that a Custodian is supposed to do, let alone someone claiming to take the high road and accuses me of impropriety. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:07, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Jtneill, you've been duped.

SB Johnny canvassed inactive admin trying to get them to come out. Abd and SB Johnny posted a WR to also canvass for support against me. Ever wonder why so many negative votes appeared immediately without any chance for defense or discussion, and that real Wikiversity people called it inappropriate? The above action by Abd verifies that his motives are not for the best for Wikiversity but for his own personal gain.

Don't you find it a tad hypocritical where Abd attacked me for posting up a policy proposal and then putting it up in the heading, when that was never a problem before? Then they post the CR against me without any recent cause to justify it and yet saw no problem with that? Do as I say, not as I do?

Admin can only be desysopped because of policy violation. You've never shown one. Abd never shown one. No one ever shown one, because there were none. You have to love how the first one to vote to desysop me was a guy who repeatedly blocked JWS out of revenge and a desire to cause him emotional stress, yet he claims I abused ops. A real good bunch.

Just look at their contribs and then you will wonder why they never do any real work or show up. Then, maybe, you will realize that they aren't academics, they don't have classes, nor do they know anything about Wikiversity is about. You never once tried to do what is right around here - when did you ever restore JWS's ops taken abusively by SB Johnny? Never. You never said a peep. Hell, when Adambro was bullying him constantly you just sat back. Funny how that happens. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:15, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity:Consensus: "Consensus is not established just by counting votes. Wikiversity is guided by ideas that are in harmony with the education-oriented mission of the project. In judging consensus, it is the responsibility of all community members to give the most weight to rational arguments that support positions and points of view that are in harmony with the Wikiversity mission."

No votes.

Only statements within our policies. Your claims against me do not show violation of policy. Your statement that votes are allowed contradict our policy.

As a Crat, you are expected to know this kind of thing, and you are expected to make all statements within policy. Voting to remove me isn't acting in that manner. It was already pointed out that there is canvassing against me, unsubstantiated statements, and that there are no policy reasons to remove me. You honestly think that it is still acceptable to pursue this when there is already consensus to shut down the whole CR process because of such abuse? When did your ethical standard fly out the window? Do your students know that you disregard community standards and norms to form a mob without rules or structures to try and get rid of a guy who bent over backwards to make your job easier? Do you think they would be proud of your actions? How would those at your University react, that you tossed away someone who was making sure your classes could actually function because of some petty, unsubstantiated claim that reflects on you far more poorly than it could ever reflect on me? Ottava Rima (talk) 03:58, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

PS. Your claim better be a mistake and better be struck. Right now, you violated our standards for determining consensus, are biased by voting before I was even get a chance to defend myself, ignore clear canvassing, and ignore a proposal to ignore the others and table it all until after thorough discussed (thus, nullifying all of the voting) which has 100% support from our active regulars. That is a serious abuse of Crat function, you know. You have used ops on dozens of pages that your students have, you have made unsubstantiated claims about incivility that were even deemed as wrong by the community, and you make demands when our policies do not back you up. Right now, there is more evidence for you to be desysoped and blocked for a substantial period of time within our policy than the two supposed matters up for my desysopping. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:05, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I offered my personal viewpoints on the CR. I would have changed my opinion and voted differently at any time on seeing sufficiently persuasive argument or evidence or a better alternative solution to the problems raised. I didn't use "crat function" in relation to this CR. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, but a Bureaucrat is expected to look for reasons first then decide after, not decide before anything is even discussed. Your statements about voting even directly contradict multiple policies. The CR even demands that only policy related statements are used, things you don't have. By the way, you don't have to use any Bureaucratic function. Your status demands that you uphold that standard in all discussions. Any violation of it at any time is a serious violation of your status. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I read the CR evidence presented, commented and voted as a member of the WV community. I read subsequent comments and evidence and didn't feel persuaded to change my vote. As I said on your talk page and the CR, the main issue seems to me to be civility and also use of tools when involved. It may be that we can agree to disagree. I respect your viewpoint and recognise that it differs to mine at least in regard to the matters raised on the CR. If you have concerns about my wiki behaviour that you feel like are not sufficiently being addressed through our talk pages, then I'd encourage you to add to the Jtneill CR and then we could more about how widely spread concern might be about such matters and how suggestions from the community about how the issues could be addressed. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 02:40, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

You voted before there were responses, and it was pointed out that it had unsubstantiated claims. When asked for policy violations, you were unable to point out any. The Consensus page and the CR page makes it clear that policy based statements are the only ones that matter, and that consensus is about everyone coming to one agreement. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

And yes, I could open up the Jtneill review again and pursue it. However, that review is how reviews are supposed to be - gentle recommendations with discussions. Not votes. Not a hammer to bash people with. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

P.S., if you forgot, this is how a CR is done: Wikiversity:Community Review/Jtneill. You list concern, list specific violations and problems, put up a recommendation, then discuss. There are no votes. There are no punishments. Why is it that you forgot this? Ottava Rima (talk) 15:38, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Can you help find where CR policy indicates no votes? As I said on CR, I would suggest that votes might be one part of determining consensus e.g., to help decide on proposed resolutions. Procedural concerns about CR could be pursued on the CR itself, as a separate CR or on the CR policy talk page. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:18, 26 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity:Community Review/Policy and process "If a consensus is reached on a community review".

Wikiversity:Consensus: ". Consensus within the Wikiversity community is formed through a process by which the community discusses a particular issue, and, after thorough discussion, reflects what the community is thinking. Consensus usually means that a large majority of community members who have discussed a proposal have provided good reasons for either adopting or rejecting a given proposal - however, any majority of opinions in a discussion or poll is only an indicator of consensus, and not the consensus itself."

and "Wikiversity's decision-making process is fundamentally based in consensus, in that it is always attempted to reflect the wishes of the community as a whole, rather than a majority. When people do not fully agree with a given proposal, the proposal should be modified to satisfy as many people as possible, if not the entire community."

and "Consensus is not established just by counting votes. Wikiversity is guided by ideas that are in harmony with the education-oriented mission of the project. In judging consensus, it is the responsibility of all community members to give the most weight to rational arguments that support positions and points of view that are in harmony with the Wikiversity mission."

You have violated all of these. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:29, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Can I suggest we agree to disagree? My read of the CR is that the community was primarily concerned about civility which is a policy and that the proposal to remove custodian rights gained considerable support relative to opposition, with stronger arguments and evidence. I agree that its quality of evidence and argument that matters in determining consensus. Voting may be an indicator that helps in determining consensus, but should not be the only indicator. My understanding is that this view is consistent with the CR policies and what you've highlighted above. So, we might be on the same page in this respect. I understand that you see the situation quite differently (i.e., in this situation you opposed the resolution to remove custodian rights whereas I supported) and I respect that. I trust that if my actions have been problematic then others will support your viewpoint and appropriate action can be taken. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 03:45, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

"is that the community was primarily concerned about civilit" Where was the discussion on civility? I find it very concerning that you make these claims yet there is nothing to back that up. As Moulton would say, that has no basis in real education or academia. You have to have both evidence and sound principles to follow. It requires direct evidence. You don't see a problem that there is many assumptions, grouped together voting, lack of discussion, and the rest? You don't see that just these very things are what tore apart this community for the past two years? And you don't think that by allowing non-regulars to vote would not split the community any further? Why would you think that any more than a small handful of people would ever trust you or side with you? You further the political factioning of this community. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:11, 28 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Community? What community? The only regulars there that voted against me were you, Abd, SB Johnny, and Adambro. Geoff did not vote against me and voted to shut down the thing as inappropriate. Darklama did the same. Thenub voted in support of me. Where was Leigh's voice? Cormaggio's? Countrymike's? Etc. The community did not participate. It is no coincidence that a "discussion" closed after 4 days and held during Thanksgiving break when most of our users are inactive would be lacking most of our real contributors. Doesn't any of that concern you? The Review was based on two things - a deleted page and a block user. I undid both actions. Therefore, there were no grounds after that. Instead, it was turned into a standard lynching. Didn't JWS and Moulton spend a long time fighting against such abuses only to have to further it? Ottava Rima (talk) 03:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

By community I mean those who expressed a viewpoint on the CR. I'm interested in what people have to say regardless of whether they've done a lot of recent editing. I don't think the amount of time for CR is explicit in the CR policy, so it should stay open until consensus becomes clear or it becomes clear that there is no consensus. I'm not that familiar with Thanksgiving, but an international project, its difficult to be taking account of national holidays. If this was a factor it should have been raised, for example, as one of the arguments for "slowing down". How about tucking into content creation for a while, which could help to show that you respect community concerns, then reapply for custodianship down the track? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 04:13, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

If that is true, why is it that you ignored what both Darklama and Geoff put forward? And as I stated, I did all the work that everyone else should have been doing. No one else will be doing it. There are some claims that they will, but those are false claims, like Abd admitting he wants to "take over" Wikiversity as stated on WR. I will not have my academic work associated with what Sj said was a failing project filled with vandalism, trolls, and not even the decency to welcome new people. I did the work to make sure Wikiversity was not shut down and was respectable. I always sought out advice from others before making decisions and always begged others to help out. This whole thing shows that Wikiversity is dying and deserves to die. When you learn why your opinions are directly harmful for the community, it will probably already be shut down. That is why I am bailing. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

OK. I read what everyone had to say and I shared my viewpoint. My viewpoint might be wrong. Yours might be right. That's possible. I disagree that you did all the work that everyone else should have been doing. Let's see what happens in the future - I'm happy to leave that to the community. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Also, if content creation would demonstrate my behavior as correct, why don't you apply the same standard to the others? Only you were a content creator that voted to desysop me. None of the others have worked on any legitimate content this year. Doesn't that bother you? I know it bothers Moulton. This link shows both my work and what I am requesting removed, as Wikiversity is too poisonous for any work, especially with all the abuse lately. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, this does concern me. I would prefer that everyone, especially custodians and bureaucrats, including myself, were more focused on content than admin. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:58, 27 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Then why is it that you allow inactive admin to still have authority? That you side with people who create no content but still think they should have adminship? Or that you would even consider Abd a legitimate Custodian candidate when Moulton has pointed out that he is the exact opposite of a scientist and an academic and has no place in an educational environment? Why do your actions promote a system opposite of what you claim to desire? Ottava Rima (talk) 15:12, 28 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Um, is the above slightly ... uncivil? Could I remind Ottava that no material fact about me was concealed when Ottava offered to mentor me, thus making me a custodian? Moulton is the authority on my credentials? Where did Moulton say this? So I can yell at him.... I've got his phone number, because we communicate directly, and I almost met him in person when I was attending a scientific conference at MIT. Geez, where to start on the above? So I'll just stop. --Abd 02:40, 29 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I mentored you out of pity because no one else was willing to offer to help you. How do you not get that? You abused the mentorship. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, even dogs know that. And Moulton is an authority on most people's credentials. The Wikiversity people just like the WR have had a lot of info about you. That is what happens when you are a long term troublemaker who goes around making claims on the internet. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I have no idea where Ottava is coming from, but I propose that Ottava and I jointly publish our IRC conversations and Abd and I jointly publish our E-Mail conversations. Let a candid world decide for themselves. —Moulton 03:05, 29 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

You made it clear that he wasn't a scientist and many other things, then proceeded to get into his personal info. Here is a good line: "[00:46] <WhatName> There is no way anyone can understand what he is writing about CF." or "[00:47] <WhatName> He is not a very good scientist. But most people aren't." Ottava Rima (talk) 03:12, 29 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

• How do you get from "not a very good scientist" to "the exact opposite of a scientist"? —Caprice 03:23, 29 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Your abstract fails to mention that such open systems are flooded with non-experts who tend to poison the atmosphere, destroy any academic credibility, and turn it into a myspace/World of Warcraft type of drama mongering that is completely unacceptable at a real university. That is why real universities have credential based processes and systems to ensure the protection of both professors and students from inappropriate conflict and outsiders wishing to disrupt. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

See User talk:Jtneill/Presentations/Open academia: Principles and practices#Criticisms of open academia. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:38, 28 November 2010 (UTC)Reply