User talk:Geo Swan

From WikiAlpha
Revision as of 11:46, 4 March 2022 by WritingSnowman (Talk | contribs) (Long-term plans for this site)

Jump to: navigation, search

Glad to have you aboard

Youre a hoax. you have no Name. Best regards Robert And just to say. This is not Wikipedia. you might have landed on the wrong website. Hi Geo Swan. I'm glad to have you aboard and thank for your contributions. I see you have a great deal of good articles userfied over at Wikipedia. I'm fairly certain that they'd be welcome here. Anyhoo, I just wanted to say hi and thanks for contributing. Best regards. Web (talk) 15:17, 6 June 2012 (MSD)

Articles deleted from Wikipedia

I'm working on your list of articles deleted from Wikipedia. Looks like some have been userfied, so I'm still running through the list trying to figure things out.

The first 20 have been undeleted and copied over here at WikiAlpha by Moonriddengirl who has been generously helping me. There is a list here showing the progress I'm making. Best regards. Web (talk) 15:48, 11 June 2012 (MSD)

  • Thank you very much with your help with this. I anticipate this will be hundreds of hours of work to get these deleted articles into article space here. And I appreciate every bit of assistance.
  • Another complication is that in some cases the article on the captive has been replaced by a namesake. Charles H. Carpenter being a case in point.
  • I'll try to get all the userified ones copied here within the next 10 days. For them I can look at the full revision history and form my own judgment as to whether I was the sole author of the intellectual content. When I askedthe closing admin of Charles H. Carpenter (lawyer) for their help I asked them if they could either also email me a listing of the contributors, or confirm my recollection I was the sole author of its intellectual content. They didn't confirm, orsend me a listing. I am not 100% comfortable, but I went with my recollection.
Thanks again! Geo Swan (talk) 20:16, 11 June 2012 (MSD)
I've gone through the list and updated it here .It appears about half are already userfied, so I included those links for convenience. There's another set that were moved to your userspace then deleted, so only you are able to ask for those to be undeleted. I'll see if I can get a few admins to undelete the rest and move them here. Best regards. Web (talk) 19:10, 12 June 2012 (MSD)
I got some very generous help from two great admins, Dcoetzee and WereSpielChequers. It looks like there's only 40 or so articles left to go. The updated list is here. Web (talk) 21:36, 13 June 2012 (MSD)
  • Thanks for all your help. Geo Swan (talk) 20:38, 14 June 2012 (MSD)

Saying hi

Hello,

I'm just getting started here and I see you're active. I'm just saying hi. Stripes (talk) 20:13, 27 July 2012 (MSD)

Hello, are you also active, or previously active, on the wikipedia... Would I know you there...
You would not have known me there as far as I know.
Read your e-mail. Stripes (talk) 21:10, 27 July 2012 (MSD)

Hicks

I noticed in the recent changes log something about David hicks, I recall seeing an entry at on en.wiki which says that the prisoners there are caught in an innocent prisoner's dilemma which is a concept most people have no clue about, so I wrote it on en.wikipedia and I've copied it here. I thought you may wish to know, or tell whoever may wish to know. Penyulap (talk) 11:13, 3 August 2012 (MSD)

  • Woah! User:Penyulap, I don't think I ever responded to this message. I don't think I ever saw this message. My apologies! Belated thanks for the heads-up. Geo Swan (talk) 12:47, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

AlphaOne

I started out in Wikipedia writting list about characters that were in public domain. I noticed that some of the articles had missing characters. I tried to fill in the missing characters but the information I wrote got deleted. So now I'm here and hopefully I won't run into the same problems again. 04:02 pm, June 25th 2014.

  • I hope that worked for you... Geo Swan (talk) 12:48, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

You didn't

You didn't answer my questions at my talk page. LuisAnton (talkcontribs) 01:31, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Bad words?

You did not say bad words. It is not good to say it. Good. CityOfSilver 03:15, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Re:Missing file

Thank you for your message! I'm sorry but I didn't get what were you referring to by asking me about a "missing file". Could you clarify?

Also, sorry for taking so long to reply! I was going to answer it 3 months ago when you sent it, but I ended up forgetting it for some reason!

Cheers - Alumnum (talk) 03:02, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi

Could you please advise me? Do I really have to wait six months? Would editing wikialpha help me on the other wiki? Thanks for your messages on the english wiki. Alexkyoung (talk) 05:15, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  • If you introduce new material here, when your block period is over, you could cut and paste sections you drafted here back there.
  • Someone nominated the Danqi Chen for speedy deletion. If it is deleted, or any of the other articles is deleted, the version here will still be readable. This wiki falls far lower on a google search list than a wikipedia article. But, when the wikipedia article is deleted some people will see the version here.
  • If you like, I will offer my opinion as to what might trigger problems with your work, here, so, when you have access to the wikipedia, you can avoid some of the problems you encountered before.
  • As for whether you really have to wait six months... I am only an observer. Sometimes people make a convincing case for early restoration, but it isn't looking promising for you. Did you get blocked from your user talk page? That is not promising.
  • With regard to Danqi Chen, just checking out a hunch, do you know her?
  • Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 15:10, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Delete potential copyvio

An article has just been listed on Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as a potential copyvio, so it's best to delete it. TimesSquares (talk) 20:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Page creator here. I'm working with the user above to write articles. It's due to issues with offline documents, so a different version had to be created. Ranarian (talk) 11:51, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd like to understand the issues with this article. Usually, I'd expect a link to the original. Third parties be able to confirm or refute whether something is a copyright violation. I've written material, on non-WMF wikis, and then had that material challenged as a copyvio, when it was ported to the wikipedia.

    Obviously I can port material I wrote anywhere I want. <p>So, things can seem like a copyvio, but have a legitimate reason for that appearance. User:TimesSquares, User:Ranarian Geo Swan (talk) 01:49, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Stuff from legal documents (best to avoid). The current version is encyclopedic, but the old version was a big confusing rant. You can see why if you look at the old version. Ranarian (talk) 13:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you!

Hi Geo Swan,

I'd like to thank you, User:Govind and the others for WikiAlpha. It's provided so much relief from the toxic, insane environment of Wikipedia. Thank you again! Ranarian (talk) 14:03, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Deleting the old version of the picture.

Creative style.jpg

Good afternoon. Can I ask you to delete the old version of the picture?

https://en.wikialpha.org/mediawiki/images/archive/8/86/20200302182900%21Creative_style.jpg 11:43, 8 November 2015

https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/File:Creative_style.jpg

  • Walte8, you call this "the old version". Are you arguing it should be replaced by a newer version?
This image is in use, in Alexander Tatarnikov (diezelsun). Stella uploaded it, in 2015.
I saw your note on Mathewignash. He and I have been entrusted with administrator authority here, mainly because we have both been very prolific here, and it helps us do our own work.
The inclusion rules here are much looser than on the wikipedia. I would delete an image, without consulting the site's owners, if there was a very clear cut reason - like if it seemed like "revenge-porn". This isn't an example. You haven't really offered a reason for deletion. If Mathew or I did delete the image, we would have an obligation to explain to Stella, the uploader, why we did so.
FWIW, if you want to link to an image, without it rendering on a page, preface it with a colon, like this, [[:File:Creative_style.jpg]]. Geo Swan (talk) 16:36, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Ah. Once I clicked on the wikilink to the image, File:Creative_style.jpg, I see someone uploaded a slightly different version of the image in March, 2020.
On the wikipedia older versions of images are only very rarely deleted. 99.9 % percent of the time all versions are kept.
The old version, here, is only 73 kb. Geo Swan (talk) 16:46, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes, I wanted to ask You to delete the old version. I like the new version with flowers, it doesn't need to be deleted. I wanted to delete the 2015 version. The author of the picture asked me to delete the old version, and let the new one remain. If it is not difficult, please delete the old version.
    Walte8
  • Walte8, understanding discussions is best done when everyone observes the usual indentation conventions. I encourage you to learn them.
Older images are only rarely deleted. Someone would have to take extraordinary efforts to look at the older version. So I think it requires extraordinary reasons to delete. What if Stella returned here, told me she preferred the original version, and asked me why I deleted it - what am I to tell her?
Over on the wikipedia, images are allowed to be used under "fair use", but only under rare conditions. There are individuals who reduce the resolution of those fair use images. They then delete the original version. It is the only time I have seen older versions deleted. Geo Swan (talk) 17:36, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
I was asked to delete by the author himself, I am not the administrator of this wiki encyclopedia. Let the new version remain. Everything else I personally like. The author is currently making new versions of the paintings, so he asked me to delete the old version of the painting... Walte8
Thanks for using indentation. It doesn't look like you read the reasons why I declined your earlier requests. Forgive me, but I am going to ignore any further requests you make that don't address my replies. Geo Swan (talk) 17:51, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
I didn't think it would be so hard to delete an old version of the picture. I'm not saying that you would completely delete it, I asked you to delete only the old version. Besides, it's not Wikipedia. Ignore it, your right. I gave you the reason for the deletion (request from the author of the picture).
Walte8
  • Yes, I saw you said the author of the picture requested deletion of the old version. You ignored my reply. Only the most recent version is visible, without a lot of effort.
I googled "Alexander Tatarnikov (diezelsun)". I bet you know what I found. Dozens of other wikis have essentially the same article about him.
Walte8, did you use Welux8 to upload that image, back in March? Are you User:Stella? Did you start some of those dozens of duplicate articles, on the other wikis?
When you refer to what the author wants, are you referring to Tatarnikov? Are you, yourself, Tatarnikov? Geo Swan (talk) 21:52, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Who cares who I am? Even if this old version is not removed, I will not be upset. Let there be both a new and an old version. Is that so hard to do? Why do you need the old version? Walte8

Deleting my picture from the site

Good afternoon. My picture was uploaded to Your site. It is displayed on our search engine in Russia. Please delete the old version of my creative work from the site. Please understand the situation and delete the old version of my image. File:Creative_style.jpg

— Preceding unsigned comment added by DiezelSun (talkcontribs) 2020-10-21T02:52:03‎

Please delete the old version of the image, as it belongs to my intellectual property. Today I registered on the site. DiezelSun Each picture has its own author and this author can ask either to replace it with a new version, or to delete the picture, this is his intellectual property, which is established in the civil code. Any country in the world has intellectual property laws, including the United States, Russia, and England. Will you continue to think that this is not the author of the paintings? I am the author of this picture. I am writing to you in all seriousness. I have intellectual property rights to these paintings. So please delete the old version of the image. If you think I'm not the author, you're wrong about that.

Delete page

I have sent an email requesting Trisha Paravas to be deleted. Please delete as soon as possible. Thanks. TimesSquares (talk) 13:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I asked whether any other wikipedians had worked on the article, prior to it being copied here. If anyone else made a meaningfl contribution to its intellectual content then I'd question whether it qualified for speedy deletion under good faith sole author requests deletion. Geo Swan (talk) 03:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Further, a third person made close to a dozen edits to the article's content. When the claim was made that you and Ranarian were the sole authors of the article did you take their contributions into account? Geo Swan (talk) 04:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Reply

Hi Geo Swan, at the moment, there is nothing about copyright. The full explanation had already been given at Richard's talk page at User talk:Richard. Here is a letter regarding the Trisha Paravas page deletion request.

Fashion Week Inc.'s corporate attorney Ms. Erica Doran, has requested that Ms. Trisha Paravas' (CEO of Fashion Week Inc.) WikiAlpha page to be deleted permanently from public view due to a pending legal matter at New York federal court. In addition, Ms. Doran requests a WikiAlpha administrator to provide a written confirmation that Ms. Paravas' WikiAlpha page has been deleted permanently from public view and shall not be restored by any WikiAlpha administrators in the future indefinitely. The reason for the request for permanent deletion of Ms. Trisha Paravas' WikiAlpha page is a legal necessity and requirement. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation. We look forward to receiving a written confirmation from WikiAlpha admins as soon as possible.

The written confirmation can be sent to [email protected], to [email protected], or at User talk:TimesSquares.

This is a polite request to delete the pages Trisha Paravas and Trish Paravas due to legal orders. I myself do not intend to harass anyone or post any legal threats and am simply relaying Trisha Paravas's request. TimesSquares (talk) 04:49, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

A simple email from you or any other WikiAlpha administrator stating: "Ms. Trisha Paravas's (CEO of Fashion Week Inc.) WikiAlpha.org page has been permanently deleted from public view at WikiAlpha.org, and shall not be restored by any WikiAlpha.org admins in the future indefinitely." This statement should suffice, and the matter would be considered resolved provided the content is deleted and confirmed. That is it: a simple deletion and one-sentence confirmation via email to [email protected], and [email protected]. Thank you very much. TimesSquares (talk) 05:00, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Lawyers.
Lawyers sometimes make ridiculous and unsupportable demands, which can safely be ignored. Over at the wikipedia article subjects don't get to try to control their content. Article subjects who make deletion requests, as a courtesy, get a fair hearing. Neither the wikipedia or wikialpha, or any one else, has an obligation to delete anything written about a public figure, when that material is fair and honest.
Over at the wikipedia parties who request courtesy deletion, who seem dishonest, or bluster and bully, have their requests turned down. Individuals who request courtesy, who are significant public figures, have their requests turned down. In general the only people who receive a courtesy deletion are people who are on the cusp, the boundary, of notability.
However, wikialpha doesn't have the stringent notability requirements of the wikipedia. So, for a public figure like Ms Paravas, there would be no cusp of notability.
So, did Ms Doran write to you? Why you? If they wrote you, why didn't you include a verbatim copy of this letter?
Her legal dispute is complicated. Is Fashion Week Inc Ms Paravas's company? Or is it one of the firms she has a dispute with?
Have you ever heard of Mattel's Cyber Patrol? If you thought a toy company, like Mattel, would have nice lawyers you would be wrong.
In the late 1990s, much earlier in the history of the Internet, Mattel thought "Parents trust us. We could sell them an (expensive) program and tell them it would protect their children from the dangers of the internet." Internally, their product, Cyber Patrol, was a stinking pile of crap. But well marketed. A couple of Computer Science students reverse engineered how it worked, and found it was just a very simple minded blacklist. If a parent ran it one the family computer it tried to block all URLs to news sites. And it tried to block all URLs that looked like they might lead to naughty pictures. But it did so in such a lazy manner, that it blocked a lot of innocent sites. It blocked everything from Carnegie Mellon university, apparently because a woman's bosoms are sometimes referred to as "melons".
No, I am not making this up.
The two students wrote an academic paper on their work. They published the source code to the program that decrypted cyber patrols blacklist database. (Mattel's programmers used very weak encryption, 19th century encryption.)
Mattel's lawyers made an enormous effort to suppress that source code. They sent their customers updated blacklists that blocked all the mirrors that held that source code, and all the sites where problems with cyber patrol were discussed.
No, I am not making this up.
After a week or two the two students went silent. Mattel's lawyers had convinced them that, since Mattel was a billion dollar company, their lives would be ruined unless they completely buckled. Mattel's lawers apparently demanded that they not only go silent, but sign over all the intellectual property rights to their programs and papers. Mattel's lawyers apparently threatened to bankrupt them and tie them up with years of lawsuits, unless they completely buckled.
The laughable part of this story was that they then threatened to sue the people managing the mirror sites. Steve Mann, an early expert in wearable computers, wrote about their threats for his continuing to mirror the source code. They claimed Mattel now owned the source code and Mann was violating Mattel's intellectual property rights by continuing to mirror it. Mann pointed out that, as was the usual practice for sites where programmers offered their source code, the two students had already released most of their intellectual property rights when they put their source code under the GNU license, which is like creative commons.
Mann's correspondence with these hyper aggressive yet incompetent lawyers seemed to show they did not understand intellectual property. It sounded like they were angry at the students because they didn't realize that when they agreed to sign over all their intellectual property rights they were signing over a mere rump, because the students had already released significant rights.
If I recall Mann's correspondence properly Mattel's lawyers were considering suing the kids into bankruptcy after all.
Mattel ended up selling cyber patrol to another firm, at a huge discount, because its value had been blown.
Now, if I am not mistaken, everything that was put into the article(s) on Ms Paravas was backed up by meaningful references. If I am not mistaken, it didn't slander anyone. So, Ms Doran has no legal justification to request its deletion.
This is all up to Richard, since wikialpha lacks the strict notability criteria of the wikipedia. He could decide keeping the article was going to be just too much trouble. But, if it were up to me, I'd stand on principle and tell Ms Doran her deletion request was going to be declined.
Another anecdote. About a decade ago I started an article on guy who was a counter-terrorism expert. He had written a paper on counter-terrorism, which I had cited in another wikipedia article. As I cited it I decided I should learn who he was. At the time he wrote those articles on counter-terrorism he was a public figure. He published. He was a public speaker. He was a panelist at conferences. He was a professor specializing in security and counter-terrorism at, iirc, the Coast Guard Academy.
He also remained a part time NCIS agent. Prior to becoming an academic he had a long career as a counter-terrorism expert, who engaged in classified assignments. He had been an interrogator at Guantanamo. People don't know this, but the military interrogators had to share the Guantanamo captives with other agencies, including the CIA. Our guy had been assigned to a joint task force, the Criminal Investigation Task Force.
He had earned some kind of highly prestigious award for secret work, which was, itself, classified. Except some of the sources that wrote about it revealed that the award had come with a very substantial cash payment.
I had only learned part of this when I put the initial article into article space. I had only spent a half hour or an hour at it. Or, at least I thought I had.
But, when I went looking for it, to add more information, I couldn't find it. I wondered whether, as sometimes happens, my session had gone stale, so that when I thought I save it, the article wasn't saved, after all.
But that wasn't it. It had been deleted, without the deleting administrator telling me what he had done.
He was nice about it. He sat on the OTRS, and the subject of the article had written to him, and requested deletion, because he didn't want to be covered by a wikipedia article. The administrator was clear, the guy hadn't complained about the article being inaccurate, or unfair. He just didn't want to be covered.
I corresponded with that administrator, half a dozen times, over the next two years, when new RS about the guy emerged. He was very nice about it, but he wasn't going to restore the article.
So, I gave up on him, and took it to the wikipedia's deletion review forum. Everyone there agreed that subjects don't get to have their articles deleted just because they don't want to be covered. If the wikipedia allowed that, and news got around, it might then be flooded with hundreds of thousands of requests for deletion from people who just didn't want to be covered.
So, the article on my guy was restored. The ironic thing is that when he left the public sector, and became a pure private industry consultant, I think I detected him making edits to the article himself. I didn't out him for lapsing from the conflict of interest policy, under the "don't sweat the small stuff" rule.
But, the whole experience reinforced for me the importance of standing firm, and not agreeing to delete neutrally written properly documented articles on public figures.
If Ms Doran had a serious justification would she have sought a publication ban from her judge? Is it possible she sought one, and the judge turned that request down?
TimesSquares, I am going to return to conflict of interest. If I am not mistaken while there is a conflict of interest policy on the wikipedia, there is no conflict of interest policy here on wikialpha. But I'd be grateful if you an Rararian clarified whether you had a real life tie to Ms Paravas's firm, or a real life tie to her legal opponents. Geo Swan (talk) 06:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Please contact Trisha Paravas and her attorney directly if you have any further questions. A simple deletion would be enough because I sincerely don't know what this is about. Thank you from a completely clueless confused wiki editor. TimesSquares (talk) 06:29, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Again, I am sincerely clueless about the situation. Please completely delete the pages and send a one-sentence email, and Trisha Paravas will consider this matter to be resolved. TimesSquares (talk) 06:38, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
  • You called yourself a freelance writer, and web designer. In addition, I think you are saying that, in this particular case, you were paid to add content you did not yourself write. Is that correct?
  • Ms Paravas hired you to cut and paste content she provided to you? Hmmm. Couldn't she have just pasted that text in herself? Do you think your admission raises the question of whether she hired freelancers to give the appearance this article was written by volunteers who aimed for neutrality?
  • So, when it was in her business interest to have an article about herself, that gave the surface appearance of being written by neutral third parties she paid you to do that - and then, when it was in her business interest to have the article deleted she pushed for it to be deleted.
  • I am going to draw your attention to the paragraph above the save page button.
  1. Please note that all contributions to WikiAlpha are considered to be released under the Public Domain (see WikiAlpha:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.
  2. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource.
  • Do you think Ms Paravas can meaningfully claim she owns the intellectual property rights to the text she provided to you, when the save page button requires agreement that the contribution is being put into the public domain? Do you think it leaves room for her to try to claw it back?
  • Note the second point. When you clicked save page weren't you promising you wrote the content yourself? Yet didn't you just acknowledge you were merely pasting in content written by someone else?
My administratorship

I am an administrator here. So is Matthew. Matthew has been very prolific here, for a long time. I have been pretty prolific too, for close to a decade. Richard trusted us with administrator bits to make our work here easier. Some wikipedia administrators ignore all rules, and make their own policies in areas where the policies are unclear or not yet set. But I don't think Matthew or I should do that here.

I will use that administrator authority to delete an item, but only when I am absolutely sure I am being helpful. I deleted an article and a image a week or so ago. But I was absolutely sure they really did meet the speedy deletion criteria.

I am not sure the article on Ms Paravas meets the speedy deletion criteria. Geo Swan (talk) 08:10, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I can't say much about this, but I do thank you for your time. I am only requesting a page deletion on her behalf. TimesSquares (talk) 08:51, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

WikiAlpha:Criteria for speedy deletion

Let's talk about WikiAlpha:Criteria for speedy deletion now. Please disregard my comments above and let's start completely again, completely from scratch.

We are following the procedure for CSD Criterion #3, and nothing else.

Azrael Jorithian Djayaprawira had been deleted in good faith due to the following.

3. Author requests deletion
If the author of a page or file is the only substantial contributor, they may request that it be deleted if they so wish. Note that this does not apply to user talk pages, which are never deleted, and that these requests are not binding. Add {{Db-requested}}.

We would like to follow the same procedure that User:SomeDude had followed for Azrael Jorithian Djayaprawira.

User:Ranarian, User:TimesSquares, and User:Albnwunne are the only 3 substantial contributors to the page Trisha Paravas. All 3 of us would like to unanimously vote to delete it because we so wish, and all 3 of us can sign here indicating our unanimous deletion request. Thank you! TimesSquares (talk) 09:52, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

  • Support deletion as the page creator. I can't comment on TimesSquares' comments posted in any other page sections of WikiAlpha. I don't know if everything has been neutrally written or not, and I don't know about whether the page could have issues. All I can say is that I support the page deletion. Ranarian (talk) 15:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
    • User:Ranarian, clarification please. I think User:TimesSquares said that the three of you were paid to submit content supplied to you by Ms Paravas. If you cut and paste content supplied to you by Ms Paravas, for a fee, I can assure you no one would think for one moment that was neutrally written. If I understood what TimeSquares wrote I think it implies a charade, where the paid content was designed to give the appearance it was neutrally written by genuine volunteers, like Matthew and I. <p>So, was your work on Ms Paravas article for a fee? Has all your work on wikialpha been paid work? Geo Swan (talk) 16:55, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
    • Can you explain any further the dispute you and TimesSquares had, six months ago, over whether the article was a copyright violation? Geo Swan (talk) 16:58, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

  1. Do you know User:Ranarian and User:Albnwunne worked for Ms Paravas? This message from Ranarian implies the opposite.
  2. Shouldn't they too explicitly call for the article's deletion for the criteria for speedy deletion to be met?
  3. Didn't you initially call for the article to be deleted as a copyright violation? Copyright violation can be tricky. If the material was taken from another source, like another wiki, its copying could have been permissible. If your initial concern was correct can the three of you claim to be the sole authors?
  4. I don't mean to be mean about this, but, in your comments, haven't you repeated, multiple times, that the deletion request is being made in good faith? Well, as I pointed out above, the paragraph above the save page says you promised "you wrote this yourself". But didn't you acknowledge you submitted content supplied to you by Ms Paravas - ie not written by you? I don't mean to be mean about this, but, if you submitted content written by someone else, that you said you didn't even actually understand, while implying you were a neutral third party who composed the content yourself - does that measure up to a, well, good faith contribution?
  5. As I explained, above, wikipedia administrators go through a formal process where the community entrusts them with administrator authority, and entrusts them to exercise that authority to use their judgement to implement the wikipedia's policies. Matthew and I, on the other hand, were rewarded with administrator authority in order to make it easier to do our own work. I don't think we were entrusted to make judgement calls as to what is best for wikialpha in tricky cases. I see this as a tricky case, where you and Ms Paravas really need to wait for Richard to weigh in.
  • Richard leases or owns the wikialpha servers, and pays all the bills. I see this decision as up to him. If I leased the servers, and paid the bills, I would decline Ms Paravas's request.
  • Wikialpha looks like the wikipedia. Wikialpha articles look like they too were written by good faith volunteers aiming for neutrality. Ms Paravas could have paid web designers, like you, to create a brand new website that didn't look like wikipedia, to host the content she wanted online. Presumably she didn't do that because she wanted the content to look like independently written, third party, neutral material. <p>In order to do so she had to agree to put the material in the public domain. I think this means she has no legal right to try to claw it back.
  • You keep repeating that Ms Paravas won't be satisfied until she gets an email from wikialpha promising to delete the article about her, and promising wikialpha will never carry an article about her, in future.
  • Well, I read about her enough to decide she, or her firm, may measure up to the wikipedia's GNG. She certainly measures up to the much looser inclusion criteria here. I considered drafting a second version of the article about her, that didn't incorporate any of the existing wording. Should Richard promise that no one should be allowed to draft a second version of an article about Ms Paravas?
  • When you tell us what Ms Paravas needs to be satisfied - well, did she use that wording? That wording implies Ms Paravas thinks she has an obligation owed to her. But, by paying you to submit content she approved as if you composed that text with no input from an employer, wasn't she trying to trick both readers and the wikialpha management? So, how could wikialpha have an obligation to her?
  • Some newspapers publish "advertorials" - content that was drafted by advertizers, and published after payment, that gave the appearance of neutrally written journalistic content. If Ms Paravas had paid you to put her content on a brand-new website, that didn't look like wikipedia, she would have both paid you, and paid to lease a website server. She chose to skip paying a website server, so how is it she could think wikialpha had an obligation to her, and not vice versa?
  • Someone like Richard could start a website like wikialpha, that used the same underlying software as the wikipedia, but with a revenue model of publishing paid content from people like Ms Paravas, who are prepared to pay for articles that look like neutrally written content drafted by good faith volunteers.
  • I see that as a decision that would open a can of worms. What if Ms Paravas read everything here, including your assertions of what wikialpha would be required to do to satisfy jer? What if she wrote an email to Richard, clawed back your assertions, apologized for using wikialpha as a server for paid content she didn't have to pay for, and offered to pay him cash money, I dunno, $1000, to delete the article, now that she no longer wants it? If he agreed would Richard have to worry he was being entrapped into a blackmail charge?
  • Most, of the wikialpha content was submitted by volunteers, like Matthew and I. It was thousands of hours of work, thousands of hours of volunteer labour. If our neutrally written content, written for free, was mere window dressing to enhance the illusion that paid content, like the content Ms Paravas paid you to submit, was also neutrally written by volunteers, would it be in our interest to continue to volunteer here?
  • Any implied threats Ms Paravas has directed against you? Almost certainly just bluffing you can ignore. You can tell her, "Ms Paravas, you paid me to put that content up. I did that, and you paid me. Relationship over." Then ignore all future emails and phone calls. Geo Swan (talk) 16:44, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I cannot provide any comments, except for this: In all due respect, I truly appreciate the thousands of volunteer hours that everyone had spent and the bills that they are paying. Thank you WikiAlpha! Ranarian (talk) 17:09, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I sent an email to Trish Paravas and Erica Donan

I sent an email to Trish Paravas and Erica Donan... Geo Swan (talk) 19:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

email I sent to Trish Paravas and Erica Donan

I have been a volunteer at wikialpha for close to a decade. I am not an employee. Nevertheless two of the three individuals who worked on the wikialpha article on Ms Paravas asked for my help in getting it deleted.

If I understood him properly, one of those individuals says you paid him to cut and paste content you provided into a wikialpha article about you, and that you now require that article to be deleted.

If I understood him properly you require a letter from the wikialpha administration assuring you that, first, the article had been deleted, and, second, that wikialpha management assure you it will never carry an article about you, in future.

Could you please clarify how much of that is accurate?

  • Did you pay people to add content to create an article about you?
  • Are you now behind the request for its deletion?
  • Are you really seeking assurance that no one ever write an article about you?

Because of all these questions I found myself reading the various versions of the existing article, and reading the news articles about you and your firm. In my opinion you may measure up to the criteria for a standalone article on the wikipedia, and you unquestionably meet the inclusion criteria for wikialpha.

Over on the wikipedia nothing prevents someone making a good faith attempt to create a second version of an article that has been deleted, although they would be well advised to address the policy shortfalls that triggered the first deletion.

If you actually did seek a promise that no one ever create an article about you I have to tell you that seems unprecedented to me.

Ultimately I see your request being one best decided by wikialpha's owner, Richard, who your employees can help you reach.

You can see the discussion over this deletion on my wikialpha user talk page at the following link https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/User_talk:Geo_Swan#Delete_page

Thank you very much. All further correspondence must be discussed privately. No further personal names should be listed publicly on WikiAlpha, since this is a private matter. Thank you again. TimesSquares (talk) 02:52, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Request to be admin/patroller/ rollback/page reviewer or any

Greetings, Hope you are fine.

I'm a contributor in WikiAlpha since 2017 and I have been created and edited many articles with sources. Previously, I worked in Wikipedia for over 2 years as a contributor. I know most of process and rules of Wiki.

I was thinking if it's possible to get another role on WikiAlpha. As for now, I'm only contributor and can't work on the platform properly. I believe my contribution will improve more if I have any other roles rather then only contributor.

Here is summery of edits made by me: [Here]

Regards --Foos (talk) 05:54, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

  • That sounds like a good idea, but it isn't up to me. I made a request like this to User:Richard, a couple of years ago. He is the one to ask.
  • Good luck! Geo Swan (talk) 06:38, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hello, can you block Cg098. They are continuously messing with my article, Dövé Windsor, by adding a deletion tag. This is not Wikipedia! I am the author of the article not for them to mess with. --Zone (talk) 19:29, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello Geo Swan, I want to point out that I have stopped putting the deletion tag on her article, but I have instead decided to leave a message on User talk:Mathewignash#Hoax article about it, but Zone has continually been deleting my message. Perhaps she could be formally warned about this behavior. Cg098 (talk) 21:33, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Template: Welcome, Template:Privacy Policy and Template:Disclaimers

These pages have been created! --SilvaFoxx (talk) 18:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Rollback vandals please

We need mass rollback tools to get rid of vandals like this: [1] WritingSnowman (talk) 20:19, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Need admin rights to fight vandalism

Hi User:Geo Swan,

I noticed the presence of vandals recently on this wikiAlpha project. I have been an old editor interested in promoting and protecting the project. I am interested in fighting vandalism and other issues here. I need admin access or any other access that can enable me to fight vandalism and have vandals banned here. Expecting to hear from you. Thanks Albnwunne (talk) 21:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Greetings Albnwunne! Thanks to you and others who countered the recent vandal.
I'll happily welcome any additional administrators wikialpha's owners entrust. Wikialpha's owner authorized Mathew and I to use our best judgment with the admin bits he entrusted us with. I became an administrator after I wrote an email, pointing to my long history here, and requested administrator authority. I think Mathew did likewise. Please follow our example.
I don't think the trust Mathew and I were given includes creating additional administrators.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 03:06, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I'd love to help out too as an admin! There is troll that stalks me all over wikis vandalizing articles that I create and I would love to protect my page Dövé Windsor. They are Account and The Great Vandalizer. They are formally known as RandomUser34. They have been banned from multiple wikis including Wikipedia, MediaWiki, Appropedia, Encyc, EverybodyWiki, Miraheze, ShoutWiki, EditThis, Illogicopedia and Akvopedia. --SilvaFoxx (talk) 08:27, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
Who is the one spamming hoax articles all over the Internet? Who is the one who vandalized me and other peoples userpages because you were angry? Who is the one who has gone on multiple fits of page blanking on Vikidia? It's not me, it is YOU. YOU are the one who is vandalizing wikis across the Internet, and I am the one who is trying to stop you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/JaySmith2018/Archive
https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/User:VOrun
https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/User:8ight
RandomUser34 (talk) 12:49, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
I have been authorized to use my bits to help out with the same kinds of specific requests you would make at the Wikipedia.
If the two of you have a dispute, can I help resolve it?
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 13:08, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • With regard to Dövé Windsor, it would not measure up to the inclusion standards on the English language Wikipedia. A lack of references means readers who look for references can not determine if the article is a hoax, or some kind of art experiment. It seems to me art experiments measure up to wikialpha's inclusion criteria.
SilvaFoxx, the last edit was an incomplete {{db}}, from you. You didn't state which speedy deletion criteria it matches... Are you calling for its deletion as the sole author of its intellectual content? Are you the sole author of its intellectual content?
If Ms Windsor was a real person, and was a friend of yours, or you were a fan, you have my condolences. Geo Swan (talk) 13:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • As far as I can tell, User:SilvaFoxx is Dove Windsor. "Dove Windsor" has falsely claimed to have died several times before. See the following links:
https://channel46news.com/2020/12/legendary-british-game-developer-dove-windsor-dies-aged-21/ (this is not an actual news site, despite what the URL would imply)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-akva1Kkz_E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL3Sz26IFdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12r7tACRMtI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_HprBmBWo
  • Good luck, this dispute has been going for almost two years now RandomUser34 (talk) 13:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • RandomUser34, could you please follow the usual indentation convention in discussions?
I took a brief glance at the three links to Wikipedia you offered. I found them unhelpful when offered out of context. Geo Swan (talk) 13:36, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • RandomUser34, thanks for the additional links. With regard to the suggestion that SilvaFoxx is Dove Windsor, or Dove Windsor might be an alternate identity created by them. That would be barred from the Wikipedia, for various reasons. But, if you look at the new article creations here, in the last year or so dozens of new BLPs have been created that are BLPs that are highly promotional in tone. In another dispute a pair of new contributors accused one another of being paid to create vanity articles for third parties. Between you and I, it is a development I am not completely happy about, but I think wikialpha's less stringent inclusion rules allow highly promotional BLPs where the contributors are in a conflict of interest.
Those other BLPs may include fantasy elements, fantasy elements that can't easily be debunked, due to a lack of good Wikipedia level referencing.
If, for the sake of argument, the Dove Windsor article contains fantasy elements, how do those fantasy elements differ from the COI BLP where the subject claims to be a CEO when they are still just an intern?
With regard to the suggestion that someone here has written an article claiming an alternate identity first accomplished something great, only to pass away at a tragically young age... I first heard about someone making this kind of claim about 20 years ago. A friend of mine had been on a mailing list, where one of the other listmembers who was a bit odd, told the other list members they had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Other list members voiced sympathy; made inquiries as to the progress of their disease, etc. Then someone else posted from that ID, claiming to be the cousin of list-member with cancer, who informed everyone that list-member had lost their battle with cancer. People voiced their condolences, only to see a strange thing happen... The cousin started posting messages that sounded very very similar to the original list member...
My friend found it odd, bizarre. Sure enough after a month or two the cousin owned up. She was the original list-member, not the cousin. She never had cancer, and didn't know why she ever claimed she had cancer.
SilvaFoxx, your edit summary here included "no proof random, my name is Dove"... That kind of confirms that Random's suggestions are at least partially correct. It is not my intention to shame you if you are trying to create real looking biographical articles on fictional alternate identities. But, can I say it looks like you are capable of writing real articles on topics that are fully factual. If you have been creating real looking fictional articles have you considered using your skills to work on fully factual articles? I think I can assure you that, except in very rare circumstances, your readers are going to be much more appreciative of fully factual articles.
If you want to work on fully factual articles I'd be happy to help you with that.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 00:30, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  • If the Dove Windsor article is fictional or contains fictional elements, which it almost certainly is from what I have seen, then it should either be deleted or have a disclaimer placed at the top stating that the article is fictional/contains fictional elements RandomUser34 (talk) 01:04, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
    • There are a bunch of editorial tags, over on the Wikipedia, including {{dubious}}, {{citations needed}}, {{npov}}. I completely agree that if the wider inclusion criteria on wikialpha allows promotional BLPs, or BLPs with fantasy elements, we may need editorial tags like {{fantastical}}, which might say something like "an editor is concerned that this article lacks sufficient references to refute or confirm whether it contains undocumentable fantastic elements." An editor might resent those tags, but, if the article can't be documented, what grounds do they have to object? The compromise between those two parties would be that the concerned contributor agrees to the removal of the tag, once all the undocumentable fantastic elements have been removed. <p>For some articles once the fantastic elements were removed there might be very little left. <p>Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 01:43, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Additionally, SilvaFoxx placed a speedy deletion template on Dövé Windsor, which implies that they want the article to be deleted RandomUser34 (talk) 01:09, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Back in December, 2020, Zone made the initial 150 or so edits to the article. SilvaFoxx made most subsequent edits. Are SilvaFoxx and Zone the same person? If they can establish they are I will go ahead and honour the unexplained {{db}}. If they are different people then I don't think SilvaFoxx is authorized to request deletion as the sole author of its intellectual content.
  • Speaking of using multiple IDs, have you, RandomUser34, used multiple IDs? Did you edit using Account? My personal request? Don't do that. It is confusing to third parties, like me. And Wikipedia has a strong reason for sanctioning people who do so - using multiple IDs allows someone to say, "Oh yeah! That Account guy is a genius! Let's follow all his suggestions." Geo Swan (talk) 01:59, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
    • I became convinced Zone and SilvaFoxx are a single individual, so I honoured the {{db}}. Geo Swan (talk) 02:49, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Thank you User:Geo Swan concerning my request. How do I contact the Wikialpha" owners? Where's the email or any sort of means to use. I was able to contact EverybodyWiki owners via facebook and I have such rights on the platform and I have been fighting and blocking vandals on EW. Let me know how I can reach out to wikiAlpha owners. Thanks again Albnwunne (talk) 10:30, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. I did already cover this, above. Richard is the owner. Geo Swan (talk) 12:46, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
I am going to repeat my offer to help you work on fully factual articles. You have already done some editing on fully factual articles, and I am sure you will get even better at it, if you keep doing that kind of work. I am also convinced you could feel a lot of satisfaction doing that kind of work.
I said I thought you had tacitly acknowledged that the Dove Windsor article must have contained some fantasy elements - because you wrote that Ms Windsor passed away, but you have acknowledge you are Ms Windsor. I am going to encourage RandomUser34 to avoid calling those fantasy elements a "hoax". I am willing to regard them as a kind of artistic experiment, or reasonable equivalent.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 00:28, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
I would like to help fight vandalism and improve the encyclopedia as well.
We also seem to share similar interests on non-mainstream topics. Let me know if you're ever interested in collaborating. WritingSnowman (talk) 05:02, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • WritingSnowman, I am happy to look at anything you want a 2nd opinion of. Feel free to comment on any material I have contributed, that triggers your interest.
  • I am not authorized to create new administrators. See above for who to ask.
  • Concerning {{Infobox person}} - good catch!

Hi, Geo Swan. Someone crated biography page on Template:Infobox_person and whole wikis are destroyed on Wikialpha. Please restore the template. Thank you!

Fixed. [2] WritingSnowman (talk) 13:07, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Help Wikialpha

Hi i need help with deletion of some pages which i found are totally promotional and users get paid to create these pages. --Wikipedian (talk) 07:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

  • Wikipedian, wikialpha has broader inclusion rules than the wikipedia. See Wikialpha:CSD. If you see something you think lapses from Wikialpha:CSD, don't hesitate to let me know. I am authorized to delete material that lapses from Wikialpha:CSD.
Promotional material, that does not lapse from Wikialpha:CSD? If you are concerned over its fairness, or accuracy, did you consider sharing your concern on the article's talk page, or the user talk page of the major contributor?
Individual editing material that concerned them to correct what strikes them as really obvious errors. It has been uncommon, and I haven't felt I knew how to adjudicate that kind of dispute.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 00:25, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Alex71 vandalism

Mass revert this vandal please: Special:Contributions/Alex71 WritingSnowman (talk) 17:16, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Recently edited articles

Hi Geo Swan, I just created WikiAlpha:Recently edited articles as a handy alternative to Special:AllPages. Makes recent changes patrolling a lot more efficient.

Thanks for all the hard work you've done too. Proud of how much WikiAlpha has grown! Also, please let Richard know that I'd be happy to make good use of sysop tools so that I can do all the grunt work more efficiently. WritingSnowman (talk) 16:05, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Admin privilege

Hi geo, can I get admin privilege here? I read all the rules here. I will obey all of them. 69 (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

  • A couple of people have asked me this. If you are someone else who asked me, and I didn't answer - sorry! This answer applies to you as well.
Um, I am not the owner here, merely someone who signed up a decade ago, and who I guess established years of trustworthy contributions. I had been here about seven years, and had started or ported several hundred articles, when I was entrusted with administrator authority.
Do the permissions bits entrusted to me allow me to make another contributor an admin? Maybe. That never occurred to me, and I have never checked. But I have never been given the authorization to create new administrators. I would never create a new administrator without explicit authorization from the site's owner.
In the meantime, if you need an admin thing done, and you leave a request on the community portal, and it doesn't get addressed, use the email Geo Swan button to email me.
I hope this helps!
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 17:28, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
User:69, I don't think you need admin privileges for this site unless you are really committed to long-term maintenance of this site and have shown that you actually have the relevant competence. As one of the most active recent changes patrollers, admin tools might be of help to me, but ultimately I'll let the other guys think about it. There's a lot of tedious volunteer grunt work involved, and it's not a glamorous position of power. WritingSnowman (talk) 09:23, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Long-term plans for this site

Hey Geo Swan,

Do you, Matt Wignash, the site owner (Richard), and the other dedicated WikiAlpha crew members here have any long-term plans for this site? A few of my concerns:

  1. Long-term survival of this site. You've done a lot of excellent work with interesting encyclopedic articles that would certainly get deleted on Wikipedia for frivolous reasons, so I'd hate to see this site suddenly go offline in the near future. WikiAlpha is getting increasingly popular among youths from South Asia, which could also increase bandwidth costs and put a heavier strain on volunteer resources. And as we all know, South Asia's population boom and growing Internet access means that WikiAlpha is going to get a lot busier in the coming years.
  1. Maintaining anonymity tolerance and independence. Anonymity Tolerance, minimal bureaucracy, and intellectual independence are of utmost importance to contributors like you and me for obvious reasons, as we can infer from each others' contributions and areas of interest. WikiAlpha should continue to be anonymous and free of the censorship madness that is gripping the mainstream web, so this is something to keep in mind.

WritingSnowman (talk) 09:37, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

  • WritingSnowman, I strongly suspect Matt also plans to continue updating articles he started, and adding related ones, for years to come.
I really hope that Richard continues to see wikialpha as a worthwhile endeavor, and, if he does start to make other plans he gives us a heads-up, in advance.
Personally, I am not a fan of anonymity. I have used a couple of other smaller wikis, that do not allow anonymous contributions. There is nothing like knowing you can't hide behind anonymity to keep comments civil and fair. In my opinion, the wikipedia's experiment in allowing contributions from anonymous IP addresses have proven to be a disaster. I think, in theory, it was imagined that plucky freedom lover would be able to continue to contribute from behind China's great firewall. But that was naive. China's official cyber security officials track Chinese internet users by their IP addresses. So their anonymous IP contributions would not be genuinely anonymous. Far too high a proportion of the wikipedia's anonymous IP contributions are from vandals.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 19:13, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
As for your points regarding anonymity, fair enough. What I was trying to get at was that this site should have minimal bureaucracy, censorship, and harassment. I can totally imagine Wikipedia users giving us a really hard time for many of our contributions, and I wouldn't want that kind of cyberbullying environment to spread onto other wikis. WritingSnowman (talk) 03:02, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Indeed, a lot of the articles I contributed here were articles I initially wrote on the wikipedia, and ported here to save them from total deletion. I started over 3500 wikipedia articles in my sixteen years there.
  • The wikipedia's great initial success was an accident. It is naive for wikipedia insiders to think its continued success is inevitable. In fact I am afraid the wikipedia is suffering from a kind of autoimmune disorder.
  • Arthritis, allergies, exczema, diabetes, thyroid disease, and some other diseases are all forms of autoimmune disorder, where the body goes haywire because the parts of the body supposed to attack bad stuff, like cancer, and invading germs, starts to attack the body's own healthy tissues.
  • I just checked, and found no User:WritingSnowman on the wikipedia. How long did you participate there. My participation on the wikipedia predates the introduction of the policy on Biographies of Living People by several years. I don't know if you know this, there was a massive drop off among the subsection of wikipedia contributors who do the important work of adding new content, and keeping existing content up to date.
  • I have never seen anyone else attribute this directly to BLP. But that is my conclusion. BLP is uneven. Some sections make perfect sense. Others are highly problematic. It is routinely misinterpreted. It gave far too much ammunition to unpleasant quality control volunteers. They drove away the volunteers who added new content. Not all of them, mind you. But a very large fraction.
  • Volunteers aren't going to keep volunteeing if those out of control quality control volunteers keep beating them up.
  • And that is not even mentioning the fraction of the time BLP is used deceitfully. I'll give you a couple of examples below.
  • First, did you ever watch the original Monty Python skits that were broadcast on the BBC?
  • In my opinion on of the most important skits has us imagine a Britain where everyone is superman. It opens with all kinds of guys, dressed like Superman, with their flowing red capes, striding purposefully down high street. Some of them are riding their bicycles down high street.
  • Then disaster! One Superman's bicycle breaks right from under him! The SUpermen gather, confused, and dismayed! Then one Superman, says to the camera, "this looks like a job for bicycle repaiman!"
  • He enters a phone-booth, and changes into a blue-collar working-guy's one-piece coverall. He strides up to the broken bicycle with his toolkit. On-looker say, "Look! It's bicycle repairman"
  • He fixes the bicycle to the amazement of the onlookers. Well, you can imagine.
  • IMO this skit is very relevant to the wikipedia. If the wikipedia really needed even more quality control volunteers, they would be the ones who merited being lionized. But the wikipedia already has too many quality control volunteers. And frankly, some of them really suck. They don't even read the articles they vote on in AFD. Or, if they read them, they don't read past the scroll. It used to make me mad when AFD nominators obviously didn't do an effective job of checking to make sure a weak article was on a genuinely notable topic. Nominators are supposed to check for references before nominating articles. A huge fraction fo regular AFD nominators weren't doing that. I used to call them on it. They'd get mad, insist they had checked. It took ma a long time to realize that they weren't trying to cover up for negligence. They actually genuinely thought they had checked, except (1) they didn't know how to check for references; (2) they didn't realize they didn't know how to check for references. I found even otherwise very experienced contributors couldn't be relied upon to do an effective search for references.
  • Okay, the deceitful BLP claims. One of the worst was a young grandmother fighting for reform of Arkansas's laws on who was a sex offender, who needed to be shamed and put on their official list of sex offenders, and on how to treat those registered sex offenders.
  • Grandma's eldest daughter had premarital sex, got pregnant, even though she was under the age to legally consent to sexual relations. She said she loved the young man, she said they were going to get married, as soon as he saved enough money. She asked her mom if the father of the grandchild could move in, so he could save enough money to marry her.
  • Grandma agreed. Because her daughter was already pregnant it seemed pointless to prevent the young pair from continuing to have sexual relations. Oops. Under Arkansas law grandma was committing a crime to knowingly let her daughter have sexual relations, when she is under the legal age of consent.
  • Grandma gets charged. Her pro bono lawyer says he or she can make a plea deal that will keep her out of jail, and grandma agrees - without realizing the very dire consequences for her and her family.
  1. All her children are taken into custody. She never gets to meet that grandchild.
  2. She is placed on Arkansas's official list of sex offenders
  3. She has to move to a home that is more than 1000 feet, or maybe it was 1000 yards, from anywhere a child would wait for a schoolbus. In her case she ends up living in an RV in the very middle of farmer's field.
  • In some counties in Arkansas there were only a couple of parcels of land that were more than 1000 feet from a child. And these tiny parcels became like hobo jungles, except populated entirely by people on that sex offender list. It included really scary dangerous people, and people like her who were essentially harmless, and may not even have been genuine sex offenders, for any reasonable definition of sex offender.
  • Grandma could have lived in her RV, in a kind of semi-anonymous shame. Instead she decided to sacrifice all her privacy, and make herself a spokesperson for reforming those laws. She was an effective spokesman. The Economist profiled her. She was regularly interviewed on American TV. So, notable, by any reasonable measure.
  • But what did those deceitful BLP experts say? They claimed we had to delete the article about her because it was damaging to her. Everyone knew that being described as a sex offender was damaging to someone. Of course this completely ignores that grandma had made a calculation and decided her best interests lay in sacrificing her privacy so she could fight for reform.
  • Now if she had been an ineffective spokesperson, and reliable sources had never covered her, or had covered her to a barely noticeable extent, of course the wikipedia should not have covered her. The wikipedia is not supposed to RIGHTGREATWRONGS. But she had been an extremely successful spokesperson. She measured up to GNG several times over.
  • I think those deceitful people knew their BLP line was actually damaging to her. I suspect their true agenda was to punish her for letting her daughter get pregnant and continue to have sexual relations outside of marriage.
  • Sick.
  • Another instance was a young Australian woman. She had to very significant events, or three, depending on how you count it, all before she graduated from high school.
  • Her name is Olympia Nelson. I love intelligent women. And she was both beautiful and intelligent, and, so far as I can figure out, a really lovely, loving, caring person too. Event one, her mom is an intelligent and gifted artist and photographer. When Olympia was six mom has her model in a pose that Charles Dodgson used with one of his models.
  • Dodgson was the mathematician known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, and Alice through the Lookingglass. He was an amateur photographer. He was an amateur photographer who took pictures of children. And, in some of those pictures they were posed in peasant clothes, or torn clothes, or, as in the one that young Olympia copied, no clothes. However, she is posed so her knees cover up her chest, so viewers don't actually see anything.
  • What most modern viewers don't know is that Dodgson's photographs were all part of a big fad that naive Victorians didn't recognize as sexual. They called it "staging a tableau". They would take a scene from a well-known greek or roman myth, of from an old fairy tale, and they would don costumes, to emulate that scene, and then take a picture of it.
  • Anyhow, six year old Olympia poses for this photo. Years later, when she is eleven, it is her mother's piece in a show to fight censorship. That is when a senior Australian politician attacked the character of Olympia's mom. And eleven year old Olympia wrote a highly regarded op-ed mocking him.
  • Later, when she was in high school, she wrote a truly brilliant op-ed on the pressure girls her age felt to share sexualized images of themselves on their cell phones. It is a phenomenon adults don't really understand. Like I said, her explanation, and her placement of some of the blame on adults was really brilliant. That op-ed was re-published in dozens of newspapers, around the world. Other commentators quoted her and praised her.
  • So, she clearly measured up to GNG. And, she clearly wasn't a BLP1E.
  • But BLP distorters not only ignored she measured up to GNG, claimed she was a BLP1E, but also claimed we had to protect her from having anyone read about her mother getting her to pose for that picture. They ignored that she loved and admired her late mother, and her artistic choices, and that this was her favourite picture, they ignored that, by the time the AFD was being debated Olympia was an adult, making adult choices.
  • Also sick choices from the BLP crowd.
  • My final example was a very well documented article on celebrities who had openly acknowledged they had abortions. One BLP arguer claimed it didn't matter that those hussies weren't ashamed of having had an abortion. They should be ashamed. So the wikipedia should suppress that information, against the day they finally wised up, and felt the shame they should have been feeling all along. Okay, I am paraphrasing, but that is what she meant.
Anyhow, thanks for reading...
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 05:44, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for your detailed thoughts and insights. Just like you, I have made tens of thousands of edits and created well over a thousand articles on Wikipedia, aka en-wiki, so I know exactly what it's like over there. I also joined en-wiki at about the same time as you, so both of us have been Wikipedians for nearly two decades now. The English Wikipedia community has turned from a fast-growing fun-loving band of rag-tag online mavericks into a closeted cabal full of belligerent deletionists, fanatical POV pushers, noticeboard wikilawyers, and people who feel like they own the whole place. Editing there is now like walking on eggshells. I've seen what you've been through - and so have I. For personal reasons, I'm not using my Wikipedia username(s) here because I don't want to carry the messy Wikipedia world over to WikiAlpha and other wikis. Just wanna leave some old baggage behind. Here we have freedom and room to breathe. Here we only have to deal with a couple of semi-literate but nice Bengalis (who started arriving around 2020), rather than the angry Wikipedia oligarchy listed on WP:NOE.
Regarding your experiences with AfD, I wholeheartedly agree it's now totally out of control. As you probably might know, AfD has been, and continues, to be used for various extortion rackets, personal vendettas, political fights, regular deletion campaigns by covert paid editors taking revenge on their competitors, and all kinds of shenegians. A few PR stunts didn't solve the problem of course, and it's only gotten worse over time.
Plus they don't just destroy BLPs for the reasons you mentioned above. These grossly incompetent self-appointed Wikipedia cops will destroy nearly everything except for biological taxa because of WP:[whatever bureaucratic acronym they came up with]. So much useful crowdsourced knowledge gets buried because of a few angry OCD deletionists' obsessions over notability, due weight, COI, BLP1E, sanctioned topics, content created by previously banned users, and other trivial reasons that eat away at the encyclopedia like a cancer. For heaven's sake, what does Wikipedia's fifth pillar say? Ignore the rules and focus on building the encyclopedia. In other terms, be practical. And in practice, AGF is now completely extinct and the cabal has gone rogue. This is why we need serious non-bureaucratic alternatives to Wikipedia.
I don't have my real email enabled at the moment, but if you want to talk more, let me know and you can give me a shout. WritingSnowman (talk) 10:33, 4 March 2022 (UTC)