User talk:AP295

thank you

Thanks for spotting META:Requests for comment/Violating the Neutral point of view in Arabic Wiki. It'll take me a while to read, but I am curious if you are going to be posting this topic on the ucoc discussion here at foundation. Unfortunately I am blocked at META (and many others too) so cannot participate in discussions there. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:53, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

"but I am curious if you are going to be posting this topic on the ucoc discussion here at foundation." Why would I do that? I didn't post the RFC to begin with, I only obliged the request for comments. Being somewhat tired at the moment, I'm struggling to come up with a glib summary of the RfC for you. The complaint against arwiki is more than a bit loony, and that's putting it charitably. Morally bankrupt is the phrase that comes to mind, though with the proviso that I cannot read Arabic. I suppose I should say something about it in the policy discussion though. A few editors in the RfC have dolled out the usual round of thought-terminating clichés. I don't mean to make it look like that's stopping me. Rather, I haven't the energy for it right at the moment. AP295 (talk) 16:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

re: "I haven't the energy for it right at the moment."

Tell me about it! I am also going through something similar. I guess we all do. I miss your fiery attitude at wikiversity. Hope you recover soon.

btw I did not see your response until now, even though I have been checking this page periodically. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: There's also this RfC. Remarkable how easily the dubious principles of "neutrality" and "consensus" are abused in order to confect such rhetoric, isn't it? AP295 (talk) 01:44, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I've had this thought for some time now. Part of what enables this is that on wikipedia and other wikimedia projects, the concepts "neutrality" and "consensus" are applied as aphorisms or dogma. It's entirely well and fine to say that encyclopedic articles should be objective and unbiased. Yet "neutral" is not a perfect substitute for "unbiased" or "objective". It does get the point across e.g. as in w:WP:NPOV but words like "objective" or "unbiased" would do just as well in that case. I get the sense that "neutrality" is more easily abused, for instance, to enforce a sort of apolitical quietism and this works all the better when the term "neutrality" is aggrandized and treated as a principle (aka "fundamental pillar" or "one of the five pillars" or some such shamanism). Such appeals to "neutrality" are really just question-begging nonsense. AP295 (talk) 02:39, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Hey, Nice to see you back here. Thanks for the link to the Community consensus for blackouts and other advocacy rfc on META. I guess this topic is/was not dead as I had assumed. It also linked me to a short discussion on the enwp village pump Ar-Wiki breaking neutrality on homepage which I assume you are aware of? Pity that one was closed prematurely.

I have been following a different kind of RFC on META: Global ban for Slowking4 (2). This discussion is about Slowking4, who is a prolific wikimedia contributor, who has been indef blocked on 3-4 wikis, and some believe this is reason enough to lock him/her out of all online+real life activities organized by the Wikimedia Movement (how will this be enforced if supported by the META community?)

I personally find this discussion more interesting and mature than other discussions I have witnessed on META before. YMMV. I think it is not expected to close for another week or so, even though it has been going strong for weeks.

Note: I only got notified 3 days ago about your post here, and only saw the notification for the first time earlier today.

Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 00:08, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

From what I've seen in general, global ban RFCs are poorly-run and lack reasonable due process. They typically amount to a plebiscite, mostly involving the same couple dozen editors each time around. Often they're padded out with bogus complaints like "incivility". It's not clear that there's a need to issue global bans in the first place. All that said, their global ban RfC is not the worst I've seen and does seem to include reasonable supporting evidence. I'm not familiar with the editor Slowking4. A cursory search shows dozens (if not hundreds) of copyright notices on their Wikipedia talk page. Breaking the copyright rules can cause problems for wikimedia. They can't just let users upload copyrighted material. AP295 (talk) 13:07, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Very interesting points...

Re:"mostly involving the same couple dozen editors each time around."

I have noticed the same thing on META RFCs.

• It appears that many of the participants are those who watchlist the RFC page and then participate in any RFC that turns up, no matter what.
  • It seems that some of these contributors do not even care to do any research and simply vote with the majority without providing any rationale, or simply saying "per x-user"
    • The above is just my impression - I have not done any homework to check if this is so
• There are others who have had a previous unpleasant incident that involved the potential-banee who vote Support for the ban
  • It would be interesting to follow some of these contributors to see if the logic they use in their rationale is the same they use in other discussions
• Some vote because they believe it supports a principle, in this example slowking4 edited as a sock puppet, something that many view as the ultimate wiki-sin.
• In general the participants are mostly current/wannabe functionaries, not a cross-section of the general community
  • Not sure how this can be fixed because many content contributors shy away from these toxic RFCs
  • This RFC is unusual as some of the participants come from Wikisource, where it appears that other contributors do not want to lose Slowking4. Would be interesting to see if copyright is an issue there
    • I have not seen this kind of behavior of supporting a person who is not a functionary. However my experience in this area is limited
• I know he/she is also involved in outreach-wiki

... to be continued when time permits Ottawahitech (talk) 16:47, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

"In general the participants are mostly current/wannabe functionaries, not a cross-section of the general community." This appears to be more or less how "consensus" works on Wikipedia and the other projects. Decisions about content, users, or whatever else are often made by a small clique of regular users. The phrase "community consensus", often summarized as "consensus" (another of the five-mystical-pillars-that-must-never-be-questioned) does not seem to amount to much more than a clever PR slogan. AP295 (talk) 06:55, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

As an example unrelated to those RfCs, consider v:Wikidebate/Guidelines. I wrote a critique of the wikidebate guidelines (which is unfinished and really just a set of notes, but should suffice to explain the problem with wikidebates). As another example, I suggested that wikinews allow editorials, and "non-neutrality" seems to be the basis for most of the objections [1]. Presumably most newspapers and online news organizations include editorials, why not wikinews? I could probably find more examples (or better examples) of circular arguments involving NPOV, but you get the point. The RfC makes it particularly apparent how facile, absurd and morally/intellectually vacuous such arguments can be, and while the RfCs don't seem to have much momentum at present it's perhaps also worth considering the many lesser instances where "neutrality" is used rhetorically. "Look to the language", Hitchens often advised on the matter of propaganda. Not being a writer, nor a linguist, nor multilingual, I've found it challenging to describe the problem in precise terms but I'm getting there, hopefully. AP295 (talk) 04:32, 28 March 2024 (UTC)