User:Volunteer Marek

East European Mailing List news

Yes, the East European mailing list is still active and we are still talking about YOU. Yes, YOU, the one in the corner, picking his nose (see 20090929-0666-[WPM] Those people pick their noses). We've actually been talking for some time about "legitimizing" the list so I decided to "Wiki blog" what's going on. Some of you might want to pay attention, updates are posted randomly.

Sunday, October 11: In light of this (last section on Tymek) I think that at this point I can reveal some additional pertinent information:

 East European mailing news list exclusive!!! EEML info you can't get anywhere else. Darkest secrets revealed (this is the real thing folks, I'm not shitting you, somebody actually said this, in reference to Tymek revealing his password) (20090924-Polish football sucks)): 

Person X (or hell, let's call them "Monkey Boy"): (When Tymek revealed his password) I thought about changing his user page to something like "I don't support Polish soccer" but I decided not to do it. I can't remember if I actually logged in though. I might not have."

Normally I'd recommend a 1 year block for anyone that has the gall to suggest that the Polish soccer team sucks. Except ... they really do suck this year. So the reviewing admins should excercise mercy and understanding in this particular case.

(and that was the extent of the damage done by Tymek sharing his password - aside from the hacking of course)

Saturday, October 10: Now it's a full blown discussion on economics and things like the J curve, Optimal Currency Areas and Purchasing Power Parity. Also what an apartment costs in London vs. Wroclaw or Bucharest. And Polish railway stations, pre and post fall of communism. And Romanian Germans. And we take a short break to notice some disruptive behavior.

Addendum Ok, so it all degenerated into a discussion of where exactly in Europe is beer the cheapest.

Friday, October 9: Hola, amigos, it's been long time since I rapped at you. Anyway, presently there's discussion of the Romanian-German Nobel prize winner in literature Herta Müller. Also, we discuss the general nature of the European Union. Some personal attacks are made, and some consider whether or not we should endeavor to stalk and harass the entire European Union on wiki. Others are more positively disposed. And something about Estonian stamps.

Monday, October 5: Man, everything is quiet on the Eastern Front so not much plotting to do, so not much discussion. Anyway we had attrition on the list but are gaining new recruits "you win some, loose some, it's all the same to me!" (or better yet [1]). Ok, now that connection has been established I claim Vyvyan as me. Vecrumba is obviously Mike, Jacurek represent the entire Balowski family, Ostap was the Glaswegian hamster, Biruitorul is the guest appearance by Madness, Sander Säde is the 2nd guest appearance by Madness, Molobo is obviously Rick, Biophys... well, in all honesty Biophys is probably the one who's Vyvyan, Hillock is Davy Jones, Martin is Peter Tork, Poeticbent was Micky Dolenz, Tymek was the actual dog that was bought when Micky said "Gonna buy me a dog", Dc was the soldier who got drafted on the Last Train to Clarksville, User:Alexia_Death is of course Edna Mode, User:Digwuren was Tito... and of course Piotrus is the long suffering Neil.

Sunday, October 4: Slow day on the mailing list and slow day on the Wiki. A rough consensus is achieved that Lavinia Şandru [2] is the hottest female Romanian politician (I mean, she's got a bow!). Also, we're checking how many fans each of us has - it seems Piotrus [3] beats out Frankenstein [4] (who's in our Auxiliary Geneva Section, Geneva not being in Easter Europe ... yet).

Saturday, October 3: Discussion about good-looking women in politics, their role and intelligence. Ample examples with photos are shuffled and pondered upon. Party membership includes she-liberals, she-conservatives, she-social-democrats, and she-communists, as well as she-monarchs.

Friday, October 2: Discussion of Moldovan politics continues. General discussions on how Wikipedia is ass-backwards these days (can't divulge more for reason which can be fathomed from my talk page). And somebody somewhere calls us the "lonliest (sic) little conspiracy ever" which I sort of like - thought probably not a good recruitment slogan: "Join the loneliest conspiracy ever! Loneliness guaranteed!" (though it'd weed out the wimps)

Thursday, October 1: Tymek innocently asks, "So ... what's up with Moldova these days?". Twenty pages of text follow as an answer. Some members think that, given our failure to take over Wikipedia, we should re-focus on a take over of real life places, Moldova being an obvious candidate.

Wednesday, September 30: Conversation has turned to child rearing. Basic consensus: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Wikipedians.

Wednesday, September 30, Evenin edition: Our fearless leader encounters some women-folk drama. FSB involvement not ruled out.

Tuesday, September 29: On Tuesdays (ha!) we all take a pause from our usual plotting and make an effort to appreciate the positive aspects of Soviet culture. This time around, someone who shall not be named, posts a link to the Yunyy Tekhnik [5] (shouldn't that have an article)?

Monday, September 28: Peters reads over the latest posted at the ArbCom case and comments We've got facts, we don't need sockpuppets.

Sunday, September 27: Germs be spreading. Dc is also "seek". Some members think that the FSB has successfully recruited Autumn as a secret agent. The "hangover theory" still holds sway however.

Saturday, September 26: Peoples are sick. Colds or swine flu? Ostap and Tymek are sure that everyone's lying and they're really just plain ol' hangover.

Friday, September 25: General shruggin' of shoulders as to the current situation. Some members have become desperate enough to sip (sip?!? WTF? chug Cabal boy!) German beer.

 East European mailing news list exclusive!!! DIRECT QUOTE FROM THE LIST!!! Exact quote from one of the members commenting on the Arb Com case (this is the real thing folks, I'm not shitting you, somebody actually said this, in reference to all the people that have showed up on the case pages) (20090924-Who you gonna call?)): 

It's as though somebody opened the ghost storage tank of Ghost Busters.

There you go. Serious EEML bloggin' going on here.

Thursday, September 24: We are talking about football. Specifically we are talking about creating articles on Polish interwar football cuz they're ain't many (an exception). Some are also making fun of the pathetic Polish football team [6].

After I have finished picking my nose, I will write that article on Polish football during WW2. Hell yeah. And yes, you had a hangover, I saw you on Google maps get some hair of the dog. With cabal greeting. Tymek (talk) 04:40, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

East European Mailing List True Confessions!!!

All true! All real! All full of your daily dose of Surgeon General recommended cabal goodness! And fiber for regular pooping!

So there's been a lot of folks crying for the members of the East European mailing list to confess!!!!!!!!!! to all sorts of things. The more wild the accusations that are made the louder the calls for the needs for us hobgoblins to confess!!!!!!!!.

Ok, ok!!! I've had enough, I'll talk. I'll talk, just please stop - watching the torture-by-hypocrisy is more then I can take! Here it is. Real. True. Confessions. From an actual member of the East European mailing list

Confession #1: Non-erotic fantasies involving aliens

So at one point in time I had this idea - it was a real stupid idea, one that I would never actually carry out, and it entered my head by accident, probably due to some kind of alien interference/implants - to create a Wiki account under the name "Onliner" and then go around and stalk and harass Offliner and edit war with him. Then we'd have all these edit wars between "Offliner" and "Onliner" and that by itself would be pretty funny. And of course, the whole situation would be confusing as hell, which is of course the point. And then I thought about how - again, completely hypothetically - if I was Onliner edit warring with Offliner, I'd regularly self-revert myself just to confuse him so that he'd revert my self-reverts thinking he was reverting Onliner but in fact he'd be reverting Onliner reverting Offliner or something like that (my imagination got confused at that point).

And then there'd be the awesome AE/ANI reports: "24 Hour block for Offliner... er, Onliner, and a warning not to edit war to ... Offliner. Wait no, Onliner. Oh screw it, they're all banned!"

Confession #2: As seen on Gossip Girl

Also, a little back when Deacon seemed to have left Wikipedia I thought about (again, completely hypothetically, with the thoughts being implanted by aliens) creating an account for Deacon of Pdnapetzim (rather than Pndapetzim) and then going around and pretending I was him for as long as possible. Like setting up a talk page using his bluish template and when the usuals show up and are like "good to have you back" I'd be like "Yes... so what are those pesky hive minded mud hut dwelling Pole-trolls up to since I left?" And then I'd completely destroy his reputation by vandalizing the Al Franken page with BLP violations.

But then the aliens left, bad thoughts disappeared and I didn't do any of it. But I confess I thought of it.

Random thought and proposals

Writing new articles vs. improving old ones

Right now there's an institutional Wiki-bias towards creating new articles rather than improving old ones. This is because most editors care most about getting exposure for their work. New articles can be submitted to DYK, which guarantees a good bit of publicity. But improving already existing articles most of the time doesn't get you any kind of recognition. Sure, if you take a crappy article and turn it into a GA you'll get some props. But this takes way way way more work than writing a new article from scratch (about 2 days to write a new DYKable article vs.at least a month and some serious library time to take an article from C-class to GA) for much less publicity (GAs are not guaranteed to be featured on the Main page) and only a small bit of recognition (other people involved in your sub-sub-sub-topic area might notice but that's about it). The problem with incentives for improving existing articles is the huge gulf between a C-class or even a B-class article and a GA. Basically, unless you're willing to seriously commit to an article you get no "Wiki reward" for improving articles at the margin.

One thing that could remedy this is to relax requirements for DYKing already existing articles which have been improved. Right now, it takes a 5X expansion for a already existing article to be DYKable (I'm not sure where this 5X threshold came from - probably from the parallel to the fact that new articles must be no more than 5 days old to be DYKable. But this is mixing apples and oranges). As a result the overwhelming majority of DYKs are new articles. If that guidelines got decreased to 2X or 3X, a lot more effort would be devoted to expanding already existing, but neglected, articles.

This is desirable because Wikipedia is already good at scope and quantity - it's got a buttload of articles, more than other encyclopedias - and this is indeed, something to be proud of. What it still struggles with (sucks at?) is quality and detail. Creating real, noticeable and public incentives for article improvement rather than just article creation would restores some balance here.

A "reference sleuth" award, combined with some kind of explicit award in the way of publicity, given to people who do the hard, often unrecognized and much under-appreciated task of just finding sources and reffing articles previously unsourced is also in order. Sure, Wikipedia relies on free labor done out of charitable motives by its contributors - but that's no reason not to recognize hard work when it occurs.

Edit warring is good for you (and for Wikipedia)

Ok, I don’t mean that literally – I just wanted a heretical headline. What I mean is that some edit warring is good. To understand this we need to look at the encyclopedia from two very different points of view; that of the "bureaucratic administrator" and that of the "content creating drone" (i.e. non-admin shmoe)

If you’re an administrator then edit warring is like the Worst. Thing. Ever. Why? Well, if a particular article is non-stable then sooner or later somebody’s gonna have to deal with it. Reports will be filed. People will whine. Controversial decisions will have to be made. Somebody somewhere will end up pissed off and will show up the next time you go up for recall, or try to get CheckUser, or just endeavor to annoy you in general. Dramu will ensue!!! In other words, if you’re an administrator and there’s edit warring going on, you might actually have to get off your ass and do some of the things that administrators are supposed to do (warning: unintentional comedy). Which is "work". And nobody likes "work". Come on, be honest, if you were an administrator you’d hate dealing with this crap too!

But if you’re the little guy who actually writes and edits articles and content, then edit warring … well, it’s not really that big of a deal. It’s just something that happens along the way, as natural as the fact that if you get enough people in the room, at least two of them will find an excuse to disagree. What you care about, if you’re a content creating editor, is not whether some article is “stable” but rather what the actual … content of the article ends up being. Like, you know, what's in the actual encyclopedia.

So bureaucratic administrators and content creating editors have different perspectives on this. The first get their panties in a twist over procedures while the latter’s underwear gets all bunched up over outcomes. That’s like the history of the world and I think some Greek philosopher dude had something to say about this and how these two worldviews just will never be reconciled.

Ok, ok, but how is edit warring good for Wikipedia? Or for you, yourself, and your POV pushing battle ground having self? Well… think of what would happen if nobody ever reverted your sorry ass. This is one of those things that sound good in theory, but deep down in your BFG heart you know it wouldn’t work well in practice. You’d get lazy, sloppy and stupid. You’d end up writing crappy articles and crappy content, simply because you could get away with it.

Some of the best articles on Wikipedia have gone through some serious edit wars. And they are better for it. An edit war – having somebody revert, challenge and fight you every inch, every word of an article – forces you to go to the sources. To do some real research. Inline cite every single word. Think about your own POV and confront it. Spend time at the library and even, Monkeys forbid!, sometimes change your mind. In other words, do what content creating editors are actually suppose to do! Just like bureaucratic admins are supposed to take their time with filed reports, consider the merits, learn something about the subject area and make controversial decisions (it’s why they be given the toolz and the power over the rest of us after all) and have the guts to take a position. Content creating editors are supposed to find reliable sources for every single piece of text they write.

And edit warring is exactly the competitive process which makes sure that they do that.

(Ok that part with the Greek philosopher was sort of evil)