User talk:Obuibo Mbstpo

New account

Welcome to your new account. If you only use this account and do not engage in disruption, I agree that you may continue to edit.

To those others who may read this message, I am the administrator who blocked the predecessor account User:Absidy for disruption. I am not going to unblock that account at this time because the user has apparently lost access to it, so they need a new account rather than a rename. Nonetheless, the use of this new account is not block evasion. Please do not reblock them unless they do something new that warrants a block. Thank you. Jehochman ^Talk 22:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. I won't let you down. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I hope not. I thank Jehochman for kindly responding to the request. At least that part of this tangled affair is now starting to be unwound. One problem, though. The prior account was clearly blocked for incivility, not disruption. He was warned for what might be called disruption, but stated he would desist from the specific action about which he was warned (it was called "canvassing." The only new action justifying the block, as far as I've seen, was the placing of an image of a finger on Jehochman's Talk page. It was improper to indef block him for that, and thus all consequential actions were founded on an improper act. Was it trolling? Yes, he wanted to be blocked, he was so upset by the massive, knee-jerk rejection of the proposal he had worked for many days on, that he wanted to be prevented from coming back. As I recall, the block reason was "trolling." But it will all come out in the wash.--Abd (talk) 00:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I've restored Model Nonprofit Corporation Act, but it really needs to have some sources.

Frankly, I'm not inclined to restore Wikipedia:Is wikidrama bad?. You were trolling, and I don't really see anything good coming from giving you back an essay to support the notion that your (hopefully former) approach was beneficial. If you'd like to add a copy to a personal, off-site blog somewhere, I can undelete your essay to your userspace for a day or two.

Incidentally, you forgot to list your other two account names – User:Thespian Seagull and User:Take You There – on your user page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You still forgot User:Take You There. I've undeleted to your userspace: User:Obuibo Mbstpo/Wikidrama. I'll probably delete it finally in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm totally sure that user Mbstpo -- couldn't he make it easier to remember? -- will acknowledge all the accounts and edits. As he was blocked, and could not access his original Talk page, having spiked the password, he couldn't respond to his original user Talk, so he created other accounts, as needed, and then also made harmless edits here and there. Nothing I've seen was disruptive, other than the disruption of block evasion. And no serious effort was made to conceal these accounts. --Abd (talk) 00:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back. I'm glad you've "gone legit" this time. Since you've changed accounts you should make sure to take extra steps to avoid confusing other editors. In particular, it would be helpful if, in any continuations of discussions you've previously been involved in, that you identify yourself as such. After a while, when people get used to the new account, it won't be necessary any more. I assume you aren't trying to be confusing, but not everyone is going to always check your user page, which is what they'd need to do to learn the connection now. (Perhaps a note in your signature? It might make it easier to remember.) Mangojuice^talk 03:28, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed blanking

Could you please provide some discussion why proposed blanking would be useful at all on the talk page? Else we are going to end up with a repetition of moves, I fear. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Is that a chess metaphor? Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 01:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

i doubt it. see also MediaZilla:3843 as prerequisite for functionality. ∴ here…♠ 07:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Well, these blanked pages would presumably have a template like Wikipedia:Experimental Deletion/XD1/Example to note that they were intentionally left blank. I don't see a crucial need for redlinking. In the event of an article being blanked for a permanent issue such as notability concerns, the incoming wikilinks could simply be removed, as we currently do when articles are deleted. If an article is blanked for verifiability or such, that is a temporary issue, and we can leave the incoming wikilinks intact. It probably would not stay blanked for long. It is also quite possible that a redirect would be used in many cases. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 14:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Your edit to WP:CANVASS

I don't think it was appropriate to edit the guideline page to set up this canvassing permission suggesting, without seeking consensus first. This is a guideline, and it really should be discussed first. I'm going to revert it, on that basis, whether or not it's a good idea. By all means, continue to discuss it in Talk there, and my reversion isn't an opposition to the proposal or action, just to bypassing process for guideline pages. --Abd (talk) 01:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Rummaging around in Talk for WP:CANVASS I see a recent comment from Jimbo:[1]. And then [2]. Fascinating. I then looked at Talk for Ta bu shi da yu. Those who think everything is peachy-keen, thank you very much, are missing the elephant in the living room. This was a long-term administrator who retired and scrambled his password. Look what led up to it. MfD. What could easily be seen as a very legitimate canvass. He was blocked. His closing statement on his Talk page, posted from IP, was:

Wikipedia, it was fun while it lasted. No sense of community here anymore (unless, of course, by "community" we mean AFD and MFD, but that's not something I want to be part of). I regret saying that I wish I hadn't formed WP:AN. It's a necessary evil. I guess where I was going with this was that I feel that to be part of WP:AN has almost become greater than editing articles on Wikipedia! That is my concern.

Look at Special:Contributions/Ta bu shi da yu. Here is his last RfA, which summarizes his history: [3]. (He was first an administrator in October, 2004. He gave up the bit voluntarily, current practice would be that he could have gotten it back at any time, by request.)

When there is an AfD or MfD, it's legitimate to notify every editor that has edited the page. That's what he did, here, essentially. He was blocked for canvassing, for 1 hour, "to get his attention." That kind of block is highly disapproved. His response was to bail. Not one more edit beyond a brief response to the block notice. Was there any complaint to the admin who blocked him? No. No peep on his Talk page.

I see now there is extended discussion with him, IP editing, at [4].

Here is the discussion that led to the block: [5]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 00:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

A little note to myself

I think it would be cool to have status updates a la facebook! It could even have a similar link, which you can click, to update your status. Yes, I will do this as soon as I stop being lazy long enough to implement it. Ah, let me just do it now. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 19:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Village Pump vs. other pages

My rule of thumb is that if it's something that affects just one policy, it should be discussed at that policy page. If it extends across multiple policies, than the VP is preferable. Generally, whenever possible these things should be discussed at the relevant policy page, since that page is more likely to be watched by people who deal with the relevant policy a lot. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Political questions

It is naive to believe (as I've said many times before and wrote in WP:FAIL) that people can work together effectively without a well-defined structure. In the absence of a social structure, we are nothing more than slightly more intelligent apes.

This naive belief appears to be rooted in 19th century Liberalism and 20th century revivals of it (i.e., Jimmy Wales' belief in Ayn Rand's Objectivism) and Marxism (lots of crazy radical leftists, especially European Socialists). Both groups are clueless about the mechanics of social behavior, because their claims are based on political ideology, not modern science or historical experience, both of which yield a number of reasons why the Wikipedia model shouldn't work. It's basically just Anarcho-Communism on a large scale and that social model has always failed.

When I've made this argument -- and I think it's a pretty solid argument -- I've received the bizarre, silly accusation of being a "defeatist," which is interesting, because the same kind of naive support for the Iraq war is the same kind of naive hope behind Wikipedia.

I support "ignore all rules," sort of the same way that a man under a corrupt government might argue, "ignore all laws." Trolls should be strictly dealt with of course, in clearly defined ways, and policies clarified, but it should always be based on reason by rational, individual editors, not fallacies, like appeals to popularity, appeals to tradition, appeals to existing policy, and so on. Any time an administrator irrationally either ignores policy or enforces policy, that's wrong. It doesn't matter whether policy is ultimately enforced rigidly or loosely, whether it must be read first or can be ignored, whether it should be argued about a lot or not taken too seriously. What is most critical is if the policy itself makes sense. It doesn't, the model itself doesn't make sense, so questions of clarification aren't relevant.

My opinion is that the Wikipedia model has failed, this failure has been empirically established, and the various policy problems will continue, probably getting worse and worse over time, and Wikipedia history -- 10 years from now -- will be a serious joke, with several major and embarrassing controversies each year. Every time, there will be a flood of comments on Jimbo's talkpage, Jimbo will say, "This isn't news," there will be a 10-page thread at Wikipedia Review, and people outside of Wikipedia who read it will gently laugh, "Hah! Another example of how Wikipedia isn't reliable."

For this reason, the current model should be scrapped entirely.

My proposal: Creating a representational democratic association, with a constitution and firm, clearly defined laws, elected officials, and a balance of power. History has shown that representational democracies with the rule of law are generally very effective.

So, instead of this naive idealistic "let's just put the website up and hope for the best," you get an elite team of sociologists, psychologists, game-theorists, and political scientists, and you decide on a system, based on rational discussion.

Once this system is decided, you let it run. The system can also modify itself, the way a democracy can. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)