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Wikipedia Editors Revolt, Vote "No Confidence" In Newest Board Member (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes with news about an editor revolt at Wikimedia to remove Arnnon Geshuri from the foundation's board. Ars reports: "Nearly 200 Wikipedia editors have taken the unprecedented step of calling for a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors to be tossed out. The Wikimedia Foundation, which governs both the massive Wikipedia online encyclopedia and related projects, appointed Arnnon Geshuri to its board earlier this month. His appointment wasn't well received by the Wikipedia community of volunteer editors, however. And last week, an editor called for a 'vote of no confidence on Arnnon Geshuri.' The voting, which has no legally binding effect on the Wikimedia Foundation, is now underway. As of press time, 187 editors had voted in favor of this proposition: 'In the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, Arnnon Geshuri must be removed from his appointment as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.' Just 13 editors have voted against, including Wikimedia board member Guy Kawasaki.
And thus begins Wikipedia burning itself to the ground. Good job, deletionists!
So the context given by the wikipedia article on this guy is: "The appointment sparked controversy among Wikipedia editors due to Geshuri's role enforcing a no-poach agreement between several large tech companies."
So people are a little butt hurt. I don't see what this has to do at all with anything.
I am just observing this social experiment. Observe. Take notes. Learn.
Conclusions?
Not yet.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The 'no-poaching' compact was an agreement among chief executives. I know someone will drag this down to Godwin's Law in a minute, but he was doing as he was ordered. Are people expecting him to go to Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs and tell them that he wouldn't follow direction? If he did, he'd get the opportunity to join the keyboard punchers at Wikipedia Editorial.
Are there any other reasons that he shouldn't offer advice on a board of a non-profit company?
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
isn't that just a volunteer work? as in, unpaid? as in, just go away if you don't like the guy because he has no real power over you to begin with?
Wikipedia's big weakness is that it is unreliable because it is consistently gamed by special interest groups, much like most of the media. As a result, its staff loves an opportunity to demonstrate publicly their commitment to fairness, because in reality, they have a lot to hide.
The fact that they don't clean their own house and have become an ego trip for the editors
http://www.theguardian.com/boo...
or the fact that they are useless for any topic with even a whiff of controversy
"You're all fired."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Since you mentioned Godwin's Law and chief execs, simply following orders is not a justifiable. To paraphrase the exchange between Google and Apple: Wikipedia's editors needs someone to be very careful to make sure this does not happen again. Wikipedia's board needs to make a public example of this termination with the group.
They are MaterialScientist, Nawlinwiki, Trinsijel, J.Delanoy, Bsadowski1, Savh, Teles, Vittizuu, Favonian, Future Perfect at SunRise, and many more. Don't donate to Wikipedia, if you have already, get a refund. Wikipedia needs to be forked with an inclusionist version (where deletionists can fuck off) where edits won't be reverted.
Where's the Wikipedia page about the issue ?
Is that like, a real person, man?
I support the inclusion of SystemD in Linux, Pocket in Firefox, I weight over 400lbs and masturbate to my little pony porn. I revert good faith editors all the time and delete articles with significant references as not notable. If you are a neckbeard Wikipedia wants you as an admin. We are only matched by private torrent tracker admins with our autism.
This fits all of the traits of a typical social "justice" angerfest:
1. Somebody does something that's actually quite minor. (Somebody gets appointed to a position of power. Or somebody mentions the word "dongle" to a friend. Or a police officer defends himself against a violent attacker who happens to have a different skin color.)
2. A small number of vocal opponents from the social "justice" movement object for whatever reason.
3. This small handful of vocal opponents from the social "justice" movement starts some non-binding petition or other useless bureaucratic construction.
4. Social media is used to rile up a bunch of other people who normally wouldn't give a fuck about what's going on, but who still want to feel that they're "making a difference" or "changing the world".
5. Despite claiming that it's wrong to single out a person and direct animosity toward this person, since doing so would be bullying, we see these social "justice" supporters single out the person and direct animosity toward them repeatedly. Yet they pretend it's not the bullying they're supposedly so very much against.
6. Typically within a few days, some new minor and pointless incident will catch the attention of the social "justice" supporters. They'll forget about everything they were angry about in the past, and they'll focus on this new issue for a day or two, until the next outrage comes along.
7. Their petition has no impact at all.
8. Slashdot reports on this pathetically irrelevant issue that nobody sensible actually cares about, well after the people who were originally outraged have forgotten that they were angry.
You've committed the Hipster Comparison Misdirection Fallacy.
This is a fallacy we typically see employed by hipsters/Millennials in discussions like this.
Here's how it works:
1. Somebody points out a real problem with an idea, a product, a person, etc.
2. Some hipster comes along, ignores the actual problem being discussed, and instead says, "But is $SOME_OTHER_IRRELEVANT_THING any better?"
3. The comparison is totally irrelevant, because we aren't talking about $SOME_OTHER_IRRELEVANT_THING.
4. Discussion of the actual problem at hand is derailed because now other people feel the need to point out that $SOME_OTHER_IRRELEVANT_THING is in fact better.
I love these unsolicited, non-binding and completely ineffective grassroot internet vote shitshows. These people think so highly of themselves and are sure that thier opinion matters.
Newsflash, your opinion doesn't matter. Wikimedia doesn't care about your petition and Obama doesn't care about your petition. Whether you've got one vote or 300,000,000 your petition doesn't mean shit and no one cares what you think!
wikipedia is already failing big time due to bias of entrenched editors from west.
my example of choice is the article on british empire. which mentions sun always shined there, but minimal mention of brutal genocidal wars the principal means of conquest and subjugation, constant revolts and mutinies in almost every country under it and the resulting savage suppressions accompanied by large scale massacres, regular famines that killed off millions well in to 1940s, land grabs and resource exploitation on a massive scale , etc etc.
when contributers try to include some of that with cited sources (even with much milder language than i have used above ) they are regularly banned , even their talks page contribution justifying edits or proposing future edits are removed ( see history of both article and talks page).
no reasons given other than consensus not reached ( after all they cannot trash the scholarly sources ) but with even talk page censored only a western pov is allowed.
for contrast, check wikipeda on famines in 1930 in ussr and later in china, which were indeed horrible, but no more than famines in 30s and 40s in india
Without a personal statement from Mr Geshuri about how he views the ethics of his own past behaviour on which to base my judgement, I can't see how this appointment can reasonably move forward.
I sure hope the employee severed for failing to break the law as directed worked this into a fat severance settlement.
This may speak more about a possible personal failure to seek out the best sources of information than it does about the quality of our current day Slashdot web site, nonetheless, I saw this first on Slashdot. An old web-haunt of mine, drawing an increasingly rough crowd, has once again proved it's worth to me. With Wikimedia / Wikipedia being perceived by me to be one of the Internet's greatest enduring assets, and, this, despite it's shortcomings, any news concerning turbulence in those waters weighs greatly upon me. I will do what I can to follow up, and, act according to my perceptions and beliefs. My thanks to the OP.
They will be replaced instantly by other people.
It might actually be good for wikipedia to get rid of some of these people who put all their effort into projecting their views on others by controlling wikipedia articles.
It got so big, it couldn't help but fail. Sadly this is seen in many large groups, commercial and non-commercial.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
... for people who earn 5 or 10 times as much as me, complaining that they don't get even more.
I find it hard to imagine that any sane person would actually want that job.
Are you kidding? We live in a CHRISTIAN society, and forgiveness has no place in Christianity!
This comparison is not hipster-specific. Almost everyone makes it. The truth is comparisons are useful when looking for ways to innovate and when making to sure that you are doing *comparatively* well, but they are not useful when looking for ways to see if you are doing *what you should be doing*. This is because a field as a whole can be taking the wrong approach. For example, a school can have students with better standardized test scores than everybody else and still not be teaching the students well.
You've committed the Hipster Comparison Misdirection Fallacy.
This is a fallacy we typically see employed by hipsters/Millennials in discussions like this.
Here's how it works:
1. Somebody points out a real problem with an idea, a product, a person, etc.
2. Some hipster comes along, ignores the actual problem being discussed, and instead says, "But is $SOME_OTHER_IRRELEVANT_THING any better?"
3. The comparison is totally irrelevant, because we aren't talking about $SOME_OTHER_IRRELEVANT_THING.
4. Discussion of the actual problem at hand is derailed because now other people feel the need to point out that $SOME_OTHER_IRRELEVANT_THING is in fact better.
Sometimes you gotta wonder if the credentials of these board members is really up to snuff
You've just pull that figure out of your backside. Its a wild guess at the extra you MIGHT have made IF someone had cold called you AND you had an interview AND you got the job at a much larger salary than you're on now.
Hey - you are allowed to approach companies yourself you know or go via an agency. So get off your cross, you're not a victim here, you're a loser.
What exactly are the grounds for this?
The vote of no-confidence includes no info and the news link is particularly vague allegations of poaching.
Why yes. Yes they do.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The problem with wikipedia admins remains the immature teenage mind - emotional, irrational, quick to judge and slow to alter a judgement despite new evidence.
The comments of the Florence Devouard, a former chair of the foundation and someone whose career I have watched exemplifies this in some respects. I struggle to find the logic in her statement of "Please take my vote as a respectful record of my perplexity." FFS.
work in progress
Seems to me Wikipedia is edited by children, biased spiteful children. They'll do a "Speedy Deletion" on you if they simply don't like the person or entity you're writing about, despite having valid references and significant information. They themselves also "vandalize" in areas they think most Wikipedia officials may not notice. Wikipedia claims there are no designated "editors" or "monitors" in the Wikipedia site. But you just try to add a new article or edit an existing one... At least a couple editors (who were watching) will jump all over you, practically call you names, change your article around (a lot), then even threaten you that you'd "better not violate the site's protocol" again or you'll be banned from making contributions. This has happened to me more than once. Note: My contributions were right on point and inoffensive in every way. (Then they dare to ask us for donations!)