Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals pages, or - for assistance - at the help desk, rather than here, if at all appropriate. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Help settle the Calton Hill dispute

If you are or have been a resident of Edinburgh, Scotland and are familiar with the Calton Hill, you might like to contribute to a current editorial dispute on its Discussion page. Your views would be greatly appreciated to help resolve a stand-off. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kim Traynor (talk • contribs)

Should East Germany be described as a satellite state of the former USSR?

A Request for Comment has begun at talk:East Germany: 'Should East Germany be described as a satellite state of the former USSR?' Your comments at this discussion are invited. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

polymoist-PS

can anybody help me. i want to know what is Polymoist-PS, and what is cell revival. i am looking for a Polymoist product for facelift without going for a facelift surgery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.10.128.70 (talk) 01:37, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Try posting your questions at Wikipedia:Reference desk. Regards, RJH (talk) 03:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Please improve Wikipedia's fund-raising emails

On December 28th, I received a fund-raising email blast from Wikipedia. The subject line was "Can you share this?" and the specific "ask" was for me to pass the request on to my personal network, to help Wikipedia raise money.

The idea is solid, but the execution was lacking. I took the time to respond with some specific suggestions, and an explanation of why it isn't enough simply to ask supporters to "forward an email." Here's what I wrote:

Dear Wikipedia,

I love you and I'd love to help you...so why on earth did this solicitation, which is actually focused on leveraging the trusted connections of existing donors, arrive without integrated sharing/republishing tools (to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.)?

Please, make it easy for me to help! I'm already juggling trying to recover from holiday travel and working from home while my bored kid is on school break and tugging at my sleeve and destroying the house. :-)

If I had time, I'd cut/paste/reformat your message into my social networks, but this is like the worst possible week of the year to assume I can manage it, and I'm sure I'm not remotely alone in that.

Make it easy: use MailChimp (or any tool!) that automatically puts that stuff into your solicitations.

Many thanks for all you do, and I hope you'll consider my suggestions so that in the future, I can more efficiently solicit my friends on your behalf.

~Jen H------

Today, I received an email back from fundraising[at]wikimedia[dot]org telling me that all changes come from the editing community. As the president of a non-profit, I am keenly familiar with the pains of fund-raising. I am also convinced that some things (like the format of an email blast) just shouldn't have more than a couple of cooks. Nonetheless, if it is the Wiki way, so be it.

Would you consider updating your email blast approach to make it easy for supportive recipients to pass the message on to their friends and family, thereby helping to raise awareness of Wikipedia's funding mechanism and money for Wikipedia, too? Heck, at least stick a Facebook "share" button in there!

Thanks,

Jen — Preceding unsigned comment added by MaldenJen (talk • contribs) 00:20, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Jen. Thank you so much for following up on this! I think you may have received that email response in error. We get a lot of suggestions for the way things should be done on Wikipedia, and it is those kinds of suggestions that we do need to direct to the community. :) I'll make sure that the fundraising team is alerted to the issue and to your idea. Thanks much for sharing your suggestion! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Ownership on Eau Claire Municipal Band

I think the image gallery at Eau Claire Municipal Band is excessive, so I trimmed it down a bit and pointed the adding editor to WP:Galleries, but was promptly reverted with the summary "reversing vandalism". Could someone else take a look at the page and see if it needs to be shortened? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Holy cow, is this Flickr? Yes, it should be trimmed. I wonder if those are the pictures of the people editing the article? You could also just let it go. I doubt it that's a high traffic article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I have plunged into what I fear will be an edit war, but that article was absolutely ridiculous with over-photo usage! - `DavidWBrooks (talk)

Yeah, I edit conflicted with you doing the same. That article has serious problems, I suspect COI/SPAM issues are the major problem. --Jayron32 03:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

best license(s) for smooth wikimedia inclusion

I'm creating a lot of lecture notes and stuff for the courses I'm teaching, and I'd be happy to see anyone take those notes and cannibalize them into a Wikimedia project. (In fact, this question is more relevant for Wikibooks, but I figured this is heavier traffic so I might get better answers here.) I'm wondering what licenses I should use to make any such cannibalization work best.

As I understand it, though I don't understand why really, I should dual-license the stuff under both CC-BY-SA 3.0 and the GFDL? I can do that, but here's my questions:

• While I would kinda like attribution, the "how" of attributing when bringing stuff from outside a Wikimedia project seems like it might be daunting.
• So, would it be easier and/or acceptable to license under CC-SA and GFDL?

Thanks for your thoughts. CRETOG8(t/c) 18:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

We find a lot of people publishing "books" compiled form Wikipedia articles, as well as mirroring or using our data with or without attribution. I get the feeling the community as a whole likes to think that people are not passing our work off as their own, especially for profit. Dual licensing under GFDL and CC-by-SA-3 should enable someone to use your work with just an acknowledgement to you. If the work has been revised by Joe Random User, then the revisions will by CC-BY-Sa-3 anyway. So I would say, go for the standard license. Rich Farmbrough, 21:39, 17 January 2012 (UTC).

Ship accident in Italy

Is there article about recent ship problem in Italy [1] --Olli (talk) 11:28, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

We have an article on the ship which mentions this incident. You can add to the sourced material to the article if you wish. Britmax (talk) 11:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Could Duolingo help Wikipedia?

Although it hasn't been released to the general public, Duolingo is getting press coverage for its potential to benefit the world - and possibly Wikipedia. In particular, in Luis von Ahn's TED talk about Duolingo, he suggests that if they had 1 million users (which isn't that unreasonable), they could potentially translate all of English Wikipedia into another language (say Spanish) in only a few days. A few days.

Have editors thought about how this could actually be used to benefit Wikipedia? Consider, for example, the tens of thousands of articles which has one of these tags: Category:Expand_by_language_Wikipedia_templates. Has there already been a discussion on this somewhere? It would be sad if we couldn't use a translation program such as Duolingo due to licensing problems.. 24.84.9.97 (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Arab Characters

Can anyone remove the "born" from Arfa Karim in the lead without messing up the foreign characters preceding it? – Connormah (talk) 20:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Tried. Failed. I'd love to know how it is eventually fixed. The issue is that the Urdu reads right to left and seems to attack all the text around it. Quite bizarre. fredgandt 20:40, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

If there isn't a better way; we could create a sub page for the Urdu text, and transclude it to the article page, thus removing the editing problems. fredgandt 20:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I added ‎ and it works, but I don't know exactly what it does. Goodvac (talk) 20:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Well done. See Left-to-right mark for some details. fredgandt 21:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

If this is the fix, why isn't this built into {{lang-ur}} or {{lang}}? -- John of Reading (talk) 21:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The ‎ would need to appear in the article text, so even if it were included in the lang templates, those templates would need to be substituted for the trick to work. fredgandt 21:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

By Unicode, the Arabic letters are strong R-to-L. Western numbers, such as 1995, are weak (=following neighboring strong letters: putting Western numbers L-to-R in an Arabic R-to-L string, and positioning the number at the end of the Arabic sentence). So, in Arab, one reads →"The price is: $20.50" at the left hand side: "$20.50 :si ecirp ehT"← correctly). Punctuation like space and bracket is neutral, i.e. does not influence sequence. So, after removing the letters "born", the text string was: Arabic - punctuations - 1995. Unicode Bidirectional reasoning then concluded that "1995" was part of the Arabic sentence, and put it at the end of the Arabic R-to-L sentence: on the left hand side.

The current trick, adding ‎, adds an L-to-R sign (like our Latin a is) but invisible by definition, so the year number is not subdued to the Arab string. From the lrm-mark onwards punctuation and the number is positioned as in Latin, as intended. Boy this is difficult to explain. -DePiep (talk) 21:47, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

FredGandt:no the ‎ could be in the template. It should be on the rightmost position (thereby stopping the effect of any Urdu R-to-L letter spoiling outside of the template into regular copy text, as has happened here). Actually, this could be in every R-to-L script template for the same reason. -DePiep (talk) 21:55, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I correct myself: technically it could be in the template, but it makes the editing window a chaos (directions are mixed up beyond readability). -DePiep (talk) 12:10, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Adamangalampudur

How do we go about the correction of Talk:Adamangalampudur? Should it be moved to article space or AFC or deleted?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  21:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the article, after it was moved to ns-0. It should meet the GNG now, but it still needs to be improved. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Talk to me} 07:24, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Announcing Wikipedia 1.19 beta

Wikimedia Foundation is getting ready to push out 1.19 to all the WMF-hosted wikis. As we finish wrapping up our code review, you can test the new version right now on beta.wmflabs.org. For more information, please read the release notes or the start of the final announcement.

The following are the areas that you will probably be most interested in:

• Faster loading of javascript files makes dependency tracking more important.
• New common*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css.
• The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link.
• Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer.
• Better timezone recognition in user preferences.
• Improved diff readability for colorblind people.
• The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension).
• More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists).
• Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language.
• Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language.
• Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18.

Report any problems on the labs beta wiki and we'll work to address them before they software is released to the production wikis.

Note that this cluster does have SUL but it is not integrated with SUL in production, so you'll need to create another account. You should avoid using the same password as you use here. — Global message delivery 00:05, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Please note: In less than 29 hours...

Will Wikipedia be disestablished?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:13, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

"disestablish... to deprive an established church of its official status": Wiktionary [2]

I don't think that Wikipedia quite qualifies as a church ;-) AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

"Like". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout: "Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18..." The announcement, written by Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, goes on to say, "The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process." My question is, can someone please provide a link to the discussion or discussions of this decision-making process? I wasn't aware of it and I'm curious to see where it took place. Thanks. P.S. I'm in favor of the blackout and I would encourage interested editors to click through to the announcement and read about why this is being done. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 07:07, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It's at WP:SOPA -- John of Reading (talk) 07:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

What does a "blackout" entail, exactly? I couldn't tell from WP:SOPA. Does it mean that tomorrow (18 January) this website will be completely unaccessible for about 24 hours? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

That is my understanding. There's a summary at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-01-16/Special report. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:40, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I read that too, but it only refers to a "blackout" without explaining what that means. Thanks. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

This needs to be stopped. The poll was taken without sufficient community notification, and it was taken before SOPA was effectively killed. Now we're using a short-notice nuclear option to protest a dead bill. This is insanity. Powers ^T 12:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting that the site can apparently be shut down and abandon its principals on the basis of a 72 hour strawpoll (not, as Sue suggests, consensus), which was initiated by a WMF staff member, and was a) worded in such a way that suggested a consensus had been established supporting some form of action, but failed to demonstrate this (Wikipedia:SOPA initiative does not demonstate any clear consensus, as far as I can see (n.b. I excluded the transcluded /Action page when looking at this)) b) contained no clear way to "support doing nothing" and c) had a generally difficult to follow layout and structure: it was particularly difficult to work out how to express one's opinion about whether action should be US or global. Just all a little out of process, really. The fact that the whole idea has now been undercut by SOPA being shelved is also an issue, as LtPowers comments above. Spitfire^Tally-ho! 12:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
ps. if you're going to link to any external resources as part of the blackout, you need to consider if they can handle the traffic. Spitfire^Tally-ho! 12:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I was pretty impressed by the speed of this, too. The base problem is that any set of internet access laws that allow YouTube to stay in business are basically evil, and any set of internet access laws that don't allow YouTube to stay in business will be lobbied off the face of the planet.—Kww(talk) 12:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Um. What? Spitfire^Tally-ho! 13:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

A bit of a tangent, no doubt, but still the foundation issue. YouTube makes its money by rapidly and indiscriminately violating copyrights at a speed and scope beyond anything the copyright holders can manage. That's the primary defect of the DMCA: it puts the entire onus on the copyright holder. So long as they can make that much money at it, YouTube/Google will be able to effectively oppose any legislation that brings an end to it. SOPA may be bad, but the DMCA is evil. There's a lot of hooplah about foreign web sites, but YouTube is the real target of SOPA, and Google is fighting back. Unfortunately, we seem to have been duped into being its ally.—Kww(talk) 13:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It had more consensus that anything I've ever seen. More editors expressed their approval that any RfC I know of; indeed, by some margin. "Insufficient notification", when basically everything was notified, doesn't hold water. That it should be re-evaluated in light of the movement on the Hill, that's a better point. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Lets not delve into strawmen. I never said, nor even mentioned, insufficient notification, so providing a counterargument against that, and including the words insufficient notification in quotation marks is misrepresentation. I talked about the failure of the proposal to follow due process, and the short time over which it ran (which meant that users such as LtPowers were not able to express their opinion, assuming he is the same "Powers" who commented on the WMF blog). That aside, the comment you make about consensus is interesting: you should be aware that something does not have more consensus or less consensus simply as a result of how many people support it, as the entire point of consensus is to do with merits of the ideas and points put forward, not the number of people supporting them. If the WMF is going to run a blackout without making efforts to judge consensus and weigh up the arguments but instead merely making sure they're supported by a majority, then fine, but I'd rather they didn't claim to be doing otherwise. Cheers, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 14:07, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The vote for a full blackout seems to have been 763 to 104, while the vote for a soft blackout was 94 to 100. I think that is a pretty clear demonstration of the overall community sentiment, and goes far beyond just a simple majority. It's hard to see how we could expect anything more clear-cut than that with 800+ participants. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

My unscientific view is that we'd be better off if there was a more robust system for notifying editors of such discussions. Certainly this was news to me. The discussion is at WP:SOPA, fine, but how did editors find out that the discussion was taking place? It's not a rhetorical question, since finding out about these types of things is not obvious to the average editor, I want to learn more about it. And here are two suggestions for handling this better: (1) A dismissable banner notice, that only signed in editors can see, notifying them of very significant discussions like this one. (2) A centralized page, short and easy to scan, with links only to very significant discussions. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 14:13, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and my scientific background leads me to wonder how Wikipedia, in general, addresses the key issue of selection bias in its discussions. I've raised this concern elsewhere (in a completely different context), but I ended up none the wiser. I believe the Wikipedia name for the issue is "vote stacking", but that expression seems to give the idea that someone is actively campaigning, which often may not be the case at all. MistyMorn (talk) 14:24, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

While I wasn't all that thrilled with the conclusions of the discussion, there were banner advertisements and notifications here in the Village Pump that such discussions were going on. The earlier discussion on Jimbo's talk page on the other hand totally took me by surprise and for me was an abuse of an individual user's talk page (even if he is the presumptive founder of the project... as if that should mean anything at all beyond a barnstar and some thanks). I asserted earlier that this is going to be a one-way trip for Wikipedia in general, and I mean that here too. The door is opened now for activism using a blackout and other political moves using Wikipedia as a political tool. For this reason I strongly objected (and "voted", as if that meant anything at all) to this action and I still think it is wrong. Since the U.S. House of Representatives' version of SOPA has already failed to pass, it almost seems pointless to hold this blackout as well.

Regardless, news of this has hit mainstream media, and it is going to make some sort of impact. Welcome to the new Wikipedia, where the principle of NPOV has now been thrown out the window as I consider that pillar to be gone from the project altogether. I would love to know what sort of steps could be taken so this never happens again, or if anybody would even care to depoliticize Wikipedia, or if that is even possible now? Yes, there are the two "political parties" of Wikipedia in the form of "inclusionists" vs. "deletionists", and I wish project politics stayed just at that level. At the very least, I'm glad that the WMF didn't censor my very negative comment to this action on the WMF site.... something I was expecting. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:42, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There has actually been a large banner notice about this discussion posted prominently at the top of Wikipedia these last couple of days. Short of sending personalised messages to every active user I can't really see how much more they could have done to make you aware of the discussion. --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

But the issue remains. Only people who have the time and inclination to explore the material behind that banner, which assumed some prior knowledge of SOPA, are likely to participate. So we're going to get a distorted view of what Wikipedia users think, presumably biased towards the opinions of people who have stronger preexisting views on the question. MistyMorn (talk) 14:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

If there was a banner notice about this, that at least partially answers my point. Not sure how I missed it, but I'll be sure to pay more attention next time. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 14:37, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

−

The notice didn't say that voting would close on Monday for a sitewide blackout on Wednesday. It just said (and I'm going by memory here) that anti-SOPA options were being explored. Not exactly commensurate with the scale and scope of the action. Powers ^T 14:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Like it or not, final decisions on consensus tend to be influenced by numbers. This comment (from Carl, above), broadly reflecting content included in Sue Gardner's announcement, gives the idea: 'The vote for a full blackout seems to have been 763 to 104, while the vote for a soft blackout was 94 to 100. I think that is a pretty clear demonstration of the overall community sentiment, and goes far beyond just a simple majority. It's hard to see how we could expect anything more clear-cut than that with 800+ participants. These are numbers affected by a major selection bias. Period. MistyMorn (talk) 14:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

But, if the selection that biased our result are "people who have the time and inclination to explore the material behind that banner," how do you propose we get any other, more representative sample? We can't conk people who DON'T have the time and inclination on the head, drag them to the SOPA page, and force them to form their opinion and post it. I'm not saying that what happened was a great way of doing it (and in fact, I have some issues of my own with the speed of the formulation and closure of that discussion), but I'm not sure what they could've done to improve on it. Also, I think saying that we've thrown out NPOV is kind of ridiculous hyperbole. The WMF believes that the bill represents (or represented, I guess?) a serious threat to Wikipedia, and they have the right to do something like this to defend it. If they had done it unilaterally, or ignoring the results of the RfC, then that would be a different story. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments like the one above show that there is a real big problem with those who twist WP:Consensus into something it simply is not. Consensus is not vote taking, and WP:VOTE has the content on that page explicitly because early on in the development of Wikipedia it was felt that vote taking was evil. Evil because there are numerous ways in which vote taking can be skewed with an on-line poll where no protections are being taken to ensure fairness in the discussion, and because the process of consensus is far more than simply counting up how many felt one way or another.

By forcing consensus rather than what the majority opinion is on something, it forces compromise solutions to be found, where minority opinions on a topic are strongly considered, and if a strong argument can be found which isn't resolved by some equally strong or stronger counter-argument that the discussion is allowed to continue on some more. For most discussions like AfDs or even community discussions about problematic users (such as what comes before the ArbCom), many of those discussions can wait for resolution as long as additional commentary is being offered.

I firmly believe that genuine consensus could have been found on this topic in terms of blanking out en.wikipedia, and if anything I would say that a soft blackout was a more reasonable compromise. More importantly, the real fall-out of this decision has not really been fully explored, where it is angering a whole bunch of Wikipedia users in terms of how this decision is going to damage the project in the future. I really don't think the supporters of this action fully considered those consequences, and I do think this is a very rash decision to have been made. No genuine attempt at consensus was really achieved with this "poll", and sadly it is an irreversible decision too.

From the Statement of principles on User:Jimbo Wales (found here as the current version doesn't display this) the following is stated:

Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by everybody in Wikipedia, in full consultation with the community consensus.

I do not believe this decision to black out Wikipedia to "protest SOPA" is either gradual nor reversible. It has changed the community in a permanent way. Something has been lost here, and it won't be back. Real consensus on what action needed to happen here did not happen, but instead a mob of people came in and took over Wikipedia. There is reason to be angry about that. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

In reply to Writ_Keeper's question above, how do you propose we get any other, more representative sample? Well, for a start, specify that a worldwide blackout of en.wp was on the cards. Explain far more clearly both in the banner and behind it what the ruddy acronym refers to. Emphasize the importance of participation in a vote. Explain that SOPA has been modified... I could go on. A protest like this which is going to attract major media attention (like the broadly successful Italian initiative) like this is just too important to be peresented with an obscure acronym. Disclaimer: I don't have a clear opinion on the protest, largely because of my ignorance of the details of SOPA and, especially, how it has been cut down. MistyMorn (talk) 15:39, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW, in responding to why NPOV has been thrown out the window is not a "kind of ridiculous hyperbole", Wikipedia has now set the precedent that it will be involved in political objectives as a project, and that politics are something it will meddle in even so far as how the content of the project itself is involved. The "leaders" of Wikipedia have ransomed the content of this project for pure political purposes. One of the reasons why advertisements are consistently rejected here on Wikipedia is the issue of perceived skewing of neutrality if that was to happen. If blanking out Wikipedia isn't a form of advertisement on some level, I don't know what else it could be considered. This is blatantly advertising an anti-SOPA POV done in a fashion that can't be ignored and in some ways is far worse than even a banner advertisement. Every single argument that applies as to why advertisements for Coca-Cola shouldn't be found on Wikipedia should equally apply as to why this was a bad thing to blank Wikipedia... along with other even stronger arguments. If you don't see that the principle of a neutral point of view has been thrown out by this action as a general principle, that as a pillar it might as well no longer exist as the pillar has been completely removed by this action, I'll just have to say "wait and see". The consequences of this action have yet to be felt, and other political actions as well as POV struggles are going to happen in the future as a result of this precedent that can't be ignored. This is a morally corrupt action to have taken and it compromises the core values for which Wikipedia was originally created in the first place. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:44, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia's mission has always listed the promotion and protection of free information gathering and exchange. This protest is just in support of that mission. No precedent has been set that hasn't always been there. It was actually part of the wikis mission from the beginning to take such stands if the exchange of information was threatened. -DJSasso (talk) 15:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia's mission has been to publish a neutral encyclopedia that is available under terms of an open source license, making it available to ordinary people. Neutrality has been as fundamental of a tenant since as long as I've been involved, and the principle has served this project very well. I remember what life was like prior to Wikipedia, where encyclopedias like Encarta, Encyclopedia Britannica, Compton's, World Book, and others simply were the only game in town and where information was being closed up due to copyright and people compromising their values for the sake of a quick buck. Regardless, there are other strong reasons to have opposed this, and as you are showing by your very statement here in re-defining what Wikipedia "has always been about" (which I am disagreeing with here) that a pandora's box has been opened which can't be shut. It is this very politicization of Wikipedia that I'm warning about, and this precedent is something very new. It hasn't "always been here", and I'm sorry that you don't see that. BTW, when talk about "the wiki's mission", are you talking about Ward's wiki wiki? There was always a bit of politics with that group, of which Wikipedia even distanced itself from even though the wiki ethos of that project did come into Wikipedia as well since a great many of Ward's wiki wiki were very early contributors to Wikipedia. --Robert Horning (talk) 17:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Leaving the particular issues under examination aside for the moment... The very tight vote in favour of a world-wide blackout is a particular concern. Familiarity with the topic is likely to have attracted a disproportionate number of US participants. Furthermore, self-selected groups such as this one tend to attract strong opinions. So it's reasonable to suppose that the "55%"* majority decision on this international question was taken by a pool of participants which overrepresented Americans with somewhat strong opinions. *Quote from the summary of the discussion, also cited in today's announcement: We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. MistyMorn (talk) 16:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I share your concern with the self-seleciton of the votes as well, but I think that is an issue which is beating a dead horse... other than that the principles of consensus clearly weren't followed in this situation. Sadly, it isn't the first time for a situation like that as well as other votes have been taken like that in the past, but this is the first time it has happened for something so political in nature. In the past it has always been about project governance or organization, such as the switch from the GFDL to CC-by-SA. --Robert Horning (talk) 17:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I haven't understood what you're saying, but if the best response to this sort of issue is going to be beating a dead horse, then expect me to lose confidence in WP:CONSENSUS. (Personally, I trust Jimbo's judgement more than what looks to me like a hastily formed "consensus", particularly as regards the global aspect of the blackout.) MistyMorn (talk) 17:40, 17 January 2012 (UTC)