Wikinews talk:Never assume/Archive 1

Please do not edit the contents of this page. It is for historical reference only.

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Redirs

We have enough redirs for this yet? --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 23:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Surely we can think of one or two more. --Pi zero (talk) 01:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Let's get rid of AGF/ABF/PBF (whatever that means) as possible abbreviations if we want to differentiate ourselves from our sister projects. Benny the mascot (talk) 01:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I'll support that. --Pi zero (talk) 02:09, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments

1. If you must create the redirects - which is probably a good idea (and full-prot) - make them soft redirects with some sort of "Dorothy, you ain't on Wikipedia anymore!" message.
2. This needs ruthlessly copyedited. It rambles. Cut it in half. Shorten the sentences, and clip it into a journalistic style. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
   • Omit needless words. Use the active voice. Avoid a succession of loose sentences. Critique (not criticize) Brian McNeil's English usage whenever possible. - Amgine | ^t 20:36, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Seriously, I like the idea of a soft redirect. I've fashioned one at Wikinews:Assume good faith, and sent the AGF/ABF/PBF shortcuts to it. (I still haven't figured out what PBF stands for, though.) --Pi zero (talk) 00:57, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Presume bad faith, maybe? No WN:PGF, though, and I'm certainly not going to be the one to create it. C628 (talk) 01:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I think AlexandrDmitri created it, IIRC it's French for "Assume good faith" or something. Tempodivalse [talk] 02:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with roughly half the comment about copyediting: It needs to be better organized; it doesn't (necessarily) need to be shorter. That's not to say that some of the current material shouldn't be cut out; I'm just not sure there aren't also things that need to be said that aren't being said yet. --Pi zero (talk) 04:06, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

• I doubt many will even finish the first paragraph. That is my concern. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

• I think the page in its current state is somewhat redundant, I'll see if I can make this more consise while still retaining all the relevant info, if nobody objects. If people don't bother to read past the first few lines, well, that's their problem and we can trout them for it later. :-b But in the end, this is a policy we need to have, as has been proven by the mess with Matthew Edwards ... Tempodivalse [talk] 13:35, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

• I removed about 1kb of stuff that was redundant or could be phrased more concisely. I probably could have done more, but want to emphasise that one should judge the content, but not contributor. Could someone have a look over my recent edits? Tempodivalse [talk] 14:00, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

• Summarize the main points right at the top as bullets. Start with "this is nothing like Wikipedia". I also want it to say "this page does NOT prohibit blunt, strong or honest language"; I'd be happy for that to be one of the last points on the bulleted list as what this page isn't is hardly the main point of what it is. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:12, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

  Hmm, I'd disagree that the page is "nothing like" Wikipedia's, there are a lot of similarities and the only major difference is that we scrutinise people's edits, and not automatically assume them as correct like WP does - plus the thing about not AGI'ing sources, (which I think is pretty obvious anyway).

  As for your other suggestion, I'm not opposed to that either, being straightforward is a good trait and something we need to preserve. But there probably should be some clarification that such comments at the same time shouldn't be rude for the sake of being rude, not of the "Your article was shit, why don't you go jump off a cliff and stop bugging me?" variety. That doesn't help anything. Tempodivalse [talk] 16:31, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

  I'd go so far as to state that edits to published articles are presumed false until proven otherwise i.e. the reviewer must factcheck it positively or remove it. The edit may be presumed false; the intention is still presumed good. This follows on from our ongoing need to up quality, which was why we lost autosight. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:04, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

  I agree, this could improve our articles' quality. The essay seems very good, by the way. I hope we start to care about this. --Diego Grez ^{return fire} 01:09, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Constructive criticism

• Strongly suggest recasting the entire essay following inverted pyramid metaphor, as follows:

  AGI is an attempt to minimize friction between contributors to the project.

  AGI suggests blah blah

  AGI does not suggest blah blah

• Before you go any further with this, I think you might wish to look at Meatball Wiki. All of those derivative essays/policies on Wikipedia are drawn from Meatball originally, so if you must send people elsewhere, send them to the source and not to Wikipedia. Referencing Wikipedia inappropriately like this reinforces Wikipedian assumptions that Wikipedia is the arbiter of policies on Wikinews. If you cannot be troubled to learn about wiki community pattern language, do not try to instruct others with your essays on them. - Amgine | ^t 17:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention the meatball policies are much closer to what people here are trying to say than the wikipedia policies are (imho). Bawolff ☺☻ 04:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments; good point. There's only been one link to a Wikipedia page in the article (about not feeding trolls) and I've replaced it with a reference to Meta; I'll also check to see if there's an appropriate meatball page to link to. Also will try to work in amgine's bulleted suggestions some way. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:17, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Upgrade

I've taken a stab at something like BRS's suggestion of bullets at the top. It seemed to me that the points that desperately need to be gotten across fast to newcomers — before they stop reading 'cause they figure the meaning of the principle is supremely obvious — are all caveats. My working theory is that we can only more-or-less count on them to read the first four words or so; anything beyond that requires that what they've already read makes them uncertain enough to read a bit more. That's the same for newcomers to WMF, too: even without prior knowledge of sister projects, the page name makes it seem obvious.

The outline of the essay needs upgrading, too. I imagine it will end up looking more similar to the bullets than it does now.

I'm currently thinking that AGI, at least as it is trying to exist now (setting aside flaws in its presentation), will not solve the problems it was hoped to solve. Something other is needed, and it may be that once that other takes shape, the form of this page will want to take the other into account. (Thrashing out the other is for the water cooler, though.) --Pi zero (talk) 09:09, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Bullets and the future of this essay

First of all, my reason for the bulleted list (both when I added it, pursuant to discussion on this talk page, and when I readded it today). It's absolutely vital to get those not's across first — much more important than anything else one might say on this page, since

• what one does do when assuming good intentions is obvious from the title of the page, and,
• moreover, all users trained on any of the other WMF projects are going to come to rapid, severely wrong conclusions about what AGI means, and they're going to look at a half dozen words at the outside before assuming that there's no reason for them to bother reading this essay.

It took months of deep thought on how to improve this essay before I finally concluded (tentatively, of course) that, in the long run, improving this essay is not what's needed. The extreme danger from misapplication of it certainly seems like a reason for improving it, but perhaps it's only a reason to have that bulleted list while this essay exists, and the essay should only exist as a stopgap until it can be replaced with something that will better fit the needs of Wikinews. I've come to suspect that an excellent solution cannot be arrived at by incrementally modifying AGI: it's going to be something askew from AGI, in a way that will keep it from being visible while one is looking at AGI. And once that solution is identified, AGI would likely become a liability — presenting a formidable exercise in political tact. Even now, when I don't know exactly yet what something better will be, I'm already trying to work up possible scenarios for peaceful transition from AGI instead of something better, to something better instead of AGI.

Still, trying to improve this is tempting (a tempting trap?). The title improved somewhat when we replaced "faith" with "intentions", but the word "assume" is another major problem: news hands shouldn't assume. One wonders whether something could be made of the phrase "benefit of the doubt", which is a bit more in the news spirit... an essay called "Doubt"? (Take that with about half a smiley.)

Have I mentioned that I consider the bulleted list at the top vitally important? --Pi zero (talk) 20:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

• Citing Scots law, how about Wikinews:Not Proven? It neither assumes, nor concludes when nothing can be ascertained for certain. Actually, I'd really like Wikinews:Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes! but I doubt that'd have the desired effect... Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:53, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I was the one who altered the page, so I suppose I'm partly responsible for this ... I wasn't completely happy with how the page read before. It seemed unclear on where AGI should be employed by switching back and forth so often - "you should sorta assume good faith - but nah, you shouldn't!" It also contained unnecessary phrasing and rambled a bit. Shorter is better. (No offence to Pi zero, I know he spent a good deal of time improving it.)

Regarding the bullet points, I can understand your position on having them be prominent to avoid TLDR. I agree, but also would like to suggest that only the first two points are necessary to stress immediately because those are the only ones that differ from most other projects' AGF. The others are less important to convey to Wikipedians, and will probably be understood by them anyway.

I understand that it's not going to be possible to please everybody with this policy. Some users vehemently refuse to have any sort of AGF policy, while others want something that closely resembles Wikipedia's model. I don't believe either extreme is best for the project. However, in the long run I believe some sort of AGF/I policy will greatly ease conflicts, especially considering that Wikinews is predisposed to conflict compared to other wikis - primarily because it's higher-pressure (deadline). In the same vein, I was toying with the idea of revamping the existing etiquette policy/guideline into something that suits our needs better, and getting it more properly enforced. It was shamelessly ignored and trampled upon during previous disputes. I may create a tentative draft in my userspace, designed to go in tandem along with an AGI policy or similar. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I see danger of falling into any (or all) of several pitfalls, there; note that I will have somewhat constructive to say, I'm just not saying it first :-). I don't want miscommunications to lurk unnoticed and then come back to haunt us later.

• Be very careful about the words "policy" and "guideline". This isn't a policy, it isn't a guideline, and I'm no longer under the misapprehension that (under its current title) it ever should be a guideline (a bit more about that as I go on).
• The etiquette guideline and dispute resolution policy are both horrible messes. The last time we had a substantial squabble (some Wikipedians, most of whom were blatant trolls, and all of whom sadly lived down to Wikinewsies' worst stereotypes of Wikipedians), the etiquette guideline actually made the situation worse. However, like this essay, I consider both of those to be distractions: time spent trying to improve them is time taken away from looking for the fundamental missing component(s), which one will never find as long as one is thus distracted.
• It's a serious (and exceedingly easy) mistake to think in terms of a spectrum between AGF and not-AGF. The space of possible strategies for community self-regulation is vast and many-dimensional, and that "spectrum" is essentially just a line segment between two points in it. So by thinking in those terms, one is omitting from consideration almost all possible strategies.
• If an approach to preventing disagreements from getting out of hand is by nature controversial, it will fail. (Controversy from troublemakers is irrelevant to this; but don't make the mistake of counting Brian McNeil among them.) I'm holding out for something that, well, Tempodivalse and Brian McNeil can both support (and not just as a political compromise). Yes, I'm really that much of an idealist. That solution, so obviously right once seen, is out there waiting to be discovered.

The bulleted list was a first cut, and I did mean to follow it up by reorganizing the whole essay after it... and then the more I thought about it the more I suspected that I couldn't get it right because the concept of the essay is flawed. So that my best use of time, if I wanted to find that elusive ideal solution, would be elsewhere. That's why my addition of the bulleted list in early October wasn't followed by further changes; I'd moved on to exploring other avenues (and then, just the last few weeks or so, I've been letting my mind lie fallow for a bit, after months of wracking my brains over this stuff).

That said, BRS's suggestion may both take this essay to where it really wants to go, and become something that Brian McNeil can support (if we do it right!), and reach such a stable state that it ceases to be a distraction thereafter. (Downcase, btw: WN:Not proven :-). I like that idea enough to try my hand at it. --Pi zero (talk) 23:16, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a very philosophical approach. I've considered whether AGI could be morphed into something different, yet retaining the basic idea of preventing conflicts. I've been rereading previous disputes and trying to find out the reason why so many were allowed to get so out of hand. My tentative conclusion is that there are multiple factors, and AGI by itself might not cover everything. Although being overly suspicious of newcomers helped start the MEdwards debacle, it was fueled by people who allowed themselves to vent their frustration without restraint or consideration, getting drawn into the luring mob mentality (no, I'm not specifically referring to brianmc, many users were guilty of it). The problem is that, unlike practically every other WMF project, we have no policy that dictates how users should interact with each other (be it civility, NPA, AGF, etc). Wikinews:Etiquette is the closest we have, but it's superficial, needs a revamp to come closer to our current needs, and more importantly needs to be promoted and enforced.

My ideas on how to improve:

• Instead of a proper AGF page, perhaps what we need is Wikinews:Don't be rude or Wikinews:Be courteous (or overhaul the existing WN:E). The page should outline basic civility/courteousness principles. Nothing drastic, just something like "don't attack other users ad hominem and/or without basis". (Personal attacks are perhaps even more of a problem for this community than assuming bad faith.) Such a page could encompass a variation on AGF appropriate for the project too, without necessitating a separate page. (I favour a minimalist approach to policy.)
• Create a better dispute process. My "dispute resolution" with brianmc didn't go well for several reasons, but a large part had to be the lack of community involvement and willingness to meditate. (Amgine was the only third party with any large input, and one person really isn't enough, IMO.) The current suggested resolution structure outlined at WN:DISPUTE doesn't work well in practice and might need altering; WN:TEA is completely unused, for instance.

I'm glad that we're trying to think more out of the box on this issue and that there's some acknowledgment that things need to be changed. I'm open to further thoughts. Tempodivalse [talk] 03:09, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────┘
There's been a moderate amount of discussion on the subject, distributed over the past six months or so. A point made early on is that there is no widespread apathy about this; it's just that the questions are authentically very difficult, insights are few and far between, and Wikinewsies who have nothing to say often refrain from giving verbal evidence of the fact.

I've also thought a great deal more about it than I've written on-wiki, not to stretch the forbearance of Wikinewsies, for whom, after all, succinctness is a prime virtue.

Thinking outside the box is a sort of specialty of mine: in any field, I look for limiting assumptions that people don't realize they're making.

• One symptom of limiting assumptions is that people have been trying to solve a problem for a long time, and they're not getting anywhere. I see that here. A candidate limiting assumption is that when people are behaving badly, one should produce a list of rules for them to follow and (I'm wording this to expose the assumption in its least favorable form) threaten to punish them if they don't toe the line. That assumption is one of the most ubiquitous and caustic there is; it's the reason why something like one out of every 150 US citizens is in prison.
• Another symptom is that as people try to get better approximate solutions, improving the approximation makes the solution more complicated. A fundamental problem has (I suggest) a clean solution; and as you approach a clean solution, things get simpler, rather than more complicated. So if your approximations are getting more complicated, you're nowhere near where you should be. I see that happening here, too.

I suspect you're not going to learn anything useful from the mediation case in which you were a principal, because you're, well, too close to it. Bawolff did remark just the other day, though, that the dispute resolution process hasn't worked successfully in a long time; I contributed the thought that the name "dispute resolution" is itself limiting in scope, as it can only kick in after a dispute is recognized to exist. --Pi zero (talk) 06:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Cut to the chase

• Good grief! There's more excess verbiage here than bugs in the tropical rainforest.

This is not, and never will be like Wikipedia, or any other WMF project. If you want it to be like Wikipedia - leave; go dick around with ITN over there.

If you aspire to any journalistic credibility, don't expect mollycoddled, or to have your errors spelt out in words of one syllable. There is not the time for such.

There have already been enough examples of misapplication of Wikipedia-esque philosophies damaging this project's credibility; so, park them outside. The "Not proven" concept put forward by BRS is interesting - if you know the context. If you don't, research it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Side note: Wikipedia-esque philosophies have damaged Wikipedia; it's just happened very much more slowly there than here, as usual. --Pi zero (talk) 13:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• And, I assume I'd be correct in guessing, tens of thousands of hours wasted putting up the pretense of assuming good faith with people who should be given an etch-a-sketch instead of an iPad, no? ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Wikipedia admin reporting in. Blunt answer: Yes. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

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(/me a little tired about how this conversation goes in the same circles over and over again) Could we please call a spade a spade. This policy is Assume good faith. To assume good faith means by definition to assume an action was done with good intentions. Assume good faith is not evil. Assume good faith does not mean you roll over and let people use you. Assume good faith does not mean you cannot give constructive criticism, it does not mean you should not be critical of your sources. Well twisting policies like this around to mean you should trust that the world is a good place without checking can damage our credibility. However just because someone can twist words to mean something unintentional is not a valid reason to not have the policy. How we treat each other also affects our credibility. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:57, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Rank hypocrisy. The name of the Wikipedia policy guideline, "Assume good faith", is a lie. Purest double-think. It took me a couple of years on Wikipedia to fully appreciate that it doesn't mean what it says, and another couple of years to really appreciate the severity of the problems caused by that discrepancy. The best, and certainly most helpful, articulation I know of the true nature of AGF is expressed in its item on WP:ZEN; and when a supposedly basic principle requires Zen philosophy to explain it, that's a bad sign.

You said it yourself: how we treat each other affects our credibility. AGF advertises itself as being about what we think, not how we treat each other. And while that lie leads to untold misery on Wikipedia in the long term, it causes much more rapid disaster here because the way we think has direct impact on our day-to-day operations.

As I only just recently got through pointing out, this is absolutely not a policy. Not even AGF on Wikipedia is a policy. Speaking of going around in circles. In wider circles (because these points haven't been raised as recently): this is not the same principle as is espoused on Wikipedia under the dishonest name "Assume good faith"; and the words "assume good intentions" do not mean the same thing as the words "assume good faith".

However, "Assume good intentions" is a bad name because it is both close to, and clearly reminiscent of, the truly awful name "Assume good faith". The name "Not proven" would be a huge improvement (with the right corresponding content). --Pi zero (talk) 21:57, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Assume good faith is a nice name (in comparison to not proven) because it is a full sentence. "Not proven" without context means nothing. Assume good faith by itself has some meaning that is relatively close to what the guideline is about. Even a guideline named "Attack the writing not the writer" would be good in my mind Bawolff ☺☻ 22:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• The idea that the title ought to be an imperative immediately strikes me neither as obviously right nor as obviously wrong. I'll have to give that more thought.
• It is (now you mention it) very promising that users may not know what "Not proven" means, as it may cause them to actually look at it.
• There is merit to choosing a short title. For one thing it's a good object lesson for aspiring newswriters.

--Pi zero (talk) 22:38, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Two Cents

As AnonIP from over a year ago (68.161.167.66 (talk · contribs), 68.161.169.110 (talk · contribs)), here's my opinion.

The problem in the Matthewedwards (talk · contribs) situation wasn't so much that there was an assumption of wrongdoing as it was the actions taken to resolve it.

Here was what he did (or at least was suspected of):

• Acquiring accreditation and trust and blah blah blah.
• Not writing the article.
• In general: fraud, betrayal, disappointment, spoiling the good name, etc.

Here were the actions taken:

• Indef block
• Scrawling vicious remarks on his user page

The question is, does the punishment fit the crime? When should blocking be used? I don't mean look it up, I mean really think about what it does and how that's supposed to help the project.

• Prevent disruption from a user's future edits.

Think about that. You had to evaluate the situation: was there a threat of future disruption from the user? Someone give one way that the block would have hypothetically prevented a user with his known history (i.e. leaving without further editing) from damaging the project with future edits. One way that the project was potentially helped by this block.

And even one way that the project was helped by the things left on the page. In that case, you really have to question the motivation behind it: helping the project, or just ego? You can hardly make an example out of someone who (apparently) left the building by making fun of him ("Hey guys, I just wrote that Matthew's an asshole on his desk! That'll show him!"). There were a lot of ruffled feathers over it, but ruffled feathers should not be what guides your actions as a person in power.

So really, it isn't about whether or not you should act civil or whatnot. It's about thinking before acting: "How does this help the project?" The only sin is selfishness.

As for abusing admin powers, here are the admin powers you should be considering when pondering whether they have been abused:

• Stuff with users
• Stuff with pages
• Using your status as an admin to hold clout over others in a dispute, whether right out, or subtly implied by bringing attention to the fact that the person is in a position of power

I'm posting all this because there is a question about the need for civility and lack of assumptions (not that this doesn't matter). Well, this shouldn't be as controversial: be mature and don't lash out at people out of spite. Be an adult. If you are in a position of power, act like it. If you want to claim you're a professional, act like one. The President of the United States doesn't go out in front of a country and say, "Fuck all y'all," even if that's what he feels. A teacher shouldn't break a kid's toy for calling him/her a cunt. A general should not be spreading rumors about a soldier because the guy insulted his wife.

In disclaimer, I just happened back here and might not think to check again. --68.161.166.101 (talk) 09:04, 24 July 2011 (UTC)