Category talk:Wiki People

... I don't think I like the user:MarkDilley stuff, I think Ray and Johns looks cleaner MarkDilley

Yes, it looks cleaner that way, but this is not a wiki about us, the people writing the site. It's about the wikis themselves. I can go with whatever you like, but mediawiki has some features that it's nice to use and not have to work around, like the comment notification, which can only work in teh user namespace. Also, we have to decide if this conversation is okay have or need to be on the talk page. TedErnst 17:36, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Right, it is not about us, but we are in the community, so if I put my interests down on my user page, I think that article pages wouldn't reference my user page. I feel like that is a bummer. I like the current work around I have for my namespace (front lawn) to be MarkDilley and my comment space to be talk:MarkDilley. ;-)

Yes, your workaround is fine with me. And if that's the convention we're going to use, no problem. Could you say more about your reasoning here? Article pages wouldn't reference your user page? What does that mean? TedErnst 11:50, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

That convention is not great as it doesn't separate a neutral view of Mark Dilley from his own self-maintained user page as Wikipedia does. You can only adopt it if you are willing to let every user control the description of themselves absolutely.

Could you say more about why you feel this way and what the ramifications are if we make the change your suggest, or if we don't? TedErnst | talk

I just realized something. User: namespace pages have extra links in the toolbox on the left side of the page "User contributions" and the always useful "E-mail this user". We lose those by using the main namespace. I suppose we could manually put up links like Special:Contributions/Sean Fennel and Special:Emailuser/Sean Fennel, but I don't know if I like having to do that. I suppose the pipe trick might help, but....

Norms

Is it appropriate at all to mention controversies wiki people are involved in? Or are these pages basically supposed to be vanity pages, in which the person brags about his accomplishments and good qualities? Leucosticte (talk) 21:49, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

From the page's header: "This is a list of people who consider themselves to be part of the wiki community and their associations to various Wiki sites. Articles about wiki people should describe the person from a sympathetic point of view (in other words, focus on their positive attributes). Please add your name to this list by creating a new page for yourself."

As you can see, it is NOT the purpose of this page to write negative things about other people. In fact, that is exactly the opposite of the purpose. --MarvelZuvembie (talk) 23:13, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

User Leucosticte added the sentence "This is a list of people who consider themselves to be part of the wiki community and their associations to various Wiki sites. Articles about wiki people should describe the person from a sympathetic point of view (in other words, focus on their positive attributes). Please add your name to this list by creating a new page for yourself." too that page a while ago. He is playing with ya all.--77.109.141.138 23:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Ah, so it is. --MarvelZuvembie (talk) 23:25, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I added that text because based on the recent deletion of Research Psychologist, it seemed to be an accurate description of the norm. But that was a short article, about one paragraph, that mentioned mostly the controversies about him; I was wondering, if we had a longer article about someone, whether it would be appropriate to have a brief mention of controversies. If we went to minimize drama, we'll avoid saying anything negative about anyone, but then we'll be potentially depriving readers of information they might want to know. Leucosticte (talk) 11:26, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Interesting discussion! Personally, I would suggest that where possible, it would be nice to highlight positives of wiki people. However, if a wiki person has done something bad - and that bad something directly had an effect on their wiki (or indeed another wiki), then we should include that. If a wiki person has only bad attributes, and no redeeming features, then it might be best to create a simple stub-like article and then provide a link to their bio on another wiki.

I do think we would be doing a dis-service if we only included people with positive attributes, or only included positive attributes of people whom had negative or indifferent attributes which affected the wiki world. Love these kinds of constructive discussions, keep the creative thoughts flowing! :)))) Sean, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat} • talk2HH 19:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

"bad" too is a matter of opinion. E.g., suppose someone says "Mr. X is an admirer of Adolf Hitler". Mr. X might be quite proud of this, and have no problem with the world knowing, but another user might say "We shouldn't attack him like that, by pointing out something others are likely to think badly of him about."

One could also say, "Mr. X was banned from FooWiki and BarWiki, with 'disruption' cited as the reason." Mr. X might actually want attention drawn to this, because anyone who looks at the history will see that the accusations were unfounded and that his bans were therefore unjustified (on those grounds, anyway). But someone looking at it only superficially might say "This is an attack article that makes it sound like Mr. X has done a lot of bad stuff" when in reality, all it said was that certain actions were taken based on certain allegations.

Also, some users take pride in disrupting wikis. Some RationalWikians, for instance, delight in editing Conservapedia in ways that are unwelcome there, and in bragging about it on their site. Some Encyclopedia Dramaticans (GNAA, I guess it would be) are the same way about their acts of blatant vandalism. Some people, including those who hold a high rank (sysop, bureaucrat, moderator, etc.) on various wikis, think they're doing a good deed with their "lulzworthy" disruption of other sites, or their interference with the orderly operation of a site that they think is a bad wiki (i.e. a wiki that doesn't conform to what they think are good standards).

The wikisphere has different norms than other communities; there's more tolerance for pulling pranks and being a pest, because anything can be fairly easily reverted. Sockpuppetry is engaged in all the time, without carrying the stigma it would if someone were to be caught deceptively operating under a fake identity in real life. Therefore, accusations of behaving dickishly are not such a big a deal, and I think we need not worry so much about exposing the truth, especially when there are contribution histories to prove what we write. In my opinion, we just shouldn't do total hatchet jobs on the one hand, or glowing PR jobs on the other, in those situations in which the truth is somewhere in the middle. Leucosticte (talk) 20:50, 6 May 2014 (UTC)