User:Versageek/My 2Cents on..

My Admin Policy

I'd been looking for a clean way of expressing this for a while, then I discovered that someone had beaten me to it.. so, with thanks to User:NoSeptember - here it is:

My Admin Policy: I trust that my fellow admins' actions are done for the good of Wikipedia. So if any of my admin actions are overturned I will not consider such an action to be a "Wheel War", but rather an attempt to improve Wikipedia. If I disagree with your action, I will try to discuss it with you or with the admin community, but I absolve you in advance of any presumption of acting improperly. We should all extend the same benefit of the doubt to our fellow admins, until they repeatedly prove that they are unworthy of such a presumption.

Paid editing

Paid editing happens. In the time that it takes me to compose this very basic outline - it's likely that somewhere on en.wiki, someone being paid to edit has saved a change. This has been happening for some time & will continue as long as Wikipedia is at the top of the results in most search engines.

Paid editing is by it's nature a conflict of interest, your client or employer wants the page to read a certain way and they will judge your performance on your ability to make the page match their expectations. This can put you (the paid editor), in an uncomfortable position. What takes priority, the wiki rules & guidelines - or what your employer wants?

Types of paid editing

Typically, paid editors are paid to present a subject in a positive manner - occasionally the opposite may be true. I suspect many paid editors fly under the radar because they adhere to our editing guidelines and provide reliable sources for material they add to articles.

Paid editors may belong to one of these groupings:

1. An employee of, or principal in .. a particular company/organization, a government agency or perhaps a public relations/Online reputation management agency:

• When writing about the company, programs which they administer or companies which they represent as a task associated with their employment.

1. A Freelancer.

• When accepting financial compensation for writing about a particular subject or entity.

The Role of admins and functionaries

The role of admins & functionaries on this project is to thwart activity which is disruptive to the goal of editing the encyclopedia, not to blindly enforce 'rules'. Zero tolerance (schools) is just as dumb in cyberspace as it is in the real world.

The Pr0n purge

• I'm of the opinion that images we use for pages about sex acts should be illustrations rather than photos.

• I don't believe that photos of erotic artwork from ~100+ yrs ago are obscene pornography today. It may or may not have been pornographic at the time it was created, but today it's age gives it additional value as both art and historical artifact. Likewise, old erotic texts hold value now as both literature and historical record. Will today's pornography have the similar value 100 yrs from now? Dunno, perhaps some of it will.

• Simple Nudity is NOT Pornographic!! The human form is a thing of natural beauty. If you can't look at a naked person without thinking about sex acts, that's your problem, not ours.

Attracting more editors

• I think we should broaden our scope (eg: modify notability requirements) to include long existing regional entities. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up deleting articles about businesses, establishments and organizations which are well known in their region - if only for having remained in business for > 50 years. Our society has lost so many of these kinds of entities in the recent years, it makes me sad to delete these pages, as I believe this is the kind of historical record our readers would find useful.

The Gender Gap / Gender in Cyberspace

• Meh : On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. That said, for women who choose to identify their gender - they should be treated as equals and not subject to harassment. In turn, they should treat men as equals and not subject them to harassment. Is it really that hard to treat others with respect?

Protesting SOPA/PIPA

• WMF projects have a long history of respecting copyright. Our blackout was about raising awareness of poorly written, overreaching proposed laws that threaten the very existence of not only our projects - but user generated content on the Internet in general.

Limitations of CheckUser

• We don't have any special tools that allow us to peer through the Interwebz and view who was sitting at the keyboard when a specific edit was made.

..more to come

Maxims & Quips

• Any SEO group who tries to advertise their services ON Wikipedia probably has no idea what real SEO is.
• Karma dictates that any spam links to money making schemes placed on Make Money Fast or Get-rich-quick scheme should be converted to examples and left there. If spammers can't bother to actually READ the articles they are trying to spam - they deserve what they get.