User talk:ShakataGaNai/Archives/2010/April

Review of 4 dead after Washington refinery fire‎

Sorry if I'm a bit anxious, but could you review 4 dead after Washington refinery fire‎? I just want to know if further writing on behalf of me should be up to that standard. Thanks, and Happy Editing! Buggie111 (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Categories, paragraphs. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 00:43, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

more from WN:AAA

Well, upon insistence from Cirt, I've decided it may be worth a try to approach you here, instead of AAA, with my concerns. I've already outlined over there why I feel the reviewer should have some sort of responsibility for the quality articles he reviews. Please, it takes little to no time to go over and fix a few obvious typos or grammar errors that you see in an article that you're reviewing, or even use Special:Move if needed. Remember, that follows the principle of {{sofixit}} too. If something is really choppy, like this, perhaps just fail review altogether. It's absolutely nothing personal and I applaud your work reviewing, I'm just uncomfortable with this general attitude of "not my problem" and feel it needs to be addressed. Apologies if I've been too blunt or unintentionally rude, it's just I get frustrated whenever I see us not trying to do our best. Best regards, Tempodivalse [talk] 20:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the first problem is we do need to figure out who is responsible for what. I mean, obviously if something gets past me in review, it is my fault. That being said, I can't possible take "responsibility" for every article reviewed. At this point in time there are simply too few people willing to do reviews on a regular basis.

My real problem, is this notion of "responsibility". You kept saying on IRC that it was my responsibility to make sure these articles were perfect, my responsibility to fix, etc etc. Until someone puts it in the policy that reviewers are, in fact, responsibility for every word of every article reviews... I'm gonna continue with the "not my problem" theory simply because I'm angry with being...well.. blamed for everything that is wrong with the articles.

Our review process is extensiveness, but no one person is that good, not even me. I'm REALLY good at catching copyvios, we all know that. I'm fairly good at catching the generic style stuff (though occasionally I forget about cats), I can tell if it newsworthy, I'm fairly good at NPOV (Though some people are super anal about that stuff to a level I can't compete). But my skill isn't the english portion. To me, a Copyvio is a million times worse than bad english. To you, it might be the other way round. In the end, I rely on the "anyone can edit" wikiness to get those english problems fixed. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I can sort-of understand what you're getting at, although I still don't agree with it at all. It doesn't take a brilliant knowledge of English to recognise that this is very difficult reading and clearly against our standards (not spelling out numbers twenty or less, typo in title and inappropriate use of past tense, numerous grammatical errors in main prose, etc.). {{sofixit}}. If it's not at least partially a reviewer's responsibility for the quality of the articles one publishes, why do we see so many people getting berated whenever they publish bad stories? Imagine if I published something that was total trash or spam, and I wasn't responsible for the content of the article, no one would contact me about it. At the risk of repeating myself: You publish the article, you make sure the writer did his job correctly. Reviewing is not a rubber-stamp. If reviewers weren't responsible for keeping what they publish to WN:SG standards, then they would all have a careless attitude and let through very shoddy work - and nobody could call them on it. I don't know how else to put this. This seems to me like it should be taken for granted, and is obvious, but whatever.

Also, I strongly disagree with the notion we should publish things that are of sub-par quality just to boost production and lower review time - and most of the time, to correct a few minor problems in an article takes less than a minute - if there's a lot to be rewritten, just fail the review altogether. Copyvio, followed by POV, is the worst, of course, but style should be important too - ultimately everything on the checklist is vital. If you publish an article in poor shape and think "oh, someone will fix the problems with it", that's not good. Because chances are, given our small userbase, it won't get fixed for a long time, (especially if you do the review when most of the contributors are asleep you have a rather westwards timezone). And the readers that stumble upon the article in the meantime will not at all be impressed, nor will come back for more later. Anyways, sorry if I rambled too much, but couldn't figure out a shorter way to speak my mind. Cheers. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I realize we're different than most, but we're still a wiki. We have reviewers and writers and all that... but we still a group think kinda setup. There needs to be some balance somewhere. Writers get off using it, but the reviewers dont at all? I mean, you write something bad and "It's a wiki, it isn't one persons article, there is no ownership - several people edited it" but the reviewers get the exact opposite treatment. How is that fair? Maybe our review system is broken. Maybe it shouldn't be one review for each component. Maybe it should be 5 reviews. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:43, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You're still not getting my point. Sure, a writer can create an article under the pretense of "I hope someone comes around and helps edit/improve it". I've nothing against that. But this is inappropriately conflating the reviewing process with the writing process - which are totally different. A reviewer cannot have the luxury of the attitude you describe, because he's our only precaution against a bad article going live and potentially damaging our already brittle reputation. Thus, there should be some additional pressure on him to check everything thoroughly. I've seen it time and again where an article with mistakes was published, and the error not noticed for a long time because: 1) - we don't have a large userbase, and perhaps more importantly, 2) - most editors don't spend time goggling over every published article looking for mistakes. In fact, many errors in live stories have been corrected by casual IP readers - if not for them, they might never have been noticed. I don't know how else to stress that reviewers must feel at least some sense of responsibility to go over things conscientiously if they care at all about the project.

Another example: It's bad when someone writes a poor-quality article. It's fivefold worse when that article is published. So it's natural for the reviewer to be more "at fault" when something bad goes live. (Also, if the reviewer is sometimes berated more than the writer, it's because the latter is frequently a newbie, might not know our policies, and thus isn't criticised much. Whereas, the reviewer is an established editor who is expected to know things properly, it's more surprising when he goofs up.) Perhaps the review system is broken, I don't know. I wouldn't object to some clarification in the policies as to a reviewer's duties. Cheers, Tempodivalse [talk] 22:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm a little teapot (talk · contribs)

Look at the userpage - known vandal. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk'} 13:34, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I presumed as much, but I had nothing to block em on other than I presumed as much. I figured they'd either show their ways, or someone would know. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

wmf4.me @ dewikinews

Hi, just for your information: I've just changed the script which posts dewikinews stories to twitter and identi.ca to use the wmf4.me shortener. Thanks for the service. -- Kju (talk) 16:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Cool. Good to hear it is of some use. Hopefully one of these days I'll get the next version of the software posted and it'll be a little more user friendly on the web. Never fear though, the API shall continue working the same. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 17:19, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Concerns, continued

(The other thread on this was archived by a bot, so I'll have to start a new thread) Shaka, I'm gravely concerned by your overall behaviour and attitude here. I'm not even talking about this "reviewer responsibility" stuff anymore, but on a larger level. Whenever I approach you with a concern about one of your actions, no matter how gently i try to put it, you almost always either ignore me, or rebuff my comments with things like "bog off" or "not my problem" - not just in IRC, but on-wiki as well. Frankly, I've found this hostile, condescending mindset very offputting; I remember several occasions where users were deterred from writing when you dismissed a problem in their articles as "trash" or "shit". This is completely not the way to to foster a cooperative, community environment and wholly unbefitting for an admin and bureaucrat.

Please. I know everyone must think by now that just I'm pestering you, but this has been of concern to me for some time now and I've become increasingly uncomfortable with it. I'll once again repeat that I have no personal vendetta against you, and much appreciate your contributions to the project in reviewing and article writing, but I feel this has to be addressed somehow. Best regards, Tempodivalse [talk] 17:14, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm ignoring the part about your concerns about my behavior because that's really just you. I mean most of that behavior you notice is me directed at you, because basically every time you ask me something, it's in the form of an accusation. I don't care if you mean it as such or not, that's how it came across. And just like this morning, It was bloody obvious I wasn't in a good mood - how do you start off? Not "Hey Shakata, Whats going on? Why so glum?", it was some accusation about something else.

As for the rest of the articles being marked as trash or shit... point them out where I was wrong to speedy them as vandalism/spam/trash - and I'll apologize.

I'm glad you're uncomfortable with me, maybe you'll leave me alone. I think it is fairly obvious that we have COMPLETELY GOD DAMN DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE VIEWS on everything. That's fine, but really... you don't like how I go about things, and I don't like how you go about things. To my knowledge, every IRC confrontation we've had...has started with you. Even if asking an "honest" question (it's always an "honest" question... but at least half the times reads like an accusation). So here's my suggestion on how to resolve this: You go your way, and I'll go mine. You pretend you don't see me, and I'll pretend I don't see you. We'll get along sooo much better. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:24, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and per that other thread, you never did address what the reviewers responsibilities were on wiki anywhere. I don't mean here, I mean get the community to decide. Cause... like I said before... we've got opposite view point for everything. So I don't care what you say, and you disagree with everything I say... neither of us are gonna budge (you because you think you're right and "for the betterment of the project", me because I don't care). --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:28, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I asked a friend to look over this thread. He indicates that I'm being an ass, but about par for the course for the fact that I'm flipping exhausted. He also indicated from the way you write that English is not your primary language. He believes something is being lost in translation and there is a "cultural disconnect". Makes logical sense me. After all, every time you say you're being "polite", I feel like you're making an accusation. Disconnect. So how about this: We go our separate ways. If you've got a specific edit that an issue, put that link on my talk page. No more of this vague "you dismissed a problem in their articles" stuff. Other than that, I'm gonna pretend you don't exist and I suggest you do the same. Everyone will be much happier that way. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:45, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I certainly didn't want to sound accusatory (I generally don't like to beat around the bush, and try to be straightforward without coming across as rude). "Shaka, just curious: how long have you been publishing my articles without looking at them?", which is more or less what I said in irc yesterday, seemed to be approaching the matter rather gently. I'm not sure how i can talk to someone about a concern without there being some element of criticism. I'm not accusing you, I'm curious about the reasons why you did what you did. (BTW, English is actually one of my two native languages, maybe I'm just using a more formal style of writing.)

If I came across badly, it's because I was disappointed and frustrated that you didn't want (or at least that's how it seems to me) to participate in constructive discussion. Normally, I wouldn't object to just going separate ways during a dispute, but here I'm worried that this attitude (esp. regarding the publishing issue) may adversely affect the project if left unaddressed. But I'll seek third opinion on whether it would be best to just drop this. WRT the reviewer responsibility thing, I'll bring it up at the water cooler too.

In any case, I hope there aren't any hard feelings and that we can still be on (somewhat) amicable terms if our paths meet again elsewhere. Best regards, Tempodivalse [talk] 17:42, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Not particularly bad. Just... tired... you'll notice I've been back to zero reviews and basically no edits. I'm gonna go take a wikibreak or something. Anyways... I still think it is safer if we just avoided each other where possible. Obviously not a big wiki, we'll run into each other... but you catch my drift. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 20:31, 18 April 2010 (UTC)