User talk:Wnt

Welcome to Meta!

Hello Wnt!, and Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing! -- Mikhailov Kusserow (talk) 08:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

You think so?

Please take a look here, if of course you'd have a time to do it before it gets deleted. Cheers.--Mbz1 (talk) 16:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Looking at this, I'd say when I said to keep it under 500 words, I was being too generous. You're still linking a bunch of different issues, some of which may be valid, under the headline "I have been bullied by ArbCom", which is not a way to get people constructively engaged. People are not going to turn around and agree that the en.wiki ArbCom is all fouled up without a lot more persuading on the individual issues. Some of these issues have substantial traction - many people don't generally approve of the lack of transparency in the process, and I really think you have a winner when it comes to blocking or banning Meta users for comments on Meta that never got them blocked on Meta itself. This one diff [1] and a simple question like the one I suggested is worth much more than your entire sandbox presentation!

There should come a point where you've been through all this despite may be reasonable concerns, where you really should ask yourself, have you been effective at presenting your case? Your approach is not working. Step back and look at the issues, one by one, dispassionately, as if you were just reading some proposal on a Village Pump about whether X is a good policy to have or not. Talk about them, one by one, dispassionately, beginning with those which are most compelling and omitting those which are complicated to explain. Just plain stop and forget about anything that involves you having to impute hostile agendas and motives to your opponents in order to make your case. It doesn't matter if you're being "bullied" or if some admin is out to get you - because the neutral observer can't figure that out! - the point is, either their actions were good policy or bad policy or contrary to policy, and you need to get that and only that sorted out by neutral parties. Wnt (talk) 17:18, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Global bans policy discussion

At Requests for comment/Global bans, where you have commented in support of Option 2, a third option has recently been implemented. The first two options did not prove a way for respondents to indicate that they oppose global bans entirely, i.e., that it is not possible to write a meaningful global bans policy that would attract their support. Option 3 is intended to provide that opportunity, and to aid in distinguishing between people who oppose the proposed policy because it requires improvements and those who oppose the proposed policy because no policy permitting global bans should be adopted.

Because the third section was added late by a respondent, it is possible that some people who responded early in the RFC have commented at option 2, but would really prefer to support option 3, or support both. If so, you may voluntarily choose to move your original comment or to or strikethrough your original comment and add new comments. This is a courtesy notice of the change, and there is no requirement that you take any action. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Building a better Global Bans RfC

en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_ArbCom_Reform_Party/Bill_of_Rights – I like what you attempted to do. Perhaps you would be interested in helping me (and hopefully others, if they join the effort; I'm alone at the moment) build a better Global Bans RfC:

• Talk:Requests_for_comment/Global_bans#Preparing_a_better_RfC
• User:Michaeldsuarez/Global_bans_RfC_2

I would like to hear your thoughts and ideas. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 19:36, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Upcoming IdeaLab Events: IEG Proposal Clinics

Idea Lab

Idea Lab

Hello, Wnt! We've added Events to IdeaLab, and you're invited :)

Upcoming events focus on turning ideas into Individual Engagement Grant proposals before the March 31 deadline. Need help or have questions about IEG? Join us at a Hangout:

• Thursday, 13 March 2014, 1600 UTC
• Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 1700 UTC
• Saturday, 29 March 2014, 1700 UTC

Hope to see you there!

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Digital democracy project

Hello Wnt. I wanted to drop you a note, firstly to thank you for all of your input to the attempt to community source the submission to the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy. Even though the work hasn't been overwhelmed by large numbers of contributors I think it has led to something valuable. We are going to look at encouraging submission to the next theme - representation - and the final theme, when it is announced. Each theme will have a separate submission (to include the talk page) but at the time of the final one we'll be compiling some kind of report as an accompaniment. The second point is I definitely agree we need to encourage more people to participate directly on the call for the second theme (and those subsequent). I would love to get some suggestions from you on this. I have deliberately been quite reticent about promoting the project through Wikipedia channels as I don't want to do anything that could upset the community. Do you have any views on how we could get more people involved? Thank you for all of your help so far, it is appreciated. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:04, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decitions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

I'm notifying you because you participated in one of several relevant discussions. -Pete F (talk) 22:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect letter update

Hi Wnt,

Along with more hundreds of others, you recently signed Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer, which I wrote.

Today, we have 562 signatures here on Meta, and another 61 on change.org, for a total of 623 signatures. Volunteers have fully translated it into 16 languages, and begun other translations. This far exceeds my most optimistic hopes about how many might sign the letter -- I would have been pleased to gain 200 siguatures -- but new signatures continue to come.

I believe this is a significant moment for Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Very rarely have I seen large numbers of people from multiple language and project communities speak with a unified voice. As I understand it, we are unified in a desire for the Wikimedia Foundation to respect -- in actions, in addition to words -- the will of the community who has built the Wikimedia projects for the benefit of all humanity. I strongly believe it is possible to innovate and improve our software tools, together with the Wikimedia Foundation. But substantial changes are necessary in order for us to work together smoothly and productively. I believe this letter identifies important actions that will strongly support those changes.

Have you been discussing these issues in your local community? If so, I think we would all appreciate an update (on the letter's talk page) about how those discussions have gone, and what people are saying. If not, please be bold and start a discussoin on your Village Pump, or in any other venue your project uses -- and then leave a summary of what kind of response you get on the letter's talk page.

Finally, what do you think is the right time, and the right way, to deliver this letter? We could set a date, or establish a threshold of signatures. I have some ideas, but am open to suggestions.

Thank you for your engagement on this issue, and please stay in touch. -Pete F (talk) 18:28, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Loss of local autonomy

I mentioned a 2013 comment of yours in Wikimedia_Forum#Impact_of_SUL_finalization_on_local_autonomy. --Abd (talk) 14:29, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Quote Stealing

I just wanted to say I'm stealing a quote from you for my personal Quotes file:

I don't have extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim... but these are extraordinary facts that need an extraordinary explanation.

That's awesome and hysterical. Great wordsmithing. The perfect rationalist approach to raising extraordinary concerns without stepping into conspiracytheoryism. Alsee (talk) 18:45, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

The word "proof" is often used carelessly. Proof is proof, what is really being described is not proof, but circumstantial argument.

The original quote is "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof," by Marcello Truzzi, one of my Favorite People, but not his most shining example of clarity, because, again, proof is proof. Ordinary proof is quite enough for anything. Carl Sagan popularized it in a more defensible version: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The WP article on Truzzi then traces this to Hume: "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence"' and back to Laplace: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." (i.e, the strangeness of the claim, not of the evidence.) These are obvious.

What is missed in many discussions of this is that is heuristic, not a logical requirement. It's another form of w:Occam's Razor, and can be a guide to where to invest one's time.

I've seen the canard repeated commonly in discussions of Cold fusion. Cold fusion exists as two distinct entities: as a body of experimental evidence which is adequate to create a high probability that there is an anomaly, i.e., something unexplained by accepted understanding -- in my considered opinion, and this has been the position in the scientific journals for some time.

Or "cold fusion" is a theory, that the anomaly is explained by some particular nuclear process, "fusion," at low excitation energies, i.e., "cold." Nearly every theory of "cold fusion" (though not necessarily all) requires that some accepted principle of nuclear physics be considered wrong or incomplete. I.e., the theories are "extraordinary claims." So, to accept a specific theory, extraordinary evidence is needed. We are not there yet.

There is a recent "explanation of cold fusion," published by Edmund Storms, that describes many aspects of the anomaly, and that also includes a "theory of mechanism." The general explanation is heavily based on experimental evidence and is highly likely to be correct (it successfully explains many of the oddities and puzzles about field). The theory of mechanism is a leap, and appears to me, and to others, to be implausible. And, for that specific theory, there is only weak circumstantial evidence. (Along the lines of "what else could it be?")

Experimental evidence is not, scientifically, rejected because someone may draw extraordinary conclusions from it. It's ordinary evidence in that sense, and the general common law of evidence obtains. (I.e., presumed true unless controverted, expertise is considered, etc.) It's the explanation that can more reasonably be controversial.

Because anomalous heat at the levels found was very much unexpected, there was reasonably high expectation that "there must be some mistake." However, those results have been confirmed, over and over (that highly loaded palladium deuteride sometimes generates heat, under conditions originally not well-understood, and still poorly understood, that appears to be more than chemistry can explain), and there is much more; the nuclear ash from the reaction was identified by 1991 as helium, and confirmed by measurement of the ratio of heat to helium. The reaction has the effect of deuterium fusion, if not using the same mechanism. That is extraordinary evidence, i.e. evidence of high probative value (through the correlation of variables that should be independent if the measurements are in error). That does not validate any particular theory of mechanism, so it does not actually challenge existing physics, the predictions of which, it is well-known, were based on approximations, since the math in condensed matter is ridiculously difficult.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is then, in practice, used to deny the existence of evidence. The purpose of the heuristic is to avoid wasting time considering claims likely to be false, based on isolated claims and only a little evidence. However, it then becomes a mantra repeated to ward off the unknown, and what Richard P. Feynman called "cargo cult science." With no actual examination of evidence, anomalies are rejected, thus freezing science into what is already thought to be understood. Truzzi stood against this, in fact, dealing with some fairly outrageous claims. --Abd (talk) 21:26, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Please fill out our Inspire campaign survey

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What future IdeaLab campaigns would you like to see?

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I’m Jethro, and I’m seeking your help in deciding topics for new IdeaLab campaigns that could be run starting next year. These campaigns aim to bring in proposals and solutions from communities that address a need or problem in Wikimedia projects. I'm interested in hearing your preferences and ideas for campaign topics!

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Future IdeaLab Campaigns results

Last December, I invited you to help determine future ideaLab campaigns by submitting and voting on different possible topics. I'm happy to announce the results of your participation, and encourage you to review them and our next steps for implementing those campaigns this year. Thank you to everyone who volunteered time to participate and submit ideas.

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I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation. 23:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Open Call for Individual Engagement Grants

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program is accepting proposals until April 12th to fund new tools, research, outreach efforts, and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), IEGs can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

• Submit a grant request or draft your proposal in IdeaLab
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With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources 15:57, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Test message to hopefully help clear phantom crosswiki notification - dismiss from Enwiki

Hope this helps to clear your phantom notification. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You’re getting this message because you participated in the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey and we want to make sure you don't miss it this year – or at least can make the conscious choice to ignore if it you want to. The 2015 survey decided what the Community Tech team should work on during 2016. It was also the focus of Wikimedia hackathons and work by other developers. You can see the status of wishes from the 2015 wishlist at 2015 Community Wishlist Survey/Results.

The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is now open for wishes. You can create proposals until November 20. You will be able to vote on which wishes you think are best or most important between November 28 and December 12. /Johan (WMF) (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You get this message because you’ve previously participated in the Community Wishlist Survey. I just wanted to let you know that this year’s survey is now open for proposals. You can suggest technical changes until 11 November: Community Wishlist Survey 2019.

You can vote from November 16 to November 30. To keep the number of messages at a reasonable level, I won’t send out a separate reminder to you about that. /Johan (WMF) 11:25, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Gab and Mastodon

Because you mentioned Gab: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190715/00244442587/gab-mastodon-challenges-content-moderation-more-distributed-social-network.shtml As expected, Mastodon is able to seamlessly absorb such projects. Nemo 17:55, 16 July 2019 (UTC)