BoyWiki:Agora/26 November 2015

Agora/26 November 2015

Hoopla over using BoyChat material at BoyWiki

A post at BC proposes "a section on BoyWiki listing interesting posts from Boychat", specifying "long and unique posts that could be saved and maybe categorized". Which is a good idea that I have recently also mentioned (here and here). Now, this comes quite unexpectedly to me, but there seems to be some deep-seated resistance towards this, perhaps out of privacy concerns, copyright considerations (as it were) or perhaps even outright hostility and distrust against BoyWiki and its contributors. How should we approach this issue in the most constructive manner? __meco (talk) 16:12, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Address the copyright concerns and then just go ahead and start copying the content over here. I'm not sure whom we need to talk to, to get the copyright concerns addressed, but this has come up at MetaBoyChat before, and maybe it's time to open a new thread there. Etenne, what do you think? Lysander (talk) 16:30, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea that will never get off the ground because no one will ever devote the amount of time necessary to see it through. --Etenne (talk) 16:54, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I cannot believe that. Are people of the community so incredibly lazy and self-obsessed that a sufficient number of people willing to work with this is blatantly unlikely, as you clearly suggest? Or does it hark back to suspicion and disagreement with the way BoyWiki is run? __meco (talk) 17:39, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I will let you decide that for yourself --Etenne (talk) 18:51, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Can we come up with a statement of consent to republication that will make it possible to repost BoyChat posts here? People would need to consent to have their content reposted everywhere, not just on BoyWiki, for it to be compatible with BoyWiki:Copyrights. I guess I'll get the ball rolling by stating, "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify all of my BoyChat posts under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts." Lysander (talk) 07:53, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure I can answer that as it seems to me to be more a question for the admin staff of BoyChat.--Etenne (talk) 15:08, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean the "admin staff"? I see one person with extended permissions editing this wiki: YOU. What is this clandestine cabal of remote personages whom we as active users are apparently supposed to humbly revere and await the edicts of? I'm more than a little flustered by this, coming from the Wikimedia community (and also another wiki) where users discuss what changes could, should and will be made. I mean, it's not like there isn't a framework and higher officials enforcing that framework at those other wikis, but it's certainly not like what seems to be how things are done here where issues being proposed are routinely referred to some unaccountable, anonymous body of controllers. I know I'm pretty new here, but I find this highly suspect. __meco (talk) 16:51, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The WMF is the same way. When you get ArbCom-banned without a formal ArbCom case being opened, there's no community discussion. In fact, the block comment will say that all discussions should be by the private ArbCom email list. When you get SanFran banned (as you and I were), the matter is not open for community discussion either. Nor was Wikipedia's child protection policy enacted by community discussion; rather, it was imposed by Jimbo, and it's kept in its current form by Alison, who usually declines to discuss the merits of it.

On BoyWiki, usually we only hear of the wiki council's discussions or actions through Etenne. They don't post their email archives, or even the minutes of their discussions, anywhere for us to see. This is what organizations do when they're afraid of the legal consequences of being transparent. Whether this actually works to reduce legal liability is debatable. Lysander (talk) 17:23, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Minutes of the Wiki Council: Etenne is currently fighting against making BoyWiki completely anonymous so users can't see the user names of the other users making edits. I am not making any friends by doing this and I am getting blasted by you and blasted by them... and still I go on, some days more merrily then others..... --Etenne (talk) 18:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Here is an excerpt from that discussion,

The second part of my post was a (small) manifestation of my tiredness and bitterness about the total lack of action concerning the personal security of our contributors.

In the beginning, we thought that BoyWiki could have the same rules and ways of functioning as Wikipedia, with everything overt and visible for everybody. We must never forget that in reality, we are hunted pariahs, treated as the worst criminals; that our fates and lives are in constant danger; and that the security of each of us can depend on an infuriated anti, a vicious traitor, a madman in crisis, or an obstinate investigator.

That's why we need to be as cautious and invisible as members of a resistance movement during a war. Tracing what one of us does and writes must be impossible.

It seems that the only way to fulfill this is to make all "signatures" in BoyWiki invisible—except for the administrators, naturally. (If there is another way, it can be discussed—but I doubt it.)

Any venue that attempts to foist anonymity upon me has seen the last of me. And please note, Etenne, my frustration is not, and has not (I believe) been directed at you. I very much appreciate your dedication. __meco (talk) 18:10, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Re. the "Minutes of the Wiki Council". In my opinion it is shocking and condemnable that (or "if", a slight proviso taking into account my newness and would-be lack of oversight) that this is being discussed unbeknownst to the community of contributors. Is there an utter lack of adherence to the consensus principle at play here? Is there an elite here that asserts ownership and dictatorial privileges with regards to the function and development of BoyWiki? __meco (talk) 18:25, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Meco, yes, it appears there's an elite here that asserts ownership and dictatorial privileges with regards to the function and development of BoyWiki. Most wikis (including RationalWiki, Dramatica, etc.) are like that. Lysander (talk) 18:27, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Etenne, I certainly don't blame you for decisions that are outside your control, and if you're fighting the good fight against what sounds like a stupid proposal, then I thank you. Even if we got rid of user names like "Meco," "Lysander," etc. we would still need to identify ourselves in some way (e.g. User1, User2, etc.) in order for the community to function as a community. I see that one of our users already chose to take part in such a naming scheme.

Thank you for staying active on BoyWiki during circumstances that might would have discouraged me to the point I would have quitted. Most notably, there have been periods when it seemed like you were the only editor, yet you soldiered on. Lysander (talk) 18:27, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Re. the text in red. I understand the argument and the need felt by many to be able to contribute anonymously. What I don't understand is how this isn't sufficiently provided for by the default wiki setup, even barred allowing anonymous contributions. Can someone please explain why they find that the way this wiki currently operates provides them insufficient security? __meco (talk) 19:22, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

This does not seem to be sufficient as an approach to this issue. As I have argued, other, antagonistic parties are going to harvest stuff from any pedo-related forum or website with utter disregard for intellectual property or privacy rights. I would think it even more important that we focuse on protecting people at BoyChat who do not want the additional exposure of being referred to prominently (or not so prominently) in a BoyWiki article. There would be several ways of effecting such protection (but such measures should be effected usually only upon concrete demand to do so). For one, we could make additional efforts to anonymize a text (quote) from BoyChat, not naming who posted it, not linking to the BC post. Also, we could use paraphrasing rather than exact quoting when requested to do so. These options could be announced at BoyChat along with their rules for posting.

We here at BoyWiki should devise guidelines for referencing and quoting BoyChat. One point of these guidelines should require that whenever material from BC was added to or referenced at a BoyWiki page (whether that be an article or a discussion), the BoyChat poster and BoyChat thread in question should be notified. And there would likely be different considerations depending on whether the reference was in an article or in a discussion. Notification to users could possibly be made privately with the cooperation of the BoyChat cogs, I suppose. If this isn't possible we could simply post the notification as a BoyChat post using a standard header such as "Notification of BoyWiki reuse", possibly even including the name of the user being notified in the title. The downside to this is that it would be very ostentatious (and some would perhaps even consider it clutter). And this notification post, or one delivered privately, would then include the standard conditions, routines and how to request added level of anonymity along the lines with which I started this comment. __meco (talk) 20:39, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Do as you wish. In the meantime, I will continue feeling free to quote short passages from BoyChat posts pursuant to fair use doctrine. Lysander (talk) 21:48, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

And here is another thread over at BC started by Hikari that includes discussion on this topic. __meco (talk) 18:03, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Do we already have an article on this (gender bias issue)

When I read this post at BC I figured it would be a very valuable thing to collate such stories from from both the male and female adult side and compare the reactions. We could start out by simply collecting the evidence and then as the material increased we could give it some analysis. Also, I'm sure there must exist some analyses of this complex already, and that should also going into this article as soon as it got dug up. The stark opposite to that woman/boy story would be this, I presume. A focus of the article would have to, in my opinion, also be homophobia and androphobia/misandry. __meco (talk) 17:36, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Hikari/notes ____meco (talk) 14:06, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Meco. Please use the notes as you wish :) Also, the doctor who was harassed is a female. Have you also seen this new article? You could use it to compare and contrast. It raises the question, do other countries have more of a gender bias than others? User:Hikari(talk) 16:46, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

That is one of the things we might just find out after we started to collate this material. __meco (talk) 17:53, 28 November 2015 (UTC)