User:JWSchmidt

Welcome to User:JWSchmidt! Feel free to edit this page, but since it is my user page, I get the last word. If you just want to leave me a message use my user talk page.

I often wonder what it is like for most people who try to learn MediaWiki markup. One day I watched a new editor spend several minutes and many edits trying to create a new external link. I finally stepped in and did it. I'm not sure that most web surfers find it easy to become Wikipedians. Wikipedia naturally selects for certain types of people and that means as a group Wikipedia editors have biases.

When I think about the youngest Wikipedia users, I feel like they and I are from different universes. Some Wikipedians seem to have little interest in making an encyclopedia; they seem to view Wikipedia as a

I learned

It was by way of Wikipedia that I first learned about

Towards that end, Wikipedia continues to evolve and to spin-off sister projects. I am very much concerned with how to promote higher quality in Wikipedia articles, and I am interested in the idea that a Wikiversity project could help.

I worry about the fact that

I support the philosophy of "gently nudging participants in the direction of more appropriate behavior". Sometimes I feel that while I have been busy "gently nudging", I have been trampled by a stampede. I worry that some Wikipedians I respect have left Wikipedia because of this continuing problem. If we view Wikipedia as an experiment, we have to accept the possibility that it contains the seeds of its own ultimate failure. It is possible that Wikipedia will be remembered as an example of how not to run a wiki.....is it possible that the best we can hope for is that other wikis will learn from the failings of Wikipedia and do better? Jimmy Wales said, "I think we should run small experiments, tests, see what works, what doesn't, and be prepared to be flexible and change, and not be too locked into stone about how things should work." I wonder if this can be applied to Wikipedia? Has Wikipedia become an institution that is not able to examine its own problems and fix them? Does this force those Wikipedians who want to fix things to abandon the project?

Of course, our problems could be even worse than just being unable to improve; the project could attract so many POV pushers that they will take control. In my view Wikipedia:Attribution as a replacement for Wikipedia:Verifiability is an example of a downward trend. This policy change was supported by POV pushers who love to cite unverifiable sources such as propaganda web sites and include unverifiable content in Wikipedia because they can attribute it to a source. These people display a concept of "reliable source" that amounts to "it supports my point of view". These folks seem to live on Wikipedia and behave like paid propagandists citing their own websites in order to spread their propaganda on Wikipedia. At one time, there were good examples of reliable and unreliable sources at Wikipedia:Reliable sources. That has been eliminated now so that mostly bland generalities remain that deter nobody from citing sources that are unreliable because they cannot be verified. It will be interesting to see the response to Jimbo's objection. The policy "wonks" who have nothing better to do have taken policy merging to the logical extreme (see: Wikipedia:Overlapping policies and guidelines). "Proposals" to merge policies can now be routinely made without there actually being a proposal explaining the benefits. "I have nothing useful to do today so I'll merge some policy pages".

Dear JWSchmidt,

"We tried to get in contact with you almost a year ago, detailing our desires to utilise your account to help rid Wikipedia of the corruption and bureaucracy at every level that continues to plague it to this very day. We are hoping that, almost a year on, your circumstances may have changed and you may be more willing to aid us in achieving our goal. At the end of the day we all want the same thing - an encyclopedia that is informative and accurate, but one that is also run in a fair manner so all can contribute on an equitable level."
Kind Regards,
The Wikipedia Freedom Fighters

Wikipedia projects I support

Wiki Loves Monuments

Fuzheado, Gamaliel, Effeietsanders, Nikikana, LilyOfTheWest, and SuperHamster discuss the annual Wiki Loves Monuments worldwide photography contest

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See the guide to WikiProjects.

• Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject - improvement of molecular and cell biology
  articles at Wikipedia.
• Cell Signaling WikiProject - example: Cell signaling
• Neuroscience WikiProject - example: Action potential
• Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids
• Eric R. Kandel
• Wikipedia podcasting project - see also: Introduction to GarageBand

• Should work closely with Wikiversity:
  • Community WikiProject
  • Fact and Reference Check WikiProject
  • Harvard referencing
• LiquidThreads - will be useful for Wikiversity - Wikicite.
• Science collaboration of the week - example: RuBisCO
• Scientology WikiProject - I have a general interest in pseudoscience and New Age religions (see). Further, I think that the scientology-related articles provide a good example of one of the serious problems facing Wikipedia. It is instructive to look at the earliest versions of the scientology article, the earliest edits of the original version of the article (such as this), and how the scientology-related articles have evolved during the past five years. I would love to obtain some information about how the original version of the Wikipedia scientology article was produced.....I'm guessing it may have originated in nupedia. In any case, it was a fairly scholarly and NPOV article and it is sad to see how the article went down hill when it came under the influence of Wikipedians. It is clear that from its earliest moments scientology came under attack by an army of determined opponents. Some open questions to ponder: which is the more interesting phenomenon, scientology or anti-scientology? Will it ever be possible for Wikipedia to produce scholarly and NPOV articles about topics such as scientology or is Wikipedia perpetually doomed to suffer from its editors' biases?
  • End of Scientology arbitration brings blocks, media coverage June 2009

"let's leave our political fights at the door to the greatest extent that we can"
--Jimbo in the WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 30, Issue 96, January 10, 2006.

Examples of places I work

• My Image:Three cell growth types.png illustration got listed as a Featured picture candidate by Finlay McWalter.
• Footnotes
  to Wikipedia articles.
• Helicobacter pylori - It is nice to have articles like this ready for the day when the Nobel Prize is announced.
• I watch for vandalism to biology-related articles, particularly subtle vandalism. my request for adminship

"Wikipedia is not a place to assess the morality of a person, their beliefs or their orientation, neither is it the place to advocate for or against a political or religious point of view." -(source, origin)

Other Wiki projects

• My Meta-wiki user page - About.
• My Wikiversity user page - History and visions
• My Wikibooks user page
• My Wikinews user page - Interview with Jimbo Wales
• My Wiktionary user page.
• My Wikiquote user page.
• My Wikispecies user page - Placentalia.
• My Wikimania 2006 user page.
• My Wikicities user page.

See also

• my old user page - pre-2006
• User:Memenen - One day I found myself on a strange computer without my Wikipedia password. I started a new user account. Sometimes I still use the Memenen account since it has a much leaner watch list than does my User:JWSchmidt account.
• In order to see what information is given to new users, I just made User:JohnWSchmidt.
• In order to test single user login I created
  User:JWSurf
  .
• As part of a Wikiversity learning project I created User:Beetlebaum.
• maintenance - my list
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-10-09/Eloquence interview
• Wikipedia problems: well said

Pending changes

Wikipedia:Reviewing | Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue | Special:OldReviewedPages | Special:StablePages | (IRC #wikipedia-en-pending) |

What is pending changes? What does it do?

Extended content

"Pending changes protection" can ensure the most recent changes to a troubled page are not displayed to the wider (non-editing) readership until checked by a more experienced user for obvious rollback . It is useful for persistent vandalism, BLP tabloid news, and other inappropriate edits that cannot easily be prevented from some exposure using existing tools, and on high sensitivity articles and issues. It can be applied to prevent IP/non-autoconfirmed editing or editing by all users (except admins) the same as semi- and full- page protection.

What is the purpose of the trial?

Extended content
One aim of the trial is to test in practice that the delay can be kept short and see what impact it has and how it works in practice.

When would it be appropriate to use it?

Extended content

See the page protection policy section . Its primary targets are pages with "hard to address" vandalism and inappropriate editing, such as very variable IP vandalism, breaking news with high visibility/high vandalism risk issues, BLPs with persistent rumors or internet gossip, or other activity that has usually needed permanent protection. Pending changes should be used during the trial for pages that have a clear requirement that edits need checking before being readable by the wider world, and when normal existing tools cannot resolve the problem, or where the disruption to good faith editing would be severe. In terms of policy, use of pending changes protection level 1 is subject to the same conditions as semi protection, and use of pending changes protection level 2 to the same conditions as full protection. Examples include Persistent ongoing vandalism that cannot be prevented by usual means without much disruption Repeated insertions of BLP violation/internet gossip/tabloid news/urban myth insertions, etc Edit warring by large groups that cannot be controlled by usual sanctions High profile articles with a high risk of inappropriate editing (requiring both editing and an absence of vandalism), especially those on permanent, long term, or very repeated protection. The trial only allows 2000 pages - use judiciously.

How does the tool impact editors and readers?

Extended content

See the help page . Editors (logged in) are not affected at all. Non-editor readers are not affected except on "pending changes protected" pages, where they see the latest version that is marked as vandalism/abuse free. In effect "anyone can still edit", but "pending changes protected" pages have a delay before non-editors see the latest versions. No material is hidden and non-editors can still see the latest revisions (if any) at the click of a tab. The trial is starting slowly in order to test whether we can in fact do this without significant delay.

How are reviewer rights obtained and removed?

Extended content
See the help page . Database reports will be used to automatically generate lists of users likely experienced enough and they will be granted the rights. Administrators can grant the rights, in the same way as rollback (which has a very similar trust level). There's also a page to individually request the right linked from there.

What is the policy?

Extended content

The policy on usage has been largely incorporated into page protection policy and processes. That's because of a pragmatic point about time (trial rolls out in a few days). More specifically, the reviewing aspect is different but the scope, usage and requests (ie WP:RFPP aspects) are likely to be nearly identical to semi-protection and can usefully go on the same page. It keeps it simple to have all forms of page protection and their requests in one place, and describe it as "pending changes protection" (which is intuitive and fits existing wordings), even if they are in fact 2 tools. Also treating it as "another form of protection" means we don't need to copypaste 2/3 of all PP and RFPP pages, guides and processes, we can just update those pages to include mention and coverage of this new method, and it's a lot less change and disruption, and much more likely to fit into "what people already know". In other words, current protection policy and requests are close enough to be adopted for a lot of it, and doing so brings this immediately into the "realms of the familiar" for anyone who uses protection already, rather than making entire new processes and pages. Other aspects of the policy such as granting of rights etc and guidance are still at WP:PEND ") is outdated and until rewritten, best ignored for a day or two.

How are requests for "pending changes protection/unprotection" made for a page?

Extended content
See Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Ie, in the same way as other forms of protection, or by any administrator. A time limit can be defined, as for all other forms of protection.

Key information:

• Request rights
  )
• section link
  ) covering usage policy.
• Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is being updated to reference requests for pending changes protection and its removal.
• Category:Wikipedia pending changes protected pages
• June 18 - 92 pages

To do:

• Mark pages referencing other proposals, possible implementations etc as "historical"
• Create necessary templates similar to semi-protection
• Check if "reviewer" and "autoreviewer" need distinguishing anywhere
• Inform users if needed (non-editor readers will probably rely on templates as for existing protection)(source)

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• Be the perfect model of a modern Wikipedian

This user knows that bears are Godless killing machines without a soul.

This user is Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology .

External links

• Here is an interesting item found in Wikipedia:
  • Link to brain sugar at Sialic acid.
• Interesting facts about Wikipedia:
  • Any publicity is good publicity