Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 1 (section)

==Four questions==
===First question; where can I keep work in progress?===
Sometimes it takes me several weeks to write a big new article from scratch. Examples completed are [[puberty]] and [[androgen insensitivity syndrome]]. Similar examples I am currently working on are [[growth hormone treatment]] and [[congenital adrenal hyperplasia]]. As you can see the latter are incomplete, sometimes even with sentence fragments. So far, no one has bothered them because they are pretty unsearched-for (maybe even unwanted or unneeded, but let's not go there...). Is there a way to make a personal temp page, or hidden sandbox, or whatever you call it, where I could do all the work until it's ready to post in a more complete form and no one else would accidentally find it? [[User:Alteripse|Alteripse]] 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

: Yes, you can make a subpage of your userpage, by adding /whatever after it - for example [[User:Alteripse/sandbox]], [[User:Alteripse/work in progress]], or whatever you like. Alternatively, just keep things offline and edit offline, and when you're ready to submit your big new article, just copy and paste. [[User:Dysprosia|Dysprosia]] 03:15, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

===Second question; More efficient searching in wiki?===
My second question is related to finding some topi in wiki policy or metawiki or something that I remember seeing but can't find again. For instance, I saw something about academic standards disease and you might not be surprised that like a first year med student I suspect I may be incubating a case. More seriously, isn't there an index that covers both wiki and meta wiki and whatever other wiki I haven't even found yet so I can find something more easily? [[User:Alteripse|Alteripse]] 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
:There is [[Wikipedia:Topical index]], which covers the Wikipedia namespace on the English wikipedia.  Meta probably has its own directory of some sort, but I don't know.  [[User:Isomorphic|Isomorphic]] 06:53, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

===Third question; trolls: wikipedia needs an immune system===
I cannot believe the time-wasting destructiveness and bad faith of a few of the people logged on here now and in the past. Actually what I can't believe is why people here tolerate it. In dozens of posts all day, irismeister has been heaping abuse on at least two of the people who do some work here, even making vague threats. I gather he just returned three days ago from being banned for doing the same thing last month. 

Why do we tolerate it? I've seen some of the arguments about legitimate differences of opinion, and giving people benefit of the doubt, and exasperated contributors or sysops tormented into saying something they shouldn't have, but trolling is like porn: you know it instantly when you see it, and the number of cases in which there is even a shred of ambiguity about motive should be quickly resolvable by direct questioning. When they play their "persecuted martyr" card, we should be able to trump it with a "let's sum up your constructive contributions" card. If you balance the cost of expelling (in terms of ''maybe'' losing the chance to convert someone from the dark side) against the cost of losing the real contributors who simply get fed up and leave (you've apparently got a whole pageful), it doesn't seem hard to figure out the paying strategy. Again, I am sure there are pages and pages of agonizing over this which I haven't found and maybe don't even want to completely read. 

I actually do have a constructive suggestion: it ought to be possible to devise a fairly straightforward response checklist of criteria and questions --sort of like a [[Turing test]] for trolls, to notify those who appear to be trolling that clarification is being sought, boundaries being set, and ambiguity removed, and if responses and reassuring behavior change are not quickly obtained to follow through with long term banning rather than weeks of rising tension and you know what, just to banish them for a few days or weeks before they return and restart the cycle. We shouldn't be ashamed to have an immune system. [[User:Alteripse|Alteripse]] 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

:Hi I expect I am the admin you are talking about above  who's been saying things i shouldn't. So I'll respond. The thing is, lot's of people are very concerned about being fair and welcoming and non cabal and giving people the chance to reform and so on. We have an arbitration comittee to deal with people like irismeister but, they won't act unless a complaint is made, they seem reluctant to ban someone for long periods of time, - and most infuriating of all they take weeks to make a decision. I would love to see a quicker decision making process, but it'll be hard to get one because are reluctant to appear harsh. In the meantime, to preserve my own sanity, I'll continue to make fun of my "admirer" [[User:Theresa knott|theresa knott]] 15:51, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
:You aren't the only one bothered by the state of such things.  I posted a rant about it last night [[User:Isomorphic/Essays/The Rule of Law|here]].  Anyway, the people to complain to about trolls and the lack of anything being done about it are the [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee|Arbitration Committee]], who are at least in theory the source of rulings on such things.  They've been a tad slow about it, though.  [[User:Isomorphic|Isomorphic]] 18:45, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

===Fourth question: Dealing with unresolvable controversies===
You know what I mean-- those pages that get protected because two people trying to contribute (as opposed to trolling) cannot compromise. Has there been any experimentation with splitting a topic into distinct pro and con pages? I am imagining a main article that contains the undisputed factual information, with two connected viewpoint pages. I realize some of the fiercest fights are over the intro paragraphs-- perhaps the condition of allowing a pair of people or factions to append un-interfered-with expositions of their viewpoint would be to let a neutral party write a brief intro paragraph, which they could counter in the intro to each partisan section. A constructive model for this would be the books published for high school debating teams on controversial topics, which strive to allow persuasive presentation of both sides without forcing sentence by sentence amalgamation. I realize that presenting both sides is NPOV wiki policy now and the best authors ideally present both sides so that partisans of each feel fairly represented, but some of us aren't that wise and intelligent. I offer this as a way of providing some structure to a controversial topic that still lets both sides have a (mostly) untrammelled say without preventing the facts and opinions they wish to suppress. I have some further ideas on details if anyone wants to pilot this on a particular page. [[User:Alteripse|Alteripse]] 03:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

: "splitting a topic into distinct pro and con pages" : this idea has been implemented at [[Wikinfo]], by the way. [[User:Dysprosia|Dysprosia]] 03:17, 18 May 2004 (UTC)