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User:CT Cooper

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by CT Cooper (talk | contribs) at 01:56, 6 June 2014 (→30px Adminship: Move to sub-page.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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European Bee-eater, Ariège, France. The female (in front) awaits the offering which the male will make. This image received my vote in both rounds of the 2012 Commons' Picture of the Year Competition and was the winner in the final result.

Hello, I am Christopher T Cooper (CT Cooper), an editor and administrator of the English Wikipedia. This is my home Wikimedia project, but I am also active on Meta and Wikimedia Commons. If you need help or want to talk to me, please leave a message on my user talk page or send an e-mail. Happy editing!

Thoughts

See also: User:CT Cooper/Essays

Since joining Wikipedia, my views on the project and how it should work have evolved through time. Some topics of interest include:

Censorship and filtering

I have always supported the the no censorship policy of Wikipedia – judging inclusion purely on encyclopedic merit in as many cases as possible allows Wikipedia to maintain political and social neutrality in its content. However, it should be remembered that the aspiration of giving everyone the "sum of all human knowledge", the foundation of Wikipedia, is inherently political, as is the belief that an encyclopedia which actively omits pornography, violence, genocide and other "undesirable" parts of human knowledge, is built on a lie. That doesn't mean ethics doesn't matter on Wikipedia though – there are some cases in which moral interests must mandate exclusion of content, as required by law. That's why Wikipedia respects intellectual property rights and copyright law for example. The same cannot be said of sexual content derived from consenting adults though; even if many cultures view it as "obscene", with claims of potential social problems, there is no extreme moral interest that mandates exclusion, and that is reflected in the laws of many countries that legalize such content. However, there is a case for ensuring appropriate record keeping of such content as required by the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act.

While hosting controversial content, the Wikipedia community is going to have set a balance between ensuring that encyclopedic content reaches as many people as possible, against maintaining political and social neutrality in its presentation of content. It would be unacceptable for Wikipedia to co-operate with the politically motivated internet censorship of the People's Republic of China by deleting the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 article for instance. However, having no filtering at all could prevent children from using Wikipedia, due to concerns of them not being mentally prepared to access the full "sum of all human knowledge". The lack of a filter option is also problematic for adults using Wikipedia in "sensitive situations", such as while in an office. Children can already be directed to the self-censored and underused Schools' Wikipedia, but I remain open minded about introducing an image filter to give readers the flexibility of removing certain images from view if they desire. Such a filter should be strictly optional and not rigid to certain cultures; clearly a filter that censored any kind of nudity but left depictions of Muhammad untouched would be unworkable. User generated blacklists, highly descriptive categorization, or both, could achieve this. Alternatively, third party filters using the same technology as advert filtering remain an option.

Flagged revisions and pending changes

I supported giving flagged revisions a fair trial on Wikipedia. Many early media reports about flagged revisions were inaccurate, and I think what Jimbo Wales said in response to them holds truth today:


Flagged revisions does partially go against the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit slogan, but does so in a less "blunt and heavy" way than semi-protection, and greater flexibility in page protection is ultimately a good thing. I opposed a universal implementation of flagged revisions as was done on the German Wikipedia, and instead supported a softer implementation in the form of pending changes, which has now been rolled out across the English Wikipedia.

Notability

The inclusion criteria for topics to have their own article on Wikipedia (known as notability) is one of the most important, yet also one of the most controversial, areas of content policy and practice on the project. I have often thought that the debate on notability has been overly ideological, with the the deletionist and inclusionist divide ultimately being a false dilemma – the reality is a lot more complicated. I officially consider myself to be a structurist, which focuses on dealing with article notability in a functional way and emphasizes that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is constantly evolving (omnia mutantur). A functional approach to notability involves ultimately judging if a topic can or does have an encyclopedic article written about it, with this being judged by the availability of reliable sources independent of the topic in question.

While the essay I have written on notability, called Potential, not just current state, is sometimes considered by other editors to be inclusionist or eventualist, I believe it reiterates many of the principles of structurism well. For example, it says stubs should not merged with another article if they have the potential to grow as a stand alone article, as a merge could constrain expansion.

I think that arbitrary criteria beyond those set out in the general notability guideline (GNG) should be avoided where possible. I am not entirely against subject specific guidelines on notability, such as Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), but they must stick to the principles of the GNG and not introduce overly constraining restrictions such as a blanket ban on the use of local sources to establish notability.

I'm neither strongly in favour nor strongly opposed to the concept of inherent notability, and I look at it mostly as a "necessary evil" for cases when "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" method of assessing notability, as set out in the GNG, is not practical. For example, there are thousands of school articles on Wikipedia and assessing them all against the GNG at articles for deletion (AfD) is simply not realistic. For years AfDs were held on a continuous stream of school articles that frequently turned into ideological battles resulting in "no consensus" being a common result. However, more recently an "unhappy compromise" has been reached through the practice of keeping articles on secondary and high schools, while merging and re-directing articles on primary, elementary, and middle schools. The downside to this practice is that it can encourage inappropriate inclusion or exclusion for exceptional schools, but this is outweighed by the benefit of having a plan to deal with large numbers of school articles quickly and easily. Furthermore, this practice makes it possible to counter the systematic bias towards exclusion of articles for schools in non-English speaking countries, where notability is not always apparent, by having a basis to make a rough judgement on if sources exist or not.

Article templates

I support the use of templates at the top of articles or sections to alert readers to article problems and to help editors know what to fix. Adding templates to articles is "no big deal"; there is nothing wrong with allowing readers to know there may be problems. Disputes about the addition of templates should be avoided; instead editors should spend their time discussing solutions to the indicated problem instead.

Images

It is easy to forget about the importance of images in articles, but their value in making articles more useful to readers and brightening up Wikipedia in general is immeasurable. While the use of free content is preferable, I recognize that for some topic areas, such as video games, non-free content is usually all that is available – restricted use of non-free content through the non-free content criteria is therefore desirable. It should be remembered however that Wikipedia is not an image repository, and that galleries and images themselves are best hosted on Wikimedia Commons wherever possible.

User namespace

While it is important that Wikipedia remains focused on its mission, over zealous enforcement of "Wikipedia is not MySpace" in the user namespace may do more harm than good. Wikipedia is ultimately a collaborative project, and some socialising as a result of that is almost inevitable. For example, I believe that user guestbooks have a positive purpose and should not be banned. I also have nothing against religious or political userboxes to help disclose any potential biases, as long as they are not excessively hateful.

Behaviour

See also: User:CT Cooper/Essays/Ageism and Wikipedia

I firmly support the civility and no personal attacks policies. They along, with the policy of assuming good faith, are critical behavioural requirements for those that choose to participate in a collaborative project such as Wikipedia. My support for these policies goes alongside, however, my belief that they can be abused. Minor incivility should be ignored, and users should not use civility as a weapon against editors they disagree with – only in serious and persistent cases should blocks be used. Furthermore, "assume good faith" should not be invoked by editors every time someone criticizes their actions; assuming the assumption of good faith is also important.

From experience I have found that communication is the key tool of collaboration in article writing. The use of edit summaries helps editors understand each other's actions, resulting in reduced frustration and confusion, which can help prevent edit wars. Edit summaries are no substitute for talk page discussion when a dispute does occur however.

I believe Wikipedia should judge editors by their actions, rather than by stereotypes. Wikipedia is somewhat unique in that it allows children to contribute to the project in the same way as adults without significant prejudice. I do not support the use of age in judging someone's suitability for positions such as adminship, given that there is usually plenty of other evidence available to make an accurate judgement. However, I do think it is important that Wikipedia takes action to protect contributing children from harm, and I therefore support the child protection policy.

Communication and consensus

See also: Wikipedia:Petitions are considered non-harmful

The concept of reaching decisions by consensus is a key part of Wikipedia. However, the use of voting to make large community decisions with hundreds of participants may be a pragmatic reality the project will have to face, since consensus does not "scale" well. Furthermore, I do think that the project should remain open minded to other forms of communication such as petitions.

Arbitration Committee

The Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is a necessary final destination for disputes that cannot be resolved by the normal dispute resolution methods. However, ArbCom is at its best when it helps to resolve disputes by removing obstructions to resolution and pushing participants in the correct direction, rather than acting as Wikipedia's governing authority. For example, I thought that the summary motion regarding biographies of living people deletions lacked balance and seemed to try to resolve a dispute with a hammer rather than set-up an atmosphere for civil discussion.

In Arbitration Committee elections I support the continued use of the secret ballot, since these elections are partially political and users should have the option of not disclosing their vote if they wish. However, the public discussion of candidates is still important and I support the use of personal opinion pages (commonly known as "voter guides"), such as my own, to help facilitate this.

Requests for adminship

See also: § Adminship, and User:CT Cooper/Requests for adminship/Criteria § Fundamentals

There has been discussion for years on if the requests for adminship (RfA) process is "broken". The answer to that debate is dependent on how "broken" is defined, but it is clear that the RfA process as it stands has a lot to be desired and could be improved. The main problem identified is user behaviour – which will not be easy to change. However, ideas produced at Wikipedia:RfA reform 2011 should be given due consideration, such as the proposal to introduce clerks to RfA. I also believe that there should be a more formalized process on removing adminship when it is misused, as this will make users more willing to give the tools out in the first place. If a community driven requests for de-adminship process is not feasible, then a sub-committee of the Arbitration Committee (like the Audit Subcommittee) could be created, that will consider complaints from users on the use of administrative privileges.

Messages of thanks

Mutual respect, co-operation, and peace makes Wikipedia a better place for all contributors.

One of the great things about being a Wikipedian is meeting and co-operating with so many people. I would like to thank the following users for the help they have given me while editing Wikipedia...

To-do list

Below is a list of general tasks I need to do on Wikipedia in rough order of addition, with each having a status of progress. I periodically remove old items from this list.

  1. Clear outstanding requests at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Assessment#Assessment requests.  Done
  2. Finish spoken article recording for Justin Bieber.  Doing...
  3. Finish spoken article recording for Murder of James Bulger.  Doing...
  4. Take steps to resolve the confusion around freedom of panorama and the English Wikipedia.  Doing...
  5. Review situation on assessment processes at WikiProject Education and sub-projects.  Not done
  6. Review Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/WikiProject Schools articles by quality log.  Not done
  7. Work on St. Stephen's School, Chandigarh as promised.  Done
  8. Help out on issues at The Doon School.  Done
  9. Do annual user page "refurbishment".  Done
  10. Clean-out future-class articles for WikiProject Eurovision.  Done
  11. Clean-up and expand LUMO Community Wildlife Sanctuary and Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary once all related photographs are uploaded to Commons.  Not done
  12. Start RfC on "Country in the Eurovision Song Contest" articles layout.  Done
  13. Clean-up referencing at The Petersfield School.  Not done
  14. Work on the Country park and Queen Elizabeth Country Park articles.  Not done
  15. Do article assessment sweep (2012 and earlier) for WikiProject Eurovision.  Not done
  16. Complete Eurovision logo re-licensing work for WikiProject Eurovision.  Doing...
  17. Look into proposed revisions of Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines.  Not done
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The current date and time is 29 December 2024 T 02:39 UTC.
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