Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship/Marshallsumter

Marshallsumter (talk • email • contribs • stats • logs • global account)

Hi!

From the "How does one become a probationary custodian?" policy at Wikiversity:Probationary custodians:

1. "State your reasons for seeking this position and in what areas you are or would like to be active": while I am and will continue to help with Wikiversity:Resources with Files Pending Deletion, Wikiversity:User Pages with Files Pending Deletion, and Wikiversity:Unused Files Pending Deletion, so as to possibly save resources, I am willing where and when possible to help with other custodial matters.
2. "The community will be given a period of five days to discuss your background, ask questions, and determine if there are any serious issues that would prohibit you from being trusted to use Custodianship tools." Fire away!
3. "Custodian mentors are expected to guide and advise you on the appropriate use of custodian privileges in accordance with established policy and community consensus." As I believe in both open systems and do not wish to slight anyone, I am asking for such a mentor here as and when point 2 above is being completed. As I interpret, ""Experienced custodians" means Wikiversity custodians who have at least 3 months of experience as a sysop ("administrator" = "custodian") on Wikimedia Foundation projects.", this also includes probationary custodians with at least 3 months of experience, especially if any of our usual mentors are unavailable or not as active as in the past. To me a mentor is someone willing to answer my questions.
4. As I understand this process, this request disappears in 7 days if points 2 and 3 are not completed in time. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Questions

• Marshallsumter, how, in your opinion, are your contributions helpful to Wikiversity? And what are your contributions? --goldenburg111 (talk) 16:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Goldenburg111!

Thank you for your question! To answer the second part first, in the section above it shows "Marshallsumter (...,contribs), just click on the "contribs" and it should list them for you. A second is to click on contribs after your own name and after the display, exchange my user name for yours and it will list mine. Excepting routine edits to other resources, my contributions focus on original research efforts in a variety of fields. The lectures/articles are learning resources which stand on their own to help Wikiversity students and educators alike. In the sense of education they are helpful contributions to Wikiversity. Lessons, problem sets, and laboratory activities are designed hopefully to succeed in Wikiversity's goal of learning by doing. The quizzes are presented to help students learn through iteration as well as improve their test-taking skills and hopefully help to overcome any test-taking anxiety they may have.

I am trying to bring each contribution to the state of the art or science for its field both to help Wikiversity resources to be at that state and to show where original research finds and fills in (or creates) new knowledge where there is a gap or void. I hope this helps to answer your questions. Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --goldenburg111 (talk) 21:21, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• 2nd question: What is your response to a user who has messaged you a comment like this? --goldenburg111 (talk) 21:21, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

It depends on the context. If it's vandalism, I delete it. If it persists, I ask a custodian to block the sender. But, the context may indicate someone who could benefit from contributing here as you and Abd have discussed with respect to apparent vandals. If its intent is malicious, it is worse than vandalism. If its intent is attention, it depends me. I hope this helps. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:30, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. --Goldenburg111 (talk) 21:49, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments

• The "policy" quoted isn't policy. The real policy is at Wikiversity:Custodianship.

historical details

The change was proposed by a disgruntled ex-custodian. See Wikiversity talk:Probationary custodians. The actual process does allow the community to register objections, but, routinely, if a custodian is willing to mentor, and a bureaucrat is willing to implement it, it's done without delay. There is no time limit for the request. I have never seen a request closed because of "7 days." . The bottom line is that whatever a bureaucrat is willing to do is what will happen. There is no "five day" period. The real policy is at Wikiversity:Custodianship. That was actual practice for years. Notice that it was tagged as policy until it was demoted June 2011 with a wikilawyered reason, that there had never been a vote. In fact, the page had been tagged as a policy since May 2007[. The tag was added by one of the founders of Wikiversity, and there appears to have been no objection. The matter of "no vote" first came up in 2008.[https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity_talk:Custodianship/Archives/2006-2010#Couldn.27t_find_where_this_policy_was_discussed_or_voted_on. Nobody acted on it the suggestion that it should be demoted to "proposed." I added comment to that in 2010, and there was some discussion. Discussion lower on the page, back in 2008, treated the page as policy, in fact, objecting to changes. In 2009, the editor who removed the policy tag in 2011 edited the Discussion page to add a policy discussion tag, he clearly believed it was policy. That tag is still there.[1] The later controversy, then, must be seen in the light of wikipolitics at the time. Certain users wanted to change the policy, for personal reasons, and there was disruption over that. The actual policy had not caused disruption. The people involved are almost entirely gone.

Essentially, as soon as a permanent custodian is willing to mentor, and a 'crat is willing to set the bit, a candidate becomes a permanent probationary custodian. It's a very simple process. There is no time limit for a request. Any restrictions are a matter of agreement between the mentor and the probationary custodian (but a 'crat effectively approves by acting). --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:44, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying this Abd. Perhaps the non-policy Wikiversity:Probationary custodians should disappear? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:09, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Are we stopping or not? --goldenburg111 (talk) 16:42, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

As exampled above, the suggested policy could pose a number of severe restrictions to Wikiversity having more probationary custodians. Most of us are creating or improving resources, this includes custodians and probationary custodians. In my opinion, such severe restrictions may serve as a resource in understanding and learning from the creation of policy, for the creation of functionally progressive policy, but instead may result in unnecessary political restrictions. One alternative is to remove the resource from actual policy consideration to a learning resource on how to develop policy, another is to put it up for deletion. What do you think? Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you. --goldenburg111 (talk) 21:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Pages in Wikiversity space with policy proposals would generally not be deleted; rather, they would be deprecated. I.e., the proposal, if not accepted in a reasonable period of time, would be marked as rejected or inactive. I'll take a look, but I need to be careful about involvement in policy pages. This really isn't the place to discuss that. The place to discuss policy and proposed policy is on attached Discussion pages. Meanwhile, I assume, this and other custodianship requests will be handled as traditionally. Give it time. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• The original policy page makes no reference to a period in which to find a mentor. However Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship does, referring to archiving a request if no mentor is found within a week. Given the paucity of active permanent custodians, that could be impractical. (At one time, with many custodians available, it made sense.) However it's harmless, because a candidate may continue to seek a mentor by requesting it of permanent custodians, and a candidacy may be reinstated at any time, trivially. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:34, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Marshallsumter is a major contributor to Wikiversity, and he is constructive, so I believe he deserves to be a custodian. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 21:43, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Banned from Wikipedia Discussion

Marshallsumter, you have been banned from Wikipedia? I am very concerned about this. I would like Marshallsumter to reply to me. Marshall, what do you have to say about your ban from Wikipedia? (verify) --Goldenburg111 (talk) 15:29, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your question! The indefinite ban on my contributing to Wikipedia is for two "violations" of their policy. The first is bringing some of their articles and ones I wrote, some 250, to the state of the art or science using primary sources following US copyright law. The effort in each article I originated was called "original research", banned on Wikipedia, which each was not yet at, but has found a home here. The second is that at Wikipedia following US copyright law to produce entries there as I do here is considered a violation of Wikipedia copyright policy. Wikipedia endeavors to sell books to individuals world-wide including those within countries and territories that have a more restrictive copyright law than the US; hence, my entries may cause legal problems for these book producing and selling efforts in these countries. In spite of this policy the WMF has included probably all of my Wikipedia entries in various books sold world-wide without any apparent problems. I hope this helps. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Were you warned? --Goldenburg111 (talk) 01:16, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your question! The answer has two parts. Individuals in 2011 would put an entry up for deletion as having original research and I would disagree. No one warned me about the copyright concerns! Let me add that as a US citizen I am required to follow US copyright law. Wikipedia copyright policy at least at that time is too restrictive. I hope this helps. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 10:33, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I confirm Marshall's account. -Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I confirm Marshall's account as to historical fact. When Marshall was blocked/banned on Wikipedia, it appears to have been without warning, or without adequate warning. See the ban discussion. It was not part of the original report, but he had posted many quotations from copyrighted material, but apparently believing that this was acceptable. Wikipedia effective policy, as applied, is, in fact, much stricter than copyright law requires. Marshall's explanation for this is not exactly the case, but it's close. The copyright policy is designed, not to protect Wikipedia, but to protect re-users of content. Not the Wikimedia Foundation, which doesn't sell content. Since a nonprofit re-user would be protected by the same laws as Wikipedia, for fair use content or even for actual and clear copyright violation, the strict policy *only benefits for-profit re-users.* I made this point a number of times on related discussions on Wikversity, where fair use content had an educational purpose, but the need to protect for-profit re-users was sustained as more important. When the material was discovered, it required, the Wikipedia community believed, massive clean-up. It appears that his block was retaliatory for this. When he came here, there were some concerns raised. Marshall promptly addressed them. There have been no sustained problems here. The Wikipedia discussion shows how many long-standing ideas about how Wikipedia works don't match the reality. There are no real policies, i.e, standards that are enforced, particularly to protect users from being punished for making mistakes. I also notice that the discussion was started by a sock puppet, of a user who was also active here. I've seen this many times, that a highly disruptive user starts a ban discussion that then rouses a mob. (I've seen this done by an IP editor who was quickly identified as being a banned editor -- but the "community" continued to do exactly what this banned user was demanding.) "Community banned" means little more than "some editors demanded that the user be banned," and an administrator agreed, while not so many defended him. Marshall had, indeed, written articles that were "original research," though I think he didn't understand the term at that time. Original research, of course, is allowed here, under proper conditions. Complicating this all was an interpretation of something Marshall had written, on Wikiversity, of unclear meaning. It was interpreted as indicating that he was researching how Wikipedia would respond to disruptive editing. I think that quite unlikely, but, again, that this was so readily believed, that so many editors converted from "assume good faith" to "deliberate disruption" citing this idea, shows the mob mentality of Wikipedia. Deliberate vandals are not banned without warning, normally. That it is possible to restrain an editor by requesting voluntary compliance with clearly-stated standards seems to be beyond the understanding of Wikipedians. There is a concept there that "bad editors" are just plain bad, and that's it. Ban them. Yet if an editor has friends .... they can sometimes get away with multiple, repeated, clear violations of policy, ignored warnings, etc. Wikipedia process is utterly unreliable, many know this, I'm not making it up. I see no sign of any movement toward changing that. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

@Abd thank you for clarifying. Abd, I agree with you that Wikipedia is an alien planet. But yet, as I believe it, being banned or block on another wiki does not qualify for adminship on any other wiki. Well, since they skipped right to a banning discussion, like they did to me on Simple English Wikipedia. I'll change my oppose to a support. :) Cheers! --Goldenburg111 (talk) 21:46, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Custodians willing to mentor

I am willing to mentor. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Y Done @Marshallsumter: is now a probationary custodian with @Dave Braunschweig: as mentor. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:13, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Recommendation for full custodian status

I would like to nominate User:Marshallsumter for full custodian status. Marshallsumter has been a probationary custodian for five months, and has demonstrated a consistent willingness to support the community through administrative moves and deletions, responses to questions in the Colloquium, etc. He also continues to seek community input toward his own learning projects and efforts, a welcome approach. Please discuss and indicate your views below. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:43, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussion and questions

Questions to and discussion of the candidate.

Voting for full custodianship

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.