Editing Encyc:Community portal/Archive 1 (section)

==WTF?==
I got an e-mail message today to say that [[User:Versatile|User:Versatile]] had edited my user talk page.  Why?  I don't recall asking for anything to be removed.  I am not sure what has been removed, because I haven't added anything on Encyc for ages (I kind of don't have anything more to add really, as I only like to write about things that I actually know a fair bit about) but it worries me that something has been removed from the history on my own talk page without my knowledge or permission.

I then checked through my contributions, and found, incredulously, that the [[Wikipedia Review]] page had been altered from the hugely long, very accurate thing that I/we spent ages on to some tiny piece that says nothing.  Why?  There was nothing inaccurate there.  I mean you could add a bit to it, since it is obviously out of date, but surely you WANT to have a bit of accurate information about it on there.  Surely that's the whole point of Encyc, that it isn't as full of censorship and nonsense.

I also note that the page on [[Stephen Hawking]] was deleted.  Why?  It was entirely factual, pretty much straight off his web sites.  What was wrong with it?  This new admin Versatile just up and decided to wipe it.  What for?  Because he is a guy that is still alive?  He is a pretty darn famous fellow and I don't think that he minds.  There was absolutely nothing negative or untrue or unproven in there!  Absolutely absurd to delete it.  I know that Versatile (yes, the same person that wiped it) has recently changed the new Biographies of Living Persons policy but it STILL didn't go against that!  Please restore that page!

I also noticed, absurdly, that the page on the USERNAME Runcorn was wiped and replaced with information about an obscure town.  Uh, what?  Why did we go through all of that work for if someone is going to just wipe them?

I have grave concerns about this new administrator, and, while I haven't seen what else they have done, if this is a sample of the work then I dare say that they are trying their level best to destroy all of the work on Encyc over so many years. [[User:Blissyu2|Blissyu2]] 10:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

:Hello Blissy and welcome back.  You can rest assured that I appreciate your role as an early adopter and all the content you contributed.  The new [[Encyc:Biography]] policy was one that I arrived at in response to some criticism and also in thinking about the problem myself.  Ultimately I decided that we simply don't have the manpower to police hundreds or thousands of biographies of living people, and that lots of people might be offended if they read controversial things about themselves or people they care about here.  There are so many other interesting and beautiful articles that we could write, and I don't want the project to be derailed over a relative handful of articles that nobody seems interested in generating or taking care of anyway.
:We were careful to redirect and not delete a lot of this material in case anyone ever returned and wanted to export it to another, more appropriate venue. [[User:Auggie|Auggie]] 15:54, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

::So what you are saying is that all of the truthful, factual and relevant information about [[Wikipedia Review]] that I spent over 100 hours over needs to be destroyed, that the factual, truthful and relevant information about the [[Poetlister scandal]] also needs to be destroyed (in spite of both of them being about pseudonyms and in no way being biographies of living persons) and generally that all of the work I spent hundreds of hours over gets destroyed, deleted, and f***ed over?  Is that right?  That you have embraced censorship, that you promised you would never do.  Is this correct?  [[User:Blissyu2|Blissyu2]] 14:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

:::A lot of time has passed.  I didn't know you felt so strongly about it.  I recognize that you spent a lot of time producing that material and I respected your effort by leaving those articles unchanged for years.  Honestly I didn't think you'd care anymore.  I'll write more later.  I'm busy right now but hopefully we can come to some mutually agreeable resolution. [[User:Auggie|Auggie]] 16:14, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

:::I see you reverted some articles, and no one has reverted you back, so it looks like we don't even really have a conflict right now.  Is that ok? [[User:Auggie|Auggie]] 17:33, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

:::One other thing.  As much as you and I love Encyc as it stands, it needs to have some flexibility to evolve.  That's why I intentionally keep many things vague.  I think that many articles about Wikipedia Review, rather than enlightening people, make people say "WTF is a windybear" and "Encyc is a joke" and "I'd be scared to contribute there".  I don't want people to write us off.  I want a wider group to participate.  I want people who would be scared to write for Wikipedia to write for us.  Does that make sense?  [[User:Auggie|Auggie]] 17:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

::::Awbrey and Kohs were scared away from Wikipedia in 2006. Why aren't they here posting their valuable material? [[User:Gridlock|Gridlock]] 19:54, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

:::::Kohs runs MyWikiBiz and keeps track of Jimmy and does a lot of other things that I have no idea how he finds the time for.  About Awbrey I don't know.  I think he likes having precise control over his articles and shouldn't really be working on wikis.   MyWikiBiz is a good place for him because it lets him use the software more like a traditional content management system. [[User:Auggie|Auggie]] 21:00, 22 July 2010 (UTC)