In a message dated 4/27/2003 6:30:44 PM Eastern Standard Time,
zoecomnena(a)yahoo.com writes:
> Not a problem. I have no interest in performing
> anything other than the minimal creation of brand new
> articles. Henceforth I will be blocking no one,
> reverting no vandals, editing nobody else's articles.
>
> There. All of the people I have ever blocked are now
> unblocked
Since this was in response to my email, I think I should respond.
Zoe, in no way was my email meant as an attack against you. Rather, it was
pointing out a fundamental problem with blocking users. I am not against
blocking users. Michael should be blocked. Ark (remember him?) should have
been blocked. The problem I have is that occasionally the blocking affects
other users as well. On two occasions, it has affected me: when Isis blocked
someone, and when you blocked Michael. As I understood your answer, I would
have to wait till Michael was unblocked. To me that is not a solution.
Imagine yourself in a similar situation--being blocked because your happen to
share an IP address with Lir.
Of course, I am not blaming you for the problem. I am simply bringing to the
attention of the list that this problem exists and should be addressed. By
all means block vandals, but let's try to find a better way to do it, so that
other users are not blocked too. LittleDan has made a suggestion on how that
can be done. I am too computer illiterate to understand the ramifications,
but it seems that there are alternative ways. I hope we can explore them.
I've been at Wikipedia for a relatively long time--long enough to remember
many of the characters that have done their damage here. On a more positive
note, I've even been here long enough to remember new users, including you,
testing the waters, so to speak, and turning into some of our top
contributors. In the time I've been here, I've contributed quite a few
articles myself and I even did all the president tables. I hope to continue
contributing for a long while to come. If I am blocked, however, I will not
be able to do so. Maybe that is a major part of the part of the damage that
vandals do--having other contributors with something to add tossed off the
project for computer-related problems.
If my posting to this mailing list offended you, I apologize. It was
certainly not meant in that way. All I wanted was to find an alternative way
of blocking vandals, so that real contributors, such as me, are not forced
out.
Danny
Wikikarma: [[ney]]
>From: "sannse" <sannse(a)delphiforums.com>
>Tim Starling wrote:
> >>I suggest you get a username, if you don't already have one, and tell us
> >>what it is. The development team will be able to override the IP
>blocking
> >>for you personally. This will allow us to continue to block Michael, and
> >>will also give us an obvious course of action if you turn out to be just
> >>another Michael pseudonym trying to get the previous pseudonyms
>unblocked.
>
> >>If you're currently an anonymous contributor and you're anxious about
> >>getting a username, keep in mind that users with usernames have much
>better
> >>privacy protection in place than "anonymous" users.
>
>If I remember rightly, daniwo59(a)aol.com is User:Danny, a longstanding
>contributor and a sysop
Sorry Danny.
>
>The problem is that a block will stop all users on that IP, logged in or
>not. The only reason sysops can't block logged in users is that they don't
>know the relevant IP numbers (aside from the policy reasons of course)
>
>I know the cookie idea will hopefully help with banning people like
>Michael,
>bypassing the need for an IP block - but could it work the other way too?
>I'm not technical so I don't know if this is feasable or not, but could we
>have a "trusted user" cookie. One that allowed trusted users to skip any
>block on the IP they are using? It woldn't be needed for most users, but
>would overrule an IP block in cases like Danny's.
>
>Anyway, as I say, I have no idea if this is possible or desirable
>
>Regards,
>
>sannse
I notice this "trusted user cookie" idea has been taken up in a few other
posts. I don't understand. Why do you need a cookie? All I'm suggesting is a
single, rather inelegant modification to User.php, i.e. adding the following
few lines to the top of getBlockedStatus():
if ( $this->mId == 584 ) {
$this->mBlockedby = 0;
return;
}
...thereby making Danny unblockable. No cookies required. Of course, if
Danny goes crazy with the power, or someone hijacks his account, the
modification can be removed. If we feel the need to make this mechanism more
general, we can add a "unblockable" flag to the user table, and make it
something like this:
if ($this->mUnblockable) {
$this->mBlockedby = 0;
return;
}
But of course that will require much more work to implement.
-- Tim Starling.
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_mobile.asp
I understand why it is necessary to block Michael. However, it is absolutely
unnecesary to block me! Furthermore, the answer that the block against
Michael (and by extension, against me) will be lifted in a day or so is
absolutely unsatisfactory.
First, there was a message in the last batch of email that
had huge quotes, re-quotes, and so forth, so much so that
one section had eight, count them, eight, quoting
marks/indents. Please, people, clean up your emails. You
don't need to quote every preceding transaction on a topic.
Secondly, I appreciate the mav/tannin compromise on
capitalization, and, hey, you see, a compromise was
possible, now, wasn't it? Having said that, Tannin, I have
to take you to task for being rather insulting by
implication to everyone who wasn't one of your self-selected
clique of "three or four" experts. What work I've done on
fauna is reasonable and a good starting point, and if you
don't like it, then it takes a lot less time for you to edit
it than it takes to write it in the first place.
Now, I want to be sure that this rule is being applied to
fauna, and not flora. It's true that many if not most
popular reference works capitalize common names for flora,
but authoritative works such as Gleason & Cronquist
generally do not except for the first letter when it's in
the first word mentioned (as in capitalizing the first word
in a sentence) or when it's a proper name, such as New York
fern.
--
John Knouse
jaknouse(a)frognet.net
Jaknose says: "Please, people, clean up your emails. You don't need to
quote every preceding transaction on a topic." Amen to that.
Also: "Tannin, I have to take you to task for being rather insulting by
implication to everyone who wasn't one of your self-selected clique of
"three or four" experts." Steady on there: we are not taking
"cliques", simply the the people who have, over the last several
months, been most active in the birds area. If you want to hop in and
do more fauna entries, then I think that would be great! You write well
and the more the merrier.There is no shortage of work to go around!
And finally: "Now, I want to be sure that this rule is being applied to
fauna, and not flora." My preference would be to apply it to species
names across the board. The plant books I have handy certainly
capitalise (and yes, I've done a few plant entries too, and plan more
as time permits). However, in the interests of a quiet life and the
spirit of cooperation, I'm happy to work with a more modest compromise.
The obvious and easy dividing line is vertebrates on the one hand,
everything else on the other.
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
Ray writes: We do have Wikipedia rules ..... The burden of proof falls
on the shoulders of those who seek to institute an exception to those
rules. I don't think that they have carried that burden, and their
approach is "for the birds". ;-)
This, however completely to come to grips with the prior situation:
i.e., that key phrase I already cited from the naming conventions: "or
is otherwise almost always capitalized". So no, Ray, your attempt to
reverse the burden of proof will not wash. No-one is talking about
making "exceptions to the normal rules", we are talking about NOT
making exceptions to the normal rule that species names are
capitalised. There is a very good reason for this rule, namely the
ambiguity problem, which is why it exists in the first place.
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
>From: daniwo59(a)aol.com
>Reply-To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
>To: wikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Again I am blocked
>Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 02:21:28 EDT
>
>I understand why it is necessary to block Michael. However, it is
>absolutely
>unnecesary to block me! Furthermore, the answer that the block against
>Michael (and by extension, against me) will be lifted in a day or so is
>absolutely unsatisfactory.
I suggest you get a username, if you don't already have one, and tell us
what it is. The development team will be able to override the IP blocking
for you personally. This will allow us to continue to block Michael, and
will also give us an obvious course of action if you turn out to be just
another Michael pseudonym trying to get the previous pseudonyms unblocked.
If you're currently an anonymous contributor and you're anxious about
getting a username, keep in mind that users with usernames have much better
privacy protection in place than "anonymous" users.
-- Tim Starling.
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp
sannse wrote:
>If I remember rightly, daniwo59(a)aol.com is User:Danny,
>a longstanding contributor and a sysop
Just an FYI: The "unban" function is not disabled when a sysop's IP has been
banned. I know this because I banned my work IP several times last year for
days at a time in order to get some, er, work done. Having to first unban my
workstation's IP before editing kept me from wasting work time editing
Wikipedia.
Now the state has spyware on all computers so I hardly edit at all while at
work (expect during breaks).
-- mav
Eclecticology wrote:
>...
> The fact that a certain cohort has currently been concentrating its
> attentions on the bird articles does not imply that it has any rights to
> insist on its own peculiar format. We do have Wikipedia rules which, at
> least in this case, tend to be consistent with the usage of grammarians.
> The burden of proof falls on the shoulders of those who seek to
> institute an exception to those rules. I don't think that they have
> carried that burden, and their approach is "for the birds". ;-)
>...
Perhaps this exception can be only for the bird articles themselves... I await
what other people have to say. I for one have /never/ used capitals for the
common names of species but then again I haven't taken any courses in
ornithology.
--mav
Mav writes: many of the links to the bird/mammal articles will be from
articles that "highlight some thing other than the creature in
question. In those articles it is most correct to have "bald eagle" in
the running text of the article and not "Bald Eagle".
I agree entirely. We should only use "Bald Eagle" where the aim is to
specify a particular exact species - i.e., the Bald Eagle as opposed
to, say, the Golden Eagle or a Spotted Harrier. In general, that will
nearly always be within the context of a fauna entry.
Mav suggests the following compromise: Have the bird and mammal
articles follow the capitalization convention deemed appropriate by the
specialists and enthusiasts working on them BUT a down style redirect
MUST be pointed to the up style article title.
This makes excellent sense and I agree wholeheartedly.
Mav writes: what is needed is to make redirects far less ugly than they
are now. People seem to get real pissy when they follow a term they
know and use only to get a result that in effect screams "the method
you are using to access this page is depreciated".
Yes. There is *absolutely* *nothing* wrong with redirects, they are a
really useful, indeed essential part of the 'pedia. But people do tend
to think that there is something "wrong" with using a redirect. How
about we change the "Redirected from XXXX" display font so that it is
in smaller letters? I'm sure that there are more advanced and elegant
solutions around (Mav offers some in his post), but that on its own
would help quite a lot. Also, we should sprinkle a few more "there is
nothing wrong with a redirect" statements around the place. In the
welcome pages, the FAQs, wherever.
Mav writes: So if specialists will allow down style links to their
articles I can live with those articles following the up style and
other conventions deemed appropriate
I have no problem with that. I don't think anyone else will either.
------------------
The place where we *will* have problems is demarkation. At what point
do we draw the line between the "specialist" entries and the "general"
entries? This is a potential breeding ground for edit wars.
If we can discuss this in advance and work out a policy *before* we run
into disputes, then the disputes need not happen.
My suggestion is that we should start from the idea that if the
intention of the article is to single out that *particular* *species*
as opposed some *other* species, then capitalisation is correct.
On its own, that's not quite enough to make a workabe guideline, so
let's work some examples.
First, consider the case of the bald eagle as the symbol of the United
States. If that is coming from an entry about the President of the USA,
it should normally be down style. (I can think of some unlikely
hypothetical exceptions, but they are just that: unlikely and
hypothetical.)
Now, what about a more difficult example: Mav's case of an article on
the US parks system that mentions the bald eagle. Seems to me that if
we are talking in generalities, then "bald eagle" is correct. If, on
the other hand, we are talking about specific species in a context
where exact identifiication of that species matters - say, the parks
service having to decide if they should prioritise scarce financial
resources to the preservation of either the Bald Eagle or the Golden
Eagle - then correct capitalisation to distinguish between the species
is appropriate. Here is a rule of thumb to help decide: if you could
sensibly replace "bald eagle" in the sentence with "Haliaeetus
leucocephalus" and not have it seem horribly out of place, then you
should capitalise. If "Haliaeetus leucocephalus" is clearly
inappropriate, then you should *not* capitalise.
My thanks again to Mav for a handsome compromise offer. I think this
one will fly.
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)