I had been thinking about this for awhile, and a recent comment by Charles Matthews inspired me to write up a general idea regarding it.
This is just a rough draft of course, and I'm open to ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Spade/Policy_Proposals
Jack / [[User:Sam Spade]]
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I'm, proposing that we go ahead and do it at the S&S -- It's a decent-sized
place, there's parking and it's about 10 minutes from the subway, and it's
vegetarian-friendly. I've posted more detailed info, directions , and links
to menus at the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Boston
The only thing left to decide is the time and duration.... Any suggestions
from attendees?
Thanks,
Brian (Bcorr)
Ed Poor wrote:
>The following Wikipedians have signed up to meet in Boston, July 31st,
>2004 -- a Saturday afternoon (exact time and place to be determined):
>
>* Jimbo - well, duh! It was his idea...
>* Bcorr - offers to organize
>* Uncle Ed - willing to help Bcorr organize; willing to give Danny
>a ride
>* moink - local, can help some
>* Danny - would like to go up together (from NYC)
>* Mihai - yes
>
>* Acegikmo1 - interested in attending
>* Raul654 - thinking about it
>* Plato - considering
>
>* (Steven G. Johnson regrets that he probably can't come )
>
>Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Would probably attend if I can get a ride up from NYC and share gas.
Matt (User:Decumanus)
Poor, Edmund W said:
> The following Wikipedians have signed up to meet in Boston, July
> 31st,
> 2004 -- a Saturday afternoon (exact time and place to be determined):
>
> * Jimbo - well, duh! It was his idea...
> * Bcorr - offers to organize
> * Uncle Ed - willing to help Bcorr organize; willing to give Danny
> a ride
> * moink - local, can help some
> * Danny - would like to go up together (from NYC)
> * Mihai - yes
>
> * Acegikmo1 - interested in attending
> * Raul654 - thinking about it
> * Plato - considering
>
> * (Steven G. Johnson regrets that he probably can't come )
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
The following Wikipedians have signed up to meet in Boston, July 31st,
2004 -- a Saturday afternoon (exact time and place to be determined):
* Jimbo - well, duh! It was his idea...
* Bcorr - offers to organize
* Uncle Ed - willing to help Bcorr organize; willing to give Danny
a ride
* moink - local, can help some
* Danny - would like to go up together (from NYC)
* Mihai - yes
* Acegikmo1 - interested in attending
* Raul654 - thinking about it
* Plato - considering
* (Steven G. Johnson regrets that he probably can't come )
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
As I understand it, writing in accord with NPOV policy
means that we treat our issues in light of their historical
development.
For instance, in our articles on Christianity and on Haredi
(Ultra-Orthodox) Judaism, we do not merely describe the way
that these religions exist now. Rather, we describe the
historical origins of these groups, as known from the best
evidence, archaeological, scientific, and from traditional
religious sources. These articles then describe changing
social, religious and political conditions, and describe
how people's beliefs and practices changed over time.
On a number of occasions, religious fundamentalist Jews,
Christians and Muslims have strenuously objected to these
treatments, claiming that they discriminate against their
religious beliefs. They prefer that the articles describe
their faith as they see it, which is from an ahistorical
perspective (e.g. the way things are is the way things have
always been; any differences are from heretical sects that
don't represent the real religion.) Fortunately, we have
reverted any such changes to the previously described
historical descriptions.
I am familiar with the NPOV article, but it doesn't really
mention historical development, even though we all
apparently understand it this way. Is there a formal
article on how and why Wikipedia NPOV polic means that
articles must be written in such a way as to show
historical context? If so, where? If not, can we edit and
add to the current NPOV article to mention this.
Robert (RK)
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Viajero writes:
> The term "childlover" appears, presumably for tactical
> reasons, to be essentially a synonym for pedophilia,
> so shouldn't the contents of the page simply be
> merged with [[Pedophilia]], which already has a
> one-line paragraph on the term?
I agree absolutely. This should be done immediately.
> Also, I am not in favor of moralizing, even indirectly,
> but if there is clinical evidence that sex with children
> is not healthy, that surely it should be reported.
Agreed. And there is a huge amount of such research. Our
article should pick a dozen separate studies on this
subject, and summarize each study separately. Build up this
article with scientific evidence.
> The text as it now stands reads like a defense against a
> charge which is not explicitly made evident.
In other words, it is pro-pediphillia propaganda.
There's a good South Park episode on this issue, btw.
Robert (RK)
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>From: David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered
>tohave discovered Wikipedia!
>Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 01:32:25 +0000
>
>On 07/14/04 00:26, Sj wrote:
>
>>I don't see any reason for our Scientology articles not to be informed by
>>criticisms, suggestions, and edits from Sc. practitioners. Anything
>>unverifiable will have to stay on Talk pages... (and maybe this user can
>>help us flesh out the article on [[Mission Earth]] so that it passes FAC
>>next time. ^ ^ ) + sj +
>
>Not 'practitioners', but the organisation itself. That's different.
>
>- d.
Is there a policy that organizations are not supposed to edit articles,
provided they meet the standards of behavior that apply to anyone else?
-Nat Krause (the eponymous user)
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I would like to draw everyone's attention to the [[Childlover]] page. I am
not taking a position on the issue, but I do believe that this is one topic we
must be very careful of. Our reputation as a reliable source can be severely
impeded if we are perceived (whether right or wrong) as promoting pedophilia.
While I am not saying that we should censor the page, I do think that everyone
should take a very careful look at it to see that we do not cross any
boundaries that can be potentially harmful to us.
Danny
Stan Shebs wrote:
>Jimbo is being a little too modest when he says that scholars haven't
>picked articles for fact-checking - we have a number of scholars and
>other authorities who are WPers, the articles in their areas get pretty
>thoroughly fact-checked, and they watch those articles closely to see
>that new errors don't get in. The only thing that hasn't happened yet
>is a large-scale systematic review.
But that wasn't the question. The article asked if Wikipedia had
tested its reliability by taking a number of RANDOMLY-SELECTED
articles and submitting them to scholars for fact-checking, to which
Jimbo admitted that they hadn't.
It's certainly true that some individual articles in the Wikipedia
have been carefully vetted for accuracy by "scholars and other
authorities," but that doesn't mean that all or even most articles
meet that standard.
Just out of curiosity, I clicked the "Random page" link a few times.
Out of ten articles, I found five stubs, two of which had frequent
grammatical errors. The remaining five included one article that
seemed strongly opinionated about the [[Nintendo Seal of Quality]],
and four articles of varying length that appear from what I can tell
to be accurate and appropriate for their topics. (Of course, I'm not
really qualified to judge the accuracy of some of the articles which
discuss topics outside my areas of interest.)
My little experiment isn't sufficient to serve as the basis for any
conclusions, but if two out of ten articles are grammatically-flawed
stubs, it would seem to support the article's contention that
Wikipedia doesn't yet meet the quality-control standards of a
commercial encyclopedia like Encyclopedia Britannica.
On the other hand, Wikipedia beats Britannica with regard to sheer
NUMBER of articles.
--Sheldon Rampton