From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 1 01:01:23 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:01:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy question: Interwiki links on disambiguation pages? References: <20031231082116.44018.qmail@web25003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FF37163.1060903@telus.net> Angela wrote: >Timwi wrote > >>Do we want to inter-wiki-link disambiguation pages? >> > >Yes, I think they're useful. > >>there may be a disambiguation page for a term which >>is ambiguous only in English and not in other >>languages ([[jack]] comes to mind). >> > >Then there wouldn't be a disambiguation page in >another language to link to, so that wouldn't be an >issue. Only languages which have a disambiguation page >that matches one in another language would have these >inter-language links, so I don't see why [[jack]] >would cause any problems. > >Often a disambiguation page does map well to those in >other languages, such as [[Mars]], which has links to >[[Mars (god)]] and [[Mars (planet)]] in English, that >maps to the [[Mars (Mythologie)]] and [[Mars >(Planet)]] on de for example. There will also be links >on the foreign disambiguation pages that aren't >included on en, like fr has [[Mars (mois)]], but that >doesn't mean the English Mars page has to link to >[[March]]. I don't think that's a problem. > >What benefit is there to removing them? > When I first saw this thread I was mildly negative to such links, but the more I consider the issue the more I see them as useful. this is especially so for people who may be familiar with more than one language who may appreciate knowing that the term is used differently in English. English concepts are often imported by other languages where they take can take on an entirely different and frequently unexpected meaning. Ec From rgmerk at mira.net Thu Jan 1 13:55:14 2004 From: rgmerk at mira.net (Robert Graham Merkel) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 00:55:14 +1100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] auto-biography In-Reply-To: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040101135514.GA14882@mira.net> > > Should we write a specific policy page about this, to expand the entry > on WWisNot, in a similar way to what I did recently for > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research ? We had this debate some time ago, at [[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]]. At the time I left it, it imposed a blanket ban on starting articles about oneself. Some people wanted a broader imposition. Others like Cunc objected to it (primarily on the basis that rules are bad - a sentiment I can understand, but disagree with in this specific case). Eloquence rewrote this later to tone it down - suggesting merely that creating an article on yourself is probably not a good idea, and that it is likely to be listed on VfD and that some people strongly disapprove of the creation of pages on yourself. Personally, I still think a blanket ban on creating articles about yourself or your own works is a good idea. From sheldon.rampton at verizon.net Thu Jan 1 18:18:13 2004 From: sheldon.rampton at verizon.net (Sheldon Rampton) Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 12:18:13 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Ed Poor wrote: >I think Jimbo mentioned last month that there is a >problem with self-written biographies: other contributors >may be excessively reluctant to 'contradict' the person >who presumably knows himself best. This issue arose >over the Sheldon Rampton article, although it little >or no problem for the William Connelley article. Jimbo expressed his opinion that this might be a problem, but he didn't offer any evidence to support his opinion, and he didn't propose any policy for dealing with it. Jimbo's theory was that people might be reluctant to contradict an article about me to which I have contributed, but his _reasons_ for thinking this were inconsistent: (1) Jimbo thought people might not want to risk clashing with me, based perhaps on a perception that I have been combative on this listserv. There are several reasons, however, why this assertion doesn't hold up under scrutiny. To begin with, most Wikipedians don't subscribe to the listserv. Furthermore, there is no particular reason to expect that most Wikipedians consult an article's history before editing it, so many people wouldn't even _know_ whether I have edited the Sheldon Rampton article before undertaking their own edits. In fact, seven different people have made edits to the Sheldon Rampton article since I first contributed to it. (2) The other issue, which Ed raises here, is whether other contributors would be "excessively reluctant to contradict the person who presumably knows himself best." This is indeed a bit of a dilemma, but the problem isn't in way unique to articles that happen to be self-referential. The same question would arise if someone with a PhD in biochemistry contributed to an article about serotonin, or a musicologist contributed to an article about Mozart. The fact is that people without special knowledge about a topic _should_ be somewhat careful about contradicting someone with special knowledge -- which of course doesn't mean that they should refrain entirely, just that they should be careful. But does Wikipedia want to adopt a _general_ policy that says people should make a special effort to avoid contributing to topics on which they have special knowledge, for fear of inhibiting lay contributors? That would be bizarre, and I think it would be equally bizarre to adopt that policy with regard to biographical articles. (3) Perhaps the best argument against self-written biographies is that we all have a strong point of view about ourselves. There might be a problem with someone inserting a passionately slanted biography about himself and then adamantly defending it against all contrary points of view. However, I don't see any evidence that this is a worse problem than other POV conflicts that occur on Wikipedia, and in practice thus far it seems to be rare. Interestingly, the concerns expressed in points (1) and (2) above could be entirely eliminated simply by adopting a policy that says people should contribute _anonymously_ whenever they contribute to a biography of themselves. If I had adopted some user name other than "Sheldon Rampton" when I contributed to the Sheldon Rampton article, no one would worry about clashing with me or about the presumption that I "know myself best." This, however, would come at the price of less transparency, and as a general rule I think transparency is a good thing. As another interesting aside, the Disinfopedia recently had an exchange with Philip Stott, a British professor who is profiled there. Stott himself made a number of contributions to the Philip Stott article, and I think his participation improved it. Moreover, I saw no evidence that people who disagree with Stott's self-assessment were at all reluctant to contradict him. If people want to see how that article has developed to date, they can read it at the following URL: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Philip_Stott Having said all this, I think there _is_ a potential problem with "vanity biographies," but this is really just a special case under Wikipedia's NPOV policy. It might be a good idea to have a policy against people _creating_ biographies of themselves, even though this would be impossible in practice to enforce. -- -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception -------------------------------- From tarquin at planetunreal.com Thu Jan 1 18:32:18 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 18:32:18 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: References: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <3FF467B2.4050404@planetunreal.com> Sheldon Rampton wrote: > > Having said all this, I think there _is_ a potential problem with > "vanity biographies," but this is really just a special case under > Wikipedia's NPOV policy. It might be a good idea to have a policy > against people _creating_ biographies of themselves, even though this > would be impossible in practice to enforce. I guess we have to distinguish between cases: Case 1: a person about whom we'd write an article anyway. In this case, we'd perhaps be wary of NPOV problems. If the person is just adding information, this should be fine. Case 2: a person about whom we *wouldn't* write an article. This is the "vanity biography". It's this I was alluding to. Anyway, it seems we have a couple of pages on this already http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Probably_not_famous_people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Auto-biography They need a bit of cleaning up though From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 1 18:40:58 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 11:40:58 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think this point of view problem is of the essence for Wikipedia. By definition what you write about yourself is simply not NPOV. And if there is any serious criticisms to be made (actually unusual for ordinary people) the trouble starts. I think Wikipedia is just not set up to deal with this and most people would not want it to be. Fred > From: Sheldon Rampton > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 12:18:13 -0600 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies > > (3) Perhaps the best argument against self-written biographies is > that we all have a strong point of view about ourselves. There might > be a problem with someone inserting a passionately slanted biography > about himself and then adamantly defending it against all contrary > points of view. However, I don't see any evidence that this is a > worse problem than other POV conflicts that occur on Wikipedia, and > in practice thus far it seems to be rare. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 1 22:54:13 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 15:54:13 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: May I suggest you are all being too hard on folks. Here's a suggested rule of thumb: If someone generates 100 or more google hits and their autobiography is reasonably brief then let it go, especially if they are a regular wikipedia contributor. I think you are needlessly hassling folks. Fred From tarquin at planetunreal.com Thu Jan 1 23:44:09 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 23:44:09 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FF4B0C9.7080608@planetunreal.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >May I suggest you are all being too hard on folks. Here's a suggested rule >of thumb: If someone generates 100 or more google hits and their >autobiography is reasonably brief then let it go, especially if they are a >regular wikipedia contributor. I think you are needlessly hassling folks. > > Hey, by that rule, *I* get one! "tarquin unreal" gets 1470 Google hits! Wow!!!!!!!!!! And I've done nothing of note except release a tiny software add-on three years ago! From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 1 23:52:26 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 16:52:26 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: <3FF4B0C9.7080608@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: You don't HAVE to write it... Fred > From: tarquin > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 23:44:09 +0000 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies > > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> May I suggest you are all being too hard on folks. Here's a suggested rule >> of thumb: If someone generates 100 or more google hits and their >> autobiography is reasonably brief then let it go, especially if they are a >> regular wikipedia contributor. I think you are needlessly hassling folks. >> >> > Hey, by that rule, *I* get one! "tarquin unreal" gets 1470 Google hits! > Wow!!!!!!!!!! And I've done nothing of note except release a tiny > software add-on three years ago! > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From tarquin at planetunreal.com Thu Jan 1 23:51:31 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 23:51:31 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FF4B283.8080301@planetunreal.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >You don't HAVE to write it... > >Fred > > > > > My point was that it's a terrible idea. This guy MRM Parrott is basically abusing the open nature of Wikipedia and using it as a platform for self-promotion. From erik_moeller at gmx.de Fri Jan 2 00:19:29 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 00:19:29 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <905nsmKCpVB@erik_moeller> Fred- > May I suggest you are all being too hard on folks. Here's a suggested rule > of thumb: If someone generates 100 or more google hits and their > autobiography is reasonably brief then let it go, especially if they are a > regular wikipedia contributor. I think you are needlessly hassling folks. Problem is verifiability, and highly idiosyncratic/POV stuff. These policies are really non-negotiable, and because self-written biographies are, from my experience, highly likely to be in violation, it's a good idea to recommend against starting them in the first place. But I see no problem with people contributing to their biographies -- we should extend a modicum of trust, but remove irrelevant stuff ("learned swimming at age 3") and ask for documentation on key facts. I do agree that people have been somewhat unreasonably hassled. I blame that on a certain contingent of Wikipedians who seem to be OK with every article as long as it is written in correct English. This makes it difficult to agree on clear policies, which in turn leads to aggressive, prolonged disputes. To be fair, there is another contingent that has very high standards as to what kind of material should be included, which are often in conflict with a totally open project like ours. IMHO it would be good for Jimbo to make some of the criteria for inclusion more definitive. We should always look at "worst case" scenarios. Do we want a million auto-generated articles from public records, for example? Regards, Erik From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 2 00:28:23 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 16:28:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] auto-biography References: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040101135514.GA14882@mira.net> Message-ID: <3FF4BB27.4050408@telus.net> Robert Graham Merkel wrote: >>Should we write a specific policy page about this, to expand the entry >>on WWisNot, in a similar way to what I did recently for >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research ? >> > >We had this debate some time ago, at [[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]]. >At the time I left it, it imposed a blanket ban on starting articles >about oneself. Some people wanted a broader imposition. Others like >Cunc objected to it (primarily on the basis that rules are bad - a >sentiment I can understand, but disagree with in this specific case). > >Eloquence rewrote this later to tone it down - suggesting merely that >creating an article on yourself is probably not a good idea, and that >it is likely to be listed on VfD and that some people strongly >disapprove of the creation of pages on yourself. > >Personally, I still think a blanket ban on creating articles about yourself >or your own works is a good idea. > I am opposed to an outright ban in either of these two areas. I find it difficult to deal with those that want to suppress all knowledge that has nothing to do with their unique visions of just what an encyclopedia is. There are of course many of these that are really user pages. Wouldn't it be simpler if the material were just moved to the relevant user page, and a notice were left at the page where the autobiography was to say something like, "The material formerly here was autobiographical material. It has been moved to [[User:....]]". Most will accept this change. Those that don't agree may restore the material. That's OK. They then need to understand that it may then be subject to merciless editing to an extent that would not happen on a user page. With enough merciless editing they may get the point. Blanket deletions of such pages only provokes animosities. The recently written "No original research" provision appears to focus on science, and "new scientific theories" and completely ignores other areas of study. The most disturbing aspect is that it uses Jimbo's comments from the mailing list as though he were speaking "ex cathedra". Jimbo has on several occasions stated that he avoids editing articles to avoid a misperception that he is exercising his dictatorial powers. There are times when he has opinions like any others of us and should have a right to express them without creating a big splash in the wading pool.. From my perspective, the degree of authority with which he speaks should depend on how close the subject is to the core values of the general undertaking and its operational necessities. His recognition that other projects within the family will develop their own policies based on an infinite range of parameters speaks to that. Using Jimbo's mailing list opinion as a technique for imposing a particular POV does not address the issue. That article does appear to give objective criteria for determining when a scientific article is to be viewed as original research. It gives no reason for why these articles should be excluded other than "Jimbo says so." It is completely silent about original research in fields outside of "science", and how to identify it In one sense every article in Wikipedia is original research except those that plagiarize another source. The fact is that the history of science is strewn with these false steps and original ideas which led nowhere. Their historical value is what makes them encyclopedic, not their content and not their theories. Their dubious value to science needs to be remarked but not ridiculed, and not obsessively disproved. (Remember, the burden of proof for any scientific theory rests with its proponent; if he hasn't carried that burden it is sufficient to say that as simply as possible.) Most of these ideas can be adequately covered in a single page, and take much less space than what is used arguing about them. Why should contemporary crackpots be viewed with any less regard than those from the last century? Ec From sascha at pantropy.net Fri Jan 2 03:27:11 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 22:27:11 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401012227.13303.sascha@pantropy.net> On Thursday 01 January 2004 05:54 pm, Fred Bauder wrote: > May I suggest you are all being too hard on folks. May I suggest that you are being too easy on this person. He added himself to [[list of ethicists]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethicists), which includes the following in the intro paragraph: "List of ethicists including religious or political figures recognized by those outside their tradition as having made major contributions to ideas about ethics, ..." Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From rgmerk at mira.net Fri Jan 2 09:35:32 2004 From: rgmerk at mira.net (Robert Graham Merkel) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 20:35:32 +1100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] cranks and deleting In-Reply-To: <20040102003330.2FD53B831@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040102003330.2FD53B831@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040102093532.GA18745@mira.net> On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 12:33:30AM +0000, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote: > The recently written "No original research" provision appears to focus > on science, and "new scientific theories" and completely ignores other > areas of study. The most disturbing aspect is that it uses Jimbo's > comments from the mailing list as though he were speaking "ex cathedra". > Jimbo has on several occasions stated that he avoids editing articles > to avoid a misperception that he is exercising his dictatorial powers. > There are times when he has opinions like any others of us and should > have a right to express them without creating a big splash in the wading > pool.. From my perspective, the degree of authority with which he > speaks should depend on how close the subject is to the core values of > the general undertaking and its operational necessities. His > recognition that other projects within the family will develop their own > policies based on an infinite range of parameters speaks to that. > That was added to "What Wikipedia is not" way back in January 2003. It has recently been modified to state "no *primary* research", which is a better description of what the rule was intended to cover. > Using Jimbo's mailing list opinion as a technique for imposing a > particular POV does not address the issue. That article does appear to > give objective criteria for determining when a scientific article is to > be viewed as original research. It gives no reason for why these > articles should be excluded other than "Jimbo says so." It is > completely silent about original research in fields outside of > "science", and how to identify it In one sense every article in > Wikipedia is original research except those that plagiarize another source. > See above. Yes, this rule has problems for areas not covered by academic journals, but so far these kind of disputes have not come up that often in such areas. As far as "Jimbo says so", I think you'll find that this rule has wide, though not necessarily universal, support, for very good reasons. One is that original research has not yet gone through the peer review of experts in the field and is thus unverified and possibly unverifiable. It is therefore an excellent tool for weeding through patent nonsense. > The fact is that the history of science is strewn with these false steps > and original ideas which led nowhere. Their historical value is what > makes them encyclopedic, not their content and not their theories. > Their dubious value to science needs to be remarked but not ridiculed, > and not obsessively disproved. (Remember, the burden of proof for any > scientific theory rests with its proponent; if he hasn't carried that > burden it is sufficient to say that as simply as possible.) Most of > these ideas can be adequately covered in a single page, and take much > less space than what is used arguing about them. Why should > contemporary crackpots be viewed with any less regard than those from > the last century? > If a crackpot theory attracts enough attention, Wikipedia should write about it - case in point, [[Timecube]]. Until that attention is gained through other means, we shouldn't. If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe theory]] we would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after listing on VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. From tarquin at planetunreal.com Fri Jan 2 09:49:04 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 09:49:04 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] auto-biography In-Reply-To: <3FF4BB27.4050408@telus.net> References: <20040101120004.A195EB861@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040101135514.GA14882@mira.net> <3FF4BB27.4050408@telus.net> Message-ID: <3FF53E90.3080106@planetunreal.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: > > The fact is that the history of science is strewn with these false > steps and original ideas which led nowhere. Their historical value is > what makes them encyclopedic, not their content and not their > theories. Their dubious value to science needs to be remarked but not > ridiculed, and not obsessively disproved. (Remember, the burden of > proof for any scientific theory rests with its proponent; if he hasn't > carried that burden it is sufficient to say that as simply as > possible.) Most of these ideas can be adequately covered in a single > page, and take much less space than what is used arguing about them. > Why should contemporary crackpots be viewed with any less regard than > those from the last century? There is nothing wrong with us having articles on cutting-edge theories, *that have previously been published and subjected to some sort of peer review* The problem is when a lone nut wants to make a mirror of his web page on WP From tarquin at planetunreal.com Fri Jan 2 09:51:25 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 09:51:25 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies In-Reply-To: <905nsmKCpVB@erik_moeller> References: <905nsmKCpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <3FF53F1D.8010109@planetunreal.com> Erik Moeller wrote: >To be fair, there is another contingent that has very high standards as to >what kind of material should be included, which are often in conflict with >a totally open project like ours. > > "open" means anyone can edit. it does nmot mean anyone can add any old junk. Some of us have lofty ambitions for WP, that's all. Others don't take it as seriously. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 2 12:01:58 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 05:01:58 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! In-Reply-To: <20040102093532.GA18745@mira.net> Message-ID: > From: Robert Graham Merkel > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 20:35:32 +1100 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] cranks and deleting > > If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and > user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe theory]] we > would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after listing on > VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. From tarquin at planetunreal.com Fri Jan 2 13:22:02 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:22:02 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources Message-ID: <3FF5707A.8000103@planetunreal.com> The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we can find on them is written by the author. So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that "Wikipedia is not a primary source". This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of articles in WP. We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many primary sources we require. From tarquin at planetunreal.com Fri Jan 2 13:22:43 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:22:43 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FF570A3.8020508@planetunreal.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >>From: Robert Graham Merkel >> >> >>If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and >>user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe theory]] we >>would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after listing on >>VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. >> >> Ah, but once journals had started covering his story -- even though they said it was nonsense -- then we WOULD have covered it! From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 2 13:31:47 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 06:31:47 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In 1536 [Copernicus'] work was already in a definitive form, and some rumours about his theory had reached the scientists of all Europe. From many parts of the Continent, Copernicus received invitations to publish it, but he felt quite apprehensive of persecution for his revolutionary work by the establishment of the time. The cardinal Nicola Schonberg of Capua wrote him for a copy of his manuscript, and this made Copernicus, who saw in this a certain nervousness of the Church, even more frightened of eventual reactions. References: From the Wikipedia article, "Nicolaus Copernicus" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus > From: Fred Bauder > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 05:01:58 -0700 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! > > > >> From: Robert Graham Merkel >> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >> Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 20:35:32 +1100 >> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org >> Subject: [WikiEN-l] cranks and deleting >> >> If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and >> user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe theory]] we >> would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after listing on >> VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 2 13:39:33 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 06:39:33 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources In-Reply-To: <3FF5707A.8000103@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: I think the question of quality of sources cannot be avoided. Where I live we had a young man who made a living off of stories of flying saucers, cattle mutilations and similar stuff, none of which was fact based (as I have lived here for many years, surely I would have observed at least one of the numberless phenomena he reported). He is notorious enough that should someone wish to write a Wikipedia article it would not be questioned. Simply a lot of independent sources doesn't raise crap to fact. The modest article Ray Gardner wrote about himself falls in an entirely different category, nothing in his article is subject to serious factual dispute, despite lack of any way of definitively validating whether, for example, he worked for Electronic Arts. Fred > From: tarquin > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:22:02 +0000 > To: Wikipedia-En > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources > > The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have > something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we > can find on them is written by the author. > > So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that > "Wikipedia is not a primary source". > This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of > articles in WP. > We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many > primary sources we require. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 2 16:27:54 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 08:27:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! In-Reply-To: <3FF570A3.8020508@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040102162754.87173.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> But how much time would we spend on arguing with him whether he was Polish or German? RickK tarquin wrote: Fred Bauder wrote: >>From: Robert Graham Merkel >> >> >>If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and >>user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe theory]] we >>would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after listing on >>VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. >> >> Ah, but once journals had started covering his story -- even though they said it was nonsense -- then we WOULD have covered it! --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040102/b6276f46/attachment.htm From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 2 20:37:47 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 12:37:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources References: <3FF5707A.8000103@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <3FF5D69B.7050508@telus.net> tarquin wrote: > The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have > something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we > can find on them is written by the author. > > So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy > that "Wikipedia is not a primary source". > This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of > articles in WP. > We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many > primary sources we require. Autobiographies can still be moved to user pages. What you call "primary sources" can be furnished with an appropriate disclaimer. I just don't like being in the position where we are judging whether someone else's ideas are worth publishing. If there are no Google hits on the subject other than the author's web page we can say that; if no books have been published on it we can say that; if there has been no peer review (an overated criterion) we can say that. If the proposed theory threatens to become unduly long, or spills over into more than one article page we can probably take steps to edit it down to size. The long-windedness of some of these people is often more reflective of their inability to write clearly, than of their theory. Many may even thank us for editing things down when they see that it makes their ideas "clearer". Discussing "how many primary sources we require" is playing a numbers game. It doesn't matter. It is also not our responsibility to try to disprove these theories. That is not a requirement of NPOV; they can be met by a brief statement as part of the disclaimer. It often seems that the compulsion which "science advocates" in our community show for disproving the unprovable is just another variation of throwing tasty morsels to the trolls. Letting our theorsts sit quietly in their playpens will generate a lot less crying than spanking them. I take a decidedly history-of-science perspective on these issues where even the scientifically invalid may neverthess be valid history. There are better ways to deal with these issues than simply deleting them. I would be glad to work on a respectful boilerplate disclaimerfor these pages that would also allay the concerns of those who fear that we are going to be overrun by an endless series of nutball theories. Ec From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 2 20:59:32 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 12:59:32 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! References: <3FF570A3.8020508@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <3FF5DBB4.2080006@telus.net> tarquin wrote: > Fred Bauder wrote: > >>> From: Robert Graham Merkel >>> >>> If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and >>> user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe theory]] we >>> would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after >>> listing on >>> VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. >> > Ah, but once journals had started covering his story -- even though > they said it was nonsense -- then we WOULD have covered it! Don't count on it! The Holy Inquisition's Fahrenheit 451 was not established just to deal with the handful of these people whose works survived. It also dealt with some dangerous characters, and that became a justification for a wide sweep. We just don't know about those many who completely failed to escape from that black hole. (I don't forsee the Vatican Archives becoming completely open to the public soon.) I don't think that a law-abiding 16th century Wikipedia would have had the courage to stare down the Holy Inquisition. :-) Ec From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 2 21:11:06 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:11:06 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Outrageous! References: <20040102162754.87173.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FF5DE6A.7070101@telus.net> Yes, maybe that issue is more important to some Wikipedians than his ideas about astronumy. ;-) Ec Rick wrote: > But how much time would we spend on arguing with him whether he was > Polish or German? > > > > RickK > > tarquin wrote: > > Fred Bauder wrote: > > >>From: Robert Graham Merkel > >> > >> > >>If the Wikipedia had existed back in the 1530's and > >>user:Copernicus had added a piece on [[Sun-centred universe > theory]] we > >>would have been perfectly correct to delete the article after > listing on > >>VfD and suggest that he first publish his work elsewhere. > From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sat Jan 3 00:51:48 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 16:51:48 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <3FF2F48C.2090305@planetunreal.com> References: <3FF2F48C.2090305@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040103005148.GC7088@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Tarquin wrote in part: >See for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:M.R.M._Parrott >On VFD he author argues that nothing in our policy forbids a biography >of him, even though we've found only two reviews of his books. >As well as being what we call "non-encyclopedic", these can't be NPOV >since the facts can't be verified. We don't need a special policy for autobiographies which states that unverifiable biographies are unacceptable, if we already have a policy that all articles must be verifiable. That said, it's justifiable, in meta pages on biography conventions, to ''mention'' that all articles, including biographies, should be verifiable. And it would be a good idea to mention this if there have been problems -- which it seems that there have! But this is not Yet Another Policy ^_^. -- Toby From ruimu at uestc.edu.cn Sat Jan 3 03:02:04 2004 From: ruimu at uestc.edu.cn (Ruimu) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 11:02:04 +0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies References: <200401012227.13303.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <004a01c3d1a6$09415a00$8d6c29d2@gus> ----- Original Message ----- From: "tarquin" > > My point was that it's a terrible idea. > This guy MRM Parrott is basically abusing the open nature of Wikipedia > and using it as a platform for self-promotion. In short: I would leave autobiographies growing alone without particular rules. I think the pov problem is not so different than in other cases. (In fact, it's easyier to address for autobio.) I don't think self-promotion is efficient on Wikipedia. It is obvious that this guy is using Wikipedia for self-satisfaction while writing his own autobiography, and Wikipedia probably wouldn't work without this powerful self-fuelling system, but how could this "promotion" have the sligthest efficiency? One article in Wikipedia in an ant in the ant hill. If he wants to promote himself, he'd better go on the streets and do a naked headstand, or simply troll the usenet (where many readers will see his prose without having to ''look for'' it). If I were God, I would gently remove him for list of ethicist, but leave him in list of persons (already done by someone else). I would leave him his page, but remove existing pov-erties if any. Someone said here or somewhere that Wikipedia have no roof and no walls. If there is list of programmers, there is maybe a list of unreal programmers. If you have released a software for unreal, your name is to be on this list. If your name is on the list, it should (have to?) be a wikilink. If there is an empty wikilink, it means that an article has to be written, by anyone including you. If you or Mr Parrott are stupid enough (I know you are not, I'm just weaving the thread) to write an autobiography that is obviously biaised, and can't retain yourself from stating that unreal or post-modernism is the best thing in the world because you feel better after saying that on something that matters to you, then it is likely that you will not be more neutral in contributing on [[unreal]] or [[post-modernism]] than on your own bio page (even worse: people will pay less attention on your edits). (Sorry for the length of previous sentence) Ruimu From tarquin at planetunreal.com Sat Jan 3 11:46:45 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 11:46:45 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <20040103005148.GC7088@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <3FF2F48C.2090305@planetunreal.com> <20040103005148.GC7088@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <3FF6ABA5.303@planetunreal.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >We don't need a special policy for autobiographies >which states that unverifiable biographies are unacceptable, >if we already have a policy that all articles must be verifiable. >That said, it's justifiable, in meta pages on biography conventions, >to ''mention'' that all articles, including biographies, should be verifiable. >And it would be a good idea to mention this if there have been problems -- >which it seems that there have! But this is not Yet Another Policy ^_^. > > > Agreed. It's making a page to explain this particular aspect of existing policy. My motivation is that when I directed MRM Parrott to "what WP is not" he said that nothing there prevented him having an article. From tarquin at planetunreal.com Sat Jan 3 11:49:58 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 11:49:58 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources In-Reply-To: <3FF5D69B.7050508@telus.net> References: <3FF5707A.8000103@planetunreal.com> <3FF5D69B.7050508@telus.net> Message-ID: <3FF6AC66.3090501@planetunreal.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: > > Discussing "how many primary sources we require" is playing a numbers > game. It doesn't matter. It is also not our responsibility to try to > disprove these theories. That is not a requirement of NPOV; they can > be met by a brief statement as part of the disclaimer. It often seems > that the compulsion which "science advocates" in our community show > for disproving the unprovable is just another variation of throwing > tasty morsels to the trolls. Letting our theorsts sit quietly in > their playpens will generate a lot less crying than spanking them. A numbers game is a bad idea. For each case we must use or judgement on how much source material there is and what its quality is > > I take a decidedly history-of-science perspective on these issues > where even the scientifically invalid may neverthess be valid > history. There are better ways to deal with these issues than simply > deleting them. I would be glad to work on a respectful boilerplate > disclaimerfor these pages that would also allay the concerns of those > who fear that we are going to be overrun by an endless series of > nutball theories. There are nutball theories and nutball theories. The "aquatic ape" theory is an example of a nutball theory we should cover, because it's been discussed and reviewed. Now if I wrote a webpage saying I think the universe is made of plasticine and Lego bricks, then spammed the URL around Usenet for a few months -- surely you don't suggest that be included in WP? From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 3 12:30:00 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 05:30:00 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Suggested policy on autobiographies In-Reply-To: <3FF6ABA5.303@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: I think I have made up my mind about what Wikipedia's policy ought to be. Looking at the comments made on Votes for Deletion regarding MRM Parrott it seems that the amount of heat generated by those who feel Wikipedia is being used for self-promotion far outweighs the amount of knowlege that is imparted in the article, MRM Parrott. I also note that the debate rapidly turns nasty with Mark (MRM Parrott} being protrayed as essentially, "no good", a gross exaggeration of whatever defects he may have. It is hard to establish presence on the internet and in popular and academic culture. You can have a really cool website, have great ideas, write and publish books, some of them quite good and not much happens. Your books don't get reviewed in important media by significant reviewers, not even bad reviews. Your books don't sell, even a good one with something to say. And it is frustrating. It is understandable why people in such circumstances try to promote themselves. Therefore I propose that when an apparent autobiography is encountered that a note be made in the talk page of the article, and on the page of the editor if they are a wikipedia user linking to our autobiographical policy (Which ought to clearly state that it is against Wikipedia policy to engage in writing self-promoting aricles about yourself or your projects). We should also make a reasonable attempt to contact them by email (googling for their websites may work for anonymous editors) and explain the policy. After a reasonable chance to respond (here it gets a bit tricky, since they usually can't delete the page they made themselves) then the page should be listed on votes for deletion or simply deleted with the authors consent now that they understand the policy. I think the rule probably needs to be hard and fast, all autobiographies are to be deleted, regardless of fame or lack of it. In the case of folks who rate an article for some reason we can trust someone will eventually write one. In summary, we should be courteous, understanding, and bottom line, firm. Hopefully we can minimize hurt feelings and maintain encyclopedic policy. Fred > From: tarquin > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 11:46:45 +0000 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies > > > > Toby Bartels wrote: > >> We don't need a special policy for autobiographies >> which states that unverifiable biographies are unacceptable, >> if we already have a policy that all articles must be verifiable. >> That said, it's justifiable, in meta pages on biography conventions, >> to ''mention'' that all articles, including biographies, should be >> verifiable. >> And it would be a good idea to mention this if there have been problems -- >> which it seems that there have! But this is not Yet Another Policy ^_^. >> >> >> > Agreed. > It's making a page to explain this particular aspect of existing policy. > My motivation is that when I directed MRM Parrott to "what WP is not" he > said that nothing there prevented him having an article. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 3 21:20:28 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 13:20:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] "working..." In-Reply-To: <20031103221452.45559.qmail@web12803.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040103212028.22932.qmail@web60604.mail.yahoo.com> What does it mean why I try to bring up Wikipedia and all I get is a blank screen that says "working..."? RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040103/16bdb93f/attachment.htm From grenfell_ at hotmail.com Sat Jan 3 21:21:25 2004 From: grenfell_ at hotmail.com (Adam Bishop) Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 16:21:25 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] "working..." Message-ID: It means "patience is a virtue." >From: Rick >Reply-To: English Wikipedia >To: English Wikipedia >Subject: [WikiEN-l] "working..." >Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 13:20:28 -0800 (PST) > >What does it mean why I try to bring up Wikipedia and all I get is a blank >screen that says "working..."? > >RickK > > > >--------------------------------- >Do you Yahoo!? >Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/photos&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sat Jan 3 21:26:38 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 13:26:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] auto-biography In-Reply-To: <3FF4BB27.4050408@telus.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote: > [ ...] I find it > difficult to deal with those that want to suppress all knowledge that > has nothing to do with their unique visions of just what an encyclopedia is. > > There are of course many of these that are really user pages. Wouldn't > it be simpler if the material were just moved to the relevant user page, > and a notice were left at the page where the autobiography was to say > something like, "The material formerly here was autobiographical > material. It has been moved to [[User:....]]". Most will accept this > change. Those that don't agree may restore the material. That's OK. > They then need to understand that it may then be subject to merciless > editing to an extent that would not happen on a user page. With enough > merciless editing they may get the point. Blanket deletions of such > pages only provokes animosities. A bit of communicative sugar always helps. Unfortunately, there are people who act as if anything except unqualified agreement with them as vicious harassment. I'll admit I have no clue of how best to deal with these people. > > The recently written "No original research" provision appears to focus > on science, and "new scientific theories" and completely ignores other > areas of study. The most disturbing aspect is that it uses Jimbo's > comments from the mailing list as though he were speaking "ex cathedra". > Jimbo has on several occasions stated that he avoids editing articles > to avoid a misperception that he is exercising his dictatorial powers. Interesting. I've been attempting to apply this rule to those articles on history that I have encountered -- as well as any topic that it fits. While this does tend to give a historiographical slant to articles (that is, writing a history of the history of the subject -- ugh), I think it takes at least one step towards the ideal of NPOV. And it is applicable. Take a look at the various articles on Chronology of Ancient History (e.g., [[Egyptian Chronology]], [[Chronology of Babylonia and Assyria]]): either we have assertions that the current chronological structure is untenable (without a clear explanation why), or the results of calculating eclipses into the 3rd millenium BC without any explanation why (or how) they are important; in one case we have a problem with NPOV, in another, it's clearly original research. (Perhaps I'm revealing my own bias in this manner, since I believe these articles should *explain* how the chronology was determined, rather than put forth one -- or more -- different chronological schemes.) The fact that some use Jimbo's comments as the final word is disturbing, but my feeling is that this usage occurs when a point has been debated to death, yet one person or a small group simply refuses to understand & let the matter drop. (Wikipedia does not seem to have any other way to end debate.) If Jimbo's opinions are used in any other way, then it is wrong. > > Using Jimbo's mailing list opinion as a technique for imposing a > particular POV does not address the issue. That article does appear to > give objective criteria for determining when a scientific article is to > be viewed as original research. It gives no reason for why these > articles should be excluded other than "Jimbo says so." It is > completely silent about original research in fields outside of > "science", and how to identify it In one sense every article in > Wikipedia is original research except those that plagiarize another source. As I understand it, the intent of this rule is to discourage the use of Wikipedia as a means to ``publish" one's discoveries, be it concerning Faster Than Light travel, one's proof that Brooklyn was founded by the Atlanteans, etc. An article should be reporting or summarizing material that appears in printed sources -- any published sources. This guarrantees that it is part of the history of ideas in at least some small way, & not the isolated rantings of some lone individual in a basement apartment, eager for the attention & approval of an imagined audience. (Hmm. That last comment could apply to myself, except that I own my house.) An example of something that clearly violates the ``No Original Research" rule can be seen in the article [[Heberite]]. From the text, I have no idea whether this describes an idea held by anyone except its author. For all I know, this is what is taught in Moscow Public schools -- in which case it belongs in Wikipedia; and it asserts a number of items without providing any proof. (It should probably be placed on VfD, but I will recuse myself from further action concernign this artilce for reasons that are clear in the Talk: section.) > > The fact is that the history of science is strewn with these false steps > and original ideas which led nowhere. Their historical value is what > makes them encyclopedic, not their content and not their theories. > Their dubious value to science needs to be remarked but not ridiculed, > and not obsessively disproved. (Remember, the burden of proof for any > scientific theory rests with its proponent; if he hasn't carried that > burden it is sufficient to say that as simply as possible.) Most of > these ideas can be adequately covered in a single page, and take much > less space than what is used arguing about them. Why should > contemporary crackpots be viewed with any less regard than those from > the last century? > I simply want proof that they have some effect on the history of thought, at least in some small way. The requirement of the use of printed sources is a small hurdle that keeps most of the unsuitable material out, although this rule may handicap in the writing of articles regarding computers or Internet folklore. Geoff From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 4 01:40:49 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 17:40:49 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources In-Reply-To: References: <3FF5707A.8000103@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040104014049.GA12981@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Fred Bauder wrote: >Tarquin wrote: >>The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have >>something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we >>can find on them is written by the author. Right! And by "verify them", you ''don't'' mean ?verify that they are correct? but instead ?verify that this is indeed what people believe about them?. (This may have confused Fred below???) >>So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that >>"Wikipedia is not a primary source". >>This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of >>articles in WP. >>We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many >>primary sources we require. I doubt that it would work well to specify a ''specific'' number of sources; the question is whether other Wikipedians can independently verify things. A possible way to manage it: * Person A is enamoured with subject B (a theory of physics, a person, etc). * So A writes the article [[B]] to get the word out to the world. * Other Wikipedians think B is insignificant and want to delete [[B]]. * A gives (or is asked for) an independent reference C about B. * Either: ** Other Wikipedians use C to verify the facts in [[B]]; and ** [[B]] is allowed to remain (perhaps improved in various ways). * Or: ** Other Wikipedians follow C and find no verification of [[B]]; and ** [[B]] is deleted. This outline assumes that verifiability is (in the end) the only reason to delete [[B]] (which isn't really true, as with vandalism for example), and it assumes that reference C settles the matter; A may need to come back with reference D or whatever. And if A is new, then A may not understand things, so that (the first) reference C is written ''by'' A (hence not independent) or some other problem; people will have to try to work things out in good faith. But the bottom line is that, if A is fighting for the life of [[B]], then A needs to provide a way for other Wikipedians to independently verify it. It would help to cultivate a culture of mentioning sources on talk pages. Most of the time, we don't do this for uncontroversial matters (and I'm as guilty of this omission as anybody else is). But mentioning sources in the absence of controversy will help smooth things over when controversy appears. Sources are the obvious (not the only) ways to get independent verification; since each Wikipedian can check the source independently. >I think the question of quality of sources cannot be avoided. Where I live >we had a young man who made a living off of stories of flying saucers, >cattle mutilations and similar stuff, none of which was fact based (as I >have lived here for many years, surely I would have observed at least one of >the numberless phenomena he reported). He is notorious enough that should >someone wish to write a Wikipedia article it would not be questioned. Simply >a lot of independent sources doesn't raise crap to fact. This situation seems entirely correct to me. Wikipedia is not interested in establishing fact. (There is the technical meaning of the term "fact" in LMS' exposition of NPOV, and that ''is'' what Wikipedia covers; but that's not as broad as the common meaning of the term.) That is, Wikipedia doesn't care if your neighbour's ideas are true. But if he is notorious, then there should be independent evidence of ''what his ideas are'', and Wikipedia can write about '''that'''. And if he is notorious, then Wikipedia ''should'' write about him too! -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 4 01:55:29 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 17:55:29 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <3FF6ABA5.303@planetunreal.com> References: <3FF2F48C.2090305@planetunreal.com> <20040103005148.GC7088@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <3FF6ABA5.303@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040104015529.GB12981@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Tarquin wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>We don't need a special policy for autobiographies >>which states that unverifiable biographies are unacceptable, >>if we already have a policy that all articles must be verifiable. >>... >>And it would be a good idea to mention this if there have been problems -- >>which it seems that there have! But this is not Yet Another Policy ^_^. >Agreed. >It's making a page to explain this particular aspect of existing policy. >My motivation is that when I directed MRM Parrott to "what WP is not" he >said that nothing there prevented him having an article. I don't think that there ''is'' anything on WWIN that: * prevents this article; ''and'' * pertains particularly to biographies. Since the page is long, that might explain why Parrott missed the bits that: * prevent this article for more generic reasons. ^_^ Perhaps he should be pointed to [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]], particularly [[#Obscure topics]]? (This is just ideas on tactics.) -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 4 04:24:38 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 20:24:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we redirect instead of deleting Message-ID: <20040104042438.GA13522@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> I'm going through my watchlist now, and I found some talk pages about [[AIDS Kills Fags Dead]] and all its many variations. These pages were deleted sometime, and they were deleted long enough ago that even though I'm an admin on [[en:]], I can't view the deleted revisions anymore. I hopped around links for a while, until discovering that old talk is at [[Talk:AKFD]] and its subpages. >From the edit history, I see that Martin reorganised the subpages, although I'd have to look through all of his edits in order to discover ''where'' my watched material ended up. Fortunately, my plans are to remove all of this stuff from my watchlist, and nothing more, so I'm OK. But what if I'd wanted to track down changes? With some work, I think that I could straighten it out -- but if I were inexperienced with Wikipedia, then I might have never found [[Talk:AKFD]] in the first place. If another person, following our advice at [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] had linked back to the edit histories of these pages in lieu of determining 5 significant authors, then this other user would be in violation of the GFDL. All of this is why, when we change the title of pages, we should turn them into redirects instead of deleting them. I almost left out the word "should" in the line above, and a year ago I would have been able to do that. -- Toby From sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk Sun Jan 4 04:56:23 2004 From: sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Angela?=) Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 04:56:23 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we redirect instead of deleting In-Reply-To: <20040104042438.GA13522@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <20040104045623.37503.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >All of this is why, when we change the title of pages, >we should turn them into redirects instead of deleting >them. I almost left out the word "should" in the line >above, and a year ago I would have been able to do >that. Normally I would agree with you, but in this case the talk pages were retitled because people wanted that phrase to stop appearing so much in Wikipedia, and renaming the talk pages AKFD was one suggested solution to this without having to lose the content itself. Leaving a redirect to the renamed page would not have solved the problem which was apparently that there were too many pages with this title. Normally redirects themselves don't cause any issues, so it is better to keep them than delete them, but as the discussions on [[Talk:AKFD/redirect]] and [[Talk:AKFD/November 2003]] show, it was decided that the redirects themselves were causing harm which is why I deleted them. Deleting redirects is a problem, but sometimes keeping them is more of a problem. For example where it makes it unreasonably difficult to find similarly named articles, where the redirect might cause confusion, the redirect is offensive or the redirect makes no sense. There are more details and discussion of the policy at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion]] and [[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects]]. Angela. ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 4 04:57:16 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 20:57:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we redirect instead of deleting In-Reply-To: <20040104045623.37503.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040104042438.GA13522@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <20040104045623.37503.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040104045716.GA13657@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Angela wrote in small part: >Deleting redirects is a problem, but sometimes keeping >them is more of a problem. For example where it makes >it unreasonably difficult to find similarly named >articles, where the redirect might cause confusion, >the redirect is offensive or the redirect makes no >sense. There are more details and discussion of the >policy at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion]] and >[[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects]]. I was going to reply on a couple of points, but since discussion on just this matter exists there, then I'll look at those pages instead for now. -- Toby From smolensk at eunet.yu Sun Jan 4 07:43:39 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 08:43:39 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <3FF6ABA5.303@planetunreal.com> References: <3FF2F48C.2090305@planetunreal.com> <20040103005148.GC7088@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <3FF6ABA5.303@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <200401040843.39384.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Saturday 03 January 2004 12:46, tarquin wrote: > Toby Bartels wrote: > >We don't need a special policy for autobiographies > >which states that unverifiable biographies are unacceptable, > >if we already have a policy that all articles must be verifiable. > >That said, it's justifiable, in meta pages on biography conventions, > >to ''mention'' that all articles, including biographies, should be > > verifiable. And it would be a good idea to mention this if there have > > been problems -- which it seems that there have! But this is not Yet > > Another Policy ^_^. > > Agreed. > It's making a page to explain this particular aspect of existing policy. > My motivation is that when I directed MRM Parrott to "what WP is not" he > said that nothing there prevented him having an article. I don't really understand what is the problem with autobiographies and why are they more unverifiable then biographies written by someone else. If we write an article about a dead person, for facts on its life we might consult person's autobiography, or biography, and biographies are often in large part written by biographer talking to person about person's life. I don't see how is it different then person writing about itself - it's the same source at the end. From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 3 21:50:00 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 13:50:00 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies Message-ID: <200401031350.00231.maveric149@yahoo.com> Nikola Smolenski wrote: >I don't really understand what is the problem with >autobiographies and why are they more unverifiable >then biographies written by someone else. Because Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ that person is able to get a real publisher to publish their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of filter. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 4 11:14:51 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 04:14:51 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <200401040843.39384.smolensk@eunet.yu> Message-ID: > From: Nikola Smolenski > I don't really understand what is the problem with autobiographies and why are > they more unverifiable then biographies written by someone else. If we write > an article about a dead person, for facts on its life we might consult > person's autobiography, or biography, and biographies are often in large part > written by biographer talking to person about person's life. I don't see how > is it different then person writing about itself - it's the same source at > the end. An autobiography is a good primary source, but it embodies the very essence of point of view and must be used with that in mind, as are interviews with the person or with family members and friends or a diary. Most of the problem with the alleged autobiographies which end up listed on votes for deletion is that they are usually submitted by an anonymous user, contain only information postive about the subject, often exaggerating accomplishments, and a defining characteristic, cute material, like "he always wears a monocle over an eyepatch", (an actual example from the current vfd, see [[Thomas Jackson]]). They are in Jungian terms, portraits of the persona, the self-image of the person as they project themselves. This is part of the problem, as folks are sensitive about their persona and "deleting" it does not go down well, nor does critical editing. When you google the name you sometimes find nothing [[Thomas Jackson]], or maybe a nice personal website (but Wikipedia is not a web directory). If there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews. Other times you find a little bit [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]], occasionaly a lot [[Florentin Smarandache]]. In some cases you can write a bit of an article or maybe a sustantial one, and perhaps save it from deletion as I tried with [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]] As I posted before, I believe the best policy is gently but firmly say no to all of them. However, in practice, I find it fun to see if I can dig up enough info to save them. But that will pass. But maybe someone else will take it up from time to time. Fred Fred From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 4 19:01:47 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 11:01:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <200401031350.00231.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401031350.00231.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040104190147.GA17388@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Nikola Smolenski wrote: >>I don't really understand what is the problem with >>autobiographies and why are they more unverifiable >>then biographies written by someone else. >Because Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ that person is able >to get a real publisher to publish their autobiography, then and /only/ then >do we use their autobiography as a source. >We need some sort of filter. That explains why the autobiographies are a problem (if you accept mav's premise that we need a filter), but it doesn't explain why they are more unverifiable. First of all, sometimes they ''are'' (or might be, I don't have an example) perfectly verifiable. And in that case, then they should pose no problem. And sometimes (non auto-) biographies are equally unverifiable, in which case those biographies are ''also'' a problem. But in general -- and in the examples that have come up here -- we run into something that Fred Bauder just mentioned: :If there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews. An autobiography (or sympathetic biography based on interviews) might well be as POV and unverifiable as a Wikipedia autobiography; but if it's published by a mainstream publishing company, then it should attract reviews that will help verifiability (and along with that, help us make the article more POV). A self-published work -- vanity book, web page, Wikipedia autobiography -- is less likely to attract the attention that will provide such context. Note that the existence of verifiability is the key here; there's nothing wrong with using a self-published book as a source ''if'' there is verifiability despite the odds against it. Potentially, a Wikipedia autobiography that attracted attention (say, on its talk page) that led to verifiable sources could be acceptable -- and such articles can be salvaged by following up the sources mentioned on the talk page. But one can't ''start'' with a Wikipedia autobiography and just hope that people will place sources in the talk page; we need to have something verifiable to begin with. Thus a Wikipedia autobiography, when there is no other material, is not verifiable. I'm focussing here on verifiability, but there's more than that to mav's point that Wikipedia is not a primary source. However, an autobiographer can avoid this by publishing a home page on a free web hosting service such as Yahoo! Geocities (or whatever the cool kids use these days); then Wikipedia's mercilessly edited article could use that homepage only as a source (and an external link). But if that homepage is the only biographical material on the person, then we ''still'' run into the problem of verifiability. -- Toby From saintonge at telus.net Sun Jan 4 23:25:30 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 15:25:30 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies References: Message-ID: <3FF8A0EA.6040004@telus.net> Fred Bauder wrote: >An autobiography is a good primary source, but it embodies the very essence >of point of view and must be used with that in mind, as are interviews with >the person or with family members and friends or a diary. Most of the >problem with the alleged autobiographies which end up listed on votes for >deletion is that they are usually submitted by an anonymous user, contain >only information postive about the subject, often exaggerating >accomplishments, and a defining characteristic, cute material, like "he >always wears a monocle over an eyepatch", (an actual example from the >current vfd, see [[Thomas Jackson]]). > I'm not impressed by the person, and reading the article doesn't help. When something like this has been clearly contributed under a person's own name, I support moving it to a user page. Anonymous contributors put themselves at a disadvantage because there is no one to contact to ask for information. This one sat unnoticed since January of last year! When I think of Thomas Jackson the image that comes to mind is of the Canadian singer, actor and native activist >When you google the name you sometimes find nothing [[Thomas Jackson]], or >maybe a nice personal website (but Wikipedia is not a web directory). If >there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews. Other >times you find a little bit [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]], >occasionaly a lot [[Florentin Smarandache]]. In some cases you can write a >bit of an article or maybe a sustantial one, and perhaps save it from >deletion as I tried with [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]] > I support the approach of making reasonable efforts to save these from deletion. A little help from the subject helps! >As I posted before, I believe the best policy is gently but firmly say no to >all of them. However, in practice, I find it fun to see if I can dig up >enough info to save them. But that will pass. But maybe someone else will >take it up from time to time. > I still prefer finding some way to save them in an appropriate controlled context. I've never been a fan of VfD. That process is just too confrontational, and seems based on a presumption of guilt. Ec From saintonge at telus.net Sun Jan 4 23:42:05 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 15:42:05 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies References: <200401031350.00231.maveric149@yahoo.com> <20040104190147.GA17388@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <3FF8A4CD.2090509@telus.net> Toby Bartels wrote: >That explains why the autobiographies are a problem >(if you accept mav's premise that we need a filter), >but it doesn't explain why they are more unverifiable. > Filters inherently require a subjective decision. They work better when opinions on something fall into a narrow range. I think that the range of attitudes about what should be kept is too wide to make filters workable. >Potentially, a Wikipedia autobiography that attracted attention >(say, on its talk page) that led to verifiable sources >could be acceptable -- and such articles can be salvaged >by following up the sources mentioned on the talk page. >But one can't ''start'' with a Wikipedia autobiography >and just hope that people will place sources in the talk page; >we need to have something verifiable to begin with. >Thus a Wikipedia autobiography, when there is no other material, >is not verifiable. > The first line of approach on any of these biographic articles should be based on attempts to contact the writer. Deletion should not be considered until a serious effort has been made in that direction. Ec From fredbaud at ctelco.net Mon Jan 5 02:13:12 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 19:13:12 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies In-Reply-To: <3FF8A4CD.2090509@telus.net> Message-ID: > From: Ray Saintonge > > The first line of approach on any of these biographic articles should be > based on attempts to contact the writer. Deletion should not be > considered until a serious effort has been made in that direction. This will go a long way towards avoiding trouble. Fred From A Mon Jan 5 08:56:44 2004 From: A (A) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 00:56:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]] In-Reply-To: <20040104120014.84F18B840@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, discussion is impossible). I request that the arbitration committee determine whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 From saintonge at telus.net Mon Jan 5 10:22:43 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 02:22:43 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]] References: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FF93AF3.1090006@telus.net> A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: >I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have >attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic >acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an >anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a >vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, >discussion is impossible). > >I request that the arbitration committee determine >whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid. > This is a question of content. Although my non-bio-scientific background would prima facie see your position as stated above to be correct, I think that it would set a dangerous precedent for the arbitration process to be used to determine the truth in a statement of scientific fact. Ec From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 5 14:35:15 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 09:35:15 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]] Message-ID: Lir, Mediation is possible when at least ONE party to a conflict expresses a desire for mediation. The appointed Mediator can then invite the other parties. I have seen this work, in the past. Ed Poor -----Original Message----- From: A [name omitted for privacy reasons] [mailto:wikilir at yahoo.com] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 3:57 AM To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]] I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, discussion is impossible). I request that the arbitration committee determine whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 5 14:43:20 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 09:43:20 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies) Message-ID: Daniel Mayer declared that: > ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ > that person is able to get a real publisher to publish > their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use > their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of > filter. How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source? I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors who actually know something about what they're writing. People are always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors' work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the Unification Church and software development. Last year and the year before that, a lot of the talk on this mailing list was about how to attract experts in their fields; how to avoid driving them away once we hooked them. Have we given up on that goal? Is Wikipedia destined to be little more than an annotated collection of web links and bibliographical references? If so, I'm going to continue to lose interest in the project. I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From vr at redbird.org Mon Jan 5 14:53:56 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 09:53:56 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040105095203.0302b980@smtp.panix.com> At 09:43 AM 1/5/04 -0500, Ed Poor wrote: >Daniel Mayer declared that: > > > ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ > > that person is able to get a real publisher to publish > > their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use > > their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of > > filter. > >How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source? > >I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors >who actually know something about what they're writing. People are >always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors' >work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more >time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the >Unification Church and software development. When we say that Wikipedia is not a primary source, we mean that information about the Unification Church--its organization, beliefs, and so on--should not be *first* or *only* available in Wikipedia. You as a member of that church know enough to write about it, which is good; it would not be appropriate for the Reverend Moon to use Wikipedia to publish sermons or proclaim doctrine. Similarly, if you have a new and better method of software development, Wikipedia is not the place to proclaim it. From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Mon Jan 5 18:25:34 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:25:34 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.1.20040105095203.0302b980@smtp.panix.com> References: <5.2.0.9.1.20040105095203.0302b980@smtp.panix.com> Message-ID: <3FF9AC1E.5050204@rufus.d2g.com> Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: > At 09:43 AM 1/5/04 -0500, Ed Poor wrote: > >> Daniel Mayer declared that: >> >> > ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ >> > that person is able to get a real publisher to publish >> > their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use >> > their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of >> > filter. >> >> How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source? >> >> I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors >> who actually know something about what they're writing. People are >> always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors' >> work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more >> time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the >> Unification Church and software development. > > > When we say that Wikipedia is not a primary source, we mean that > information about the Unification Church--its organization, beliefs, > and so on--should not be *first* or *only* available in Wikipedia. You > as a member of that church know enough to write about it, which is > good; it would not be appropriate for the Reverend Moon to use Wikipedia > to publish sermons or proclaim doctrine. Similarly, if you have a new > and better method of software development, Wikipedia is not the place > to proclaim it. I think in addition, this must be verifiable in other sources, which is why we say Wikipedia is a secondary source. If Ed is writing stuff about the Unification Church that is not available elsewhere, then I don't think that'd be appropriate. If the stuff he's writing is verifiable (perhaps in Church literature, or in books about the Church, etc.), then it's perfectly fine. -Mark From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 5 18:26:25 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 10:26:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040105182625.39055.qmail@web12822.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary > source? >... Er, a primary source would be the /first/ place a new fact is published (such as a journal). Sorry, but we are not such a place. -- mav __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From mcelravy at uwtc.net Thu Jan 1 02:39:00 2004 From: mcelravy at uwtc.net (John & Tammy McElravy) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:39:00 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] help Message-ID: <004f01c3d010$6a6eb440$8eb523d0@macwin98> Hello, I put some information on the "Foxtrot Class Submarine" And it left my computer number. Could you delete it and put in my user name. I would really appreciate it. Also I put in the info before I read your copyright material. I don't know if it is OK. Send me a reply to both as soon as possible please. by the by - nice site! wringing my hands, John L. McElravy E-mail: mcelravy at uwtc.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031231/a81d2973/attachment.htm From karissal2006 at hotmail.com Sun Jan 4 21:15:53 2004 From: karissal2006 at hotmail.com (Karissa S.) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 16:15:53 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] questions Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040104/2132ce6c/attachment.htm From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Mon Jan 5 20:52:47 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 12:52:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]] In-Reply-To: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040104120014.84F18B840@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040105205247.GA29356@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Lir (A [name omitted for privacy reasons]) wrote: >I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have >attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic >acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an >anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a >vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, >discussion is impossible). Mediation is appropriate whether Peak thinks so or not. If Peak refuses to enter negotiations, then that's a point in your favour -- but the mediation committee can still try. >I request that the arbitration committee determine >whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid. The arbitration committee does not decide the content of articles. Also, I notice that there is no discussion of this on [[Talk:DNA]]. If there was discussion elsewhere (on user talk pages), then you might want to copy it to [[Talk:DNA]]. (But the mediation committee can decide what they really want.) -- Toby From sheldon.rampton at verizon.net Mon Jan 5 21:08:47 2004 From: sheldon.rampton at verizon.net (Sheldon Rampton) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 15:08:47 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources In-Reply-To: <20040105203715.4AE1DB827@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040105203715.4AE1DB827@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Ed Poor wrote: >Is Wikipedia destined to be little more than an annotated collection of >web links and bibliographical references? If so, I'm going to continue >to lose interest in the project. Oh, Ed, don't tempt me.... ;) More seriously, I think Wikipedia is at a point where increasing the _number_ of articles is less important than improving their _quality_. I'm not sure what the best strategy is for doing this. One possibility might be to seek funding for the purpose of hiring some information specialists (such as librarians and/or or experts in various fields) to help with cataloging, organizing and editing. The model I'm thinking of here is OhMyNews, an online newspaper in South Korea. About 20% of its content is written by its staff, while the majority of articles are written by more than 10,000 other contributors who are paid small amounts of money for their work. Has anyone considered the possibility of some kind of creative partnership with commercial encyclopedia companies? If IBM is getting into Linux these days, it's not inconceivable that World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica might develop an interest in getting involved with Wikipedia before things advance to the point where their own rationale for existence disappears. -- -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception -------------------------------- From jwales at bomis.com Mon Jan 5 22:03:38 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:03:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040105220338.GG12793@joey.bomis.com> Poor, Edmund W wrote: > How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source? [...] > I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less. The best way for Wikipedia to become more authoritative is to steadfastly refuse to be a primary source. A primary source isn't primary because it's authoritative, it's primary because it is the first or original source for something. Primary sources can be unreliable, reliable, biased, whatever. There's no shame in being a secondary source, and secondary sources is where the authority business gets really strong and interesting. :-) For us, as a social culture, avoiding the idea of being a primary source helps us to resolve some otherwise impossible dilemmas. Do we publish quack physics theories? No, because we are not a place for original research. --Jimbo From beaubeaver at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 5 23:36:47 2004 From: beaubeaver at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Nicholas=20Moreau?=) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:36:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]] Message-ID: <20040105233647.94227.qmail@web25102.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Nucleic acid is what the NA stands for. I've checked multiple credible sources, and they agree hole heartedly with me. Original message: I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, discussion is impossible). I request that the arbitration committee determine whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040105/fc4b5e96/attachment.htm From kurt.forstner at chello.at Mon Jan 5 23:53:14 2004 From: kurt.forstner at chello.at (K Forstner) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 00:53:14 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources References: <20040105220338.GG12793@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <000a01c3d3e7$15505c40$4c136c50@OHGOD> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" To: "English Wikipedia" Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 11:03 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-writtenand obscure biographies) > Poor, Edmund W wrote: > > How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source? > > [...] > > > I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less. > > The best way for Wikipedia to become more authoritative is to > steadfastly refuse to be a primary source. A primary source isn't > primary because it's authoritative, it's primary because it is the > first or original source for something. Primary sources can be > unreliable, reliable, biased, whatever. > > There's no shame in being a secondary source, and secondary sources is > where the authority business gets really strong and interesting. :-) > > For us, as a social culture, avoiding the idea of being a primary > source helps us to resolve some otherwise impossible dilemmas. Do we > publish quack physics theories? No, because we are not a place for > original research. > > --Jimbo One point of view (Ed's) could be seen as thesis, the other (Jimbo's et.al.) as antithesis. We might be ready for the synthesis: Wikipedia (just like any printed encyclopaedia) is not the place to publish one's original research. But it certainly does not do any harm (rather the opposite I'd guess) if people who in real life carry out research themselves also contribute to Wikipedia about topics related to their own field: They are usually educated, principled, intellectual, and trying not to appear biased, and I think Wikipedia should try to attract them. Kurt (aka KF) From timwi at gmx.net Tue Jan 6 01:30:42 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 01:30:42 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is a great work In-Reply-To: <2d.37d13fb3.2d14d279@aol.com> References: <2d.37d13fb3.2d14d279@aol.com> Message-ID: <3FFA0FC2.10302@gmx.net> Docpetersn at aol.com wrote: > Ladies and Gentlemen, > I write to applaud your public-spiritedness. > Wikipedia is a great idea. How are you funded? How can I help? Two ways: (1) Contribute. Write articles. :-) (2) Donate. :-) http://www.wikimedia.org/letter Timwi From timwi at gmx.net Tue Jan 6 01:39:55 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 01:39:55 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about MediaWiki namespace Message-ID: Hi. I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting either {{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference). Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly? For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some of the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to modify all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them all *again* because I forgot one of them. All of this would have been easier if this short list of links were a page in the MediaWiki namespace and were included in the Greek letter articles using {{msg:}}. So, my question basically is: Should I do this? One shortcoming I see with this is that each of the Greek-letter articles would then have a link to itself. I guess one could resolve that with coding; perhaps {{msg:}} should automatically change [[XYZ]] and [[XYZ|.*]] to '''XYZ''' if it's used in [[XYZ]]. Or something. Boxes like those on the right of articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Franks could also benefit from this. Timwi From rjaros at shaysnet.com Tue Jan 6 02:32:36 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 21:32:36 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <972E673C-3FF0-11D8-8F76-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 4, 2004, at 4:15 PM, Karissa S. wrote: > hey- I just used Wikipedia to help write?me write my?paper, but I am > having trouble putting this sight into my bibliogrpahy. Is there > acompany,city andstateincluded in this project? Those are the things I > must include in my bibliogrpahy. Hey, Karissa. I'm sending this to the list and you, in case you're off the list. Here's what you need to know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia That's the word from Wikipedia. It uses the APA guidelines. You won't be able to use the book format you have because [[m:wiki is not paper]], so use this (electronic) format instead. For a more official source, see: http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/online.shtml That has the format for MLA-style citations for online and electronic media. I think it's pretty much the same thing. Best idea is to confirm with your teacher first, if you can. But the upshot is that you can't use the book citation format for a website. To the list: Perhaps we should have a [[Cite Wikipedia|Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia]] link on the sidebar. Also, please correct me if I got anything wrong. > You're sight is very helpful I rather think so. Without it I'd walk into twice the walls I do now. ;) Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 6 03:45:47 2004 From: sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Angela?=) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 03:45:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] help In-Reply-To: <004f01c3d010$6a6eb440$8eb523d0@macwin98> Message-ID: <20040106034547.15130.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> John McElravy wrote: >And it left my computer number. Could you delete it and put in my user name. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Changing_attribution_for_an_edit for details on how to do this. > Also I put in the info before I read your copyright material. I don't know if it is OK. It seems you've copied it almost word for word from http://members.ozemail.com.au/~tourism/sydney/attracts/national/maritime/submarine.html. The site's copyright page was not available when I tried to access it, but the version in the archives states that the material can not be used except for personal use. (http://web.archive.org/web/20021015155042/http://members.ozemail.com.au/~tourism/sydney/copyrght.html). I have sent a [[Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission]], but as the site seems semi-offline, it is possible I won't get a reply, in which case the page will be deleted. There is a temp page linked to from the current [[Foxtrot class submarine]] page at [[talk:Foxtrot class submarine/temp]] where the page can be rewritten if you want to create a non-violating version. The temp one will replace the original when it is deleted. Angela. ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html From ts4294967296 at hotmail.com Tue Jan 6 03:56:40 2004 From: ts4294967296 at hotmail.com (Tim Starling) Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 14:56:40 +1100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Question about MediaWiki namespace References: Message-ID: <3FFA31F8.8010706@hotmail.com> Timwi wrote: > > Hi. > > I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can > insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting either > {{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference). > > Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly? > > For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to > all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some of > the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to modify > all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them all > *again* because I forgot one of them. > There is a known bug with MSG in that changing the links in a message will break the link table of the articles which include it. So in your example, the "what links here" for [[Omega (letter)]] would have listed all the greek letter articles, despite the fact that they were all updated to point to [[Omega]] instead. If such a change needs to be made, the link table can be refreshed by making some trivial change to each of the affected articles. The moral to this story is: don't change messages unless you really need to. And don't use MSG in places where you're expecting changes to the links. -- Tim Starling From timwi at gmx.net Tue Jan 6 05:53:55 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 05:53:55 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Question about MediaWiki namespace In-Reply-To: <3FFA31F8.8010706@hotmail.com> References: <3FFA31F8.8010706@hotmail.com> Message-ID: Tim Starling wrote: > Timwi wrote: > >> I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can >> insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting >> either {{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference). >> >> Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly? >> >> For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to >> all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some >> of the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to >> modify all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them >> all *again* because I forgot one of them. > > There is a known bug with MSG in that changing the links in a message > will break the link table of the articles which include it. So in your > example, the "what links here" for [[Omega (letter)]] would have listed > all the greek letter articles, despite the fact that they were all > updated to point to [[Omega]] instead. Then I suppose that bug should be fixed?... > The moral to this story is: don't change messages unless you really need > to. And don't use MSG in places where you're expecting changes to the > links. In light of that bug, I agree, but once it's fixed, then I suppose we can start using this? Timwi From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 6 07:39:22 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 23:39:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies) References: <20040105182625.39055.qmail@web12822.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FFA662A.4030409@telus.net> Daniel Mayer wrote: >--- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > >>How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary >>source? >> >Er, a primary source would be the /first/ place a new >fact is published (such as a journal). Sorry, but we >are not such a place. > That's not the usual meaning of primary source. It generally refers to documents directly related to an event, original manuscripts, archival material, etc. Any written book or article based on these materials by a person who was not directly involved is a secondary source. Ec From john at freeq.com Tue Jan 6 08:02:55 2004 From: john at freeq.com (John Robinson) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 02:02:55 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] From the talk page Message-ID: From [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage]]: ...could we please make some headroads into changing [[Benjamin Disraeli]] to an article rather than a redirect, and [[Duke of Wellington]] into an article instead of a disambiguation page, in keeping with the caveat of "[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)|best known in English]]"? I don't think a WikiProject should attempt to trump something that fundamental. - [[User:Hephaestos|Hephaestos]] 01:50, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC) From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Tue Jan 6 10:21:46 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 04:21:46 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources In-Reply-To: <3FFA662A.4030409@telus.net> References: <20040105182625.39055.qmail@web12822.mail.yahoo.com> <3FFA662A.4030409@telus.net> Message-ID: <3FFA8C3A.4080601@rufus.d2g.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: >> Er, a primary source would be the /first/ place a new >> fact is published (such as a journal). Sorry, but we >> are not such a place. >> > That's not the usual meaning of primary source. It generally refers > to documents directly related to an event, original manuscripts, > archival material, etc. Any written book or article based on these > materials by a person who was not directly involved is a secondary > source. This seems to vary by field. In a field such as classics, journals are indeed secondary sources, containing discussion of primary sources (which would include things like Aristophanes's plays). In scientific fields, journals are generally primary sources: a documentation of novel research written by those who performed the research. In this context, a textbook or encyclopedia article on neural networks is a secondary source, but the classic journal article by Kohonen documenting self-organizing maps is a primary source. And I think that's the sort of stuff we're trying to avoid. -Mark From gutza at moongate.ro Tue Jan 6 22:50:28 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 00:50:28 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? Message-ID: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> How about a Wikipedia "documenting" expressions in various languages? I mean, try googling around for "bring it on" (~542,000 matches), or "what goes around comes around" (~98,500 matches)--and try finding out what they /mean/. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find any explanation anywhere--I haven't. Now I'm aware such a topic is more "dictionary-like" rather than "encyclopedia-like"--I guess that's the first objection which comes to mind, although we already have a Wiktionary--, but is Wikimedia's purpose to only support encyclopedic projects, or to support projects which would be helpful? Also, think about the various languages which make use of expressions--due to the human nature, I expect all languages do--, and think how helpful such a (successful) project would be for people around the world trying to find out information about this and that obscure expression in some language. Bells and whistels included a la Wikipedia, as in cross-referencing languages, historical periods, you know the drill, I won't go into that. What do you think? --Gutza From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Tue Jan 6 23:11:39 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:11:39 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> Gutza wrote: > How about a Wikipedia "documenting" expressions in various languages? > I mean, try googling around for "bring it on" (~542,000 matches), or > "what goes around comes around" (~98,500 matches)--and try finding out > what they /mean/. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find any > explanation anywhere--I haven't. > > Now I'm aware such a topic is more "dictionary-like" rather than > "encyclopedia-like"--I guess that's the first objection which comes to > mind, although we already have a Wiktionary--, but is Wikimedia's > purpose to only support encyclopedic projects, or to support projects > which would be helpful? While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for Wikipedia categories?). -Mark From gutza at moongate.ro Tue Jan 6 23:26:37 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 01:26:37 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> Delirium wrote: > While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be > incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new > project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in > them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go > ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of > meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of > things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for > Wikipedia categories?). > > -Mark Well, Mark, I actually have a problem with markup in Wiktionary, hope this doesn't get personal. :) I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I guess some guy (gal) said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done. But it's waaaay too English-centric, Wiktionary tends to become a good English-to-anything dictionary if successful in the long run, but it's a shame that it's nothing-to-English in return, due to lack of formalized markup. I personally never followed (nor even found) any discussion on the topic, but since there are a lot of intelligent, knowledgeable people involved in all of Wikimedia's projects, I expect I'm not raising a new issue here. What I'm trying to say is that Wiktionary will probably have to go through some major (hopefully automated) markup changes in the mid-ling run in order to support arbitrary language-to-language dictionary searches, whereas "Wixpression" or whatever it would be called, if accepted as a new project at all, is not suitable for such treatment because expressions are generally not translatable 1:1, as words tend to be. Also, while "red" in English is simply translated to "rouge" in French, "bring it on" in English needs to be explained /in English/ first, and only then, optionally, in French. Therefore I think these should be two separate projects. --Gutza From ts4294967296 at hotmail.com Tue Jan 6 23:57:26 2004 From: ts4294967296 at hotmail.com (Tim Starling) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 10:57:26 +1100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Question about MediaWiki namespace References: <3FFA31F8.8010706@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <3FFB4B66.4040101@hotmail.com> Timwi wrote: > > Tim Starling wrote: >> >> There is a known bug with MSG in that changing the links in a message >> will break the link table of the articles which include it. So in your >> example, the "what links here" for [[Omega (letter)]] would have listed >> all the greek letter articles, despite the fact that they were all >> updated to point to [[Omega]] instead. > > > Then I suppose that bug should be fixed?... > >> The moral to this story is: don't change messages unless you really >> need to. And don't use MSG in places where you're expecting changes to >> the links. > > > In light of that bug, I agree, but once it's fixed, then I suppose we > can start using this? Yes. In fact with a few simple extra features, it could be used for many templates. The most important suggested feature is "parameterised inclusion". For example, if [[MediaWiki:Hello]] contains "Hello $1, welcome to $2", then {{msg:hello|Timwi|Wikipedia}} would generate "Hello Timwi, welcome to Wikipedia". -- Tim Starling From timwi at gmx.net Wed Jan 7 00:48:36 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 00:48:36 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> Message-ID: Gutza wrote: > I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I guess some guy (gal) > said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done. Wow. I'm really not the only one who thinks that? :-) OK, here are my major problems with Wiktionary: * English-centric (as has already been said) * not automated enough. Linking from [[biscuit]] (an English word) to [[Keks]] (a German word) should automatically add a link from [[Keks]] back to [[biscuit]]. A lot of identical formatting/layout should be automated (perhaps have a template automatically show up in the edit window when you try to edit a not-yet-existing page?). * too crowded in places. [[e]] should not contain all its meanings in hundreds of different languages on a single page. My suggestions for major improvement would be: * wait for MediaWiki to support multi-language projects within a single Wiki. This is already in the plans for Wikipedia. Once that is done, you can have one page [[e]] in Spanish, another [[e]] in Italian, etc. * add more options to the MediaWiki software to customise the appearance and behaviour, including: * * allow for the inter-wiki links (which should really be called inter-language links once it's a single wiki) to be displayed in a completely different fashion, i.e. instead of: _dansk_ | _dansk_ | _Deutsch_ | _English_ | _English_ | _Fran?ais_ at the top and bottom, display them as a dominantly visible list only at the bottom: == Translations == * Dansk: _kiks_, _biskuit_ * Deutsch: _Keks_ * English: _biscuit_, _cookie_ * Fran?ais: _biscuit_ * * allow for automatic reciprocal adding of inter-language links * make one major change of policy/aim/goal. I think it is completely redundant and futile to try to define (explain the meaning of) all words of all languages *in* all languages. I think a word should only be defined in its own language, and if you want its meaning explained in another language, then you should really look up its translation in that other language. There are just so many things on Wiktionary that are language-independent (e.g. the translations for each word, or pronunciation written in IPA) that duplicating it hundreds of times seems really dumb. So far are my ideas. Timwi From timwi at gmx.net Wed Jan 7 00:51:29 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 00:51:29 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: From the talk page In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: John Robinson wrote: > From [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage]]: > > ...could we please make some headroads into changing [[Benjamin > Disraeli]] to an article rather than a redirect, and [[Duke of > Wellington]] into an article instead of a disambiguation page I've moved [[Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield]] to [[Benjamin Disraeli]] for you, but the rest really has to be done by someone who knows about this stuff. Timwi From rjaros at shaysnet.com Wed Jan 7 01:29:47 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 20:29:47 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> Message-ID: On Jan 6, 2004, at 7:48 PM, Timwi wrote: > * make one major change of policy/aim/goal. I think it is completely > redundant and futile to try to define (explain the meaning of) all > words of all languages *in* all languages. I think a word should only > be defined in its own language, and if you want its meaning explained > in another language, then you should really look up its translation > in > that other language. There are just so many things on Wiktionary that > are language-independent (e.g. the translations for each word, or > pronunciation written in IPA) that duplicating it hundreds of times > seems really dumb. The trouble arises here when exact translations aren't available. If I want to know what 'guba' means in Hoobiflitz, I'd look up guba, translate to English (via inter-lang link), and read the definition. But 'guba' (let's say) doesn't have an exact English translation, so there's no appropriate English definition to link to. Here it's most effective to explain the definition of 'guba' in English. I think there may be a better way to set up inter-language links to allow for this. And if I had a good idea for it, I'd really have a point. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 6 18:26:25 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 10:26:25 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? Message-ID: <200401061026.25025.maveric149@yahoo.com> This thread has no place on the English mailing list. Please move it to Wikipedia-l. -- mav From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 6 18:32:05 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 10:32:05 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? Message-ID: <200401061032.05050.maveric149@yahoo.com> Gutza wrote: >What do you think? Sounds like a good idea for a series of new books at Wikibooks. They could be used in conjunction with our language textbooks. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From A Wed Jan 7 12:43:28 2004 From: A (A) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 04:43:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr In-Reply-To: <20040107120010.2BE2AB835@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040107124328.23490.qmail@web21502.mail.yahoo.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Socialism&diff=0&oldid=2105510 __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Flockmeal at cox.net Wed Jan 7 13:19:07 2004 From: Flockmeal at cox.net (Flockmeal) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 08:19:07 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr In-Reply-To: <20040107124328.23490.qmail@web21502.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040107124328.23490.qmail@web21502.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FFC074B.3000508@cox.net> A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: >http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Socialism&diff=0&oldid=2105510 > > > Yes, there is an active edit war going on with the Socialism article between Adam Carr and Lir. The question appears to be about the inclusion of the Nazis and their brand of National Socialism in the article. An NPOV statement regarding the Nazis needs to be added to the article and then someone must protect the article. Please help. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 7 15:02:13 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 08:02:13 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr In-Reply-To: <3FFC074B.3000508@cox.net> Message-ID: Hitler was always for "Peace" too, maybe he ought to be in the article on the Peace Movement. Nothing more than the briefest mention that Nazism was called National Socialism is appropriate. The various efforts the Nazis made which have some socialist content can be covered in the Nazism article. That certain apologists want to have links to [[Stalinism]] and [[Marxist-Leninist government]] is no excuse (But of course those are not the links they choose to make). In any event you cannot discuss socialism without somehow referencing communism, but you can write a very informative article without bringing in fascism and Narxism as examples. Shame on you, Lir, stirring up trouble... Fred > From: Flockmeal > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 08:19:07 -0500 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr > > A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Socialism&diff=0&oldid=21055 1>> 0 >> >> >> > > Yes, there is an active edit war going on with the Socialism article > between Adam Carr and Lir. The question appears to be about the > inclusion of the Nazis and their brand of National Socialism in the > article. An NPOV statement regarding the Nazis needs to be added to the > article and then someone must protect the article. > > Please help. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Wed Jan 7 15:24:13 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 07:24:13 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <20040107152413.GA22514@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Gutza wrote on : >How about a Wikipedia "documenting" expressions in various languages? I >mean, try googling around for "bring it on" (~542,000 matches), or "what >goes around comes around" (~98,500 matches)--and try finding out what >they /mean/. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find any explanation >anywhere--I haven't. >Now I'm aware such a topic is more "dictionary-like" rather than >"encyclopedia-like"--I guess that's the first objection which comes to >mind, although we already have a Wiktionary--, but is Wikimedia's >purpose to only support encyclopedic projects, or to support projects >which would be helpful? >Also, think about the various languages which make use of >expressions--due to the human nature, I expect all languages do--, and >think how helpful such a (successful) project would be for people around >the world trying to find out information about this and that obscure >expression in some language. Bells and whistels included a la Wikipedia, >as in cross-referencing languages, historical periods, you know the >drill, I won't go into that. >What do you think? Some of this has been happening on Wikipedia already. I tried to write a brief summary for this post, but it was impossible; you might read [[en:Let's Roll]], [[en:Talk:AKFD]], and of course [[en:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (slogans)]] to see why. But you have to look at edit history and see things in dynamic context, and that is literally ''impossible'' now. Suffice it to say that allowing [[Bring it on]] to be an article on the English Wikipedia (I don't know about the other wikis) produces an irreconcilable conflict between NPOV and good taste. However ... On Wiktionary, one ''expects'' page titles to be words or phrases. By default, they are mentions rather than uses, if you like. If Wiktionary can accept phrases (I don't see why not, but I don't know), then Wikipedia authors can write "[[Fred Phelps]] paraded [[anti-gay slogan]]s, most famously [[wiktionary:AIDS Kills Fags Dead|]] at the Sheppard's funeral" on [[Matthew Sheppard]] without worry. In any case, the history and usages of phrases in a worthy topic for Wikimedia to cover, if Wikimedians can find a tolerable format to discuss even the loathesome ones. -- Toby From timwi at gmx.net Wed Jan 7 15:45:50 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:45:50 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> Message-ID: Peter Jaros wrote: > The trouble arises here when exact translations aren't available. I don't think that's a problem at all. If you know Hoobiflitz well enough to appreciate the subtleties of the language, then you can just read the definition of guba in Hoobiflitz. If you don't, then you wouldn't be able to appreciate the subtle implications of a word anyway, so a few suggested translations can give you the general idea. Besides, several inaccurate translations often give you a more accurate picture of a word's meaning than a single inaccurate translation. Suppose, for example, the three possible translations for guba were "offer", "sale", "promotion". The combination of the three gives you more information than each single one. What I'm getting at here is that having a list of well-chosen translations is as good as a definition. Timwi From dpbsmith at world.std.com Tue Jan 6 23:11:45 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 18:11:45 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] DNA and "nucleic acid" In-Reply-To: <20040106035646.0C3FCB830@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040106035646.0C3FCB830@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Crick and Watson's original paper was entitled "Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids," (1953), Nature 171:737-738. The opening sentence is: "We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest." The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed. defines "nucleic acid" as "Any of a group of complex compounds found in all living cells and viruses, composed of purines, pyrimidines, carbohydrates, and phosphoric acid. Nucleic acids in the form of DNA and RNA control cellular function and heredity." However, looking at [[Talk:DNA]] and the descriptions of the changes on the page, history, I don't see any obvious dispute framed in terms of whether "whether DNA is a nucleic acid." -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/ From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Wed Jan 7 21:15:45 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:15:45 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FFC7701.3050509@rufus.d2g.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >Nothing more than the briefest mention that Nazism was called National >Socialism is appropriate. The various efforts the Nazis made which have some >socialist content can be covered in the Nazism article. > > Something like: ''See also: [[National Socialism]]'' Seems like it'd be sufficient. The very fact that "National Socialism" uses "Socialism" in its name implies to the reader that there is a claimed connection, and they may click through to read more about it. -Mark From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 7 21:24:38 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 16:24:38 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hitler and Socialism Message-ID: I'd like the articles to clarify to what extent the "National Socialism" of Hitler and Nazism is or is not "socialist". Perhaps a short list of the essential attributes of socialism, combined with a brief discussion of the degree to which Nazism had or did not have these attributes. The article should also explain any reasons why Soviets despised Hitler's government. Germany's invasion of Russia was probably a big factor, to be sure, but was Nazism a "competing variant" of socialism? Is it possible for a socialist economy or socialist government to be more nationalistic than internationalist? If not, who says so, etc. Remember, the Soviets were not always straightforward about their goals and deeds, and they may have characterized Nazism as non-socialist for propaganda purposes. Have enough decades elapsed for us to puncture the veneer of Soviet propaganda and reveal the truth? (Or at least give several POVs on the topic?) Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 7 21:35:42 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:35:42 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hitler and Socialism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: That might be ok in the article [[Hitler and socialism]] but the socialism article need to be about socialism, not Nazism or Communism. Fred > From: "Poor, Edmund W" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 16:24:38 -0500 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hitler and Socialism > > I'd like the articles to clarify to what extent the "National Socialism" > of Hitler and Nazism is or is not "socialist". Perhaps a short list of > the essential attributes of socialism, combined with a brief discussion > of the degree to which Nazism had or did not have these attributes. > > The article should also explain any reasons why Soviets despised > Hitler's government. Germany's invasion of Russia was probably a big > factor, to be sure, but was Nazism a "competing variant" of socialism? > Is it possible for a socialist economy or socialist government to be > more nationalistic than internationalist? If not, who says so, etc. > > Remember, the Soviets were not always straightforward about their goals > and deeds, and they may have characterized Nazism as non-socialist for > propaganda purposes. Have enough decades elapsed for us to puncture the > veneer of Soviet propaganda and reveal the truth? (Or at least give > several POVs on the topic?) > > Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From imran at bits.bris.ac.uk Wed Jan 7 21:39:05 2004 From: imran at bits.bris.ac.uk (Imran Ghory) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 21:39:05 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <200401061032.05050.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote: > Gutza wrote: > >What do you think? > > Sounds like a good idea for a series of new books at Wikibooks. They could be > used in conjunction with our language textbooks. It's in rather a strange position, as initially the expression must have started life as quote, but some expressions have become so common that they have essentially become parts of the English language so would be suitable for a dictionary. So the choice between wikiquote and wiktionary is rather clouded, so maybe wikibooks would be the best place to have it. Imran -- http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 8 01:19:56 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 17:19:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040108011956.63052.qmail@web60605.mail.yahoo.com> Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! Lir? Stir up trouble? RIckK Fred Bauder wrote: Shame on you, Lir, stirring up trouble... Fred --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040107/66d9c8dc/attachment.htm From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 8 07:19:27 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:19:27 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <3FFD047F.2030303@telus.net> Delirium wrote: > While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be > incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new > project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in > them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go > ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of > meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of > things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for > Wikipedia categories?). I generally agree that this type of thing is fine on Wiktionary. I also believe that some kind of meta-markup will be be needed on Wiktionary. Nevertheless I would like to see some kind of such scheme up and working on one single project so that we can get the bugs out before the scheme is adopted on other projects. Ec From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 8 07:39:54 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:39:54 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <3FFD094A.7080908@telus.net> Gutza wrote: > Delirium wrote: > >> While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be >> incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new >> project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in >> them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go >> ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of >> meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts >> of things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for >> Wikipedia categories?). >> >> -Mark > > > Well, Mark, I actually have a problem with markup in Wiktionary, hope > this doesn't get personal. :) > > I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I guess some guy > (gal) said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done. But it's > waaaay too English-centric, Wiktionary tends to become a good > English-to-anything dictionary if successful in the long run, but it's > a shame that it's nothing-to-English in return, due to lack of > formalized markup. I personally never followed (nor even found) any > discussion on the topic, but since there are a lot of intelligent, > knowledgeable people involved in all of Wikimedia's projects, I expect > I'm not raising a new issue here. > > What I'm trying to say is that Wiktionary will probably have to go > through some major (hopefully automated) markup changes in the > mid-ling run in order to support arbitrary language-to-language > dictionary searches, whereas "Wixpression" or whatever it would be > called, if accepted as a new project at all, is not suitable for such > treatment because expressions are generally not translatable 1:1, as > words tend to be. Also, while "red" in English is simply translated to > "rouge" in French, "bring it on" in English needs to be explained /in > English/ first, and only then, optionally, in French. Therefore I > think these should be two separate projects. The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally na?ve view of language. The idea of other language Wiktionary projects has come up repeatedly. At this stage I find "Wixpression" completely useless, or at best premature. There has always been an intent to have Wiktionaries in other languages, and once they are functional it will be a lot easier to co-ordinate them with the English project and with each other. But instead of seeing Wiktionaries in other languages, all I see is complaints. If the whiners went ahead and started Wiktionaries in the language of their choice we would all be further ahead. Ec From gutza at moongate.ro Thu Jan 8 08:35:48 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 10:35:48 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFD094A.7080908@telus.net> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> <3FFD094A.7080908@telus.net> Message-ID: <3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro> Ray Saintonge wrote: > The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated > translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". > What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly > a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that > there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages > represnts a totally na?ve view of language. Really? Here's what I tried: clicked on "Random Page" 10 times. Here are the results: 1. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronunciaci%C3%B3n 2. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%92%AD 3. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Mayoress 4. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Bijutel 5. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Decibel 6. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Balul 7. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%86 8. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Airtight 9. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Brush 10. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%9A There is not a single one hit in the ten above which isn't appropriate for automated parsing: * No. 1 would be reverse translated from Spanish to English (note that http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronounciation doesn't exist). * No. 2, 3, 7 and 10 would be completely skipped in parsing because they don't contain any proper translations. * No. 4 and 6 would be reverse translated from Volap?k to English (note there is no mention of Balul at http://wiktionary.org/wiki/January, and http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Jeweller doesn't exist). * No. 5, 8 and 9 would be properly translated to the respective languages for which translations are available. What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind? --Gutza From arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk Thu Jan 8 10:09:18 2004 From: arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk (Arwel Parry) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 10:09:18 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> <3FFD094A.7080908@telus.net> <3FFD094A.7080908-EynCeXvFgoheoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org> <3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro> Message-ID: In message <3FFD1664.3070803 at moongate.ro>, Gutza writes >Ray Saintonge wrote: > >> The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated >>translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". >>What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly >>a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that >>there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages >>represnts a totally na?ve view of language. > >Really? Here's what I tried: clicked on "Random Page" 10 times. Here >are the results: >1. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronunciaci%C3%B3n >2. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%92%AD >3. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Mayoress >4. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Bijutel >5. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Decibel >6. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Balul >7. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%86 >8. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Airtight >9. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Brush >10. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%9A > >There is not a single one hit in the ten above which isn't appropriate >for automated parsing: >* No. 1 would be reverse translated from Spanish to English (note that >http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronounciation doesn't exist). >* No. 2, 3, 7 and 10 would be completely skipped in parsing because >they don't contain any proper translations. >* No. 4 and 6 would be reverse translated from Volap?k to English (note >there is no mention of Balul at http://wiktionary.org/wiki/January, and >http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Jeweller doesn't exist). >* No. 5, 8 and 9 would be properly translated to the respective >languages for which translations are available. > >What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind? Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations... -- Arwel Parry http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/ From gutza at moongate.ro Thu Jan 8 10:53:31 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 12:53:31 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> <3FFD094A.7080908@telus.net> <3FFD094A.7080908-EynCeXvFgoheoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org> <3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <3FFD36AB.6030701@moongate.ro> Arwel Parry wrote: > In message <3FFD1664.3070803 at moongate.ro>, Gutza > writes > >> Ray Saintonge wrote: >> >>> The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated >>> translation. [...] Still, to choose one example and say that there >>> is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts >>> a totally na?ve view of language. >> >> >> What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in >> mind? > > > Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word > "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it > is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means > "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations... Ok, maybe I didn't get the concept across really well. You are aware that we didn't get to that point in history where we humans all lay back and expect automatons to do all the work for us, right? Writing a parser to create the proper cross-links between definitions in the English Wiktionary and other languages' Wiktionaries would not be expected to result in complete dictionaries for all other languages. But the same happens with human contributors: you happen to know that "glas" has those two meanings, but some other contributor may not. Some other contributor may write the "glas" article in the Welsh Wiktionary and only include the first definition. If you happened to come across that article, you might add the other definition as well. I don't see why we need that human contributor at all if "glas" were to be found on the English Wiktionary article on "sky blue", for instance. Not to mention that if "glas" also showed up on "grass green" then both definitions would be available for the Welsh "glas", using a smart automated parser. In any case, the point is not to expect the automated parser to result in a prefect any language to any language dictionary, but rather to do what automated things tend to do today: make our lives easier, as in creating a reasonable basis for other Wiktionaries, as well as keeping things in sync. Just my 2c, Gutza From jheiskan at welho.com Thu Jan 8 11:01:28 2004 From: jheiskan at welho.com (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 11:01:28 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l]/[[DNA]]/Lir/and a PS on Expert Determination (crossposting to the legal list) In-Reply-To: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1073559869.9124.45.camel@myhome.home> NOTE: I AM CROSSPOSTING THIS TO THE WIKILEGAL LIST, SO PLEASE EDIT THE LISTS LINE TO THE APPROPRIATE RECIPIENTS. On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 10:56, A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: <> Respectfully, I think in this situation, discussion is imperative. By speech and action, you should make it clear that Peak and his (putative) anonymous friend are incorrect in their characterisation of you. (more about the possible role of mediation below) <> It is unclear whether we are going to allow either the mediation or the arbitration process stray into making determinations on questions of fact (personally I think it would be a serious over-reach of authority and compounding of "hats" which might cause severe difficulties to the credibility of either process). If that is decided to be outside our remit, perhaps the best you could hope for is that a mediator would try to get Peek and/or the anonymous editor to confront your views, and try to help all parties to find some useful mode to discuss the matter between each other, either within the mediation process or subsequent to it, without taking a position in any way, other than to the effect that discussion should take place and perhaps suggesting intermediary discussion points which might help to chart where the heart of the disagreement lies. Respectfully, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro), MEMBER OF THE MEDIATION COMMITTEE P.S. I hate to keep on harping on this matter, but there is a possibility that a method for resolving questions of fact may be needed down the line. The ideal method for this is neither arbitration nor mediation, but rather "expert determination". This has already been excercised informally in the Florentin Smarandache and Neutrosophy case, when a professor from outside Wikipedia was "enticed" to "fix" the problem. Once we get more and more public exposure, it may well turn out that on specific tightly defined questions of fact, we may be able to get even notable experts to accept commissions to sort things out, in a context of both/all sides of the conflict accepting beforehand the expert enlisted makes the final call. There are attendant possibilities here, for generating publicity for both Wikipedia and/or the expert who accepts the commission (and we may even get a new convert from the highest reaches of the particular field :-). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040108/13b6127c/attachment.htm From sascha at pantropy.net Thu Jan 8 14:43:55 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 09:43:55 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <3FFD36AB.6030701@moongate.ro> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFD36AB.6030701@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <200401080943.57083.sascha@pantropy.net> On Thursday 08 January 2004 05:53 am, Gutza wrote: > Arwel Parry wrote: > > In message <3FFD1664.3070803 at moongate.ro>, Gutza > > writes > > > >> Ray Saintonge wrote: > >>> The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated > >>> translation. [...] Still, to choose one example and say that there > >>> is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts > >>> a totally na?ve view of language. > >> > >> What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in > >> mind? > > > > Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word > > "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it > > is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means > > "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations... Perhaps the most famous example would be "libre" and "gratuit" mapping onto the english "free". I agree with Gutza nonetheless that automation would be a good idea. The overwhelming majority of words can be translated into most languages one-to-one (ie. no ambiguities). This would save us a lot of work. And for the few cases where there are problems, they can be corrected by hand. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From kwang at kwang.org Thu Jan 8 19:16:02 2004 From: kwang at kwang.org (Kent Wang) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:16:02 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics Message-ID: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> I was browsing through OHHLA.com (Online Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive) and realized that a lyrics archive would be an excellent application of Wiki technology. Although OHHLA is the most comprehensive website in its genre, there are still many less popular artists that are not covered, and most of the pages I've seen contain at least a mistake or two. So I think a great new WikiMedia project would be a "WikiLyrics" that would cover music lyrics for all genres. Hip-hop lyrics are particularly in need for a wiki because they are full of slang words and in-references that can be Wikified to articles explaining them. Hip-hop albums also rarely come with lyrics sheets though ironically, are probably most in need of them. I've already Googled for "lyrics wiki" and found no significant hits. I'm very enthusiastic about this idea but a major problem that will need to be resolved is that almost all lyrics are not open content and the GFDL will most certainly be incompatible. Though the RIAA is definitely tort-happy, I don't believe there have been any attempts to shut down online lyrics websites, especially since they should not undermine record sales. I eagerly await your comments on this idea. Kent Wang From tarquin at planetunreal.com Thu Jan 8 19:26:32 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 19:26:32 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> References: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <3FFDAEE8.4050308@planetunreal.com> Kent Wang wrote: >So I think a great new WikiMedia project would be a "WikiLyrics" that >would cover music lyrics for all genres. > > A core principle of ALL wikimedia projects is the concept of free content. >I'm very enthusiastic about this idea but a major problem that will need >to be resolved is that almost all lyrics are not open content and the >GFDL will most certainly be incompatible. > > It's an unsurmountable problem. From erik_moeller at gmx.de Thu Jan 8 21:29:39 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 21:29:39 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <90TpxisCpVB@erik_moeller> Kent- > Though the RIAA is definitely > tort-happy, I don't believe there have been any attempts to shut down > online lyrics websites Incorrect. The best lyrics archive of all time was lyrics.sh, and it was shut down via court order by the Swiss RIAA equivalent. I think they reached a settlement of some kind, but the site that is now in its place is a spam-infested craphole. Everything2.com, which is a bit like a wiki, has recently started to enforce strict copyright rules on material such as lyrics. There are lots of ad-infested lyrics archives on the net, but it seems like the good ones always get shut down sooner or later. If you want to deal with legal threats, then go ahead and set up a lyrics wiki. Nowadays when I search for lyrics, I just google for a phrase from the song which I can identify (remember to put the phrase in quotes), that usually does the trick. Regards, Erik From erik_moeller at gmx.de Thu Jan 8 21:39:49 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 21:39:49 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <90TpxisCpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <90TpyNxCpVB@erik_moeller> > Incorrect. The best lyrics archive of all time was lyrics.sh lyrics.ch, that is. Regards, Erik From jwales at bomis.com Thu Jan 8 21:41:26 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:41:26 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <3FFDAEE8.4050308@planetunreal.com> References: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> <3FFDAEE8.4050308@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040108214126.GG31106@joey.bomis.com> I agree. I love the idea, but it's not for us. tarquin wrote: > > > Kent Wang wrote: > > >So I think a great new WikiMedia project would be a "WikiLyrics" that > >would cover music lyrics for all genres. > > > > > A core principle of ALL wikimedia projects is the concept of free content. > > > >I'm very enthusiastic about this idea but a major problem that will need > >to be resolved is that almost all lyrics are not open content and the > >GFDL will most certainly be incompatible. > > > > > It's an unsurmountable problem. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 9 00:33:25 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 16:33:25 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFB40AB.5050005@rufus.d2g.com> <3FFB442D.5070406@moongate.ro> <3FFD094A.7080908@telus.net> <3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <3FFDF6D5.504@telus.net> Gutza wrote: > Ray Saintonge wrote: > >> The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated >> translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". >> What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only >> secondly a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and >> say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two >> languages represnts a totally na?ve view of language. > > > Really? Here's what I tried: clicked on "Random Page" 10 times. Here > are the results: > 1. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronunciaci%C3%B3n > 2. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%92%AD > 3. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Mayoress > 4. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Bijutel > 5. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Decibel > 6. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Balul > 7. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%86 > 8. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Airtight > 9. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Brush > 10. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%9A > > There is not a single one hit in the ten above which isn't appropriate > for automated parsing: > * No. 1 would be reverse translated from Spanish to English (note that > http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronounciation doesn't exist). > * No. 2, 3, 7 and 10 would be completely skipped in parsing because > they don't contain any proper translations. > * No. 4 and 6 would be reverse translated from Volap?k to English > (note there is no mention of Balul at > http://wiktionary.org/wiki/January, and > http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Jeweller doesn't exist). > * No. 5, 8 and 9 would be properly translated to the respective > languages for which translations are available. > > What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind? Most of the above have their own problems. 1. Spanish. It at first seems like a simple matter of using the cognate "pronunciation", but in Law it can also mean "publication". Coming back from English there is also the usage at a wedding where the parties are "pronounced husband and wife" 2. An elder brother. Not all languages have special words to differentiate between an older and younger brother. Just because there is no translation there now, does not mean that it will never be added. 3. Are we talking about a female mayor, or the mayor's wife. 4. Two meanings are given: the jeweller (or jeweler in the U.S.) and his shop. How do we determine which is meant. English does not have a proper single word for the latter. At least French has "bijoutier" and "bijouterie" 5. This is the most stable of the lot because it is defined by international standards. 6. Probably stable. Names of months usually are unless we are talking about diferent calenders, which would be stretching the issue even for me. 7. This one relates to pennants or streamers, or even flags, but not in the sense of national flags. 8. The literal meaning seems obvious, but one still has to allow for the more metaphorical, as in "The lawyer had an airtight case." 9. The ordinary meaning might seem easy enough, but a brush in an electric motor would not be translated the same way. 10.It can mean a cloth for carrying a baby on one's back, or as a verb to "tie" or "bind" So this leaves me with only two out of ten where one does not run into ambiguities. This is far too much ambiguity for automated translations to be a viable option. As US President Kennedy once said, "I am a jelly doughnut". Ec From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 00:55:59 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 01:55:59 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l]/[[DNA]]/Lir/and a PS on Expert Determination (crossposting to the legal list) References: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> <1073559869.9124.45.camel@myhome.home> Message-ID: <3FFDFC1F.1010503@yahoo.com> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen a ?crit: > NOTE: I AM CROSSPOSTING THIS TO THE WIKILEGAL LIST, > SO PLEASE EDIT THE LISTS LINE TO THE APPROPRIATE > RECIPIENTS. I think I am misunderstanding what you mean here... what is the list line ? (gee, I am *sure* I am making a mistake) > On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 10:56, A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: > > < attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic > acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an > anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a > vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, > discussion is impossible).>> > > Respectfully, I think in this situation, discussion is imperative. > > By speech and action, you should make it clear that Peak and his > (putative) anonymous friend are incorrect in their characterisation > of you. > > (more about the possible role of mediation below) > > > < whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.>> > > It is unclear whether we are going to allow either the mediation > or the arbitration process stray into making determinations on > questions of fact (personally I think it would be a serious > over-reach of authority and compounding of "hats" which might > cause severe difficulties to the credibility of either process). > > If that is decided to be outside our remit, perhaps the best you > could hope for is that a mediator would try to get Peek and/or > the anonymous editor to confront your views, and try to help > all parties to find some useful mode to discuss the matter > between each other, either within the mediation process or > subsequent to it, without taking a position in any way, other > than to the effect that discussion should take place and > perhaps suggesting intermediary discussion points which might help > to chart where the heart of the disagreement lies. > > Respectfully, > > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro), > MEMBER OF THE MEDIATION COMMITTEE Boy, did you sound serious there... > P.S. I hate to keep on harping on this matter, but there is a > possibility that a method > for resolving questions of fact may be needed down the line. The ideal > method for > this is neither arbitration nor mediation, but rather "expert > determination". This has > already been excercised informally in the Florentin Smarandache and > Neutrosophy > case, when a professor from outside Wikipedia was "enticed" to "fix" the > problem. > > Once we get more and more public exposure, it may well turn out that on > specific > tightly defined questions of fact, we may be able to get even notable > experts to > accept commissions to sort things out, in a context of both/all sides of > the > conflict accepting beforehand the expert enlisted makes the final call. > There are > attendant possibilities here, for generating publicity for both > Wikipedia and/or the > expert who accepts the commission (and we may even get a new convert from > the highest reaches of the particular field :-). hummmm, perhaps. Yeah, why not. But...let's say...if it is a purely factual point, expertise is nice. But usually, most conflicts are not exactly on purely factual points. More on some that involves interpretation. And...being an expert is no guarantee of neutrality rather far from that in fact :-) Say...if we call for help upon an expert...I would say it is ok if this expert succeeds to *convince* us of the proper answer to the issue, provided that he gives us appropriate references. ?t is ok that he convinces us. It is not ok that he just tell us "this is the good answer". I mean...if we call help upon a "great" expert, that we agree on that expert, that this expert is indeed biaised in his answer, and makes a final call upon which someone disagree, how are we gonna get out of that ? and tell the guy from whom we requested help that "no, it is not acceptable". In short, I think a respectable number of us know an expert, who is just as experts as us on a topic, but with whom we disagree. I do not think it would be fair in the slightest that on wikipedia this expert vision is considered the right one, just because he was requested as an expert, if in the real world we fairly disagree. the idea is seducing, but dangerous :-) From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 01:24:22 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 17:24:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <20040109012422.78296.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Completely disagree. Copyright problems would destroy the project. Read up on the history of www.lyrics.ch. RIckK Kent Wang wrote: I was browsing through OHHLA.com (Online Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive) and realized that a lyrics archive would be an excellent application of Wiki technology. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040108/a4cfde0b/attachment.htm From cprompt at tmbg.org Fri Jan 9 03:17:14 2004 From: cprompt at tmbg.org (cprompt) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 22:17:14 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> References: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <1073618234.2414.9.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> Actually, I was planning on start a project like that for a while now. Maybe I'll actually get around to doing it. :-) I believe that lyrics should be under fair use, and I think that most artists would agree with me. That's why people who buy music on eBay would more likely bid on CDs without the liner notes, as opposed to liner notes without CDs. While I think a lyric project would be a great use of our wiki software, I think it doesn't really belong on Wikimedia, which has prided itself on open content. Unless the Wikimedia version restricted its lyrics to public domain songs or songs under a free (as in freedom) license. On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 14:16, Kent Wang wrote: > I was browsing through OHHLA.com (Online Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive) and > realized that a lyrics archive would be an excellent application of Wiki > technology. Although OHHLA is the most comprehensive website in its > genre, there are still many less popular artists that are not covered, > and most of the pages I've seen contain at least a mistake or two. > > So I think a great new WikiMedia project would be a "WikiLyrics" that > would cover music lyrics for all genres. > > Hip-hop lyrics are particularly in need for a wiki because they are full > of slang words and in-references that can be Wikified to articles > explaining them. Hip-hop albums also rarely come with lyrics sheets > though ironically, are probably most in need of them. > > I've already Googled for "lyrics wiki" and found no significant hits. > > I'm very enthusiastic about this idea but a major problem that will need > to be resolved is that almost all lyrics are not open content and the > GFDL will most certainly be incompatible. Though the RIAA is definitely > tort-happy, I don't believe there have been any attempts to shut down > online lyrics websites, especially since they should not undermine > record sales. > > I eagerly await your comments on this idea. > > Kent Wang > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From rjaros at shaysnet.com Fri Jan 9 00:08:10 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 19:08:10 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: www.wixpression.org? In-Reply-To: <200401080943.57083.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <3FFB3BB4.5050906@moongate.ro> <3FFD36AB.6030701@moongate.ro> <200401080943.57083.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: On Jan 8, 2004, at 9:43 AM, Sascha Noyes wrote: > On Thursday 08 January 2004 05:53 am, Gutza wrote: > >> Arwel Parry wrote: >> >>> Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word >>> "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it >>> is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means >>> "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations... > > Perhaps the most famous example would be "libre" and "gratuit" mapping > onto > the english "free". I agree with Gutza nonetheless that automation > would be a > good idea. The overwhelming majority of words can be translated into > most > languages one-to-one (ie. no ambiguities). This would save us a lot of > work. > And for the few cases where there are problems, they can be corrected > by > hand. Take, specifically, the Spanish 'libre', the English 'free', and the French 'gratuit'. Without care, one might end up saying that since sp:'libre' means en:'free', which means fr:'gratuit', sp:'libre' also means fr:'gratuit', which is of course wrong. The transitive property does not always apply to language. Here out little automaton friend might run into difficulty, even if he *is* only aiming to "make our lives easier". Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 04:42:10 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 20:42:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we PLEASE ban Wik? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040109044210.95725.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> He is in a CONSTANT state of edit war with just about efverybody on every article he works on, and he has added Hephaestos and Angela to Problem Users. This has gone far enough. RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040108/fe36bd25/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 04:44:31 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 20:44:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics In-Reply-To: <1073618234.2414.9.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> Message-ID: <20040109044431.7221.qmail@web60607.mail.yahoo.com> You're going to get into a lot of trouble with it. As has been said here, lyrichs.ch was shut down by the police because American publishers sent the Swiss police to shut it down. RickK cprompt wrote: Actually, I was planning on start a project like that for a while now. Maybe I'll actually get around to doing it. :-) I believe that lyrics should be under fair use, and I think that most artists would agree with me. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040108/f32f31ce/attachment.htm From maveric149 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 8 17:19:19 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 09:19:19 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] www.wixpression.org? Message-ID: <200401080919.19214.maveric149@yahoo.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: >Nevertheless I would like to see some kind of such >scheme up and working on one single project so that >we can get the bugs out before the scheme is adopted >on other projects. That is what http://test.wikipedia.org/ is for. --mav From grenfell_ at hotmail.com Thu Jan 8 20:16:09 2004 From: grenfell_ at hotmail.com (Adam Bishop) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 15:16:09 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics Message-ID: It's apparently illegal to post lyrics on the Internet, and I think some lyrics sites have been sued or shut down because of this. Some guitar tab sites (notably olga.net, the Online Guitar Archive), were also forced to shut down in the past, partly because of the lyrics (but also because of the uncertain legality of the tabs themselves, but that's another story...in any case now they can only include a few words of lyrics). >From: "Kent Wang" >Reply-To: English Wikipedia >To: >Subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiLyrics >Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:16:02 -0600 > >I was browsing through OHHLA.com (Online Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive) and >realized that a lyrics archive would be an excellent application of Wiki >technology. Although OHHLA is the most comprehensive website in its >genre, there are still many less popular artists that are not covered, >and most of the pages I've seen contain at least a mistake or two. > >So I think a great new WikiMedia project would be a "WikiLyrics" that >would cover music lyrics for all genres. > >Hip-hop lyrics are particularly in need for a wiki because they are full >of slang words and in-references that can be Wikified to articles >explaining them. Hip-hop albums also rarely come with lyrics sheets >though ironically, are probably most in need of them. > >I've already Googled for "lyrics wiki" and found no significant hits. > >I'm very enthusiastic about this idea but a major problem that will need >to be resolved is that almost all lyrics are not open content and the >GFDL will most certainly be incompatible. Though the RIAA is definitely >tort-happy, I don't believe there have been any attempts to shut down >online lyrics websites, especially since they should not undermine >record sales. > >I eagerly await your comments on this idea. > >Kent Wang > > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca From A Fri Jan 9 11:12:52 2004 From: A (A) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 03:12:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Mediation [[nervous system]] In-Reply-To: <20040109032007.86FC2B833@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040109111252.97278.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> The current edit war is over whether it is really technically accurate to refer to neural "information" as being "true" information. The article on [[information]] clearly indicates that it might be inaccurate to refer to this as information. However, my edits are reverted by people who make far more personal attacks than statements of fact or discussion. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From daniwo59 at aol.com Fri Jan 9 12:37:37 2004 From: daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 07:37:37 EST Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. Message-ID: <1a9.1ed824f6.2d2ffa91@aol.com> A while ago, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes for deletion and deleted. RK has insisted on keeping the material, so he placed it into [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. It has been removed repeatedly by Zero and myself for NPOV violations--the same violations that caused it to be deleted as an independent article in the first place. I am saying this because I would ask that someone look at RK's edit history last night. Zero and I are listed in Vandalism in progress and RK is making ad hominem attacks against us. It is tiresome. It is also a statement that if you scream loud enough and bully enough people, you will get your way. I wonder whether this is the message that we want to get across to cranks. Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040109/0ae98208/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 9 13:00:41 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 06:00:41 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: <1a9.1ed824f6.2d2ffa91@aol.com> Message-ID: I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor". He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly. Fred From: daniwo59 at aol.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 07:37:37 EST To: wikiEN-l at wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. A while ago, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes for deletion and deleted. RK has insisted on keeping the material, so he placed it into [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. It has been removed repeatedly by Zero and myself for NPOV violations--the same violations that caused it to be deleted as an independent article in the first place. I am saying this because I would ask that someone look at RK's edit history last night. Zero and I are listed in Vandalism in progress and RK is making ad hominem attacks against us. It is tiresome. It is also a statement that if you scream loud enough and bully enough people, you will get your way. I wonder whether this is the message that we want to get across to cranks. Danny _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040109/e4c9f32e/attachment.htm From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 13:24:54 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 05:24:54 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: <1a9.1ed824f6.2d2ffa91@aol.com> References: <1a9.1ed824f6.2d2ffa91@aol.com> Message-ID: <20040109132454.GL19776@joey.bomis.com> No one needs to be banned over this, but it is obvious to me from a review of the history that it is Danny and Zero0000 who have misbehaved and ought to apologize and (more importantly) change their editing strategy. VfD is completely broken. I say that here for emphasis because I think we really should get rid of it entirely. daniwo59 at aol.com wrote: > A while ago, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed > on Votes for deletion and deleted. I think that was obviously a mistake and is a good example of what's broken about the VfD concept. "Palestinian views of the peace process" is absolutely a valid topic for an article, and the solution to any alleged NPOV problems is not to delete it, but to fix it. The result hoped for -- that deleting information you don't like from Wikipedia will eliminate a controversy is clearly not happening. > RK has insisted on keeping the material, so he placed it into > [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. It has been removed repeatedly by > Zero and myself for NPOV violations--the same violations that caused > it to be deleted as an independent article in the first place. You are wrong to do this. Here is an example of an edit of yours that is wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Israeli-Palestinian_conflict&diff=2104428&oldid=2103857 You removed a huge section of text because you don't want people to learn the information that it contains. > I am saying this because I would ask that someone look at RK's edit > history last night. Zero and I are listed in Vandalism in progress > and RK is making ad hominem attacks against us. It is tiresome. It > is also a statement that if you scream loud enough and bully enough > people, you will get your way. I wonder whether this is the message > that we want to get across to cranks. Danny You and Zero0000 are at least as guilty in this instance than RK. Zero0000 did a mass deletion and called it "trash". You called that section of the article "biased POV rubbish" and alleged that RK merely put it there to "support your rightwing agenda". I see no material difference between these allegations and what RK wrote, i.e. thinks like "DO NOT just savagely delete huge amounts of Wikipedia beacuse you have left-wing political views." I think that RK is factually correct when he writes "Danny is hysterically out of control." It is wrong of him to use that sort of language in an article dispute, even though you and Zero0000 started it. (Actually, reviewing the page history since Dec. 21, 2003, I see that Zero0000 was the first to engage in personal attacks -- you just piled on later.) --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 13:26:06 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 05:26:06 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: References: <1a9.1ed824f6.2d2ffa91@aol.com> Message-ID: <20040109132603.GM19776@joey.bomis.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor". > > He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly. I think you should review that edit history more carefully. RK is primarily the victim here. Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting his editing. --Jimbo From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 9 13:47:45 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 06:47:45 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: <20040109132603.GM19776@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward points of view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation. Fred > From: Jimmy Wales > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 05:26:06 -0800 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) > > Fred Bauder wrote: >> I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor". >> >> He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly. > > I think you should review that edit history more carefully. RK is > primarily the victim here. Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, > openly, and it's affecting his editing. > > --Jimbo > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 9 14:28:33 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 09:28:33 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Partisanship and Neutrality (was: Effective bullying strategy) Message-ID: I am the first to admit that it's difficult to put forward points of view /neutrally/ when one is a partisan. That is why I am usually V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W to edit anything relating to the [[Unification Church]]; I'm a member of it and a passionate advocate of its theological and philosophical views. I'm also slow and careful (when I can be) on environmental issues, but several times a year I seem to lose my temper, edit too hastily, and have to apologize. Some other respected contributors, recognizing the difficulty they have writing neutrally on subjects they feel passionately about, avoid those topics altogether. Daniel Mayer (Maveric) sets the best example I'm aware of, in this respect. The two best things I've found to help me avoid partisan fighting at Wikipedia are: 1. Summarize the POV of my "opponent" /TO HIS SATISFACTION/ !!! 2. If one of my contributions is reverted (even once), take this as a signal that I'm NOT DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB of reflecting POVs other than my own. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 9 14:41:17 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 14:41:17 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. Message-ID: From: Jimmy Wales wrote: >VfD is completely broken. I say that here for emphasis because I >think we really should get rid of it entirely. So do I. The very idea of deleting people's work, that they have freely given, is insulting, off-putting to newbies, and non-collaborative. I suggest that we delete VfD and use cleanup instead. Theresa From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 14:48:08 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 06:48:08 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: References: <20040109132603.GM19776@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040109144808.GC23802@joey.bomis.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward points of > view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just > as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation. Can you be more specific about what is overdone about his presentation? I'm not sure what the word "overdone" means here. Certainly, the material in question is too long and in detail for a broad overview article -- but this only shows why it was a mistake to delete the original article in the first place. But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem. There is no question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation requires understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process actually are. There is no question that one point of contention is whether Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process as "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to destroy Israel. Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable. This is an important part of one of the major questions of our time. I've read and re-read the passages in question -- they could use some work, no doubt. But the only arguments I've seen for deletion is that the material is biased (though just how it is biased, I'm not sure). I've been trying to find the original VfD entry, but Wikipedia is painfully slow at the moment, so I've been unsuccessful. --Jimbo From jheiskan at welho.com Fri Jan 9 15:28:10 2004 From: jheiskan at welho.com (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 15:28:10 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Expert Determination (crossposting to the legal list) In-Reply-To: <3FFDFC1F.1010503@yahoo.com> References: <20040105085644.60982.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> <1073559869.9124.45.camel@myhome.home> <3FFDFC1F.1010503@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1073662283.10140.385.camel@myhome.home> On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 02:55, Anthere wrote: I; (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) wrote: > P.S. I hate to keep on harping on this matter, but there is a > possibility that a method > for resolving questions of fact may be needed down the line. The ideal > method for > this is neither arbitration nor mediation, but rather "expert > determination". This has > already been excercised informally in the Florentin Smarandache and > Neutrosophy > case, when a professor from outside Wikipedia was "enticed" to "fix" the > problem. > > Once we get more and more public exposure, it may well turn out that on > specific > tightly defined questions of fact, we may be able to get even notable > experts to > accept commissions to sort things out, in a context of both/all sides of > the > conflict accepting beforehand the expert enlisted makes the final call. > There are > attendant possibilities here, for generating publicity for both > Wikipedia and/or the > expert who accepts the commission (and we may even get a new convert from > the highest reaches of the particular field :-). hummmm, perhaps. Yeah, why not. But...let's say...if it is a purely factual point, expertise is nice. But usually, most conflicts are not exactly on purely factual points. More on some that involves interpretation. And...being an expert is no guarantee of neutrality rather far from that in fact :-) Say...if we call for help upon an expert...I would say it is ok if this expert succeeds to *convince* us of the proper answer to the issue, provided that he gives us appropriate references. ?t is ok that he convinces us. It is not ok that he just tell us "this is the good answer". Right. Any such expert would have to respect the fact that Wikipedia is a wiki, and any information that she provided would be edited ruthlessly, as always. The help she would be able to provide would consist solely of providing an authoritative view from outside the wikipedia social context. I mean...if we call help upon a "great" expert, that we agree on that expert, that this expert is indeed biaised in his answer, and makes a final call upon which someone disagree, how are we gonna get out of that ? and tell the guy from whom we requested help that "no, it is not acceptable". I presume you mean that one or more of the combatants on the question would not accept the resulting answer to our query? I think then that person would have a very steep hill to climb to prove to the rest of wikipedians that they were not just trying to cause trouble. In short, I think a respectable number of us know an expert, who is just as experts as us on a topic, but with whom we disagree. I do not think it would be fair in the slightest that on wikipedia this expert vision is considered the right one, just because he was requested as an expert, if in the real world we fairly disagree. the idea is seducing, but dangerous :-) I think your concerns are legitimate, and certainly would have to be addressed somehow. I am not quite sure how we should handle such a conflict, although I would hope that any expert we called upon would genuinely attempt to arrive at a neutral solution acceptable to all. Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040109/67a8782d/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 9 16:03:46 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 09:03:46 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: <20040109144808.GC23802@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: I believe RK's material could and should probably be presented in several paragraphs. What he has done is a piece of original historical research, which by citing particular statements made by Palestinians builds a strong case that at least some Palestinian leaders are insincere. However due to my experiences with him I would hesitate to rely on what he has done as he has often composed this sort of lengthy detailed article which by framing the debate in his terms and sytematically misrepresenting opposing positions distorts the situation. (My big edit war with him was in Chiroractic medicine which I do know something about. Your chiropratic medicine article remains unrecognisable to chiropractic practitioners or their patients). I would certainly never attempt to edit an article he was actively working on in an aggressive way. (Silly to get upset over a hobby like Wikipedia). On Vfd, just recently someone tried to delete [[Communist government]], but had to give up. That article which is quite toned down after extensive editing remains deeply offensive to apoligists, however they have their [[Communist state]] article which presents a sanitized version of things. Thing is, Wikipedia is to some extent an ideological battleground, a forum for struggle. Fred > From: Jimmy Wales > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 06:48:08 -0800 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) > > Fred Bauder wrote: >> Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward points of >> view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just >> as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation. > > Can you be more specific about what is overdone about his > presentation? I'm not sure what the word "overdone" means here. > > Certainly, the material in question is too long and in detail for a > broad overview article -- but this only shows why it was a mistake to > delete the original article in the first place. > > But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem. There is no > question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation > requires understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process > actually are. There is no question that one point of contention is > whether Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process as > "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it > merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to > destroy Israel. > > Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable. This is > an important part of one of the major questions of our time. > > I've read and re-read the passages in question -- they could use some > work, no doubt. But the only arguments I've seen for deletion is that > the material is biased (though just how it is biased, I'm not sure). > > I've been trying to find the original VfD entry, but Wikipedia is > painfully slow at the moment, so I've been unsuccessful. > > --Jimbo > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 16:18:02 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 08:18:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040109161802.86272.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Fine. I give up. I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia. RickK "KNOTT, T" wrote: From: Jimmy Wales wrote: >VfD is completely broken. I say that here for emphasis because I >think we really should get rid of it entirely. So do I. The very idea of deleting people's work, that they have freely given, is insulting, off-putting to newbies, and non-collaborative. I suggest that we delete VfD and use cleanup instead. Theresa _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040109/b45aaeaa/attachment.htm From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 16:24:36 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 08:24:36 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: References: <20040109144808.GC23802@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040109162436.GZ19776@joey.bomis.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > I believe RK's material could and should probably be presented in several > paragraphs. What he has done is a piece of original historical research, > which by citing particular statements made by Palestinians builds a strong > case that at least some Palestinian leaders are insincere. I don't really see how it's original historical research in any way shape or form. Palestinian attitudes are well documented and discussed -- except on Wikipedia, where people have chosen to delete rather than work for neutrality. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 16:28:20 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 08:28:20 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: <20040109161802.86272.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040109161802.86272.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040109162820.GA19776@joey.bomis.com> Rick wrote: > Fine. I give up. I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and >I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to >Wikipedia. I don't think being huffy about it is very helpful. Better, I think, to work for a new system that doesn't make such egregious errors. "Palestinian views of the peace process" is quite clearly an important topic -- one of the most important topics in one of the most important issues of our times. And yet, rather than find a way to work for a neutral presentation of that issue, VfD resulted in deletion. That's broken. The material there may have been flawed in some ways (though I find it to be pretty decent, as a first draft at least), but it was hardly "vandalism". On the other hand, deleting "any garbage that any vandals want to add to wikipedia" is valuable. Tying the two together is a mistake, I think. When I say that the current VfD process is broken, I am not thereby endorsing the notion that we can't justifiably delete vandalism or nonsense. --Jimbo From ebeins at hotmail.com Fri Jan 9 08:37:32 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 00:37:32 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Brilliant prose rename brainstorm References: <8ziipEUxpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: It has to be obvious to non-Wikipedian oldie readers. 'Trusted AREA' & 'Safe zone' (both words) are not obvious. The others are ok. -- ___________________________ Menchi p.s. My 1st reply to the ML in several months... And the 1st to use a mail client program directly, hope it gets thru From ebeins at hotmail.com Fri Jan 9 08:48:30 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 00:48:30 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Set globally (ML settings) Message-ID: What does it mean when the settings say "Set globally " in http://mail.wikipedia.org ? ___________________________ Menchi From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 9 16:02:23 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 17:02:23 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: <20040109144808.GC23802@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Jimbo, I am in the uncomfortable and for me highly unusual position of completely disagreeing with your assessment of the situation. I was the one who listed the original article, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], on VfD in mid-December. I had encountered the article last summer and was appalled by it, and made a mental note to try to salvage what little of value was in the article and merge it somewhere else. However, I never got around to it -- nor did anyone else -- and finally I thought the best thing would be to give the thing a quick and decent burial. The vote if I recall correctly was nearly unanimous; six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation, as you will see from the VfD vote. Sometimes it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. (As an aside, I would like to add that I agree with the shortcomings of VfD; I also think it should be abolished and Cleanup as a process further enhanced, but this is a separate issue which should be discussed elsewhere.) At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor the scholarly resources to offer a detailed explanation as to why the material in that article was so bad: suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context, obviously (to some of us at least) manipulated solely as a way of discrediting the Palestinian cause. It failed to take into consideration that there is a broad range of opinion among Palestinians; the radical/fundamentalist/militarist POV is but one. The PLO -- representing the Palestinians but not necessarily reflecting ALL of Palestinian opinion -- did indeed at one time have as a goal the destruction of Israel. This goal was renounced at the PNC meeting in 1988 if I recall correctly. Perhaps our coverage of the evolving Palestine perspective could be expanded in the main article or one of its offspring -- the issue is not "omitting" any information or censoring any POV -- it is presenting balanced (and balancing) viewpoints with the proper historical context, something the above-mentioned text failed utterly to do. I support Danny and Zero on this one 100%. I find it particularly ironical and completely hypocritical that RK now positions himself as the "defender" of Palestinians from "censorship". Have you no shame RK? On 01/09/04 at 06:48 AM, Jimmy Wales said: > But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem. There is no > question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation requires > understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process actually are. > There is no question that one point of contention is whether Palestinian > leaders, in particular, view the peace process as "permanent and > irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it merely as a short-term > negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to destroy Israel. > Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable. This is > an important part of one of the major questions of our time. V. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 9 16:58:59 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:58:59 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Context and POV (was: Effective bullying strategy) Message-ID: Viajero, List me as "abstaining" from the VfD vote: so it wasn't unanimous, there was at least one abstention. If I thought VfD was a helpful process, I'd have voted "keep". I agree that the article wasn't well written, but I don't think /voting to eliminate it/ is the answer. Perhaps BLANKING the content and starting fresh, with a stub would be better. Part of the problem in politics is that advocates (like Arafat) espouse various positions. Sometimes the change is gradual over time, or sudden at a particular point. There have even been claims that a politician will say different things to different audiences on the same day! The hardest political position to describe is one which the advocate doesn't want to be "caught" advocating; he tells his supporters one thing and his critics another. The so- called "secret agenda". In American politics, some people think Bush and Cheney have a secret agenda in Iraq, e.g., of self-enrichment via Haliburton. In Middle Eastern politics, some people think Arafat seeks the full elimination of Israel and talks peace only as means to that end. It's exceedingly difficult to figure out what a politician is /really/ saying, in such a case. Is he telling the truth, and his opponents are TWISTING his words? Or is he speaking with forked tongue, and his opponents are REVEALING the deception? I don't think Wikipedia is called upon to make the ultimate judgment. Rather, we should say things like: * Former Israeli prime minister X believes that Arafat says one thing and does another * Islamic leader Y believes that Arafat has always sincerely sought to live side by side in peace with Jews If it's a question of statements being taken out of context, we can help by quoting lengthier passages. But it's up to the /reader/ to decide whether the man /really/ means what he says. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 9 17:01:41 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 17:01:41 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD Message-ID: Rick wrote: > Fine. I give up. I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and >I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to >Wikipedia. When I see obvious vandalism, I revert. If a newbie creates an experimental page "fgh" etc. I just delete. No need to go through VfD for that sort of thing. Everything else should be cleaned up, not deleted. When I was a newbie, I had some of my stuff listed on VfD because I didn't understand the way things are done around here - It's not nice to have you work criticized in this manner. It is off-putting, fortunately I'm thick skinned but others are not so. I've seen lots of things put on VfD because they are deemed "trivial". This is insulting to the people who put their time and effort into writing the "not important" article. Obviously the article was important to at least one person. I've seen a large number of How-to type articles listed on VfD because they are "not encyclopaedic". Although I agree that this type of article is not what you find in a paper encyclopaedia it is often useful knowledge that potential users of Wikipedia may very well want to know, recently some people have been moving the how-to pages over to Wikibooks, which is a much more suitable place for this type of article IMO but if the deletionists got their way , much of the material may have been lost in the meantime. Most worryingly of all. I've seen some syops delete pages based on as majority rather than a consensus. The page is broke and can't be fixed :-( Let's have [[newbie tests]] so that non sysops can bring "hello! Paul is gay!" type pages to a sysop attention. And [[Pages that need to be moved to other wikis]] for wikionary quotes etc And [[Vanity pages]] for suspected vanity pages And have everything else go to [[cleanup]] If it doesn't work out after a while, we can always bring back VfD Theresa Proposal copied to talk:VfD please answer there. Theresa From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 17:11:56 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 09:11:56 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: References: <20040109144808.GC23802@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040109171156.GD19776@joey.bomis.com> Viajero wrote: > finally I thought the best thing would be to give the thing a quick and > decent burial. The vote if I recall correctly was nearly unanimous; six or > eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a POV rant that was > hopelessly beyond salvation, as you will see from the VfD vote. Sometimes > it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. I have as yet been unable to find the VfD vote, nor have I seen the version of the article that was being voted on. But the text that Daniwo and Zero000 have been repeatedly deleting is *not* a POV rant. It is not perfect, but then it is easy to understand why -- no one is attempting to edit it, they just try to suppress the information by deleting it and insulting RK. If the original was a POV rant, it was still not appropriate to *delete* the article -- deletion causes text to be completely unavailable to future editors who are not sysops. It would have been much more sensible to just edit it down to a stub, and to ask RK to substantiate everything that he wanted to add back in. > At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor the scholarly > resources to offer a detailed explanation as to why the material in that > article was so bad: suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of > quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context, obviously (to > some of us at least) manipulated solely as a way of discrediting the > Palestinian cause. It failed to take into consideration that there is a > broad range of opinion among Palestinians; the > radical/fundamentalist/militarist POV is but one. The text in question gives considerable context for each quote, and clearly indicates a broad range of opinion among Palestinians. So far, you are the first person to say that the quotes are "of dubious origin", but they are generally referenced to reputable sources -- Washington Post, etc. > The PLO -- representing the Palestinians but not necessarily reflecting > ALL of Palestinian opinion -- did indeed at one time have as a goal the > destruction of Israel. This goal was renounced at the PNC meeting in 1988 > if I recall correctly. Perhaps our coverage of the evolving Palestine > perspective could be expanded in the main article or one of its offspring > -- the issue is not "omitting" any information or censoring any POV -- it > is presenting balanced (and balancing) viewpoints with the proper > historical context, something the above-mentioned text failed utterly to > do. I don't agree. (Again with the caveat that I have not seen the original so that we may be talking about different things.) The text could be improved, of course. But it is very good precisely becasue it presents "balanced and balancing viewpoints with the proper historical context". The quotes are dated and exact references are given. Alternative views and background information is given. > I support Danny and Zero on this one 100%. I find it particularly ironical > and completely hypocritical that RK now positions himself as the > "defender" of Palestinians from "censorship". Have you no shame RK? But I think he's exactly right about that. I think that's really important to understand. Many in the West are uncomfortable with this kind of information because it doesn't comport well with the prevailing liberal view that the Palestinians are solely victims. Rationally, of course we can say that Palestinians are indeed victims while simultaneously holding and expressing reprehensible views. What we must not do is simply omit information about Palestinian attitudes because it doesn't match up too our rosy view of noble rebels fighting a racist apartheid state. What I'm primarily arguing, though, is not the content of the material. I think that the material is good, though not excellent, but my real point is that it can in no way be characterized as something that ought to be simply *deleted* outright. It should be *improved*. In the present case, we see why deletion is bad. We are left with a horribly broken presentation in which readers are unable to discover why it might be that, despite the PLO officially no longer calling for the destruction of Israel, and Arafat himself announcing a right to exist, the majority of Palestinians polled support the destruction of Israel. We can only come to understand that better when we come to understand Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel propaganda that is rampant in the Palestinian culture. But because some supporters of Palestine are uncomfortable with that material, it is censored from Wikipedia. No, I don't think censorship is too strong a word. --Jimbo From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 18:13:00 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:13:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: <20040109170604.873E2B83F@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040109181300.50640.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Fred writes: > I believe RK's material could and should probably be > presented in several paragraphs. What he has done is a > piece of original historical research, Nonsense. I have done no original research at all. My only "sin" is that I made available very well known quotes that Danny and Zero want to hide. Thus the censorship. These quotes were widely quoted on TV, radio, the web and in Arab newspapers. Ironically, on this issue there is more free speech in the Arab world than on Wikipedia. > which by citing particular statements made by > Palestinians builds a strong case that at least some > Palestinian leaders are insincere. Please re-read my contributions; Unlike others, I have tried very hard to include _all_ points of view. I also have shown statements from Palestinian leaders who think that the peace process should be permanent and sincere. Both views exist. I cannot imagine why it is controversial to note this. In an NPOV encyclopedia, we do not take sides with one group or another. Rather, we show the range of positions that exist, we document these positions with quotes and sources, and allow readers to make up their own minds. This text may need to be edited, sure. But no one can edit it if it does not exist! > However due to my experiences with him I would hesitate > to rely on what he has done as he has often composed > this sort of lengthy detailed article which by framing > the debate in his terms and sytematically misrepresenting > opposing positions distorts the situation. Fred is clearly insinuating that they really don't have the beliefs that they clearly say that they do, and that the only way we can come to such conclusions is through my "systematic misrepresentation". Fred is wrong. His position is only tenable if we assume that all Palestinians constantly lie about all of their beliefs. Some do lie, on occasion, but as these quotes show, the truth always shows through. In any case, Fred also totally misses the point...that Palestinians have a number of points of view, not just one. That is why I included multiple POVs. His claims to the contrary are wrong. It is Fred and Danny who systematically represent the Arab views by hiding all quotes they disagree with, or denying their veracity. Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 9 18:23:54 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:23:54 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: <20040109181300.50640.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040109181300.50640.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Robert writes: > Nonsense. I have done no original research at all. My only "sin" is that I > made available very well known quotes that Danny and Zero want to hide. Thus > the censorship. No Robert. Your sin (besides the fact you called me a Nazi, for which I will not forgive you) is that you wrote the article as an entirely accurate piece of propaganda. As Ed sagely said, people -- yeah, even politicians -- say different things to different and what you did in this article was gather all the worst things Palestinian leaders said and dump them in one place. Arafat has (many times) said terrible things about Israel and cynical things about the Peace Process. He has also said conciliatory things about both. Your original draft of this article was composed of as many of the former as you could muster, and none of the latter. Then you represented these views as if they were the incontrovertible and steadfast beliefs of the entire Palestinian population (can you imagine an article entitled "US views of the Iraq Conflict" that suggested such a united front -- laughable.) You did these things because you are -- like all of us -- are utterly incapable of being impartial in things that concern you closely. That's why it was POV. That's also why it shouldn't have been deleted. Theres a good article in there, showing how the stated views of the Palestinian leadership have changed over time -- and a corresponding one showing the vicissitudes of the Israeli leadership. You and your various antagonists are *not* the people who should write them. -- Gareth Owen "Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001) From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 18:40:58 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:40:58 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: References: <20040109181300.50640.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040109184058.GG19776@joey.bomis.com> Gareth Owen wrote: > Your original draft of this article was composed of as many of the > former as you could muster, and none of the latter. Then you > represented these views as if they were the incontrovertible and > steadfast beliefs of the entire Palestinian population (can you > imagine an article entitled "US views of the Iraq Conflict" that > suggested such a united front -- laughable.) I can't speak on the original draft of the article, but in any event we are not now arguing about the original draft, but an edit war which broke out recently between Danny and Zero000 on the one hand, and RK on the other hand, about a large block of text that does not in any way meet the description that you give here. > You did these things because you are -- like all of us -- are utterly > incapable of being impartial in things that concern you closely. > > That's why it was POV. But I think that this is unfair to RK (and all of us), and in particular this is unfair to the specific block of text in question. That block of text was not perfect, it could stand improvement, but we must not imagine that the text was anything other than what it was. Self-evidently, if you read it, it was exactly what RK has said it was... a genuine effort to collect and present a variety of views that have been expressed by prominent Palestinians. For each quote, a certain degree of context was provided. For the entire set, care was taken to note where views (of Arafat, say) have changed, and so on. Danny, like you, has a problem with RK. But in the current instance, this portrayal of the particular text in question is wrong. It isn't a one-sided screed at all. It cites reputable sources. It presents different viewpoints. It shows clearly that Palestinian views are diverse. Maybe there are some egregious problems with the text that I haven't understood yet. But we should be careful to look at it with a fresh eye, and not misunderstand what's going on here, which is Danny engaging in deleting text repeatedly while refusing to work with someone who is very much trying to write a balanced text. --Jimbo From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Jan 9 18:52:48 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:52:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: Proposal for New VFD Policy (was: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.) In-Reply-To: <20040109162820.GA19776@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040109185248.29170.qmail@web25005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Hello, I propose a new VfD system which uses Scientific Management principles as described by Taylor, the creator of Scientific Management: (don't take it too seriously!) The rules of the new system are: 1. When a Wikipedian proposes to delete a page and the community says "NO" (as defined in Article 7), he or she will be charged with an amount of X Wikis from his WikiBank account. (PUNISHMENT) 2. When a Wikipedian proposes to delete a page and the community says "YES" (as defined in Article 7), he or she will earn an amount of X Wikis, added to his or her WikiBank account. (REWARD) 3. When a Wikipedian proposes to delete a page and the community is "UNDECIDED" or "NEUTRAL" (as defined in Article 7), no change will occur to his or her WikiBank account. 4. Only users with at least X Wikis on their WikiBank account will be able to vote for deletion. However, there will be an allowed overdraft of Y Wikis on all WikiBank accounts. The user will be required to pay the overdraft in a period of Z months by creating new articles or fixing existing ones or providing another service to the community. 5. Usual voters' WikiBank accounts will not be affected. The punishment or reward will affect only the Wikipedian who proposed a page to be deleted. 6. (intentionally left blank without any rational reason). :) 7. Definition of the Community's Will: When a P percentage of the voters say "YES", the Community Will is considered to be "YES". When a P percentage of the voters say "NO", the Community Will is considered to be "NO". When there are no votes at all, the Community Will is considered to be "NEUTRAL". In any other case the Community Will is "UNDECIDED". 8. The real value of the variables X, Y, Z and P will be defined by Jimbo, unless he nominates another person or group to define these values. The definition will be added to this rule-list as Article 9. :) 9. (Intentionally left blank for future use.) 10. A vote is: 10a. Positive if the Wikipedian wrote "DELETE!". 10b. Negative if the Wikipedian wrote "KEEP!". 10c. In all other cases it is a comment, not a vote, even if the Wikipedian meant a positive or negative vote by using other words. 10d. The "!" and the capital letters are included in the definition of a vote. i.e. "delete!", "delete" and "DELETE!" are considered different. :) note: currently a P percentage of 2/3 is discussed on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy The main idea of the proposed system is to PUNISH wikipedians who vote to delete a useful page and REWARD wikipedians who help keeping Wikipedia clean and usable by voting to delete unnecessary or harmful pages. People will think twice before voting to delete a page which may seen as useful by others, but at the same time they will have a (wiki-monetary) incentive to vote the deletion of pages which surely will not yield negative votes, thus keeping Wikipedia clean, usable and safe for its readers. Background information: For the definition of a "Wiki": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimoney For the definition a "WikiBank Account": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiMoney_accounts For what VfD is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion The goal of VFD is to prevent trolls and vandals from destroying Wikipedia and keep it clean, usable and safe for its readers. Our readers are our masters and we must serve them at the best of our ability. We should never allow vandals to put gargabe, false information (which, especially in cases about Health or Law, may be dangerous), potentially offensive material etc. VFD should exist but not overused. Currently it is overused, since most of the pages listed in VfD could have been listed in Cleanup or Pages Needing Attention. My (serious) recommendation is that anyone who likes to use VFD should read and have a deep understanding of Ahimsa and WikiLove. See: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikipediAhimsa and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLove VFD is often destructive and contrary to Ahimsa. Ahimsa is non-violence. However, Cleanup and Pages Needing Attention are in harmony with the Ahimsa principles. It is better first to use Cleanup and Pages Needing Attention before using VFD. VFD forces people to write either only good articles or no articles at all. It uses the power of Fear to control people's inclusion of stubs (small articles) and gargage in Wikipedia. Using fear is psychological violence, so it is against Ahimsa. In the end, VFD may be useful (keeping Wikipedia clean), but VFD's means are based on Violence. Of course I accept that it is impossible or very difficult not to use Violence, provided the current state of society and human spirit. It is sure that if we had unlimited time, we would delete all Wikipedia articles in the end, because everyone will find some soft or hard objection to any of the existing articles. (this is an interesting "infinite time experiment", isn't it?). Even the best and most NPOV article may be seen as offensive by some people. And it is known that in the human society, a lot of mad persons found great support among the people. If you can't think of any example, just open a History textbook or browse Wikipedia for historical figures and you will find many crazy trolls who were able to influence the society in order to materialize their craziness. Thank you, With Best Wishes for Peace Profound, --Optim --- Jimmy Wales wrote: > Rick wrote: > > Fine. I give up. I will no longer list anything > to be deleted, and > >I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals > want to add to > >Wikipedia. > > I don't think being huffy about it is very helpful. > Better, I think, > to work for a new system that doesn't make such > egregious errors. > > "Palestinian views of the peace process" is quite > clearly an important > topic -- one of the most important topics in one of > the most important > issues of our times. And yet, rather than find a > way to work for a > neutral presentation of that issue, VfD resulted in > deletion. That's > broken. The material there may have been flawed in > some ways (though > I find it to be pretty decent, as a first draft at > least), but it was > hardly "vandalism". > > On the other hand, deleting "any garbage that any > vandals want to add > to wikipedia" is valuable. > > Tying the two together is a mistake, I think. When > I say that the > current VfD process is broken, I am not thereby > endorsing the notion > that we can't justifiably delete vandalism or > nonsense. > > --Jimbo > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 9 19:04:57 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 14:04:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views Message-ID: Part of the problem is the "authority and endorsement" issue. Robert (RK) appears, in the eyes of some Wikipedians, to be making the following argument: * Palestinians say they want peace, but * Here is the proof that they really want to destroy Israel. Thus it appears that Robert is trying to get Wikipedia to endorse /his personal POV/ that the Palestinians are lying. Hence the complaints that he's "engaging in original research" or "writing from a POV". I have occasionally had a similar problem with Sheldon and William. One of us will try to find "proof" that scientists or politicians "really" support or oppose a particular scientific hypothesis. Then one of us will complain that it's just POV. Well, the Wikipedia will never be a place to resolves political or scientific disputes. Not until we depose our Philosopher King and eliminate his NPOV policy. Whatever the dispute is, the solution has always been -- and always will be -- to /identify/ the advocates of the various sides and /attribute/ their stated POV to them. If it's a dispute over whether a quote is authentic, then we can say: * UPI quoted Arafat as desiring peaceful coexistence with Israel * Jayson Blair, a reporter for the New York Times, hired an Arabic translation who says Arafat's recent speech to Hezbollah and Herbrestah is filled with repeated calls for the immediate and total destruction of Israel. That leaves the reader with the choice of believing UPI or Jayson Blair. Wikipedia isn't going to tell him whom to believe. Or if a contributor doesn't think UPI has any credibility, then how about CNN or Fox News or the Washington Post or Al-Jazeera? Or how about an historian or legal scholar? Or any other published source? I don't care who says it, as long as you provide the identity of the speaker. I'll decide for myself if I agree with them or not. This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same: LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z. Uncle Ed From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 9 19:07:24 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 12:07:24 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: <20040109181300.50640.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Fred has never edited the article. Fred > From: Robert > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:13:00 -0800 (PST) > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views > > It is Fred and Danny who systematically > represent the Arab views by hiding all quotes they disagree > with, or denying their veracity. From erik_moeller at gmx.de Fri Jan 9 19:08:11 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 19:08:11 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <90XqQiQCpVB@erik_moeller> Teresa- I think your concerns that VfD puts off contributors who might otherwise become valued long term members are very legitimate. There is another side to the issue, though, and this is already touched upon in your post -- this attitude that just because one person cares about an article, it somehow has a place in Wikipedia. This is not the case. Wikipedia is not Everything2. There are limits to the type of content we allow -- these limits have been enumerated on [[What Wikipedia is not]] and other pages. Already it is often very difficult to get rid of pages that contain nothing but trivia. You may feel that enumerating all the things in the world in which the number "101" appears is valuable, I think it is worthless trivia. I think that my view is supported by every legitimate philosophical understanding of the terms "knowledge" and "encyclopedia" (the latter being a sum of the former). If we remove the VfD process entirely it will become even more difficult to remove these pages, and we will stray away even further from our goal of being an encyclopedia. Instead, our new goal will then be to be a loose collection of provably true statements. E.g. it is a true statement that the number 101 apperas in the film title "101 Dalmatians", but it is hardly of encyclopedic value. Such a collection is much harder to maintain and much more likely to be inconsistent than a true encyclopedia, and I also believe it tarnishes our reputation, because we claim to be something which we are clearly not. Removing VfD is the wrong answer to a real problem: How do we communicate to contributors what kind of content is acceptable and what isn't? I think the real solutions are different: - improving and standardizing welcome messages - improving VfD headers and communicating with users in cases where their pages have been listed - solidifying certain policies so that they can be referred to as strict rules, rather than "rules to consider" - generally, dispelling the popular notion that Wikipedia is a place without rules by including appropriate notices on the edit pages etc. As for the VfD process itself: VfD is like a servant working for two masters. One master believes in rules and due process, the other believes in creative chaos and consensus. As a result, the VfD page is very confused and occasionally inconsistent. Depending on which sysop makes the final decision and which users participate in the debate, the outcome may be entirely different. We need to make a decision as to what we want VfD to be: 1) a voting page 2) a discussion page where consensus has to be reached. If we want it to be a voting page, then we need to set a clear threshold at which deletion can be allowed. We need to make rules as to who is allowed to vote. If we want it to be a discussion page, we should be allowed to ignore "votes", that is, comments that merely express a preference, but not a reason. If I write a long explanation why I think a page should be deleted, I don't want the page to remain in the system just because someone quickly dropped by, looked at the page and posted a "Keep." comment. I want my arguments to be logically and soundly refuted. I want people to put up or shut up. Given that we do not have a defined decision making process within Wikipedia, such a decision can only be made in two ways: 1) Jimbo makes it 2) Jimbo authorizes a process or a person to make it. Until then, VfD is indeed broken, but it would hardly be fair to remove it entirely just because we haven't fixed it yet. Regards, Erik From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Jan 9 19:13:30 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:13:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040109191330.537.qmail@web25003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z. > > Uncle Ed unfortunately I haven't watched the ongoings about RK/palestinians/etc, but I generally agree to "LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z". Why have an edit war and not WikiHug each other wishing everyone to have "peace profound"? With Best Wishes For Peace Profound, --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 9 19:22:45 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 12:22:45 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: <90XqQiQCpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: I wouldn't be near as sore as I am if this was policy. Coming back and finding good stuff gone is upsetting. Fred > From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: 09 Jan 2004 20:07:00 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD > > - improving VfD headers and communicating with users in cases where their > pages have been listed From erik_moeller at gmx.de Fri Jan 9 19:25:02 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 19:25:02 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <90XqSL7CpVB@erik_moeller> Ed- > This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same: > LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z. Yes, that is the basic premise of NPOV. I think everyone understands that. The problem is that NPOV is not very clear on other matters, such as balance and level of detail. So people keep arguing about the same things over and over again. Articles often get listed on VfD because they (allegedly) *selectively* attribute points of views to their adherents. You know that you've started quite a few such articles yoruself, Ed. Similarly, in the case of the [[Mother Teresa]] article, I added a lot of critical information about her, properly attributed. Many people feel that in such cases, the information should either be split away or removed, and only a "balanced" article would be legitimate. Of course what is and isn't balanced is different to different people. Personally, I think that if the statements in an article are correct, encyclopedic and relevant to the article's subject, they should remain, and the article should be expanded (or summarized) by those who feel that certain views or facts are missing (or overly detailed). Some people may feel that this gives advocates of one stripe or another a blanket check to insert their point of view ("propaganda") into Wikipedia as long as it is properly attributed. Indeed it does. That is not a bad thing, though. We need to get away from the notion that articles have to be perfect shining diamonds at any given time, and if they are not, they should be deleted. That's not how articles grow and evolve on Wikipedia. To put things into perspective, most of our information about foreign countries currently comes from the CIA World Factbook and the State Department. This information looks more or less NPOV, but it obviously omits essential historical details. For example, most of our articles about African countries make no mention of the corporations and banks that have business operations in these countries, or of the mercenaries they hire. Most conflicts are described as "ethnic" rather than economically motivated. There is little information about how governments and media are bribed into supporting pro-western policies. And we don't learn why western governments ignore (or actively support) genocides in some countries (Rwanda) and invent them in others (Congo). Yet few people challenge these articles. Why? Because they're nicely written and look as if they are complete. Yet, in terms of true NPOV, they are among the worst material we have on Wikipedia. Even in these cases, however, I think it is better to edit the articles than to delete them. Regards, Erik From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 9 19:26:00 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 14:26:00 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD Message-ID: We have too many crucial, urgent pages about articles and people. I can't follow all of them. I can't even figure out how to use half of them. All we need is vandalism in progress and pages requiring attention. The [[Wikipedia:Pages requiring attention]] article should be for problems that YOU can't solve but want US to solve for you: * What was the name of the guy who said X? * Could someone please speel czech this? * Mediator needed at [[talk:Y]] (Heckle and Jeckle are at it again) * Please help me describe Z neutrally. * Someone posted their resume, and I'm not a sysop; please delete it for me. If an article has a problem that is so unclear that we want to debate it or vote on it, that's usually because there is a genuine Policy Disagreement. It's not really about the article in question; rather, the article is only one example of a class of similar articles. So, let's take it to the mailing list and hash out the /issue/. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 9 19:31:29 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:31:29 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: <20040109132603.GM19776@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: On 01/09/04 at 05:26 AM, Jimmy Wales said: > Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting his editing. Danny has an agenda? This is laughable. What is it? That he is pro-Palestinian? I have yet to see a shred of evidence of this. His major failing appears to be that he is not uncritical enough of Israel in the Manichean worldview of RK and his ilk. A pretty strange accusation when you think about it; Danny lived in Israel for many years, served in the IDF, and speaks both Hebrew and Arabic. In their own ways, both Danny and Zero are extremely well-informed and have a far subtler grasp of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than RK. And rightly so, they both strongly -- and at times inelegantly -- resist RK's efforts to insert blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda in Wiki articles. V. From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 20:23:33 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 12:23:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and Viajero's claims In-Reply-To: <20040109170604.873E2B83F@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040109202333.4748.qmail@web20305.mail.yahoo.com> Viajero writes: > I was the one who listed the original article, > [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], on VfD in > mid-December. I had encountered the article last > summer and was appalled by it, Yes, but only because it made available verified Palestinian quotes that you wanted to hide. You could not point out any POV problems; rather, you claimed that the topic's mere *existence* was a POV violation. That, of course, is not tenable. In theory, I could have written editorials containing my point of view about these Palestinian views; but as you can see for yourselves, I did no such thing. I merely allowed both groups of Palestinians to speak for themselves, in their own words. That includes both those that are working for a permanent peace with Israel, and those that view the peace process as a "Trojan horse" (their own words) for destroying Israel. People can see the array of views and draw their own conclusions. This is the very definition of NPOV, precisely what we have been aiming for in all our other articles. > six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a > POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation, Six or eight people can write all the fiction they want. But their claims cannot be made true by repeating them. As you can see for yourself, that text contains zero points of view _about_ the Palestinians; rather, it only presents their own points of view, and allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Your problem is that you do not want readers to draw their own conclusions; you have your own conclusion you are forcing on us. > At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor > the scholarly resources to offer a detailed explanation > as to why the material in that article was so bad: So we should delete entire articles just on your say so? While Danny and Zero agree with you, I think most of us can agree that this is silly. > suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of > quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context, Sorry, but now you are making things up in an effort to slander me. These quotes were presented in detail precisely because left-wing Wikipedia readers kept denying their existence. That is precisely why lenghty quotes were given; so that no one could possibly see them as being out of context. Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are proud of them. The only problem is that some people are uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project. Robert (RK) ===== "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous". The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 9 20:17:32 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 21:17:32 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: <90XqQiQCpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: On 01/09/04 at 08:07 PM, erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) said: > Already it is often very difficult to get rid of pages that contain > nothing but trivia. You may feel that enumerating all the things in the > world in which the number "101" appears is valuable, I think it is > worthless trivia. I think that my view is supported by every legitimate > philosophical understanding of the terms "knowledge" and "encyclopedia" > (the latter being a sum of the former). > If we remove the VfD process entirely it will become even more difficult > to remove these pages, and we will stray away even further from our > goal of being an encyclopedia. Instead, our new goal will then be to > be a loose collection of provably true statements. E.g. it is a true > statement that the number 101 apperas in the film title "101 > Dalmatians", but it is hardly of encyclopedic value. Such a collection > is much harder to maintain and much more likely to be inconsistent > than a true encyclopedia, and I also believe it tarnishes our > reputation, because we claim to be something which we are clearly not. These are excellent points. I think the concept of what is "encyclopedic knowledge" needs to be made more explicit. For my part, I feel I know it when I see it -- and correspondingly I know unencyclopedic material when I see it but I can't rationally explain what the difference it is -- it is an inituition. I've taken information out of articles which I consider "unencyclopedic" but when confronted about this I can't explain why. V. From sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Jan 9 20:39:39 2004 From: sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Angela?=) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 20:39:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040109203939.19736.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Sorry to send so many replies in one email but as all are related to VfD, it seemed silly to send them separately. This is in reply to Danny, Jimbo, Erik, Optim, Rick, Ed and Theresa. >Danny thought that "[[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes for deletion and deleted." It was never deleted as two people on VfD suggested that at least some of the content was salvageable and ought to be merged elsewhere. Please see [[Talk:Palestine]]. >Jimbo wrote "I think that was obviously a mistake and is a good example of what's broken about the VfD concept." Had it been deleted, that might have been a mistake, but as it wasn't, perhaps it's a sign that VfD is not as broken as many people seem to think. VfD brought new ideas to the problem, with people previously uninvolved suggesting potential solutions which are now documented on the talk page. This often happens at VfD with poor articles being saved as a direct result of being listed. I can't understand why people keep overlooking this huge benefit of the page and doing nothing but criticising the process. >Erik wrote some very sensible things regarding the role of VfD in eliminating the articles which reflect [[What Wikipedia is not]] and suggested "communicating with users in cases where their pages have been listed" Contacting the author(s) of a listed page is important, but not absolutely essential. The deletion process does not have to be final. There is [[Votes for undeletion]] should someone find out later their page was deleted without their knowledge. I think it would be nice if people were informed, but I don't think people should start ranting if it doesn't happen. >Erik also proposed "solidifying certain policies" This is an excellent suggestion and would largely eliminate the need for VfD, which at the moment is being used to debate the same policies every single week. >Optim proposed "a new VfD system which uses Scientific Management principles". So instead of training newbies to understand the deletion process and how our policies apply to articles to be deleted, you want to punish them for not already having this information? An article wrongly listed is not the end of the world. It won't be deleted, so no harm done, and hopefully the person who listed it and others that read the resulting comments on why such an article ought not be deleted will have learnt something. >Rick wrote "I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia." Rick, please stop saying this. I believe you are doing a great job defending Wikipedia from vandals and listing something on VfD that others think should be kept is hardly a crime. >Ed suggested "we have too many crucial, urgent pages about articles and people...All we need is vandalism in progress and pages requiring attention." Such a page would very quickly become hundreds of kilobytes long and unusable. You might find the "Things to watch" and "Problems in need of fixing" sections of [[Wikipedia:Utilities]] useful. >Theresa said "let's have [[newbie tests]] so that non sysops can bring "hello! Paul is gay!" type pages to a sysop attention. And [[Pages that need to be moved to other wikis]] for wikionary quotes. We already do. Please see [[Wikipedia:deleted test]], [[Wikipedia:Pages to be moved to Wiktionary]] and [[Meta:Transwiki]]. Angela. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040109/07930afd/attachment.htm From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 9 20:54:01 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:54:01 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD Message-ID: <3FFF14E9.4284.8158A8@localhost> Erik said some very insightful stuff about our current deletion process, but I would like to take issue with: > One master believes in rules and due process, the other believes > in creative chaos and consensus I think it is more accurate to suggest that one master believes in rules, another believes in votes, and a third believes in consensus. There actually is a lot of support, even a near consensus, behind the "due process" side of things, which is why there's always so much fuss if a sysop deletes a page in a way that isn't strictly supported by our deletion policy. Currently we fudge the three viewpoints by essentially allowing the sysop/user taking the decision to decide on what basis to take it - "rough consensus" covers a multitude of sins. While clearly non-ideal, it's not as bad as it sounds - we're empowering those who take the decisions, and since they're the ones who get the flak, that seems kinda fair. -- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 9 20:54:01 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:54:01 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Conflict resolution and text orientation (Was Effective bullying strategy) Message-ID: <3FFF14E9.30495.815907@localhost> Hi. I would like to comment on one aspect of our collective behaviour in these cases: We're focusing on the text that is being disputed, rather than focusing on the conflict generated by the text. This seems to be quite common, and I believe it was first noted by "Louis Kyu Won Ryu" in relation to the conflict over Mother Teresa. People who comment start talking first about whether the disputed text is accurate or not, and the conversation revolves around text. There is some logic to this: often, improving the text resolves the dispute, and particularly for smaller scale incidents, many of us have realised than ten minutes of research is worth ten hours of edit war and debate. So this text orientated approach has its place. That place is on the relevant talk page, or the article itself, not on this mailing list. Also, note that while editing the disputed text is often effective, telling someone else to edit the disputed text has a long and distinguished history of abysmal failure. However, I wonder whether this approach is perhaps overused. Sometimes disputes can be resolved or prevented by focusing on the people, rather than the text. Sometimes a dispute may not be resolvable right now, and we need to take a "damage limitation" approach, while we wait for someone to come along with the time, knowledge, and wisdom to solve the problem at text level. In this case, if the problem could be easily resolved at the text level, surely one of the frequent contributors to the Isr/Pal pages would have done so - if they've failed to do so, is it reasonable to hope that we can do so? I think we should recall that Danny didn't come to this list asking us to write the perfect account of Palestinian views of the peace process. Indeed, I would imagine that the person most capable of writing such an account would be Danny! Rather, Danny came here to discuss the "bullying strategy" that he felt that Robert Kaiser was using. The same focus on behaviour is evident with most of the cases raised on the mailing list, which I think underlines my feelings. WikiLove, -- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 9 20:54:01 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:54:01 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy Message-ID: <3FFF14E9.20187.81595E@localhost> Hi I would first suggest to Danny and Robert Kaiser that, since they feel unable to reach a direct resolution with each other, it might well be appropriate for one of them to request formal mediation. I'm sure the mediation group will be delighted to intervene, and I wish them the very best of luck. I do not intend to get deeply involved in this conflict at this stage. However, I note a comment from RK to Danny that "your repeated mass deletions are censorship and may get you banned", which reminds me of similar statements by him in the past. I would like to remind Robert that it is the sysops who decide whether pure vandalism warrants a ban, and (now) the arbitration committee which decides whether other behaviour warrants a ban. Speculation about such decisions has a poor record in the promotion of WikiLove. Cheers, -- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 9 21:01:39 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 21:01:39 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedic knowledge Message-ID: <3FFF16B3.31397.885658@localhost> > I think the concept of what is "encyclopedic > knowledge" needs to be made more explicit Encyclopedic knowledge is verifiable and informative, amongst other qualities. [[wikipedia:verifiable]] [[wikipedia:informative]] We're slowly and quietly amassing quite a wealth of information on how to decide what should and should not be deleted. (though I will probably now discover that one or both of these articles has been deleted!) -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 9 20:26:24 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 21:26:24 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was: Effective bullying strategy)) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/09/04 at 11:58 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > Viajero, > List me as "abstaining" from the VfD vote: so it wasn't > unanimous, there was at least one abstention. If I thought VfD was a > helpful process, I'd have voted "keep". > I agree that the article wasn't well written, but I don't > think /voting to eliminate it/ is the answer. Perhaps > BLANKING the content and starting fresh, with a stub would be better. Ed, In THEORY I agree with what you say. In PRACTICE however I have problems with your ideas. First, that article was listed for a week or so. Neither you nor any other of the half dozen or so people who have said on this list today that the article shouldn't have been deleted took the trouble to try to salvage it. Neither did I. I simply didn't have the time or energy for it. Previous to that, it lay in the gizzard of WP for a good three, four months untouched. It is fine in principal to be against deleting articles but that implies ACTION in concrete terms, but since we are a collection of volunteers, this doesn't always follow. While I have nothing against incomplete articles, of which there are obviously many in WP, I am strongly against have genuinely *bad* articles -- such as the Palestinian viewpoints article -- in the encyclopedia. They should be fixed immediately or deleted -- one or the other. Not having a mechanism for deleting "bad" articles places the onus on the WP community to fix them. Any crank can come along and write up some nutty POV and leave it for the rest of us to deal with. Maybe for 99% of the articles in WP that is acceptable; for the remaining 1% on controversial subjects such as the Middle East, it isn't. To repeat what I said above: I could have devoted an afternoon or an evening to salvage the article; so could have you, or Danny, or Zero or another user. But no one volunteered. At the risk of offending the author, it was better that it was deleted. Pragmatically yours, V. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 9 21:10:17 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 16:10:17 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete vs salvage Message-ID: There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an article makes its way to VfD: 1. The matter will be decided by a vote. 2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the article. So many times, I've labored for over an hour on an article, just to find it deleted by a committee vote. I'd rather run for political office, at least I might get my picture in the paper. If the article is really THAT BAD, just delete it: you're an admin, be bold and can that trash! If it just needs a lot of work, pick a volunteer and assign him (or her) the task of fixing it. If they refuse, they lose one WikiDollar ;-) Ed Poor From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 9 21:21:56 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 14:21:56 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedic knowledge In-Reply-To: <3FFF16B3.31397.885658@localhost> Message-ID: No, but informative could be greatly improved, the academic definition of knowledge, "a justifiable, actionable belief", is rather obtuse and difficult to relate to. Fred > From: "Martin Harper" > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk, English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 21:01:39 -0000 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedic knowledge > > [[wikipedia:verifiable]] > > [[wikipedia:informative]] > > We're slowly and quietly amassing quite a wealth of information on how to > decide > what should and should not be deleted. (though I will probably now discover > that one > or both of these articles has been deleted!) From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 21:44:00 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:44:00 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] I've edited an article! Message-ID: <20040109214400.GB1283@joey.bomis.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_%27The_science_is_settled%27 I may have left some things out, or made some mistakes, but at least until shown otherwise, I think this type of edit is a model of what we ought to strive to do, i.e. find a way to characterize an issue in a way that both sides to a dispute can agree to, and refrain to the maximal extent possible from writing things that we know will only inflame passions on the other side. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 21:53:38 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:53:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: References: <20040109132603.GM19776@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040109215338.GC1283@joey.bomis.com> I wrote >> Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting >>his editing. Viajero wrote: > Danny has an agenda? This is laughable. What is it? His agenda is that RK is a crank, and that his contribution on the topic in question ought to be deleted rather than edited. > That he is pro-Palestinian? I have yet to see a shred of evidence of > this. His major failing appears to be that he is not uncritical > enough of Israel in the Manichean worldview of RK and his ilk. No, it has nothing to do with being pro-Palestinian. It has to do with summarily deleting perfectly good content, rather than working to improve it. Really, not much of the current dispute has anything to do with being pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel. RK has worked to present the varying views of the Palestinians, and people who don't like the result just delete it instead of work to improve it. > In their own ways, both Danny and Zero are extremely well-informed > and have a far subtler grasp of the complexities of the > Israeli-Palestinian conflict than RK. In that case, they ought to work to improve the article, not to censor material that they don't like. > And rightly so, they both strongly -- and at times inelegantly -- > resist RK's efforts to insert blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda in > Wiki articles. In the general case, there may be some truth to that. But focussing on the current example, it does not seem to be an accurate representation of the text at hand. It is _not_ "blatant anti-Palestinian propoganda" to give accurate, verified, balanced quotes from a variety of sources in an effort to illuminate Palestinian views on the peace process. Is it? It is "blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda" to quote Arafat? I don't see how, particularly when he is quoted multiply to show how his statements have changed over time. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 21:59:17 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:59:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040109215914.GD1283@joey.bomis.com> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >Robert (RK) appears, in the eyes of some Wikipedians, to be making the >following argument: > > * Palestinians say they want peace, but > * Here is the proof that they really want to destroy Israel. I understand that people think that, but I think that's more out of a general view people have of RK than something that comes from this particular text. This particular text contains reports of quotes tending in different directions. As far as I know, a slim majority of Palestinians does not recognize the right of Israel to exist, so clearly both views are common there, and this is reflected in the quotes. I'm sure the passage could be improved, but there's really no way to characterize it as "rubbish" or "trash" that needs to be summarily deleted. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 9 22:11:04 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 14:11:04 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: <20040109203939.19736.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040109203939.19736.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040109221104.GE1283@joey.bomis.com> Angela wrote: > It was never deleted as two people on VfD suggested that at least >some of the content was salvageable and ought to be merged elsewhere. My mistake. I was told that it was deleted, and found the redirect but didn't realize that the page had not been actually deleted. I would edit the last revision prior to the redirect and restore it, but I wouldn't want people to think that this is some kind of "official action" -- I already edited once today, which is scary enough. :-) But perhaps if someone else did it, no one would freak out? It seems clear to me that this is a valuable topic. I don't think that the version that was there when the redirect happened was at all bad, certainly much better than a lot of our articles. Certainly, not so bad that it had to be removed! --Jimbo From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 9 22:50:07 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 16:50:07 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FFF301F.1070009@rufus.d2g.com> KNOTT, T wrote: >From: Jimmy Wales wrote: > > > >>VfD is completely broken. I say that here for emphasis because I >>think we really should get rid of it entirely. >> >> > >So do I. The very idea of deleting people's work, that they have freely >given, is insulting, off-putting to newbies, and non-collaborative. I >suggest that we delete VfD and use cleanup instead. > > Have you looked at the crap that's been deleted lately? Much of it *was* on Cleanup first, sometimes for over a month, and most of the rest either doesn't belong here, or is such terrible nonsense as to be useless as a savageable starting point for a future article. A sampling: [[JumpTheCroc]], an idiosyncratic term coined on Wikipedia [[Mac OS XI]], a made-up mac rumor that even the mac-rumor sites don't carry [[The mo]], an animal invented by the submitter with a somewhat amusing backstory [[Soylent Greens]], a fictitious political party invented by the submitter etc. So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine. Do those who think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator excepted, because I know he does)? -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 9 22:58:02 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 16:58:02 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and Viajero's claims In-Reply-To: <20040109202333.4748.qmail@web20305.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040109202333.4748.qmail@web20305.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FFF31FA.8010507@rufus.d2g.com> Robert wrote: >Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider >Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the >original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these >quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the >Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are >proud of them. The only problem is that some people are >uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to >hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project. > > My problem is that I do not believe selecting some quotes is the proper job of Wikipedia: going to the texts of speeches, interpreting them, and selecting a few quotes from millions of documents is original research. We should be summarizing existing research. If you want to suggest that Palestinians are insincere about the peace process, you should find a historian or respected commentator who has made that argument, and cite him, perhaps also citing the quotes he cited as "so-and-so cites an Arafat speech of 1988 to support his case, as follows: '...'", and so on. And, while I generally lean towards the Israeli point of view, I do find this text rather biased. It's a primary-research selection of quotes attempting to build an editorial case that the Palestinians are insincere about the peace process. That has no place in an encyclopedia (and, indeed, does not appear in any other mainstream encyclopedia). -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 9 22:59:12 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 16:59:12 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete vs salvage In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FFF3240.90903@rufus.d2g.com> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an article makes its way >to VfD: > >1. The matter will be decided by a vote. >2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the article. > > That's not true at all. I've fixed dozens of articles that have appeared on VfD, left a note there saying "I rewrote it; keep the rewritten version", and it has been kept. Seems pretty simple to me. -Mark From libertarian at myway.com Fri Jan 9 23:19:50 2004 From: libertarian at myway.com (libertarian) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 18:19:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views Message-ID: <20040109231950.559183980@mprdmxin.myway.com> > In an NPOV encyclopedia, we do not take sides with one > group or another. Rather, we show the range of positions > that exist, we document these positions with quotes and > sources, and allow readers to make up their own minds. Which is the problem when it comes to facts. If flat-earth theory is given the same legitimacy as what science accepts the shape of the earth to be, Wikipedia loses its credibility. Wikipedia is full of conspiracy theories and claims which science would consider to be rubbish. He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a dangerous path. It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried mediating on at least one issue (their mind was made up already but they were pretending to mediate), but when I confronted them with FACTS and EVIDENCE, they quietly withdrew from the mediation. This is a clear case of dishonesty, but never mind. The point is that Wikipedia is full of errors (even in areas where I wasn't involved in any confrontation) and the reason is that it allows those with the loudest voice to win. How about new words - Wikipolice and Wikicop? A Wikicop is one who solves problems by judging someone a winner in a shouting match. -libertarian _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Introducing My Way - http://www.myway.com From sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Jan 9 23:54:12 2004 From: sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Angela?=) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 23:54:12 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete vs salvage In-Reply-To: <3FFF3240.90903@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040109235412.21470.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Ed Poor wrote > >There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an > article makes its way > >to VfD: > > > >1. The matter will be decided by a vote. > >2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the > article. As Eloquence once said on my talk page, "keep in mind that, while 'Votes for deletion' has votes in the title, it is not a formal vote." I've explained in the past on [[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy]] that there is far more to VfD than votes. Actions such as the article being rewritten obviously need to be taken into account by the sysop making the decision as to whether to delete an article. Often "votes" made prior to the rewriting will need to be discounted. If you feel there are sysops who are making deletion decisions without taking this into account, you need to address this with them, but I haven't seen any evidence of this happening. Rewritten articles are generally removed from VfD fairly soon after they have been rewritten. Angela. ------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela/Deletion ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html From sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Jan 9 23:56:41 2004 From: sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Angela?=) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 23:56:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: <20040109231950.559183980@mprdmxin.myway.com> Message-ID: <20040109235641.42386.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Libertarian wrote >It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried >mediating on at least one issue (their mind was made >up already but they were pretending to mediate), but >when I confronted them with FACTS and EVIDENCE, they >quietly withdrew from the mediation. This is a >clear case of dishonesty, but never mind. This is not true. All I did was?initiate the mediation by suggesting that Brian help with it as he had been the one to list it on [[Wikipedia:Current disputes over articles]]. I was not involved in the mediation myself. Your suggestion that my mind was already made up is also untrue as?I've not even read the article and therefore have no view on it. Libertarian wrote >He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. Not necessarily the loudest, but there have certainly been suggestions in the past that whoever shouts the longest will win. The problem is we have no policies for dealing with people who continue to do this. Angela. ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html From dpbsmith at verizon.net Sat Jan 10 00:02:33 2004 From: dpbsmith at verizon.net (dpbsmith at verizon.net) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 18:02:33 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Representing all P'sOV is important; "balance" isn't. Message-ID: <20040110000233.WMNM38.out012.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> The essence of censorship, and of social thought control, is the suppression of alternative points of view to the point where the average member of society literally does not know that the point of view exists. Orwell, insanity is a minority of one. The goal is to get people with doubts or tendencies to inquiry to believe "I am _the only person in the world_ who believes this." This sort of censorship can exist even when more than one point of view is represented. For example, in the United States, there is a tendency by the mainstream media to give the impression that everyone is _either_ a Republican or a Democrat. (I often think it comical, fa lal lal, fa lal lal, that every boy and every gal who's born into this world alive is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative...) Or, that everyone is either a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Jew. The strength of this sort of thought suppression is almost entirely sapped when even the slightest hint of the existence of the suppressed point of view slips through. Many of us have felt the intense liberating effect of the discovery that we are _not_ the only [agnostics, Democrats, people who can't abide twelve-tone music, whatever] in the world The important thing is that the points of view be presented. And, that they be labelled and attributed so that the reader has an opportunity to judge their credibility. Whether the presentation is balanced is _far_ less important. The reader can see and judge the balance for himself. If the article gives great weight to one set of views and little weight to another, that will be obvious to the reader, who will be able to sense the author's point of view. That's OK. It's not important that the author's point of view not leak through (and it's impossible to prevent). What's important is that the other points of view be present. _Even if_ they are given short shrift, or accurately or inaccurately presented as less authoritative. "You'll believe this, and no authority supports it, but there IS this kook named Copernicus who thinks the Earth isn't the center of the universe" is more than enough to open the mind and trigger the "Wow! is that _possible_?" response. An article that truly presents a single point of view ex cathedra is bad. But I think even a sentence or two labelling it "this is the XYZ point of view put forth by ABC. QQXXZZ, however, counters (one sentence summary)" "neutralizes" it almost completely. Later, if someone wants to write a longer section dealing with the QQXXZZ viewpoint, they can. That's my point of view, anyway. From grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk Sat Jan 10 00:56:21 2004 From: grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk (Graham Burnett) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:56:21 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations feature? References: <20040109221217.3EE8AB82C@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <00dd01c3d714$95f58840$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Hi all- on the Anarchism talk page jack lynch has stated; "External links within the article are against wiki policy." To which I replied; "PS. Where is it wiki policy not to use external links in articles? I always thought citations were a standard way of referencing, if it is policy it should be changed forthwith." Which admit I wrote whilst feeling a bit snotty towards this individual, however, I've never seen anything which says external links are against 'policy', I use them all the time in much the same way i'd use citations, and can't see what's wrong here, please can i have some clarification from the rest of the community. Personally i'd like to see MORE external links/citations, and was even thinking of proposing a feature for including citations or attributiuons within articles (for example, I've used some stuff that has been told go me personally by people (ie, by ex-members of Crass for the Crass article, which can't be verified by Google, but is none the less useful and encylopedic (or even vice versa- Micheal claimed someone from Crass was in a band called Trapeze- google verified this because someone else had written it on a dodgy unresearched website, but my primary source (ie, the people themselves) confirmed it was bollocks. Iyt would be nice to have a 'citation' feature that linked to quoted sources, much as the end of a chapter in an academic book has a 'notes' section at the end... Cheers Graham burnett (quercus robur) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.554 / Virus Database: 346 - Release Date: 21/12/2003 From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 00:59:46 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 16:59:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations feature? In-Reply-To: <00dd01c3d714$95f58840$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Message-ID: <20040110005946.72746.qmail@web14008.mail.yahoo.com> --- Graham Burnett wrote: Iyt would be nice to have a > 'citation' feature that linked to quoted sources, much as the end > of a > chapter in an academic book has a 'notes' section at the end... put them at the bottom of the article, under Extternal links, under References. Then reference them in the text as you would in a english composition class paper. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sat Jan 10 03:12:17 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:12:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: <3FFF301F.1070009@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Delirium wrote: > [snip] > > So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine. Do those who > think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator > excepted, because I know he does)? > Speaking as one who hasn't been part of this discussion, I haven't taken part in VfD for quite a while because I found it difficult to get my 2 cents in (I frequently have the page changed on me while I'm trying to edit over a dial-up connection), the conversations move too quickly for me to check in only once or twice a day, & putting this page on my watchlist is of little use. Participating in the forum at [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] at least allows me to help keep some of the potential candidates for VfD from appearing there. It's not only the newbies who find the wrangling over form & content confusing &/or off-putting. Geoff From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 03:22:38 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:22:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: <3FFF301F.1070009@rufus.d2g.com> References: <3FFF301F.1070009@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040110032238.GA8264@joey.bomis.com> Delirium wrote: > [[JumpTheCroc]], an idiosyncratic term coined on Wikipedia > [[Mac OS XI]], a made-up mac rumor that even the mac-rumor sites don't > carry > [[The mo]], an animal invented by the submitter with a somewhat amusing > backstory > [[Soylent Greens]], a fictitious political party invented by the submitter I think that all of those deletions are perfectly fine. So when I say that the process is broken, I don't mean to say that we should not have a process. I mean that the process is clearly going astray when a page like the one we've been discussing on Palestinian views on the peace process are deleted. (Turns out, of course, that it wasn't actually deleted, but redirected, which is better, but only slightly so.) --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 03:29:32 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:29:32 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: <20040109231950.559183980@mprdmxin.myway.com> References: <20040109231950.559183980@mprdmxin.myway.com> Message-ID: <20040110032932.GC8264@joey.bomis.com> libertarian wrote: > Wikipedia is full of conspiracy theories and claims which science > would consider to be rubbish. Can you give me an example? > He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that > it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like > USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full > of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a > dangerous path. Can you give me an example? > It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried mediating on > at least one issue (their mind was made up already but they were > pretending to mediate), but when I confronted them with FACTS and > EVIDENCE, they quietly withdrew from the mediation. This is a > clear case of dishonesty, but never mind. This sounds like an example, can you give more details? What page? --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 03:36:14 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:36:14 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations feature? In-Reply-To: <00dd01c3d714$95f58840$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> References: <20040109221217.3EE8AB82C@mail.wikipedia.org> <00dd01c3d714$95f58840$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Message-ID: <20040110033614.GE8264@joey.bomis.com> Graham Burnett wrote: > "External links within the article are against wiki policy." Earlier today I used external links in an article, but I didn't really like it. And I found myself doing something really bad -- but I caught myself. I wrote something like... In [http://www.whatever.com/ this article], so-and-so says such-and-such. that's really bad because when the content is repurposed, that sentence will make no sense at all. --Jimbo From susie at shoko.calarts.edu Sat Jan 10 06:14:38 2004 From: susie at shoko.calarts.edu (susan allen) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 22:14:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth' Message-ID: ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye! The following is a quote from another subscriber: "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a dangerous path." Susan Allen PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it is so terribly lame! -- Susan Allen, Associate Dean Instructor of Harp & Improvisation School of Music California Institute of the Arts 24700 McBean Parkway Valencia, CA 91355 phone (661) 222-2780 fax (661) 255-0938 Founding Director, Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course, Inc. and from Paris to the Pyr?n?es: the Harp and Art in France & Spain email: susie at shoko.calarts.edu websites: http://shoko.calarts.edu/~susie and http://www.summerharpcourse.com From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 06:42:05 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 22:42:05 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth' In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040110064205.GE11991@joey.bomis.com> As usual, I must ask for specifics. susan allen wrote: > ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye! The following is a quote from another > subscriber: > > "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that > it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like > USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full > of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a > dangerous path." > > Susan Allen > > PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it > is so terribly lame! > -- > Susan Allen, Associate Dean > Instructor of Harp & Improvisation > School of Music > California Institute of the Arts > 24700 McBean Parkway > Valencia, CA 91355 > phone (661) 222-2780 > fax (661) 255-0938 > > Founding Director, Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course, Inc. > and from Paris to the Pyr?n?es: the Harp and Art in France & Spain > email: susie at shoko.calarts.edu > websites: http://shoko.calarts.edu/~susie > and http://www.summerharpcourse.com > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From imthesponge at hotmail.com Sat Jan 10 07:41:24 2004 From: imthesponge at hotmail.com (Andrew Cleveland) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 23:41:24 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice Message-ID: User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not releasing the entirety of an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) including images, some of which may have been used under fair use. The images were included after his modifications. He claims the entire article, including images, must be released under GFDL to avoid breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm just confused (heh) and worried that this may become a problem.. probably just me being weird. - Evil saltine _________________________________________________________________ There are now three new levels of MSN Hotmail Extra Storage! Learn more. http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=hotmail/es2&ST=1 From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 10 07:46:20 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:46:20 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FFFADCC.1090500@rufus.d2g.com> Andrew Cleveland wrote: > User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright > infringements that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not > releasing the entirety of an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) > including images, some of which may have been used under fair use. The > images were included after his modifications. He claims the entire > article, including images, must be released under GFDL to avoid > breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm just confused (heh) and > worried that this may become a problem.. probably just me being weird. This seems reasonable, and could be problematic. If I release an article under the GFDL, and you republish it with additions, you have to let me (and everyone else) use the additions under the GFDL. So it would be against the GFDL for a commercial company to take our articles, add proprietary images to them, and publish, not allowing us to copy their derived work because of the copyright images. I think the Wikipedia case is probably similar, except it's us that's doing it. (But IANAL). -Mark From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 07:53:25 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 07:53:25 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Partisanship and Neutrality (was: Effective bullying Message-ID: <20040110075325.605B5B825@mail.wikipedia.org> strategy) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:52:54 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200401091152.54223.maveric149 at yahoo.com> Status: RO X-Status: Q X-KMail-EncryptionState: X-KMail-SignatureState: Poor Edmund wrote: >... >Some other respected contributors, recognizing the difficulty >they have writing neutrally on subjects they feel passionately >about, avoid those topics altogether. Daniel Mayer (Maveric) >sets the best example I'm aware of, in this respect. NOTE: I'm speaking in generalities here (meaning I'm not alluding to the current conflict between RK and Danny et al.) Thanks for the compliment. :-) However, I happen to be interested in many different things, so changing direction away from my own POV landmine fields is easier for me than I suspect it is for many people (who may be primarily interested in contributing to areas they may not be able to easily write neutrally on). I also edit and add content to relax, believe it or not. Edit wars in which the content I add is reverted into a page's history is not what I would call relaxing. >The two best things I've found to help me avoid partisan >fighting at Wikipedia are: > >1. Summarize the POV of my "opponent" /TO HIS SATISFACTION/ !!! This is often difficult, but can also be fun so long you are not too close the subject. I like your advice of editing slowly and reacting deliberatively when editing articles whose topics are close to you. Big changes to articles on hot topics often result in some sort of conflict. >2. If one of my contributions is reverted (even once), take > this as a signal that I'm NOT DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB of > reflecting POVs other than my own. This is true, to an extent. Sometimes the other person is not reasonable and in fact doesn't want an NPOV article, but one that pushes a certain POV (and this can even be on a subconscience level where the other person can't even see their own POV as POV but instead view their POV as fact). So sometimes forcing edit warriors to slow down is what is needed. It is near impossible to write toward NPOV during an edit war because emotions get in the way and cloud people's judgment. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 08:04:30 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:04:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: <20040109203939.19736.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110080430.18949.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong. And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I thought was right. Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong? RickK Angela wrote: >Rick wrote "I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia." Rick, please stop saying this. I believe you are doing a great job defending Wikipedia from vandals and listing something on VfD that others think should be kept is hardly a crime. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040110/b7263c12/attachment.htm From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 20:11:24 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 12:11:24 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD Message-ID: <200401091211.24380.maveric149@yahoo.com> Viajero wrote: >... >Sometimes it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. >... Yes - I agree. Jimbo really should take a look at the stuff added to VfD before making a decree that VfD should be abolished. Ideals are all fine and good, but it is us, not him, who are in the trenches. There is just too much crap added on a daily basis for us to fix it all. Sorry Jimbo. But I agree that VfD should not be the primary solution for bad content and that Cleanup and its associated pages may not be used enough. However, most of what is added to Wikipedia daily is already fixed via the wiki process - /very/ little is actually removed or deleted. So maybe the lack of use of the Cleanup pages compared to VfD isn't really that big of an issue after all. Nothing wrong with separating the wheat from the chaff. That doesn't necessarily mean deletion of a page, but if the page only contains chaff and no wheat ... Sometimes an edit link is more informative. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 20:33:51 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 12:33:51 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK) Message-ID: <200401091233.51273.maveric149@yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >I believe RK's material could and should probably be >presented in several paragraphs. What he has done >is a piece of original historical research, which by >citing particular statements made by Palestinians >builds a strong case that at least some Palestinian >leaders are insincere. Well the allegation that Palestinian leaders often say one thing in English to westerners and say another thing in Arabic to the Islamic world is not what I would call new work. But the long passage would definitely be improved by a great deal of condensation at the very least. My first impression upon reading it was that for the length of text it actually said very little. But I'm not prepared to get into an edit war with RK over it - he seems to find it difficult to take critical comments about his work. I'm sure I'm not the only person who avoids editing these kind of articles because of RK. Wrong or not on this particular issue, Danny was one of the few people who would not back down to RK's bullying (yes, IMO, what RK does when he does not get his way is bullying). Sadly it now seems that Jimbo's declarative and unmitigated comments have resulted in Danny leaving the project. Jimbo should realize the great weight his comments have and mix criticism with some sort of mitigating/less sharp comments. I don't think that Danny's absence serves the big picture goal of having NPOV over many Middle-east subjects. I am very sad to see him leave. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 20:52:42 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 12:52:42 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views Message-ID: <200401091252.42275.maveric149@yahoo.com> Ed wrote: >This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same: > > LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z. Exactly! This is why I think that [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] is so important. Otherwise an article becomes a mix of opposing POVs of various Wikipedians which, at best, masquerades as NPOV by sounding neutral. --mav From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 10 09:05:31 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 03:05:31 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes Message-ID: <3FFFC05B.8080007@rufus.d2g.com> Among many other examples, if a reader were looking for the person commonly known as [[Robert Harley]], on Wikipedia they'll be pleased to find them under the ridiculous title of [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer]], a name not used except in the context of giving his title. Now, while the said Robert Harley may indeed have been 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, it's nonetheless a plain fact that his name was Robert Harley, and it is by this name that he is and was commonly called. This seems to be a proliferation on Wikipedia, and indeed there is a proposal, currently with a wide degree of support, being discussed on [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] to make this official Wikipedia policy: where someone holds a title, it must be part of their name, without exceptions. At least for British titles; perhaps other countries' titles will be dealt with more vaguely. I'd argue that simply using peoples' names, except where their titles are commonly used or necessary for disambiguation purposes, is best in keeping with our standard "use the most common name in English" naming policy, and far preferable to the one currently being proposed. In either case, those of you with an opinion might wnat to head on over to [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] and vote. -Mark From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 9 21:10:59 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:10:59 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was: Effective bullying strategy)) Message-ID: <200401091310.59217.maveric149@yahoo.com> Viajero wrote: >It is fine in principal to be against deleting articles but that implies >ACTION in concrete terms, but since we are a collection of volunteers, >this doesn't always follow. While I have nothing against incomplete >articles, of which there are obviously many in WP, I am strongly against >have genuinely *bad* articles -- such as the Palestinian viewpoints >article -- in the encyclopedia. They should be fixed immediately or >deleted -- one or the other. Nicely put! As a group of volunteers we can't expect that somebody will want to fix a bad article. So giving a bad article exposure for one last chance to at least become a stub is a good thing. Furthermore, the mere existence of bad articles encourages more bad articles to be added. Incomplete is one thing - that is relatively easy to fix - but bad is another and if often much more difficult to fix. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From A Sat Jan 10 10:42:21 2004 From: A (A) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 02:42:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110090547.BC135B835@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> The pages on genetalia should not contain images of genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we should make some attempt to respect. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From A Sat Jan 10 10:52:58 2004 From: A (A) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 02:52:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Felching In-Reply-To: <20040110032350.6995FB835@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040110105258.45337.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> or should I upload the pictures I took at the 2003 North American Felching Convention? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From dpbsmith at verizon.net Sat Jan 10 11:21:34 2004 From: dpbsmith at verizon.net (dpbsmith at verizon.net) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 5:21:34 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links and attributions Message-ID: <20040110112134.NZJ9064.out007.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> > From: "Graham Burnett" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations > feature? > Personally i'd like to see MORE external links/citations, and was even > thinking of proposing a feature for including citations or attributiuons > within articles. > > From: Christopher Mahan > > put them at the bottom of the article, under Extternal links, under > References. Then reference them in the text as you would in a english > composition class paper. I would really like to see more use of attributions, references, citations within Wikipedia. Traditional encyclopedias don't do very much of this, but I think this is a serious weakness on their part. The traditional encyclopedia simply speaks _ex cathedra_, and the only reason you have for believing it is that "they wouldn't print it if it weren't true." Even if (reportedly) the U. S. version of Microsoft Encarta says the light bulb was invented by Edison, and the British version says it was Swan. (The old Britannica used to at least have the articles initialed, so you at least knew that "well, Lord Rayleigh thinks so.") I remember being shocked in high school when I learned for the first time that an encyclopedia could not be referenced in a scholarly article because it didn't meet scholarly standards for attribution. I don't know why print encyclopedias don't choose to reference their sources. Presumably it's limited space, and/or a desire not to clutter up the article with footnotes. Or perhaps it's a feeling that for the stubby two-paragraph articles the article-to-references ratio wouldn't be very high. Wikipedia has fewer space limitations. However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and citations. In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the best of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can be made visible if you want to trace the authority for something. I agree that there's nothing to stop anyone from doing what Christopher Mahan suggests. And that would be a good thing. But at the very least, I'd like to see a convenient way of doing an inter- page link, so that you can put a citation in the text that is just an unobtrusive thing like a single character, such that clicking on it takes you to the reference in the references section--AND automatically puts a RETURN- link in the reference. I believe you can do this today with hand-tuned HTML, but... It seems to me that a policy that encourages the inclusion of references, and a markup mechanism that makes them easy to write and read, would support in the spirit of NPOV and "X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z." From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 11:30:03 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:30:03 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Felching In-Reply-To: <20040110105258.45337.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90aqkhtSpVB@erik_moeller> Adam- > or should I upload the pictures I took at the 2003 > North American Felching Convention? Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx. Obviously there is a gradation of offensiveness -- a point at which we decide that not offending readers is more important than NPOV. For example, there may be a few felching fans who would feel that it is POV not to show such images in the article. We would overrule these readers on grounds of offensiveness. However, I think we should be very careful with such taboos, and only apply them when there is almost universal agreement to do so. In other words, when there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, then we can do without them. This is not the case for genitalia -- I think pictures of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small segment of the population, whereas a relatively large segment feels that they *are* offensive to a large segment (simply because they are never shown in the mainstream media), but still maintains that they *themselves* are not offended by them. Regards, Erik From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 11:30:03 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:30:03 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: <20040110080430.18949.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90aqkvdSpVB@erik_moeller> Rick- > I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong. And > now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I > thought was right. Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue > doing what is obviously wrong? You're beginning to sound a lot like User:Zoe. Not everything is directed at you personally. If you take everything as a personal attack, you will not be able to endure Wikipedia much longer. Regards, Erik From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 10 12:02:26 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 05:02:26 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes In-Reply-To: <3FFFC05B.8080007@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: This is a difficult problem. If they deserve an article they have probably done something under their name (without title), but we have a faction that honestly believes that all members of the titled British nobility deserve an article based on their title. Long ago someone said, "Well, they appear in Who's Who" Fred > From: Delirium > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 03:05:31 -0600 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes > > Among many other examples, if a reader were looking for the person > commonly known as [[Robert Harley]], on Wikipedia they'll be pleased to > find them under the ridiculous title of [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of > Oxford and Mortimer]], a name not used except in the context of giving > his title. Now, while the said Robert Harley may indeed have been 1st > Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, it's nonetheless a plain fact that his name > was Robert Harley, and it is by this name that he is and was commonly > called. > > This seems to be a proliferation on Wikipedia, and indeed there is a > proposal, currently with a wide degree of support, being discussed on > [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] to make this official Wikipedia > policy: where someone holds a title, it must be part of their name, > without exceptions. At least for British titles; perhaps other > countries' titles will be dealt with more vaguely. > > I'd argue that simply using peoples' names, except where their titles > are commonly used or necessary for disambiguation purposes, is best in > keeping with our standard "use the most common name in English" naming > policy, and far preferable to the one currently being proposed. > > In either case, those of you with an opinion might wnat to head on over > to [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] and vote. > > -Mark > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 10 12:38:28 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 05:38:28 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I agree, it's lame, but it's a baby, two years old. Wikipedia is, unless we do something grossly wrong, destined to become a major human institution, used and potentially participated in by most of the human race. Think 5 years, 10 years out, 25 years out, 100, 300. Winning by intimidation works fine with a two year old and I think Jimbo has a blind spot in this area, but we are all learning and this is just one problem which is solvable. The trivia problem, like the urban legend of cow tipping, I'm afraid will always be with us. It's funny. I wrote the article, [[cow tipping]], one of the most ridiculous articles and notions imaginable. (It might have been deleted long ago). At the time I lived out in the ranch land west of Crestone. Would have been easy to test it out. But it is such nonsense that I didn't bother. Yet I think it's a good article and I had fun writing it. The thought of actually stomping around in the brush trying to get close enough to one of a herd of wild cows in the middle of the night and pushing on it... Fred > From: susan allen > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 22:14:38 -0800 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth' > > ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye! The following is a quote from another > subscriber: > > "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that > it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like > USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full > of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a > dangerous path." > > Susan Allen > > PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it > is so terribly lame! > -- > Susan Allen, Associate Dean > Instructor of Harp & Improvisation > School of Music > California Institute of the Arts > 24700 McBean Parkway > Valencia, CA 91355 > phone (661) 222-2780 > fax (661) 255-0938 > > Founding Director, Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course, Inc. > and from Paris to the Pyr?n?es: the Harp and Art in France & Spain > email: susie at shoko.calarts.edu > websites: http://shoko.calarts.edu/~susie > and http://www.summerharpcourse.com > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 10 12:42:14 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 05:42:14 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views In-Reply-To: <20040110032932.GC8264@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Just look at RK's activities with respect to the article, Chiropractic medicine. Fred > From: Jimmy Wales > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:29:32 -0800 > To: libertarian at myway.com, English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views > >> He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that >> it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like >> USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full >> of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a >> dangerous path. > > Can you give me an example? From grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk Sat Jan 10 12:56:16 2004 From: grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk (Graham Burnett) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:56:16 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] footnotes and citations References: <20040110120009.9E659B804@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <005d01c3d779$229b3ec0$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> > > However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and > citations. In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the best > of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can be > made visible if you want to trace the authority for something. > This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, but didn't express too well due to the imbibing of far too much home-made wine last night ;-) Graham (Quercus robur) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.554 / Virus Database: 346 - Release Date: 20/12/2003 From tarquin at planetunreal.com Sat Jan 10 13:04:49 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 13:04:49 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] I've edited an article! In-Reply-To: <20040109214400.GB1283@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040109214400.GB1283@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <3FFFF871.1020908@planetunreal.com> Jimmy Wales wrote: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_%27The_science_is_settled%27 > >I may have left some things out, or made some mistakes, > > > which strongly opposes the Kyoto treaty, claims that "US lead global warming negotiator Stu Eizenstat misled the press at a November 10 press briefing. He announced that the "science is settled," parroting Vice President Al Gore's favorite non-truth, and went as far as to refuse to answer a reporter's question about the science. Missing close-quote. Unclear where quotation ends From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 10 13:06:41 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 06:06:41 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] invisible footnotes (comments) In-Reply-To: <005d01c3d779$229b3ec0$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Message-ID: You can use comments within the text. > From: "Graham Burnett" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:56:16 -0000 > To: > Subject: [WikiEN-l] footnotes and citations > > > >> >> However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and >> citations. In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the > best >> of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can > be >> made visible if you want to trace the authority for something. >> > > This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, but didn't express too well > due to the imbibing of far too much home-made wine last night ;-) > > Graham (Quercus robur) > > > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). > Version: 6.0.554 / Virus Database: 346 - Release Date: 20/12/2003 > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com Sat Jan 10 13:34:29 2004 From: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com (Bjorn Lindqvist) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:34:29 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] vfd In-Reply-To: <20040110032350.6995FB835@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040110032350.6995FB835@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040110133429.GA1105@localhost> > Have you looked at the crap that's been deleted lately? Much of it > *was* on Cleanup first, sometimes for over a month, and most of the rest > either doesn't belong here, or is such terrible nonsense as to be > useless as a savageable starting point for a future article. > > A sampling: > [[JumpTheCroc]], an idiosyncratic term coined on Wikipedia > [[Mac OS XI]], a made-up mac rumor that even the mac-rumor sites don't carry > [[The mo]], an animal invented by the submitter with a somewhat amusing > backstory > [[Soylent Greens]], a fictitious political party invented by the > submitter Look at [[List of nicknames for George W. Bush]] that article was also deleted. :-( > So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine. Do those who > think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator > excepted, because I know he does)? Some chose to work inside the system others outside it. BL From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jan 10 13:53:34 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 05:53:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: > The pages on genetalia should not contain images of > genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we > should make some attempt to respect. > if this post is not a joke, I suppose you are referring to pages like http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis I see no problem. however, I would not have objections to the replacement of the photographs with diagrams, although I still don't see where the problem is. --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From vr at redbird.org Sat Jan 10 13:56:56 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 08:56:56 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040110090547.BC135B835@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040110085527.00ab3ec0@smtp.panix.com> At 02:42 AM 1/10/04 -0800, Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: >The pages on genetalia should not contain images of >genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we >should make some attempt to respect. Taboos vary widely from one group to another. An encyclopedic article on anatomy needs illustrations, and human anatomy is a subject that an encyclopedia should, and this encyclopedia does, cover. Anyone likely to be offended by an image of a penis, clitoris, or vagina is likely to be offended by the rest of the article, and has the option of not reading it. From tarquin at planetunreal.com Sat Jan 10 14:00:03 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:00:03 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40000563.8070305@planetunreal.com> Nikos-Optim wrote: >I see no problem. however, I would not have objections >to the replacement of the photographs with diagrams, >although I still don't see where the problem is. > > > Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. From magnus.manske at web.de Sat Jan 10 14:11:35 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:11:35 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. In-Reply-To: <20040110032238.GA8264@joey.bomis.com> References: <3FFF301F.1070009@rufus.d2g.com> <20040110032238.GA8264@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <40000817.20709@web.de> Jimmy Wales wrote: > So when I say > that the process is broken, I don't mean to say that we should not > have a process. I mean that the process is clearly going astray when > a page like the one we've been discussing on Palestinian views on the > peace process are deleted. I hereby propose a new, semi-automated tagging (in contrast to voting!) system: * All logged-in users (yep, my favourite phrase!) get a "tag this article" link for each article, leading to a "set tag" special page * Tags can be set for many things: copyright problem, NPOV problem, brilliant prose, stub, etc. * There's a "YES/NO" rabio button, so one can say "that's no copy vio" * A comment can be added, one per user per article. If a user changes his/her mind, the old comment is overwritten. * Special pages can be created from this information: ** Brilliant prose pages (sorted by number of tags) ** NPOV/copyright problem pages (sorted by date of first entry and number of tags) ** etc. * Some of this information can be displayed on the article page as well ("This article is considered [[brilliant prose]]") I suggest to create a new "article tag" table in the database for that purpose, once we're back on the monster server. Magnus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:17:44 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:17:44 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Effective bullying strategy. References: <3FFF301F.1070009@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <40000988.6000102@yahoo.com> Delirium a ?crit: > So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine. Do those who > think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator > excepted, because I know he does)? > > -Mark I have a shudder each time I think of VfD. I go there the minimum. Plus I hate edit conflict :-) I made sort of a pledge to myself (I do not always respect it, but I try :-)) * never vote "delete". The idea is that if it is garbage enough, it should be deleted on the spot. If it is not, it should be kept. * if I vote "keep", I try to go to the article, and to edit it to improve it. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes, it can be much later. But I try to do edit all those for which I voted keep. From magnus.manske at web.de Sat Jan 10 14:21:28 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:21:28 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] I've edited an article! In-Reply-To: <20040109214400.GB1283@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040109214400.GB1283@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <40000A68.704@web.de> Jimmy Wales wrote: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_%27The_science_is_settled%27 > > I may have left some things out, or made some mistakes, but at least > until shown otherwise, I think this type of edit is a model of what we > ought to strive to do, i.e. find a way to characterize an issue in a > way that both sides to a dispute can agree to, and refrain to the > maximal extent possible from writing things that we know will only > inflame passions on the other side. Welcome to wikipedia, Jimbo! ;-) From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:32:09 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 06:32:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let the article say that X reports Y about Z In-Reply-To: <20040110090547.BC135B835@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040110143209.7805.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> Ed Poor and others wrote: > This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always > the same: > LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z. Mav and others repeatedly claim to agree: > Exactly! However, I am beginning to question the sincerity of my critics on this issue. The fact remains is that the deleted material *did* do precisely this. Danny and Zero simply didn't want this information made available. They have an anti-Zionist agenda (which is their right), and they do not want quotes from Palestinian leaders made available at all, if it hurts their political views (which is not their right.) To claim that they don't have anti-Zionist agendas is untenable; they are very clear on these issues. As for the repeated claim that every single quote was taken out of context, that is just wishful thinking. First off, please stop misrepresenting the content of the articles. It does _not_ claim that every Palestinian leader says the same thing; it quotes from a variety of leaders, a variety of sources, and provides a variety of views. Secondly, when someone repeatedy says that they want to destory Israel, and they repeatedly admit that they lied to the Israelies, and that they have no intention of ever having a real peace with them, we are obligated to report these facts. We may not censor these facts and claim that "Those silly Arabs don't really mean what they sa". When we do this, we push am obviously anti-Israeli agenda, and we also infantilize Arabs. We may agree or disagree with them, but let's stop treating them like children incapable of expressing simple thoughts. There has developed two standards of intellectual integrity among the Wiki-En contributors. One standard is for Arabs, and the other standard is for the rest of the world. This double-standard must end if Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously outside left-wing circles. Robert (RK) ===== "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous". The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:37:51 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:37:51 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Representing all P'sOV is important; "balance" isn't. References: <20040110000233.WMNM38.out012.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Message-ID: <40000E3F.7040807@yahoo.com> dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: > The essence of censorship, and of social thought control, is the suppression > of alternative points of view to the point where the average member of > society literally does not know that the point of view exists. Orwell, > insanity is a minority of one. The goal is to get people with doubts or > tendencies to inquiry to believe "I am _the only person in the world_ who > believes this." One point I raised on the fr wikipedia a few times is that neutrality is an ultimate goal that has to be reached globally, and that each article is only a subset of a more global scheme. It is nice to think of having an article in itself neutral, but neutrality will be nearer when all view points are introduced globally. That goes in particular for all articles covering war issues. A *neutral* article on ... say "Palestinian view of conflict blablabla" is great. But as long as there is no neutral article on "Israelian view of conflict blablabla", there will be unsatisfyied readers. We write for the whole world :-) Neutrality is important; balance is important as well. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:43:01 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:43:01 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links in articles, and a citations feature? References: <20040109221217.3EE8AB82C@mail.wikipedia.org> <00dd01c3d714$95f58840$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Message-ID: <40000F75.1040204@yahoo.com> Graham Burnett a ?crit: > Hi all- on the Anarchism talk page jack lynch has stated; > > "External links within the article are against wiki policy." > > To which I replied; > > "PS. Where is it wiki policy not to use external links in articles? I always > thought citations were a standard way of referencing, if it is policy it > should be changed forthwith." Most of the time, the links are at the bottom of the article. Sometimes, I think it is best that the links are within the text for clarity. I do not think there is a policy for links inside the text. If there is one, let's change it Quercus ! (or decide not to follow it :-)) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:49:47 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:49:47 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Felching References: <20040110105258.45337.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> <90aqkhtSpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <4000110B.3090209@yahoo.com> Erik Moeller a ?crit: > Adam- > >>or should I upload the pictures I took at the 2003 >>North American Felching Convention? > > > Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx. Hi Lir Just as I suggested at goatse.cx, links to offensive pictures may be offered with non clickable links. That may prevent quick clicking by kids. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:45:39 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:45:39 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the 'truth' References: Message-ID: <40001013.3070104@yahoo.com> susan allen a ?crit: > ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye! The following is a quote from another > subscriber: > > "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that > it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like > USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full > of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a > dangerous path." > > Susan Allen > > PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it is > so terribly lame! Susan ? Are you a woman ? Do you speak (write actually) french ? If so, the french wikipedia needs you in the music department and I would most welcome you. ant :-) From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:53:58 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 06:53:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia articles could use more primary references In-Reply-To: <20040110120009.9428BB848@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040110145358.88048.qmail@web20304.mail.yahoo.com> dpbsmith at verizon.net writes: > I would really like to see more use of attributions, > references, citations within Wikipedia. Traditional > encyclopedias don't do very much of this, but I think > this is a serious weakness on their part. The > traditional encyclopedia simply speaks _ex cathedra_, > and the only reason you have for believing it is > that "they wouldn't print it if it weren't true." > ... > I remember being shocked in high school when I learned > for the first time that an encyclopedia could not be > referenced in a scholarly article because it didn't meet > scholarly standards for attribution. I agree; this is why I usually try to cite sources, articles, interviews, etc. This fits in well with our NPOV policy. Person X says Y about subject Z. See, for example, our article on [[The Bible and history]], which has a fairly extensive bibliography. More Wikipedia articles need to refer readers to primary sources. > I don't know why print encyclopedias don't choose to > reference their sources. Presumably it's limited space, > and/or a desire not to clutter up the article with footnotes. I am sure that this is precisely the problem they faced. However, Wikipedia has no limitations on text; we have room to document every important point in every article. We don not even need to clutter up the main article to do so; if footnotes or references ever get too long, we can add them as a footnotes page, such as (proposed): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_footnotes or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History (footnotes) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History/footnotes Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 14:59:05 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:59:05 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> Nikos-Optim a ?crit: > --- A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: > >>The pages on genetalia should not contain images of >>genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we >>should make some attempt to respect. The natural state of a penis is with the skin. Not circumsized. In some places in the world, circumsision hold a very strong pov (jewish faith) and memories (WWII). It is not until I came to the US, and a very unwise doctor carelessly asked me to sign the paper wherupon I was supposed to agree to have my child defaced (maybe not the best word), and I had to loudly forbid such a move, that I realise that people could do circumsision for other reasons than religion really. I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a difficult word to spell). If no one does it, I will (open threat :-)) From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 15:05:31 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 07:05:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs In-Reply-To: <20040110120009.9428BB848@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040110150531.89015.qmail@web20304.mail.yahoo.com> Erik writes: > However, I think we should be very careful with such > taboos, and only apply them when there is almost > universal agreement to do so. In other words, when > there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, > then we can do without them. So far, so good. I agree. > This is not the case for genitalia -- I think pictures > of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small > segment of the population I disagree. A very large number of Americans will refuse to use Wikipedia if it contains color photographs of penises, vaginas, anal sphincters, etc. If we do not have at least some level of protection, then we will become one of America's most-blocked site on home and school Internet filters. (On the other hand, such blocking might occur because we have NPOV discussions of God and religion, which is a threat to many Americans as well...) Perhaps main articles should have no such images, but can contain a link to a related article with such photos. That way even if pages are blocked due to certain images, the main articles would still be available to be read in most homes and schools. Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in Sat Jan 10 15:00:24 2004 From: arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in (Arvind Narayanan) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:30:24 +0530 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com>; from anthere8@yahoo.com on Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100 References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100, Anthere wrote: > The natural state of a penis is with the skin. > Not circumsized. > The natural state of people is without clothes. Should we post only nude photographs of people we write about? [snip] > > I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that > article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a > difficult word to spell). > I don't agree. If a significant fraction of males worldwide are circumcised then certainly the picture is relevant to the article. Arvind -- Its all GNU to me From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 15:28:51 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:28:51 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs In-Reply-To: <20040110150531.89015.qmail@web20304.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90aquUexpVB@erik_moeller> Robert- > I disagree. A very large number of Americans will refuse to > use Wikipedia if it contains color photographs of penises, > vaginas, anal sphincters, etc. If we do not have at least > some level of protection, then we will become one of > America's most-blocked site on home and school Internet > filters. We've gone through this before. My point of view is that we have no obligation to pander to filters - we have an obligation to be an encyclopedia. Being overly offensive hurts our usefulness as an encyclopedia, but being in the filters is not an indication for being overly offensive. A lot of stuff is put in filters that is not offensive by any reasonable standard. > Perhaps main articles should have no such images, but can > contain a link to a related article with such photos. I find this to be an implicit endorsement of the shamefulness/sinfulness POV that has some prominence in American culture. NPOV should be paramount except for cases of near-universal offensiveness. We should probably formulate a policy on this. On Talk:Clitoris there was a near consensus for including either a photo or a drawing, and a slim majority for a photo (although no suitable free illustration has been found yet). I do not see a fundamental difference between clitoris and penis in this regard. So it appears that the vast majority of Wikipedians favors liberal standards of inclusion rather than conservative ones. Regards, Erik From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 15:41:19 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:41:19 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> Message-ID: <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> Arvind Narayanan a ?crit: > On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100, Anthere wrote: > > >>The natural state of a penis is with the skin. >>Not circumsized. >> > > The natural state of people is without clothes. Should > we post only nude photographs of people we write about? Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human in its natural state : nude. See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis* Not *circumsision* ...an article on which there is *currently* no picture. >>I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that >>article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a >>difficult word to spell). >> > > I don't agree. If a significant fraction of males worldwide are > circumcised then certainly the picture is relevant to the article. > > Arvind If so, let's change the picture legend. We put at the top of the article the natural picture of a penis, with a legend stating "this is a penis" Then, much more at the bottom of the article, we indicate that some people have their penis transformed, and we put the relevant picture with a label "circonsized penis" Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV. From arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in Sat Jan 10 15:20:03 2004 From: arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in (Arvind Narayanan) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:50:03 +0530 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com>; from anthere8@yahoo.com on Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 04:41:19PM +0100 References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110205003.A26842@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 04:41:19PM +0100, Anthere wrote: > > > Arvind Narayanan a ?crit: > > On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100, Anthere wrote: > > > > > >>The natural state of a penis is with the skin. > >>Not circumsized. > >> > > > > The natural state of people is without clothes. Should > > we post only nude photographs of people we write about? > > Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human > in its natural state : nude. > > See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human > > In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis* > > Not *circumsision* > > ...an article on which there is *currently* no picture. > Agreed. Arvind -- Its all GNU to me From matt_mcl at sympatico.ca Sat Jan 10 15:48:35 2004 From: matt_mcl at sympatico.ca (Matt M.) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:48:35 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 25 References: <20040110141516.BD49BB83A@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <003301c3d791$35073380$0200a8c0@oemcomputer> > Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. I would favour diagrams, not for reasons of prudishness (for christ's sake, nearly everyone has one or the other) but because they have the advantage of not having any skin colour or ethnicity. It seems a little odd that all of the body parts we have photos of, to my knowledge, are photos of white people (except the 'eyes' article). Matt From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 16:22:15 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:22:15 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 25 References: <20040110141516.BD49BB83A@mail.wikipedia.org> <003301c3d791$35073380$0200a8c0@oemcomputer> Message-ID: <400026B7.60203@yahoo.com> Matt M. a ?crit: >>Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. > > > I would favour diagrams, not for reasons of prudishness (for christ's sake, > nearly everyone has one or the other) but because they have the advantage of > not having any skin colour or ethnicity. It seems a little odd that all of > the body parts we have photos of, to my knowledge, are photos of white > people (except the 'eyes' article). > > Matt errrr... Matt, I know I have some black blood (guadaloupe and martinique ancestry), but I am usually considered white. I apology :-( From viajero at quilombo.nl Sat Jan 10 16:25:25 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:25:25 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let the article say that X reports Y about Z In-Reply-To: <20040110143209.7805.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 01/10/04 at 06:32 AM, Robert said: > Danny and Zero simply didn't want this information made > available. They have an anti-Zionist agenda (which is their right), and > they do not want quotes from Palestinian > leaders made available at all, if it hurts their political > views (which is not their right.) To claim that they don't > have anti-Zionist agendas is untenable; they are very clear on these > issues. Sorry Robert, I won't let you get away the defaming these two contributors behind their backs; Danny appears to have left us and Zero doesn't subscribe to this list. Smearing them as "anti-Zionists" is a ludicrous charge; it is as meaningless a term as calling them "anti-American" and simply demonstrates nothing more than the poverty of your argument. You think perhaps Danny and Zero wish for the destruction of Israel??? I challenge you to supply even the fainest shred of evidence that these two think this way. They may be critical of the Israeli government, just like some Americans are critical of the US government, but the problem is that in your ultra-fanatical Zionist worldview that would do the Taliban proud there is no space for even the most minimal criticism of Israel. Unless you come up with more substantial criticisms of Danny and Zero I trust the readers of this list will dismiss your complaints as just more of your tiresome whining. > Secondly, when someone repeatedy says that they want to > destory Israel, and they repeatedly admit that they lied to the > Israelies, and that they have no intention of ever having a real peace > with them, we are obligated to report these facts. We may not censor > these facts and claim that "Those silly Arabs don't really mean what > they sa". When we do this, we push am obviously anti-Israeli agenda, > and we also infantilize Arabs. We may agree or disagree with > them, but let's stop treating them like children incapable > of expressing simple thoughts. This is just more of your shameless, ultra-Zionist fantasy as Israel the victim. Has the Israeli government never lied to its people or to Israel's neighbors??? > There has developed two standards of intellectual integrity among the > Wiki-En contributors. One standard is for Arabs, and the other standard > is for the rest of the world. This > double-standard must end if Wikipedia wants to be taken > seriously outside left-wing circles. An other wholly unsubstantiated claim without merit that is an insult to the many Wikipedians who have contributed on articles on the Middle East. V. From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jan 10 17:14:51 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 09:14:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40000563.8070305@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- tarquin wrote: > Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. Since some people seem to have problems with photos, I agree to replace them with diagrams, find some other solution, but I also think it wouldn't hurt if we left the article unchanged - except if lots of people consider it offensive. --Optim. PS> Below I wrote some comments, my POV, feel free to ignore or left unread: It is really a surprise for me to see such a discussion in Wikipedia during ***2004***... (POV follows) I thought the dark ages were past. (POV ended) I know however that my liberal standards are a bit higher than most people, and I do admit that during reading this discussion on this subject I laughed many times thinking about the development of human spirit, (POV follows) from my point of view I find it ridiculous (POV ended) and it makes me to feel sad. Anyway, if pictures of sexual organs really offend some people, we should take care of this. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia should not be offensive. Better to use diagrams. I hope nobody will find them offensive! (humour follows) Now, I would like to make my own addition to the "offensive material" issue. Article [[Child]] has an offensive photograph! It is the photo of a White child. But not all children are white. There are black and yellow children too! So this article is offensive to non-Whites and it is written from a White's Point Of View, which is against the NPOV spirit! I strongly suggest to remove this photo and replace it with a photo showing three children: one white, one black and one yellow, representing the friendship between the races and the unity of humanity! (in case you are wondering, I am White). (humour ends) (more humour, dont read it) And additionally the current [[Penis]] article says "The penis is capable of erection for use in sexual intercourse." but this is POV, because erection is also used in [[Masturbation]]. So Masturbators would find this article offensive and POV! :) (more humour ends, continue reading below) ***Let's replace quickly the "questionable images" with diagrams or find some other solution which will keep everyone happy, and stop wasting our time with penises!*** with Best Wishes for Peace Profound (an unknown concept to humans), --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From sascha at pantropy.net Sat Jan 10 17:43:37 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:43:37 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs In-Reply-To: <20040110150531.89015.qmail@web20304.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040110150531.89015.qmail@web20304.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401101243.40348.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 10 January 2004 10:05 am, Robert wrote: > > This is not the case for genitalia -- I think pictures > > of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small > > segment of the population > > I disagree. A very large number of Americans will refuse to > use Wikipedia if it contains color photographs of penises, > vaginas, anal sphincters, etc. If we do not have at least > some level of protection, then we will become one of > America's most-blocked site on home and school Internet > filters. We should not stoop to the level of the American puritans. Pictures of human anatomy are patently unoffensive - or are these same puritans offended by themselves when they go for a shower? And even if they are irrationally offended, what the censors do not understand is that they do not have a right to not be offended. I agree that there is an argument to be made for having as broad an acceptance as possible, but we should not accept the lowest common denominator of offensiveness. Some religious people are offended by pictoral representations of deities, which does not mean wikipedia should go out of its way to not display pictures of deities. Personally, I would be inclined to tell those people to 'sod off', and get their "sanitised" version of reality elsewhere. Recognising that this is unlikely to be adopted as the policy of wikipedia (unfortunately), I agree with Erik that we should try to limit ourselves to things that are almost universally considered offensive. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From tarquin at planetunreal.com Sat Jan 10 17:59:01 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:59:01 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40003D65.1060908@planetunreal.com> Nikos-Optim wrote: >--- tarquin wrote: > > > >>Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. >> >> > >Since some people seem to have problems with photos, I >agree to replace them with diagrams, find some other >solution, but I also think it wouldn't hurt if we left >the article unchanged - except if lots of people >consider it offensive. --Optim. > > > Diagrams have the advantage of being clearer to understand. We have a great diagram of the heart :) I can use vector graphics programs, but I would need something to work from (I mean a diagram, not a model, btw) From sascha at pantropy.net Sat Jan 10 17:56:00 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:56:00 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401101256.00794.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 10 January 2004 12:14 pm, Nikos-Optim wrote: > --- tarquin wrote: > > Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. > > Since some people seem to have problems with photos, I > agree to replace them with diagrams, find some other > solution, but I also think it wouldn't hurt if we left > the article unchanged - except if lots of people > consider it offensive. --Optim. I do not agree with replacing pictures with diagrams. Both are useful and informative. > Anyway, if pictures of sexual organs really offend > some people, we should take care of this. No we shouldn't. Only if they offend most people. > As an > encyclopedia, Wikipedia should not be offensive. Why? Some people find pictures of deities offensive. Doesn't mean we shouldn't include them. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From sascha at pantropy.net Sat Jan 10 18:01:14 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 13:01:14 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 25 In-Reply-To: <003301c3d791$35073380$0200a8c0@oemcomputer> References: <20040110141516.BD49BB83A@mail.wikipedia.org> <003301c3d791$35073380$0200a8c0@oemcomputer> Message-ID: <200401101301.14252.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 10 January 2004 10:48 am, Matt M. wrote: > It seems a little odd that all > of the body parts we have photos of, to my knowledge, are photos of white > people (except the 'eyes' article). There is a perfectly logical explanation for this. Distribution of wealth: One has to be wealthy (by world standards) to contribute a picture to wikipedia. (Computer, Internet access, Camera, Free time, etc.). "White-skinned" people are comparatively more wealthy than non white-skinned people. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From mt at mirko-thiessen.de Sat Jan 10 18:25:13 2004 From: mt at mirko-thiessen.de (Mirko Thiessen) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:25:13 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Effective bullying strategy. (RK) In-Reply-To: <20040110090547.C5C41B836@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040110090547.C5C41B836@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <1139150560.20040110192513@mirko-thiessen.de> Daniel Mayer wrote: > Sadly it now seems that Jimbo's declarative and unmitigated comments have > resulted in Danny leaving the project. Jimbo should realize the great weight > his comments have and mix criticism with some sort of mitigating/less sharp > comments. > > I don't think that Danny's absence serves the big picture goal of having NPOV > over many Middle-east subjects. > > I am very sad to see him leave. That is true. Danny was a valuable contributor who made a large number of excellent contributions. Unfortunately I can't say the same about RK. Danny deserved better treatment than this. A sad day for Wikipedia. Mirko. From dpbsmith at verizon.net Sat Jan 10 19:07:56 2004 From: dpbsmith at verizon.net (dpbsmith at verizon.net) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 13:07:56 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia Message-ID: <20040110190756.GOBC29632.out009.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current article has pictures of both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so what's the problem? Re pictures of genitalia. As a reference point, the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, the index word "penis" references the article "Reproductive system." This article contains a number of detailed line drawings (engravings?), mostly from Cunningham's Textbook of Anatomy. None of them are, however, what I'd call a picture of a genital. The male section shows a transverse section of a "young Prostate" (eeewwwww); a transverse section of a testis and epididymus (eeeewwww); a sagital median section of bladder prostate, and rectum, and a three-dimensional-looking detailed view that looks to me like a dissected cadaver (EEEEEwwwwww), showing a "view of the base of the bladder, prostate, seminal vesicles, and vasa deferentia." The female section offers a cadaverous view of the uterus and broad ligament, and a diagram of the vaginal cavity, cervix, and uterus. In other words, I infer that their policy is "an encyclopedia should have pictures," and also that their policy with respect to genitalia "cadavers and transverse sections only, and no erectile tissue at all." Let me say as clearly as I can that I present that just as a data point. I am not, repeat NOT suggesting that this is the appropriate policy for Wikipedia! From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 19:19:09 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:19:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures Message-ID: <20040110191909.26592.qmail@web14005.mail.yahoo.com> On the whole discussion on pictures: What about pictures of: Dead, bloody people (common on european TV) Drug paraphenalia Step by step bomb making Dangerous animals Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads disfigured) Medical pictures of diseased bodypart Election proceedings (hello PRC) War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a vietnamese during the vietnam war?) Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, bondage, etc. Domestic violence Aborted Foetuses To paraphrase the founder of the nizkor project in a persional email: Don't censor yourself. Plenty others will censor you for free. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 19:30:06 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:30:06 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was: Effective bullying strategy)) In-Reply-To: <200401091310.59217.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401091310.59217.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110193006.GF26584@joey.bomis.com> Daniel Mayer wrote: > Furthermore, the mere existence of bad articles encourages more bad articles > to be added. Incomplete is one thing - that is relatively easy to fix - but > bad is another and if often much more difficult to fix. I agree. But if the topic is _itself_ valid, then the right thing to do with a bad article is to fix it, not delete it or redirect it. It's usually pretty easy to go to an article, and move the bad parts to the talk page along with a courteous request for more documentation, or rewriting of some biased terminology or whatever. --Jimbo From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 19:41:19 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:41:19 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia References: <20040110190756.GOBC29632.out009.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Message-ID: <4000555F.10604@yahoo.com> dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: > Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current article has pictures of > both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so what's the problem? http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ? There is no images whatsoever on that article. Is there another article on circumcision somehow ? From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 19:45:26 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:45:26 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let the article say that X reports Y about Z In-Reply-To: References: <20040110143209.7805.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110194526.GA27376@joey.bomis.com> Viajero, Notwithstanding the ridiculousness of RK's charges of anti-Zionism, which I don't think is really the issue here, do you agree with him at least on these central points? 1. That an article "Palestinian views of the peace process" is a legitimate topic of significant importance and 2. That the article ought to report neutrally on just what Palestinian views are, both the views of the people in general, but also the views as expressed in their own words by prominent Palestinians All that is necessary to move forward in a productive manner on the article is agreement on those two points. The central point that RK is absolutely right about here is that simply omitting quotes from Arafat and others simply because those quotes show them in an unflattering light is not acceptable. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 19:52:22 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:52:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040110195222.GD27376@joey.bomis.com> Andrew Cleveland wrote: > User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements > that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not releasing the entirety of > an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) including images, some of which > may have been used under fair use. The images were included after his > modifications. He claims the entire article, including images, must be > released under GFDL to avoid breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm > just confused (heh) and worried that this may become a problem.. probably > just me being weird. I wonder if you could ask him to come to the mailing list and express his concerns. I'm not sure I understand what he's saying. I've talked this fair use images issue over with a number of people, including Larry Lessig and Richard Stallman, but it's still very complex. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 19:56:19 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:56:19 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD In-Reply-To: <20040110080430.18949.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040109203939.19736.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <20040110080430.18949.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110195619.GE27376@joey.bomis.com> Rick wrote: > I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is >wrong. And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is >attacking me for what I thought was right. Well, I must be wrong, >then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong? Rick, how am I attacking you? I fully support your work. I don't really know what you're talking about. Let me repeat -- my complaints about VfD are not complaints about all deletions, nor are they complaints about most of what goes on there. Allow me to give a very inexact analogy. Imagine a court system in which 99% of the time defendants are given a fair trial, but in 1% of the cases they are not, perhaps due to some loophole in the process. A person can say that the process is broken, because in a small but important number of cases the wrong thing is done, without thereby criticizing in any way the other 99%. You're solidly in the 99%. I have no complaints about people working to clean up vandalism and my concerns should not be taken as a slight against anyone doing that. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 20:01:30 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:01:30 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD In-Reply-To: <200401091211.24380.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401091211.24380.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110200130.GF27376@joey.bomis.com> Daniel Mayer wrote: > Yes - I agree. Jimbo really should take a look at the stuff added to VfD > before making a decree that VfD should be abolished. I'm not about to make any sort of decree, don't worry about that. Erik suggested that the problems with VfD can only be resolved by me making a decision, or appointing someone to make a decision. But I have a slightly different view. Nothing about VfD is Policy with a capital P, laid down or decreed by me. It's just a social custom, no more and no less. If the VfD process decides that an article like "Palestinian views on the peace process" should be redirected or deleted, there's absolutely nothing to prevent the next person who comes along from trumping the VfD process by just editing the page. And if they do so in a positive, co-operative, and NPOV manner, then Wikipedia will be the stronger for it. If they do so in a negative, non-co-operative, and POV manner, then the Wiki process will work again -- the article will get re-deleted, re-redirected, etc. --Jimbo From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jan 10 20:09:39 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:09:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia In-Reply-To: <4000555F.10604@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040110200939.46034.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> probably refers to [[Penis]] (damn, please let us find something more productive to do than wasting our time with penises and such stuf!) --Optim --- Anthere wrote: > > > dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: > > Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current > article has pictures of > > both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so > what's the problem? > > > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ? > > There is no images whatsoever on that article. > > Is there another article on circumcision somehow ? > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 20:17:51 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:17:51 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <20040110191909.26592.qmail@web14005.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90ar2e8hpVB@erik_moeller> Christopher- > What about pictures of: > Dead, bloody people (common on european TV) Are they? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but my impression always was that US TV is more violent than Euro-TV. I may be wrong, of course. Answer: Depends on context - we don't needlessly throw pictures of "dead, bloody" people into articles. Why would we? An article about decompensation, rigor mortis etc. might include an image, but obviously, the more generally offensive such a picture would be, the more likely we would want to link to it instead of displaying it inline. > Drug paraphenalia Sure, no problem. > Step by step bomb making Could be legally problematic. > Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments Sure, if they warrant an article. > Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads > disfigured) Definitely, but only in an article that is explicitly about the effects of war; in a main article about war they should be linked to. > Medical pictures of diseased bodypart Definitely useful, but preferably link instead of displaying inline. > War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a > vietnamese during the vietnam war?) Definitely, see above re: combat. > Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, bondage, > etc. Legally problematic. Nipple clamps no problem. > Domestic violence Link to. > Aborted Foetuses Link to. Regards, Erik From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 20:32:10 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 21:32:10 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia References: <4000555F.10604@yahoo.com> <20040110200939.46034.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4000614A.7030504@yahoo.com> male-ish comment if there is :-) Nikos-Optim a ?crit: > probably refers to [[Penis]] > > (damn, please let us find something more productive to > do than wasting our time with penises and such stuf!) > > --Optim > > --- Anthere wrote: > >> >>dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: >> >>>Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current >> >>article has pictures of >> >>>both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so >> >>what's the problem? >> >> >>http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ? >> >>There is no images whatsoever on that article. >> >>Is there another article on circumcision somehow ? From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 20:30:22 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:30:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <90ar2e8hpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <20040110203022.27746.qmail@web14007.mail.yahoo.com> --- Erik Moeller wrote: > Christopher- > > What about pictures of: > > Dead, bloody people (common on european TV) > > Are they? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but my > impression > always was that US TV is more violent than Euro-TV. I may be wrong, > of > course. On French Paris Match (paper magazine), last summer, saw photo of israeli soldier killed in combat, brain cavity was emply, brian had been removed by impact, cranium was 1/2 missing, and photo showed the inside of the head with the brain mostly removed, and part of the skull still attached and hanging. Soldier was on a stretcher, others were mulling about paying him no attention. This kind of photo, we don't see on US tv/print media. > Answer: Depends on context - we don't needlessly throw pictures of > "dead, > bloody" people into articles. Why would we? An article about > decompensation, rigor mortis etc. might include an image, but > obviously, > the more generally offensive such a picture would be, the more > likely we > would want to link to it instead of displaying it inline. > > Step by step bomb making > Could be legally problematic. > > Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments > Sure, if they warrant an article. > > > Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads > > disfigured) > Definitely, but only in an article that is explicitly about the > effects of > war; in a main article about war they should be linked to. > > Medical pictures of diseased bodypart > Definitely useful, but preferably link instead of displaying > inline. > > War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a > > vietnamese during the vietnam war?) > > Definitely, see above re: combat. > > > Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, > bondage, > > etc. > Legally problematic. Nipple clamps no problem. > > Domestic violence > Link to. > > Aborted Foetuses > Link to. Link to but where? What webserver do you trust will be there 2, 5 years down the road, with the same URL with the same picture? The problem with a linked-to URL (and this has been discussed prior) is that the picture may change, the picture server may disappear, or the picture server may change its licensing. As far as legality of images, we should let lawyers do that. I think this would be a good thing to spend money on: asking real legal advice on what photos can and cannot be posted. Anything that can be posted, on a legal standpoint, and adds to the imformation conveyed in the article, should be. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From jwales at bomis.com Sat Jan 10 20:29:12 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:29:12 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <90ar2e8hpVB@erik_moeller> References: <20040110191909.26592.qmail@web14005.mail.yahoo.com> <90ar2e8hpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <20040110202912.GJ27376@joey.bomis.com> Erik Moeller wrote: > Are they? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but my impression > always was that US TV is more violent than Euro-TV. I may be wrong, of > course. I watch a lot of US TV. In the US, television news rarely shows graphic images of blood and guts, but "if it bleeds it leads" they love to cover bloody stories. If there's been a horrible car accident, we will see only a body under a clean white sheet, or a child's shoe in a gutter. The most popular war footage is the twisted wreckage of vehiciles but actual dead people are virtually never seen. Movies and television shows are similar -- lots of cartoon violence, but very little realistic blood and guts. I might or might not agree with the specific answers that Erik gave here, but I would agree with his overall approach -- context matters, and mostly it just depends on the demands of quality writing and sound factual presentation of information. Editorial good taste can go a long way towards balancing competing concerns responsibly. And there will always be hard cases that are tough to decide. We aren't the first to confront these issues, and I doubt if we will come up with a magic formula that will always resolve the issues cleanly. --Jimbo From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 20:36:08 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:36:08 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <20040110203022.27746.qmail@web14007.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90ar5KpCpVB@erik_moeller> Christopher- > On French Paris Match (paper magazine), last summer, saw photo of > israeli soldier killed in combat, brain cavity was emply, brian had > been removed by impact, cranium was 1/2 missing, and photo showed the > inside of the head with the brain mostly removed, and part of the > skull still attached and hanging. Soldier was on a stretcher, others > were mulling about paying him no attention. This kind of photo, we > don't see on US tv/print media. Well, the conclusion that this is a US vs. Euro phenomenon seems overreaching. I've never seen such photos in German newspapers, for example. German media always seemed very sanitized to me. > Link to but where? To a file uploaded on our server (provided copyright is not an issue), using a [[Media:]] link. Regards, Erik From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 20:56:32 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:56:32 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD In-Reply-To: <20040110200130.GF27376@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <90ar5prxpVB@erik_moeller> Jimmy- > Nothing about VfD is Policy with a capital P, laid down or decreed by > me. It's just a social custom, no more and no less. If the VfD > process decides that an article like "Palestinian views on the peace > process" should be redirected or deleted, there's absolutely nothing > to prevent the next person who comes along from trumping the VfD > process by just editing the page. > And if they do so in a positive, co-operative, and NPOV manner, then > Wikipedia will be the stronger for it. If they do so in a negative, > non-co-operative, and POV manner, then the Wiki process will work > again -- the article will get re-deleted, re-redirected, etc. This doesn't sound like an encyclopedia to me - it sounds like a giant dumping ground where anyone who spends enough time to defend their space can keep it. It makes all the definitions of [[Wikipedia is not]] moot for people who are reasonably nice (or, more realistically, sufficiently persistent). Without clear policies as to what material is allowed and what is not, and without clear means to enforce these policies (that is, a deletion policy), Wikipedia will develop into an Everything2-ish state. Thus you eventually end up *needing* a Sifter project because Wikipedia will be so full of crap that nobody takes it seriously. I prefer a model wherein there are only articles which have at least the *potential* to be brilliant prose. And when I say, "we have X articles", I would prefer not to have to follow this up with increasingly cumbersome estimates as to how many of these *really* qualify as articles. Although you have in effect made a clarification that you think VfD is not policy, this clarification is still buried somewhere in a mailing list archive and will likely not be referred to by persistent trolls to justify their crapflooding. (That's good!) Without such a declaration being directly inserted into the respective pages, your view is also unrealistic, however: Sysops treat VfD as policy. Users are told by sysops that VfD is policy. Sysops *will* call for bans of users who try to circumvent VfD. We even have a page called Wikipedia:Deletion *policy*. So now you've made a bad situation worse: 1) VfD doesn't have a clearly defined process 2) VfD is treated by other pages and by sysops as policy 3) Jimbo says that VfD isn't policy The potential edit wars and long-term conflicts that can result from this fuzzy state make my head hurt. I know you value creative anarchy and consensus building, but I think you also have to come to terms with the reality that an encyclopedia requires clear rules that are actually enforced to work. NPOV is such a policy, and I do not see a single good reason why we shouldn't have a similarly strongly enforced inclusion policy. Regards, Erik From mattheww at chiark.greenend.org.uk Sat Jan 10 21:03:30 2004 From: mattheww at chiark.greenend.org.uk (Matthew Woodcraft) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 21:03:30 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD Message-ID: <20040110210330.GA6890@golux.woodcraft.me.uk> Jimmy Wales wrote: >Nothing about VfD is Policy with a capital P, laid down or decreed by >me. It's just a social custom, no more and no less. If the VfD >process decides that an article like "Palestinian views on the peace >process" should be redirected or deleted, there's absolutely nothing >to prevent the next person who comes along from trumping the VfD >process by just editing the page. Except that, until we have reversible delete, someone who wants to edit a deleted page is deprived of the opportunity to build on the previous form. -M- From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 21:06:34 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 13:06:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <90ar5KpCpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <20040110210634.48033.qmail@web14003.mail.yahoo.com> --- Erik Moeller wrote: > Christopher- > > On French Paris Match (paper magazine), last summer, saw photo of > > israeli soldier killed in combat, brain cavity was emply, brian > had > > been removed by impact, cranium was 1/2 missing, and photo showed > the > > inside of the head with the brain mostly removed, and part of the > > skull still attached and hanging. Soldier was on a stretcher, > others > > were mulling about paying him no attention. This kind of photo, > we > > don't see on US tv/print media. > > Well, the conclusion that this is a US vs. Euro phenomenon seems > overreaching. I've never seen such photos in German newspapers, for > > example. German media always seemed very sanitized to me. Point taken. Is there an article somewhere discussing the differences in media reporting between various european countries? > > Link to but where? > To a file uploaded on our server (provided copyright is not an > issue), > using a [[Media:]] link. So we host the photo but don't include it with the article, but on a separate instance (machine) that is easily accessible. Do we provide thumprints? What's truly gained? I mean, having a link to an image and the image itself are fairly the same. If we cloak the penis image because it offends, do we cloak the democratic demonstration? The photo of dalai Lama? The headshot wound? The gnarly, nasty, disgusting-looking yet medically significant photo of a "insert horrible, disfiguring medical condition"? I wonder. I think this might lead to bias. What shows in the article, verus what is not shown. (Mao's photo shown in article, Sun Yat Sen's photo cloaked (available, but only through a link)... I wonder. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From cprompt at tmbg.org Sat Jan 10 16:09:36 2004 From: cprompt at tmbg.org (cprompt) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:09:36 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1073750976.2278.11.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 10:41, Anthere wrote: > > If so, let's change the picture legend. > > We put at the top of the article the natural picture of a penis, with a > legend stating "this is a penis" > > Then, much more at the bottom of the article, we indicate that some > people have their penis transformed, and we put the relevant picture > with a label "circonsized penis" > > Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV. I recall reading that in the United States, most men are circumcised, and in the rest of the world, most men aren't. Since both circumcised and uncircumcised are fairly common, it makes sense to have them side-by-side for comparison. Since men with pierced penises (ouch) are rather uncommon (so I would think), if we were to have a picture of one, I'd agree it shouldn't receive the same attention as the pictures on the top of the article. As for having photos on the Wikipedia at all, I really see no reason we should go around getting rid of photos of genitalia. If someone is offended by a photo of a penis at [[Penis]], I have to wonder why they were going to that article in the first place. From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 21:15:46 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 21:15:46 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <20040110210634.48033.qmail@web14003.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90ar7SkhpVB@erik_moeller> Christopher- > Point taken. Is there an article somewhere discussing the differences > in media reporting between various european countries? I've found most general media-related articles on Wikipedia sorely lacking, but that may have changed. (Just checked: [[mass media]] is still crap.) We have fantastically detailed articles about individual publications, though .. > So we host the photo but don't include it with the article, but on a > separate instance (machine) that is easily accessible. It's a regularly uploaded image. You can do this with any image file by typing [[Media:name.jpg]]. > Do we provide thumprints? In these cases, probably not. > What's truly gained? I mean, having a link to an image and the image > itself are fairly the same. Not if the image has a very strong shock value to the vast majority of viewers. http://goatse.cx is one notorious example, see [[shock site]] for others. But I agree that the penis picture should be displayed inline. As I said before, my standard is: is it almost universally offensive? If yes, link to it. If no, show it inline. The only other standards that I can think of are 1) legality, 2) encyclopedic relevance. Regards, Erik From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sat Jan 10 19:21:48 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:21:48 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40000563.8070305@planetunreal.com> References: <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40000563.8070305@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <3C9708AE-43A2-11D8-B2D2-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 10, 2004, at 9:00 AM, tarquin wrote: > Nikos-Optim wrote: > >> I see no problem. however, I would not have objections >> to the replacement of the photographs with diagrams, >> although I still don't see where the problem is. > > Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. Perhaps an inline diagram and a linked photo, so as to less offend the casual reader who stumbles (somehow...) on an article he didn't want to read, ? la [[breast]]. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sat Jan 10 19:08:49 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:08:49 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations feature? In-Reply-To: <20040110033614.GE8264@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040109221217.3EE8AB82C@mail.wikipedia.org> <00dd01c3d714$95f58840$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> <20040110033614.GE8264@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <6BF4FC35-43A0-11D8-B2D2-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 9, 2004, at 10:36 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote: > Graham Burnett wrote: >> "External links within the article are against wiki policy." > > Earlier today I used external links in an article, but I didn't > really like it. And I found myself doing something really bad -- > but I caught myself. > > I wrote something like... > > In [http://www.whatever.com/ this article], so-and-so says > such-and-such. > > that's really bad because when the content is repurposed, that sentence > will make no sense at all. Sure, but "So-and-so says such-and-such [http://www.whatever.com/]." will make perfect sense once it's been repurposed. Citation-type links are parenthetical and can simply be removed; the content just loses a little credibility. If any information about the context of the referenced material is useful to the reader of the article (who wrote it, where it was published, etc.), this information ought to be in the article anyway. Readers should not be expected to follow the link to understand the reference, only for the full story. When such content is repurposed it may be appropriate to move this link to an equivalent of an "External links" section, but this can be done without garbling the text. Putting it there on the wiki version just makes the context of the reference unclear and confuses the reader. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 22:14:12 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:14:12 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> <1073750976.2278.11.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> Message-ID: <40007934.90309@yahoo.com> cprompt a ?crit: > On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 10:41, Anthere wrote: >>Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV. I repeat, labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized" penis is POV It is like putting on an article about [[teenager]], with two pictures of two teenager girls, one white and one black : as legend, "a white girl" and "a non white girl". > I recall reading that in the United States, most men are circumcised, > and in the rest of the world, most men aren't. Since both circumcised > and uncircumcised are fairly common, it makes sense to have them > side-by-side for comparison. Since men with pierced penises (ouch) are > rather uncommon (so I would think), if we were to have a picture of one, > I'd agree it shouldn't receive the same attention as the pictures on the > top of the article. in the United States, most men are circumcised in the rest of the world, most men aren't conclusion : both situations are common. I do not know why, but I feel like I could go on a rant here. I really do. From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Sat Jan 10 22:44:44 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex T.) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:44:44 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> <1073750976.2278.11.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> <40007934.90309@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001201c3d7cb$57d7a8b0$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> Many people agree with you Anthere, even in the United States. This is an issue that has become galvanized because of the supposed "antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though moslems also practice this form of male genital mutilation as a religious right of the parents). J. Steven Svoboda, a Harvard Law School graduate started this UN recognized NGO: http://www.arclaw.org/ There are also some other sites to look at: http://www.mgmbill.org/ http://www.noharmm.org/home.htm This is a serious problem. If you chose to discuss it on this list it would not be a rant, Anthere, as I think most list members respect and value your opinions. It is certainly related to the issue of NPOV and is not off topic because of the discussion about what would be an accurate, unbiased depiction of the human anatomy. Alex (en:user:alex756) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthere" To: Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 5:14 PM Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia > > > cprompt a ?crit: > > On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 10:41, Anthere wrote: > > >>Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV. > > I repeat, labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized" penis is POV > > It is like putting on an article about [[teenager]], with two pictures > of two teenager girls, one white and one black : > > as legend, "a white girl" and "a non white girl". > > > I recall reading that in the United States, most men are circumcised, > > and in the rest of the world, most men aren't. Since both circumcised > > and uncircumcised are fairly common, it makes sense to have them > > side-by-side for comparison. Since men with pierced penises (ouch) are > > rather uncommon (so I would think), if we were to have a picture of one, > > I'd agree it shouldn't receive the same attention as the pictures on the > > top of the article. > > in the United States, most men are circumcised > in the rest of the world, most men aren't > > conclusion : both situations are common. > > I do not know why, but I feel like I could go on a rant here. I really do. > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 10 23:09:49 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:09:49 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <001201c3d7cb$57d7a8b0$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> Message-ID: <90er9m8xpVB@erik_moeller> Alex- > Many people agree with you Anthere, even > in the United States. This is an issue that has > become galvanized because of the supposed > "antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though > moslems also practice this form of male genital > mutilation as a religious right of the parents). This is not the place for a circumcision flamewar. Many people feel that in spite of lacking a foreskin, they are fully sexually functional, and may even believe in the supposed medical benefits of the procedure. As a matter of fact, there are some recent studies which promote the belief that circumcision even prevents HIV. I say "promote the belief" because these studies are fundamentally methodologically flawed, but it is easy to see that people might believe them, given that they have been published in peer reviewed (US) journals and have received widespread (international) media attention. There are people who believe just as forcefully that circumcision is right, decent and proper as I believe that it is wrong, harmful and pointless, and there are internally consistent arguments that can be made for both sides. Few subjects are as eligible to turn into long lasting flamewars as this one. Please do not encourage rants on this subject -- they do not really contribute to a debate about inclusion standards. Wikipedia is not Usenet. It's not a place for advocacy of any kind. If anything, we should talk about how to make the article [[circumcision]] better, not about what's morally wrong with the procedure. Otherwise we might as well talk about the international arms trade, social equality, global warming and electronic voting machines, all very serious issues. Regards, Erik From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 23:31:21 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 00:31:21 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <20040110104221.94813.qmail@web21501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040110135334.68776.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40001339.1080607@yahoo.com> <20040110203024.A26545@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <40001D1F.9000905@yahoo.com> <1073750976.2278.11.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> <40007934.90309@yahoo.com> <001201c3d7cb$57d7a8b0$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> Message-ID: <40008B49.1080402@yahoo.com> Alex T. a ?crit: > Many people agree with you Anthere, even > in the United States. This is an issue that has > become galvanized because of the supposed > "antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though > moslems also practice this form of male genital > mutilation as a religious right of the parents). > J. Steven Svoboda, a Harvard Law School > graduate started this UN recognized NGO: > http://www.arclaw.org/ > > There are also some other sites to look at: > http://www.mgmbill.org/ > http://www.noharmm.org/home.htm > > This is a serious problem. If you chose to > discuss it on this list it would not be a rant, > Anthere, as I think most list members respect > and value your opinions. It is certainly related > to the issue of NPOV and is not off topic > because of the discussion about what would > be an accurate, unbiased depiction of the > human anatomy. I thank you for this comment Alex. But, it is *not* whether circumsition is *good* or is *bad* the idea that I am desperatly trying to get through. And in seems my comparisons are just not being understood. I am currently hesitating just removing the pictures of the article, at the risk of an edit war. or explaining a little bit more crudely what I think here, at the risk of seing my comments be seen offending by american editors. I guess I go remove the pictures then. If someone disagrees, I'll try to explain again why I think the labels under the pictures ARE POV, and why the second picture does not best belong to this article. The first does not bring much more than the diagramm and the third provides. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 23:33:54 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 00:33:54 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <001201c3d7cb$57d7a8b0$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> <90er9m8xpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <40008BE2.9080806@yahoo.com> Erik Moeller a ?crit: > Alex- > >>Many people agree with you Anthere, even >>in the United States. This is an issue that has >>become galvanized because of the supposed >>"antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though >>moslems also practice this form of male genital >>mutilation as a religious right of the parents). > > > This is not the place for a circumcision flamewar. Many people feel that > in spite of lacking a foreskin, they are fully sexually functional, and > may even believe in the supposed medical benefits of the procedure. As a > matter of fact, there are some recent studies which promote the belief > that circumcision even prevents HIV. I say "promote the belief" because > these studies are fundamentally methodologically flawed, but it is easy to > see that people might believe them, given that they have been published in > peer reviewed (US) journals and have received widespread (international) > media attention. > > There are people who believe just as forcefully that circumcision is > right, decent and proper as I believe that it is wrong, harmful and > pointless, and there are internally consistent arguments that can be made > for both sides. Few subjects are as eligible to turn into long lasting > flamewars as this one. Please do not encourage rants on this subject -- > they do not really contribute to a debate about inclusion standards. > > Wikipedia is not Usenet. It's not a place for advocacy of any kind. If > anything, we should talk about how to make the article [[circumcision]] > better, not about what's morally wrong with the procedure. Otherwise we > might as well talk about the international arms trade, social equality, > global warming and electronic voting machines, all very serious issues. > > Regards, > > Erik I am going to improve the article right now, by moving to it what currently DOES NOT belong to the penis article. Which is *absolutely* the only position I have been holding. I was talking of NPOV and american bias, not of any morality issues. From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Sat Jan 10 23:40:11 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex T.) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:40:11 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <90er9m8xpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <002c01c3d7d3$16e39230$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> I think you missed my point Eric. The point being that Anthere has a perfectly valid complaint. There is nothing NPOV about circumsicion. It is not a fact, it is something that people do. As such it should not be used to slant an article one way or the other. No one is talking about advocacy here. If you want to advocate either way, then join one of the pro or anti circumcision groups. If you want to be objective then don't suggest that an article about genitals should feature genitals that have been altered by a medical procedure. Showing a circumsicised genital, male or female, is a culturally charged act, not something that should be taken for granted in an encyclopedia that is trying to be neutral. If someone wants to write an article about circumcision, that is where a circumsized male and female genitalia belong, just like I would not put an image of a person being murdered in an article about some purely private civil law topic such as breach of contract. It is just not appropriate. Certainly the pros and cons of circumcision should be discussed on the circumcision page, not on a page about genitals, male or female, otherwise, you are right Eric, Wikipedia will be nothing more than another verison of Usenet that is used to distort knowledge rather than clarifying what is knowledge and what is opinion. My main point being that Anthere bringing this up is showing that NPOV is not as easy as some people will make it out to be. To be culturally and socially neutral requires that one be sensitive and non-judgemental to all perspectives, otherwise NPOV is just another way to create propaganda that subtly controls by using sophisticated references that are hidden while appearing to be "objective" (whatever that means). Hopefully you will now understand where I am coming from, if I telegraphed my opinions and they did not register I hope this explaination gets through. Alex756 From: "Erik Moeller" To: Cc: ; Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 6:09 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia > Alex- > > Many people agree with you Anthere, even > > in the United States. This is an issue that has > > become galvanized because of the supposed > > "antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though > > moslems also practice this form of male genital > > mutilation as a religious right of the parents). > > This is not the place for a circumcision flamewar. Many people feel that > in spite of lacking a foreskin, they are fully sexually functional, and > may even believe in the supposed medical benefits of the procedure. As a > matter of fact, there are some recent studies which promote the belief > that circumcision even prevents HIV. I say "promote the belief" because > these studies are fundamentally methodologically flawed, but it is easy to > see that people might believe them, given that they have been published in > peer reviewed (US) journals and have received widespread (international) > media attention. > > There are people who believe just as forcefully that circumcision is > right, decent and proper as I believe that it is wrong, harmful and > pointless, and there are internally consistent arguments that can be made > for both sides. Few subjects are as eligible to turn into long lasting > flamewars as this one. Please do not encourage rants on this subject -- > they do not really contribute to a debate about inclusion standards. > > Wikipedia is not Usenet. It's not a place for advocacy of any kind. If > anything, we should talk about how to make the article [[circumcision]] > better, not about what's morally wrong with the procedure. Otherwise we > might as well talk about the international arms trade, social equality, > global warming and electronic voting machines, all very serious issues. > > Regards, > > Erik From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 11:39:57 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 03:39:57 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401100339.57227.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that >article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a >difficult word to spell). > >If no one does it, I will (open threat :-)) Leave the photo of the circumsized penis at [[penis]]. Nothing wrong with it being there as a compare/contrast photo set with uncircumcised penis. You also allude to a very important point - a great many men (perhaps most) in the U.S. are circumsized and it has nothing to do with religion. -- mav From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 23:53:22 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 00:53:22 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <90er9m8xpVB@erik_moeller> <002c01c3d7d3$16e39230$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> Message-ID: <40009072.8020008@yahoo.com> I am glad you understood Alex, and explained better than I did what the issue was. Thanks :-) I moved the pictures to the circumcision article. Alex T. a ?crit: > I think you missed my point Eric. The point being that > Anthere has a perfectly valid complaint. There is nothing > NPOV about circumsicion. It is not a fact, it is something > that people do. As such it should not be used to slant an > article one way or the other. > > No one is talking about advocacy here. If you want to > advocate either way, then join one of the pro or anti > circumcision groups. If you want to be objective then > don't suggest that an article about genitals should feature > genitals that have been altered by a medical procedure. > > Showing a circumsicised genital, male or female, is a culturally charged > act, not something that should be taken for granted in an > encyclopedia that is trying to be neutral. If someone wants > to write an article about circumcision, that is where a circumsized > male and female genitalia belong, just like I would not put an image > of a person being murdered in an article about some purely > private civil law topic such as breach of contract. > It is just not appropriate. > > Certainly the pros and cons of circumcision should be > discussed on the circumcision page, not on a page about > genitals, male or female, otherwise, you are right Eric, > Wikipedia will be nothing more than another verison of Usenet > that is used to distort knowledge rather than clarifying > what is knowledge and what is opinion. > > My main point being that Anthere bringing this up is showing that > NPOV is not as easy as some people will make it out to be. > To be culturally and socially neutral requires that one be sensitive > and non-judgemental to all perspectives, otherwise NPOV is > just another way to create propaganda that subtly controls by > using sophisticated references that are hidden while appearing > to be "objective" (whatever that means). > > Hopefully you will now understand where I am coming from, > if I telegraphed my opinions and they did not register I hope > this explaination gets through. > > Alex756 > From: "Erik Moeller" > To: > Cc: ; > Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 6:09 PM > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia > > > >>Alex- >> >>>Many people agree with you Anthere, even >>>in the United States. This is an issue that has >>>become galvanized because of the supposed >>>"antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though >>>moslems also practice this form of male genital >>>mutilation as a religious right of the parents). >> >>This is not the place for a circumcision flamewar. Many people feel that >>in spite of lacking a foreskin, they are fully sexually functional, and >>may even believe in the supposed medical benefits of the procedure. As a >>matter of fact, there are some recent studies which promote the belief >>that circumcision even prevents HIV. I say "promote the belief" because >>these studies are fundamentally methodologically flawed, but it is easy to >>see that people might believe them, given that they have been published in >>peer reviewed (US) journals and have received widespread (international) >>media attention. >> >>There are people who believe just as forcefully that circumcision is >>right, decent and proper as I believe that it is wrong, harmful and >>pointless, and there are internally consistent arguments that can be made >>for both sides. Few subjects are as eligible to turn into long lasting >>flamewars as this one. Please do not encourage rants on this subject -- >>they do not really contribute to a debate about inclusion standards. >> >>Wikipedia is not Usenet. It's not a place for advocacy of any kind. If >>anything, we should talk about how to make the article [[circumcision]] >>better, not about what's morally wrong with the procedure. Otherwise we >>might as well talk about the international arms trade, social equality, >>global warming and electronic voting machines, all very serious issues. >> >>Regards, >> >>Erik > From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 10 11:52:13 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 03:52:13 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401100352.13863.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human >in its natural state : nude. Yes - there should be a photo with a naked man and naked women just standing side by side. I think Erik mentioned he knew of a public domain photo like that that was on a one of the gold plates on either a Pioneer or Voyager mission.... >See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human Yes - some photo is needed. I would suggest a photo of an African tribesman and a female companion in their traditional clothes since humans looked pretty much like that for most of our history. That would negate the need for completely naked photos too. >In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis* And as already has been stated, a large number of penises are circumcised - especially in the United States. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sun Jan 11 00:01:10 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 00:01:10 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <002c01c3d7d3$16e39230$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> Message-ID: <90erEhxhpVB@erik_moeller> Alex- > No one is talking about advocacy here. If you want to > advocate either way, then join one of the pro or anti > circumcision groups. If you want to be objective then > don't suggest that an article about genitals should feature > genitals that have been altered by a medical procedure. This medical procedure is also a wide-spread cultural phenomenon. Having a picture of an intact and a circumcised penis in an article about the human penis does not mean that you take circumcision for granted. In fact the article links to the one about [[circumcision]] three times, and describes the procedure and its cultural background briefly. Our job as an encyclopedia is to inform. And one thing people might ask themselves when they read the article [[penis]] is: Why does my penis not look like the one in the illustration/photo? As a matter of fact, studies have shown that many circ'd men don't even know the difference, and don't know -whether- they are circumcised! This should not be surprising as many parents expect "the media" to do the job of sex education. Of course the article should not solve the problem by showing no penis at all. It should probably show a whole multitude of penises to illustrate common differences in length (erect/flaccid), thickness, keratinization/ moisture, foreskin length, foreskin retractability, circumcision status etc. > To be culturally and socially neutral requires that one be sensitive > and non-judgemental to all perspectives, otherwise NPOV is > just another way to create propaganda that subtly controls by > using sophisticated references that are hidden while appearing > to be "objective" (whatever that means). Well, I'm afraid that *omitting* the photo might cause this precise problem, only that it would push things into the opposite direction. I would prefer a solution where the image is put into context. Factual completeness is better than political correctness. Regards, Erik From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Sun Jan 11 00:32:14 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 00:32:14 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice Message-ID: <4000998E.27518.163EF14@localhost> > User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements > that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not releasing the entirety of > an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) including images, some of which > may have been used under fair use. The images were included after his > modifications. He claims the entire article, including images, must be > released under GFDL to avoid breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm > just confused (heh) and worried that this may become a problem.. probably > just me being weird. > - Evil saltine Firstly, legal questions should be posted to wikilegal-l (or resolved on wikipedia, of course). I'm cross-posting this one. Some claim that we only release Wikipedia text under the GFDL, (see [[meta:permission grant extent]]). As far as I know, Jimbo has not explicitly clarified this. However, this claim is not sustainable when the images are embedded within the article using "inline links". In this case, the image and the text form a single document. My reasoning is based on the various cases where people created HTML pages that embedded content from another server - there are a bunch of examples at http://www.linksandlaw.com/linkingcases-framing.htm. In these cases, it was argued that inline linking creates a derivative work. Note that the GFDL only gives permission to create a derivative work if the resulting work is also released under the GFDL. If the fair use image (or, indeed, quote) would probably also be fair use for all (reasonable) downstream users, and its copyright status is explicitly marked, then we're probably ok, but we do typically ask the image uploader to add as much detail as they can on the image description page, so sub-licensees can decide whether to take the risk. However, if the fair use claim relies heavily, on, for example, Wikipedia's non-profit status, then we should remove it, and may be in danger of infringing our contributors copyright. If an image is vital, note that normal linking (not "inline linking") does NOT create a derivative work. -- Martin "IANAL" Harper From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 00:36:12 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:36:12 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was: Effective bullying strategy)) Message-ID: <200401101636.12864.maveric149@yahoo.com> Jimbo wrote: >I agree. But if the topic is _itself_ valid, then the right thing to >do with a bad article is to fix it, not delete it or redirect it. >It's usually pretty easy to go to an article, and move the bad parts >to the talk page along with a courteous request for more >documentation, or rewriting of some biased terminology or whatever. As I said before; if the article contains only chaff and no wheat then an edit link is more informative (the validity of the topic is a side issue). Sometimes this cannot be determined by just one person or other times the amount of wheat in the heap of chaff just isn't worth the effort to salvage - thus the VfD process is invoked. But of course if that process results in somebody fixing the article (which it often does), then great. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 00:47:06 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:47:06 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401100339.57227.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40009D0A.6070803@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Leave the photo of the circumsized penis at [[penis]]. Nothing wrong with it > being there as a compare/contrast photo set with uncircumcised penis. You > also allude to a very important point - a great many men (perhaps most) in > the U.S. are circumsized and it has nothing to do with religion. > > -- mav A circumsized penis is not the natural state of a penis. It is pov to label a regular penis by describing him not being a non-natural state of a penis A "missing" picture is not alluding the fact some penis are circonsized, the text is explaining circoncicion and there is a link to this article. Wikipedia is not a source of information for America only. And the rest of the world does not necessarily want to hear about America only. American men are far from being the majority of men on planet. The fact penis are circoncized for religion or for social reasons is irrelevant to the article on penis. It is highly relevant to the article on circonsizion. Circonsision or not circonsision is not a very important point about penis. The very important points about penis is that it allows you to 1) urinate 2) make children 3) give pleasure (controversial) 4) feel pleasure (controversial) I would not have thought I would spend my evening with penises From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 11 00:50:57 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:50:57 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40009DF1.4040005@rufus.d2g.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >This is a difficult problem. If they deserve an article they have probably >done something under their name (without title), but we have a faction that >honestly believes that all members of the titled British nobility deserve an >article based on their title. Long ago someone said, "Well, they appear in >Who's Who" > > Just to play devil's advocate for a minute, the main reason people seem to be arguing for the titular naming scheme is that some people were known primarily by their titles ("The 1st Duke of ...") rather than by their names, some were known by either, and the whole mess is best sorted out by just using "Firstname Lastname, Their Title" consistently. While I can see the reason people might want a standardized naming scheme like that, I think it detracts from readability and makes some articles just ridiculous. The article on [[Bertrand Russell], for example, should very clearly appear there, *not* at [[Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl of Russell]], a name by which he was rarely if ever known, and a name he did not use when signing his writings. But this is exactly what the current proposal would mandate. Though I personally plan to keep [[Bertrand Russell]] at that location, regardless of the outcome of the current vote, as I don't recognize the authority of Wikiproject:peerage over such general-purpose articles as [[Bertrand Russell]]. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 11 01:07:27 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:07:27 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40009D0A.6070803@yahoo.com> References: <200401100339.57227.maveric149@yahoo.com> <40009D0A.6070803@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4000A1CF.7070901@rufus.d2g.com> Anthere wrote: > A circumsized penis is not the natural state of a penis. It is pov to > label a regular penis by describing him not being a non-natural state > of a penis By that logic, one could also argue that it is POV to label a person as "bearded", or to show a cleanshaven person as an example on [[human]], as, after all, "bearded" is the natural state, and shaving is an artificial modification to this natural state. Now one might argue that circumcision is a bad modification, while shaving is a good (or neutral) modification, but that's also a POV claim. I think the best we can say is that some people are circumcised, and some are not, and neither is explicitly "normal", but in some parts of the world one is more common, and in other parts of the world the other is more common. So we should probably have both images, and not make a statement about which is "normal" or "natural". -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 11 01:17:04 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:17:04 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Felching In-Reply-To: <90aqkhtSpVB@erik_moeller> References: <90aqkhtSpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <4000A410.4040604@rufus.d2g.com> Erik Moeller wrote: >Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx. > >Obviously there is a gradation of offensiveness -- a point at which we >decide that not offending readers is more important than NPOV. For >example, there may be a few felching fans who would feel that it is POV >not to show such images in the article. We would overrule these readers on >grounds of offensiveness. > >However, I think we should be very careful with such taboos, and only >apply them when there is almost universal agreement to do so. In other >words, when there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, then we >can do without them. This is not the case for genitalia -- I think >pictures of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small segment of >the population, whereas a relatively large segment feels that they *are* >offensive to a large segment (simply because they are never shown in the >mainstream media), but still maintains that they *themselves* are not >offended by them. > > I don't see what's wrong with simply linking to them (on the Wikipedia servers, not externally, but not inline in the article). Certainly many people are not offended by genitals, but a great many people would be somewhat shocked to see them up front without first clicking on a link, and many people might be unhappy with having them come up right at the top of the screen if reading Wikipedia from, say, work, school, or a public library. Since forcing users to "click here for an image of a penis" is not really forcing them to do a whole lot of extra work to get the information, I don't think this is an unreasonable compromise. I know I personally would not like an image of a penis to be on my computer screen if I were in a public library. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 11 01:22:33 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:22:33 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs In-Reply-To: <90aquUexpVB@erik_moeller> References: <90aquUexpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <4000A559.7040102@rufus.d2g.com> Erik Moeller wrote: >I find this to be an implicit endorsement of the shamefulness/sinfulness >POV that has some prominence in American culture. NPOV should be paramount >except for cases of near-universal offensiveness. > > I don't see that as being the case. I see nothing shameful or sinful about penises or clitorises or other such organs, but neither do I want to see them unless I've gone out of my way to do so. The same way I have no problem with people having sex, but I don't generally want them to be doing it on the street. So I'd disagree, and propose more conservative standards: anything that a large portion of the population would be bothered by seeing should be put in a link. This detracts very little, as clicking a link is a very easy thing to do, but gives people the option not to click it. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 11 01:25:32 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:25:32 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <20040110191909.26592.qmail@web14005.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040110191909.26592.qmail@web14005.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4000A60C.1010509@rufus.d2g.com> Christopher Mahan wrote: >On the whole discussion on pictures: > >What about pictures of: > Dead, bloody people (common on european TV) > Drug paraphenalia > Step by step bomb making > Dangerous animals > Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments > Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads >disfigured) > Medical pictures of diseased bodypart > Election proceedings (hello PRC) > War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a >vietnamese during the vietnam war?) > Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, bondage, >etc. > Domestic violence > Aborted Foetuses > > Of the ones you cited, I think the great majority should be included with "click here for a photo of [blah]", not inline in articles. I do not generally want to see a graphic picture of an aborted fetus even if I am reading an article on abortion; if I wish to do so, I am quite capable of clicking on the link to display the image. I see no benefit to forcing our readers to see images they may not wish to see based on a highly POV claim that they are "normal" images that they should not be offended by. -Mark From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 01:29:50 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:29:50 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401101729.50328.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >A circumsized penis is not the natural state of a penis. It is pov to >label a regular penis by describing him not being a non-natural state of >a penis It seems that you are most offended by the label so then label the circumsized one as circumsized and the other one as intact. >Wikipedia is not a source of information for America only. And the rest >of the world does not necessarily want to hear about America only. Within the bounds of NPOV, the English Wikipedia is first and foremost by and for the English speaking world (with an emphasis on the needs of native speakers - other languages have their own 'pedias, so this is only fair). It has already been noted that a large part of that world has very significant percentages of their male population with circumsized penises. So to not include a photo of circumsized penis while including one of an obviously intact penis is POV. But I see you moved both photos to [[circumcision]] while retaining the photo of an erect penis (which is, of course, more difficult to tell if it is circumcised or not). While not ideal, I can live with that since the comparison is more relevant to that article. >American men are far from being the majority of men on planet. So they should be ignored then? Since when has Wikipedia been a place where only majority views are expressed? -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 01:35:33 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:35:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal attacks from Viajero are unacceptable In-Reply-To: <20040110182529.05136B843@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040111013533.39346.qmail@web20313.mail.yahoo.com> Viajero writes: > Sorry Robert, I won't let you get away the defaming > these two contributors behind their backs; Danny appears > to have left us and Zero doesn't subscribe to this list. First off, Zero is probably Danny. Secondly, I have re-read my initial letter and I can find no defamation or personal attacks at all. I only described his own stated political philosophy. (Which is also clear from dozens of public statements and edits he has made.) Unlike you, I really tried to work with Danny, and I had a real relationship with him off of Wikipedia as well (i.e. in the real world) for several months. He repeatedly made it clear that he was anti-Zionist...yet we still got along for some time. I have no reason to believe that he was lying about his own beliefs. > Smearing them as "anti-Zionists" is a ludicrous > charge; it is as meaningless a term as calling > them "anti-American" and simply demonstrates nothing > more than the poverty of your argument. Please stop your baseless slander of me. Your words only show your ignorance of the topic, and prove to others that you cannot be taken seriously. In reality, Danny, Adam Carr and I all cooperated on the new Wikipedia anti-Zionism article, and we all came to an agreement. All of us agreed that the term anti-Zionist is NOT a hate term, it is not slander, and that it does not carry the specific meaning that _you_ assign to it. Heck, some of my own family members are anti-Zionist, and I don't hate them. I just understand that they have a very different view of the world than I do. So please stop being hysterical. The problem with Danny is that he was very emotional in his anti-Zionism, and started to push his views. When he found out that he could not force Wikipedia to promote his private political views in one article, he deleted his homne page and quit forever. That was unfortunate, and a bit surprising. I was expecting more mature behaviour. If you had taken the time to read the Wikipedia anti-Zionism article, or just peruse its edit history, you would know all this, but it seems that you are no longer here to help. You just have personal animosity towards me. > You think perhaps Danny and Zero wish for the > destruction of Israel??? Does it make you feel better to put words in my mouth, and then attack me for things I never said or implied? That kind of behavior is out of line. If I did this to you, people would be calling for me to be banned. In sadness at your behaviour, Robert __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 01:57:29 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 02:57:29 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401101729.50328.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4000AD89.30200@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Anthere wrote: > >>A circumsized penis is not the natural state of a penis. It is pov to >>label a regular penis by describing him not being a non-natural state of >>a penis > > > It seems that you are most offended by the label so then label the circumsized > one as circumsized and the other one as intact. Yes. Which is why I also suggested that only the regular picture be kept at the top, with the mention "penis". And that circoncized one be moved at the bottom (there is a small paragraph introducing the topic, where it would relevant possibly). Then, I realised there were NO pictures of circoncized penis in the circonsision article. So I thought that the pictures were more relevant there, and that moving both allowed comparison. On the penis article, there is a diagram which I think is sufficiently informative. I was considering moving the semi erected picture as well to the erection article (as this article has no picture at all either), then Brion stopped the writing of the database....and... >>Wikipedia is not a source of information for America only. And the rest >>of the world does not necessarily want to hear about America only. > > > Within the bounds of NPOV, the English Wikipedia is first and foremost by and > for the English speaking world (with an emphasis on the needs of native > speakers - other languages have their own 'pedias, so this is only fair). It > has already been noted that a large part of that world has very significant > percentages of their male population with circumsized penises. So to not > include a photo of circumsized penis while including one of an obviously > intact penis is POV. I respectfully disagree that the english wikipedia is first and beforemost for the english speaking world. Unless you agree to include most Europe for example, as most adults now speak a reasonable amount of english. We do not build a project with a special pov depending on languages and cultures supposed to be associated to specific country. An article on the english wikipedia is supposed to be neutral for american readers, but supposed to be neutral for french readers as well. If not (actually, it is not), we can't claim our goal is to be neutral. > But I see you moved both photos to [[circumcision]] while retaining the photo > of an erect penis (which is, of course, more difficult to tell if it is > circumcised or not). While not ideal, I can live with that since the > comparison is more relevant to that article. Good. The picture is not very good unfortunately. It would be best as Erik says, that we have more pictures of different states. >>American men are far from being the majority of men on planet. > > > So they should be ignored then? Since when has Wikipedia been a place where > only majority views are expressed? You can't claim seriously circunsision is being ignored in that article Mav. It is mentionned in the anatomy part, AND there is a special paragraph as well AND there is also a link at the bottom. It is mentionned quite proeminently and clearly. I would like that minority views are always expressed as clearly. ------ This is not just for Mav. I went to the article about clitoris for a tiny comparison, as a huge number of african girls are circonsized as well (some of them being french, as this is still practiced in secret among african immigrants). It is also practiced in other countries; A minority, just like masculine circoncized, but a relevant number anyway. There are no pictures of circonsision in the article. And no picture in particular showing a natural clitoris with a label saying "un-circoncized clitoris". What would you feel when seeing the pict of a perfectly classical (for us) clitoris, with the label being not "clitoris" but being "uncirconcized clitoris" ? Would it feel quite right ? Would it ? The topic of female circonsision is only very shortly mentionned in two lines at the bottom of the article. And that's it. Not mentionned in the anatomy. Not additional link. Now, I wonder what an african reading these two articles, one proeminently talking about a practice he does not really know about, and another hardly mentionning what is cultural norm to him, would think. From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 02:45:50 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:45:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <4000A60C.1010509@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040111024550.98934.qmail@web14001.mail.yahoo.com> --- Delirium wrote: > Of the ones you cited, I think the great majority should be > included > with "click here for a photo of [blah]", not inline in articles. Fair enough. > I > do > not generally want to see a graphic picture of an aborted fetus > even if > I am reading an article on abortion; if I wish to do so, I am quite > > capable of clicking on the link to display the image. I see no > benefit > to forcing our readers to see images they may not wish to see based > on a > highly POV claim that they are "normal" images that they should not > be > offended by. Granted, yet since offense is subjective, do we have a committee/voting cabal that decides which picture is inline and which picture is "offensive"? Of course, if the picture was included in the article for "shock value", I would remove it myself. If the picture, however, "made" the article, it would not be adequate to relegate it to another 1-click page. I specifically have in mind the picture of the student standing in front of a tank in tanamen square. I think if we had such a picture, it might be seen as offensive by some, yet would entirely belong in the article. But I see your point very well. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From elian at djini.de Sun Jan 11 03:33:09 2004 From: elian at djini.de (Elisabeth Bauer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 04:33:09 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] congratulations Message-ID: <4000C3F5.5010801@djini.de> Hello, I just wanted to congratulate the English wikipedia on Dannies departure. I am sure the neutrality and objectivity of Wikipedia will very much profit from it. If you don't think so, there's work to do: * Al-Aqsa Intifada * Anti-Israel movements * Anti-Semitism * Arabs and anti-Semitism * Christian-Jewish reconciliation * Deir Yassin massacre * Dhimmi * First Intifada * Golan Heights * Hezbollah * History of Israel * History of anti-Semitism * Islam * Islam and Judaism * Islam and anti-Semitism * Islamism * Israeli-Palestinian conflict * Israeli-Palestinian conflict timeline * Israeli attack on USS Liberty * Israeli settlement * Israeli terrorism * Israelis and anti-Palestinian racism * Jenin * Jewish fundamentalism * List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war * Muhammad o List of Muslims o Palestinian refugee * PLO and Hamas * Palestine * Palestine Liberation Organization * Palestinian * Palestinian Authority * Palestinian territories * Proposals for a Palestinian state * Rachel Corrie * Six-Day War * Terrorism against Israelis * The Bible in Islam * Wahhabism * West Bank * Yasser Arafat * Zionism and racism * Zionist conspiracy theories regarding the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks these are some of the articles linked from [[Wikipedia:NPOV dispute]]. Minus talk and wikipedia pages, they make up almost 30% of all articles which are currently under a neutrality dispute. greetings and have fun, elian PS: could someone please delete my user account on en? From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Sun Jan 11 03:31:34 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:31:34 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia Message-ID: <7cb5df8b.df8b7cb5@asteroid.scranton.edu> Tribble sex? (I'm sorry. I couldn't resist being both stupid and smartass.) John ----- Original Message ----- From: Nikos-Optim Date: Saturday, January 10, 2004 3:09 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia > probably refers to [[Penis]] > > (damn, please let us find something more productive to > do than wasting our time with penises and such stuf!) > > --Optim > > --- Anthere wrote: > > > > > > dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: > > > Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current > > article has pictures of > > > both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so > > what's the problem? > > > > > > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ? > > > > There is no images whatsoever on that article. > > > > Is there another article on circumcision somehow ? > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sun Jan 11 03:39:54 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:39:54 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040110171451.340.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Jan 10, 2004, at 12:14 PM, Nikos-Optim wrote: > --- tarquin wrote: > > (humour follows) > Now, I would like to make my own addition to the > "offensive material" issue. Article [[Child]] has an > offensive photograph! It is the photo of a White > child. But not all children are white. There are black > and yellow children too! So this article is offensive > to non-Whites and it is written from a White's Point > Of View, which is against the NPOV spirit! I strongly > suggest to remove this photo and replace it with a > photo showing three children: one white, one black and > one yellow, representing the friendship between the > races and the unity of humanity! (in case you are > wondering, I am White). Amen! Personally, I find the picture on the [[Penis]] article *quite* offensive. Not all people have penises! This article is inherently sexist and should be deleted! > (humour ends) (BTW, absolutely no offense to Matt, who brought up the skin color issue. Just having a little fun) :) Seriously, though, I agree that >> Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better. If only because diagrams tell you much more (eg., [[Image:Maleana2.gif]] vs. [[Image:Erect_penis.gif]]). I have no objection to pictures, and I think they are entirely appropriate, but diagrams are more informative. If the two are deemed redundant, I'd rather have the diagrams. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From gwebauer at hotmail.com Sun Jan 11 03:45:46 2004 From: gwebauer at hotmail.com (G. W. Bauer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 03:45:46 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Wik Message-ID: I noted that the user Wik has listed at least * Angela * RickK * Hephaestos * Jiang all sysops, on Problems users the last three days! -- _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail snakker ditt spr?k! http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/sbox?rru=dasp/lang.asp - F? Hotmail p? norsk i dag From ruimu at uestc.edu.cn Sat Jan 10 17:30:12 2004 From: ruimu at uestc.edu.cn (Ruimu) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:30:12 +0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links and attributions References: <273732338.08255@uestc.edu.cn> Message-ID: <273791844.14218@uestc.edu.cn> > However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and > citations. Not only wiki markup: Footnotes aren't easy to display and to use with html pages and computer screens. PSs aren't useful anymore in e-mails, as one can edit inside the text (what wasn't possible in hand written letters). I guess that footnotes go the same way: they aren't useful anymore, as additional info can be added inside the text itself or simply linked on. If I do recall well, inline external links are bad because their targets can change after a while and become obsolete. In a perfect world, citations wouldn't point on, say, a newspaper article, but on a cached copy, or on some archiving (and trusted) web-site, and not only carry an URI, but a date. On wiki editor pov, this could be done simply by coding like this: As Untel said in LA Time, "bla bla bla" [[Citation:http://blabla.bla]] After edit, the thing could become [[Citation 11/1/2004:http://blabla.bla]], will simply display as [1], and would be a link on whether the cached page or the original one (maybe depending on whatever the original page has been modified or not). I don't know if wikipedia could handle the caching of those pages, but I suppose this to be legal, as google already does. (Only a little idea poping in my head) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 04:01:02 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 05:01:02 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: congratulations References: <4000C3F5.5010801@djini.de> Message-ID: <4000CA7E.1070200@yahoo.com> Elisabeth Bauer a ?crit: > Hello, > > I just wanted to congratulate the English wikipedia on Dannies > departure. I am sure the neutrality and objectivity of Wikipedia will > very much profit from it. I still have not really understood why he left. I can't help to think that it *can't* be just because of Jimbo's comments. ? From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sun Jan 11 04:07:21 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:07:21 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD In-Reply-To: <90ar5prxpVB@erik_moeller> References: <90ar5prxpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: On Jan 10, 2004, at 3:56 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: > So now you've made a bad situation worse: > 1) VfD doesn't have a clearly defined process > 2) VfD is treated by other pages and by sysops as policy > 3) Jimbo says that VfD isn't policy Actually, he said VfD isn't Policy, with an explicit capital P. I assume there's a significant distinction, though it's unclear to me. It may resolve the above quandary. Jimbo? Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sun Jan 11 04:58:04 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:58:04 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <4000AD89.30200@yahoo.com> References: <200401101729.50328.maveric149@yahoo.com> <4000AD89.30200@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Jan 10, 2004, at 8:57 PM, Anthere wrote: > I went to the article about clitoris for a tiny comparison, as a huge > number of african girls are circonsized as well (some of them being > french, as this is still practiced in secret among african > immigrants). It is also practiced in other countries; A minority, just > like masculine circoncized, but a relevant number anyway. > > There are no pictures of circonsision in the article. There should be (I think). Care to look for one? :) > And no picture in particular showing a natural clitoris with a label > saying "un-circoncized clitoris". > > What would you feel when seeing the pict of a perfectly classical (for > us) clitoris, with the label being not "clitoris" but being > "uncirconcized clitoris" ? Would it feel quite right ? > > Would it ? I understand your point, but I think it's a matter of context. If we show an "uncircumcised penis" (this all goes for "clitoris" too) next to a "penis", then yes, that is POV: one is implied to be "normal". If we show an "uncircumcised penis" next to a "circumcised penis" (as you did on [[circumcision]]) the implication is that the circumcised one had something done to it, namely a circumcision. That's not POV, that's fact, and it's also closer to your opinion. But hey, a penis is a penis is a penis, folks. > The topic of female circonsision is only very shortly mentionned in > two lines at the bottom of the article. And that's it. Not mentionned > in the anatomy. Not additional link. > > Now, I wonder what an african reading these two articles, one > proeminently talking about a practice he does not really know about, > and another hardly mentionning what is cultural norm to him, would > think. Your points here are truly valid. Let's fix the clitoris article. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 05:07:44 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 21:07:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genitalia Message-ID: <200401102107.44722.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >I respectfully disagree that the English wikipedia is first and >beforemost for the English speaking world. Unless you agree >to include most Europe for example, as most adults now speak >a reasonable amount of English. If they speak English well enough to be able to effectively use the English Wikipedia, then they are part of the English Wikipedia's audience. And we should always write to our audience within the bounds of NPOV. However, the primary audience of the English Wikipedia should still be native speakers. >We do not build a project with a special pov depending on >languages and cultures supposed to be associated to specific >country. Of course not! :) That is why I said 'within the bounds of NPOV'. It is more of a focus issue and it is about writting for your audience. That is why Wikibooks, for example, can use NPOV without having to fill textbooks (a specialized works of reference) with largely irrelevant side-topics. >An article on the English wikipedia is supposed to be neutral >for American readers, but supposed to be neutral for french >readers as well. If not (actually, it is not), we can't claim our >goal is to be neutral Focus and neutrality are two different things. Different cultures will have different wants and needs from a work of reference. If a large segment of your readership is interested in a certain aspect of a subject, then that aspect should have higher prominence in the article that deals with that subject. >What would you feel when seeing the pict of a perfectly classical >(for us) clitoris, with the label being not "clitoris" but being >"uncirconcized clitoris" ? Would it feel quite right ? We have already gone over this above where I said go ahead and use the wording 'intact'. Same goes here. >The topic of female circonsision is only very shortly mentionned in >two lines at the bottom of the article. And that's it. Not mentionned >in the anatomy. Not additional link. This proves my point about focus; Since we are a group of volunteers, I do not find it at all surprising that the topic of female circumcision is in this state in the English Wikipedia. It simply isn't on the minds of as many English speakers as I imagine it is on the minds of French speakers (many of whom, as you note, are from parts of Africa where this practice is common). So I would expect there to naturally be more of a need to elevate the issue of female circumcision to a higher level in the French Wikipedia as there is in the English one. Maybe even to a level where it would make sense to have a photo of the genitals of a circumsized female next to a photo the genitals of an intact female in an article that deals with female genitalia in general. If a large percentage of your readers would expect such a thing, then it should be there. That is focus and writing to your readership. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From smolensk at eunet.yu Sun Jan 11 06:27:16 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:27:16 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <200401100352.13863.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401100352.13863.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401110649.44629.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Saturday 10 January 2004 12:52, Daniel Mayer wrote: > And as already has been stated, a large number of penises are circumcised - > especially in the United States. I estimate that, of 3,000,000,000 available penises in the world, only around 650,000,000 are circumcised, while 2,350,000,000 are not. From smolensk at eunet.yu Sun Jan 11 06:27:36 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:27:36 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] footnotes and citations In-Reply-To: <005d01c3d779$229b3ec0$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> References: <20040110120009.9E659B804@mail.wikipedia.org> <005d01c3d779$229b3ec0$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Message-ID: <200401110706.40701.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Saturday 10 January 2004 13:56, Graham Burnett wrote: > > However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and > > citations. In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the > best > > of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can > be > > made visible if you want to trace the authority for something. > > This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, but didn't express too > well due to the imbibing of far too much home-made wine last night ;-) I was thinking about this problem. I think that probably the best way for solving it is introducing pseudo-namespaces "Footnote:" and "Citation:". These would display in the text as numbers, consistent with current URL inlining: Some text [http://site1.com], with a [[Footnote: This is a footnote]], and then a [http://site2.com], and a [[Citation: This Book by Someone]] would render: Some text [1], with a [2], and then a [3], and a [4] would render: Now, the simplest thing to do is having a link that leads to nowhere (#) and the text of the footnote/citation would be displayed as hover text (just as, when you hold your mouse over a link to an article for some time, the name of the article which realy is beign linked to is displayed). The proper thing to do, though it is a bit complicated, would be that, in addition to above, text of the footnote/citation is actually added on the fly to the Footnotes/References paragraph of the article, the link points to footnote/citation's anchor, and next to the footnote/citation there is a link (or more of them) that says "go back" and points to an anchor in the text next to the citation number. Perhaps, as the first solution, browser detection could be done, and browsers which are not capable of displaying hover text would be fed with [2: This is a footnote] text instead. From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 06:38:22 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:38:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures In-Reply-To: <90ar2e8hpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <20040111063822.70765.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> We have articles on [[Flour bomb]] and a couple of others that I asked about Wikipedia's liability on, and was told that it's not a problem. RickK Erik Moeller wrote: Christopher- > Step by step bomb making Could be legally problematic. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040110/89aa8b2d/attachment.htm From arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in Sun Jan 11 06:22:40 2004 From: arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in (Arvind Narayanan) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 11:52:40 +0530 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <200401100352.13863.maveric149@yahoo.com>; from maveric149@yahoo.com on Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:52:13AM -0800 References: <200401100352.13863.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040111115240.A9337@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:52:13AM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote: > And as already has been stated, a large number of penises are circumcised - > especially in the United States. > And as already has been stated, United States != world. [[Curcumcision]] says that a sixth of penises worldwide are circumcised. I would argue that that is not a large enough number in the current context. What about FGM? You're probably asking "well, what about it" because it doesn't happen in the United States. But since it is widespread in certain cultures should we have pictures of it alongside the female genitalia? Arvind -- Its all GNU to me From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 11 13:29:09 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 06:29:09 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Going Off in a Huff In-Reply-To: <4000CA7E.1070200@yahoo.com> Message-ID: People make mistakes, usually on both sides of any disputed issue. Usually, over time upon taking thought these mistakes can be corrected. A major project like Wikipedia with a bright future deserves handling with some perspective. One bad editor, RK, and one misjudgment, Jimbo's, do not somehow make an entire project worthless. Regarding Jimbo: I think it is important that you create an account under some persona, edit some articles, get into an edit war or two, and in general get grounded in the realities of this project. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 05:01:02 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: congratulations > > > > Elisabeth Bauer a ?crit: >> Hello, >> >> I just wanted to congratulate the English wikipedia on Dannies >> departure. I am sure the neutrality and objectivity of Wikipedia will >> very much profit from it. > > I still have not really understood why he left. I can't help to think > that it *can't* be just because of Jimbo's comments. > > ? > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 13:32:59 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 05:32:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the harassment and censorship. In-Reply-To: <20040111045817.8F93BB848@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040111133259.71720.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Anthere writes about Danny and Jimbo: > I still have not really understood why he left. I can't > help to think that it *can't* be just because of Jimbo's > comments. Your sarcasm towards Jimbo does not make Wikipedia a better place. Please desist. Danny has made it clear why he left. There are over 100,000 articles on Wikipedia, and he made sure that he had to get his way on every one that he edited. The first time he was rebuffed on *one* article, he deleted his account and ran away. Now some other user is running away as well, all because some people would rather blatantly censor information than jointly edit articles. In contrast, I have seen a few regular users on this very list get strongly rebuffed, and most of their edits rebuffed on some articles (not just one.) Yet they don't leave the project in a huff; most people here understand that this is a group effort that strives to incorporate multiple points of view. Those people that cannot stand the sight of points of view other than their own will eventually burn out. It is up to you which kind of user you would like to be. It is not just me who feels this way: Others agree that discussion is superior to politically motivated censorship: >From the article's talk page. "I just stumbled onto this article (I usually try to steer clear of things like this). But it would be wrong to remain silent on this one, Danny. This is nothing whatsoever wrong or innacurate with the last sentence of the material you have censored (it is factually accurate, just read the textbooks; if you don't like the adjectives then change those, but they are actually understated!), nor with the bulk of the quotations. The material is entirely relevant to the subject at hand. It is shameful of you to have played the silly game of expunging the material time and again. I don't intend to play that game or get involved in this any further, but I do hope that others with not only add back the material but make sure that Danny agrees to no more censorship based on his obviously extreme political biases. This is a real test for Wikipedia." This person is correct. By the way, Martin and Viajero are again *lying* about the content of the article and are deleting vas chunks of it. They are putting words into the mouth og Yassir Arafat and others, makign them out to be saying the opposite of what they actually are saying. I understand that both of these people have a hatred of Israel, but that does not give them the right to falsify information and censor material. Sadly, this "edit war" is not over. I also am having problems with Martin, as AGAIN he is treating me absuively on my own home page. I have already made clear that this person is forbidden to do so; I will not have people with pro-CI beliefs continually harass me. Robert __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 13:44:15 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 05:44:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment Message-ID: <20040111134415.22495.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment. He won't stop writing hateful notes to me on my home page. > Just so we wouldn't miss the point, you repeated > yourself six times. Don't worry, we all got the message. > We're just upset you didn't bugger off like you promised > to. Go away already American readers should know that "bugger off" means "fuck off". (It literally means "go fuck an animal, or "go have anal sex", depending on the context.) New users should be aware that Martin has also harassed me in the past by bullying me with his support of anti-Semitic Christian Identity posts by others; Even Danny admitted that these Christian Identity (if not Nazi posts) posts were anti-Semitic; he was the author of the "anonymous" letter to the Wiki-En list. (Funny, back then few people supported Danny. People disagreed with the proof offered simply because of personal hatred of me. I wonder what people think of Danny now that they now it was him whose message I forwarded? Will they now admit that blatant anti-Semitism is wrong? Or will they hate Danny?) I have not been in a debate with Martin; I have not been makign remarks on his page; I have not been discussing anythign with him at all. There is no reason for his continuted remarks. Yet anytime I make an edit that has to do with Jews and Israel, Martin goes haywire and begins a hateful harassment campaign against me. I don't know why he keeps doing this, but his behaviour is a violation of Wikipedia etiquette. Please do something to stop his harassment. Robert __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Sun Jan 11 14:12:20 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 14:12:20 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] "Harassment" Message-ID: <400159C4.16790.498293@localhost> Dear Robert. I don't take lessons in Netiquette from Robert "fuck you sick Nazi bastards" Kaiser. You made your bed. Lie in it. Incidentally, I see you still don't know the difference between a talk page and a home page. -Martin From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sun Jan 11 14:26:55 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 06:26:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <4000A1CF.7070901@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040111142655.40468.qmail@web25005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- Delirium wrote: > Now one might argue that circumcision is a bad > modification, while > shaving is a good (or neutral) modification, but > that's also a POV claim. > -Mark ForYourInformation: Shaving is considered a bad modification by many religious sects. Shaving is also discouraged by some mystics. There are lots of people who don't like shaving. I just wanted to show that it is very difficult to say that some claim is neutral. Most claims are POV :) How can we keep Wikipedia NPOV while most claims are POV? I think the best way is to present all claims and write "X says that Y is wrong" or "Z says that A is right", that is, reporting all POVs and giving references. When we write an article we should think "I don't know the truth, I am only a reporter, the reader will decide what is true". --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sun Jan 11 14:42:43 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 06:42:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <4000AD89.30200@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040111144243.95267.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > >>Wikipedia is not a source of information for > America only. And the rest > >>of the world does not necessarily want to hear > about America only. > I consider English Wikipedia as International, and I want it to be International. > I went to the article about clitoris for a tiny > comparison, as a huge > number of african girls are circonsized as well > > There are no pictures of circonsision in the > article. > > And no picture in particular showing a natural > clitoris with a label > saying "un-circoncized clitoris". I haven't visited the articles you mention, but if we don't have photos or diagrams we should add them ASAP, either as inline images or links to images or external links. --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 14:58:40 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 06:58:40 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401110658.40401.maveric149@yahoo.com> Arvind Narayanan wrote: >And as already has been stated, United States != world. >[[Curcumcision]] says that a sixth of penises worldwide are >circumcised. I would argue that that is not a large enough >number in the current context. Wrong. A sixth of the entire male population of the world is a huge number. But that is a moot issue since the article is in English and written for an English speaking audience. I would venture to guess that among male English speakers the percentage is even higher. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 15:00:34 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:00:34 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401110700.34344.maveric149@yahoo.com> Nikola Smolenski wrote: >I estimate that, of 3,000,000,000 available penises in the world, >only around 650,000,000 are circumcised, while 2,350,000,000 >are not. LOL! /Only/ 650,000,000. What an insanely small number! -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 15:02:36 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:02:36 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Going Off in a Huff Message-ID: <200401110702.36187.maveric149@yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >Regarding Jimbo: I think it is important that you create an account under >some persona, edit some articles, get into an edit war or two, and in >general get grounded in the realities of this project. Peter the Great did it - why not Jimbo? -- mav From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 15:22:44 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:22:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401110722.44670.maveric149@yahoo.com> Nikos-Optim wrote: >I consider English Wikipedia as International, and I >want it to be International. That is a rather odd statement since many languages (esp. French, Arabic and Spanish) are international. English just happens to be one of the most international (meaning there are people who speak English in many different nations). All those people are part of the English Wikipedia's audience. But as I've stated before there is a primary audience (those whose native language is English) and a secondary audience (those whose native language is something other than English). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From viajero at quilombo.nl Sun Jan 11 15:38:35 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:38:35 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Religious Zealotry 1 - Secular Humanism 0 (was: Re: Effective bullying strategy. (RK)) In-Reply-To: <20040109215338.GC1283@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Jimbo, Danny appealed to the list on Friday because of RK's belligerence ("bullying") over the "Peace Views" article. Cleverly, RK immediately shifted the terms of the debate from the underlying issues (how Palestinian POVs should be represented in WP) to one of "censorship". You fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Last fall, it was obvious to Danny, Zero, and me (and perhaps others) that the article in the original form (it has since been made less awful thanks to the good offices of Martin and others) was a ludicrous and transparent attempt to smuggle an anti-Palestinian editorial into Wikipedia. To those of us with any understanding of the issues (and I am by no means an expert) it wasn't a remotely meaningful representation of the Palestine position. In fact, the article was a canard. It implicitly cast Israel as the victim of apparent Palestinian duplicity with regard to the "peace process", which is of course inane; Israel is the occupying force in the Occupied Territories, it has a huge, well-equipped army, the backing of the USA, and between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. The Palestinians have zilch; the rest of the Arab world has basically abandoned them to their fate. The point is not whether those quotes of Arafat and others were "true" or "accurate" or whatever but they are essentially irreverent taken outside of the historical context and geopolitical reality of the current Palestinian situation. Let me draw an analogy: imagine someone submits -- just for the sake of argument -- an article on "Cuban views of the conflict between Cuba and the USA". It frames the issue as a debate between hardliners and compromise-seekers, noting that Fidel calls for the destruction of the USA in Spanish speeches and calls for reaching a compromise in English. The Cubans destroy the USA? What a joke! Such a comment or collection of comments -- if it were possible to take seriously -- would only be meaningful if presented in the context of Caribbean history and Cuba's internal political discourse. Now, back to the "Peace views" article. That you had a different reaction to the article I can only attribute to the fact that coverage of the Middle East in the American media is pretty bad these days, and it is nearly a fulltime occupation to keep well-informed. That's ok. But why couldn't you trust the opinion of a Danny, an Israeli citizen who could have explained to you that in Israel -- where the debate is more open and frank than in the US -- mainstream opinion would regard such an article as a bad joke, and that framing the debate in such as way is characteristic of the marginal fringe of the ultra-Zionist Right in Israel and their rather more numerous brethren in the USA, of whom RK is a prime example. How could you possible perceive Danny has having an agenda in his handling of this and fail to see RK's rabid Zionist zealotry reflected in practically every edit he makes on the Middle East, something patently obvious to anyone who has edited an article on the topic here. Correspondingly, how could you POSSIBLY accuse Danny of being bullying, when likewise those of us who have worked with him found him unceasingly well-informed, modest, and non-confrontational??? To repeat, the issue is not one of censoring the point of view of Arafat et al but presenting the issues in an intellectually honest manner, something that users like Danny, Zero, 172, Adam Carr, and others repeatedly demonstrate they are capable of doing, despite their own particular ideological leanings, and something that Robert is congenitally incapable of doing, whether it is Middle Eastern topics or alternative medicine, an area where he shows exactly the same kind of blind fanaticism and the bullying tactics that Danny denounced on Friday. You wrote: > RK has worked to present the varying > views of the Palestinians, and people who don't like the result just > delete it instead of work to improve it. Not true. It was perceived as shoddy work; it has nothing to do with censorship. Why should the onus be on us to include "bad" material in our articles? RK didn't take the trouble to integrate the quotes in a responsible way in a description of the peace process; he offered them in isolation as a blatant editorial position. We followed the existing -- admittedly imperfect -- system to vote to delete the material rather than use it. In closing, it is good that you involve yourself in these disputes, but unless you are intimately involved in the day-to-day editing process, interacting with other editors, and acquainting yourself with the issues, you run the risk -- as you have just done -- of making things worse. V. From viajero at quilombo.nl Sun Jan 11 15:44:14 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:44:14 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Personal attacks from Viajero are unacceptable In-Reply-To: <20040111013533.39346.qmail@web20313.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 01/10/04 at 05:35 PM, Robert said: > If you had taken the time to read the Wikipedia > anti-Zionism article, or just peruse its edit history, you > would know all this, On the first line of the fourth line of the article, it says: "The defining characteristic of anti-Zionism is therefore opposition to the existence of the State of Israel Ok. Provide us with concrete evidence that Danny and Zero have been pushing an "anti-Zionist agenda" on Wikipedia as you charge. I don't mean something Danny said to you on the telephone; I mean verifiable edits and comments on Talk pages. Show us where EXACTLY where their edits reflect activism in opposition of Israel. V. From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sun Jan 11 17:51:02 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:51:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading In-Reply-To: <20040111115240.A9337@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> Message-ID: <20040111175102.50175.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> A notice for everyone who writes often on Wikipedia: ***Users do not read the page; they just scan it!*** See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html Personally I agree completely with the article, which of course I haven't read but just scanned it and scrolled quickly from start to end picking interesting words to understand what it is all about. May you Have PEACE PROFOUND, --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From mt at mirko-thiessen.de Sun Jan 11 18:27:28 2004 From: mt at mirko-thiessen.de (Mirko Thiessen) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:27:28 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Going Off in a Huff In-Reply-To: <20040111045817.9FEC2B849@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040111045817.9FEC2B849@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <13025614115.20040111192728@mirko-thiessen.de> Fred Bauder wrote: > People make mistakes, usually on both sides of any disputed issue. Usually, > over time upon taking thought these mistakes can be corrected. A major > project like Wikipedia with a bright future deserves handling with some > perspective. One bad editor, RK, and one misjudgment, Jimbo's, do not > somehow make an entire project worthless. > Regarding Jimbo: I think it is important that you create an account under > some persona, edit some articles, get into an edit war or two, and in > general get grounded in the realities of this project. About edit wars and especially RK: It is difficult to imagine what it is like to deal with RK and his ilk if you are not involved. One year ago we had one of many discussions about banning RK. I argued against banning him, probably because at that point of time I did not make my own experience of being constantly insulted, accused and reverted. Now I did not have trouble with RK, since he apparently edits other topics than me, but there are others like him who prefer reverting and discrediting the opponent rather than discussing. So I think I know what it was like for Danny, and he has my respect for nonetheless bearing with RK. I also understand his reaction of leaving Wikipedia. RK has now a feeling of having something like an official backing for his annoying behaviour, just have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=RK. Therefore it will now be even more difficult to bring neutrality into the topics which are frequented by RK. We need more editors like Danny, not less. I hope that someone around here knows him good enough to persuade him to return. Mirko (Baldhur) From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sun Jan 11 18:57:39 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:57:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Edit War on Wikipedia:Conflicts between users Message-ID: Almost every day I look to the Wikipedia Website to add information, or perhaps -- even better -- to read some articles about something I didn't know much about. And outside of an occasional email to this list as the result of some navel-gazing, I tend to stay out of most of the disagreements over policy. In other words, I don't go looking to find a new reason for banning people. But I have found one today, thanks to Wik. As many of us have seen, Wik enters into more than his share of edit wars. I don't know his reasoning: is he just pig-headed? Does he enjoy pointless arguments? I don't know, & I really don't care. But it seems to me that when someone enters into an edit war over certain pages on Wikipedia, it should be grounds for some kind of serious reprimand, such as a ban for 1 to 3 days. One of those pages would be [[Wikipedia:Conflicts between users]]. Others could include VfD, [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], [[Wikipedia:Village Pump]], [[Wikipedia:Pages needing attention]] -- in short any page where discussion is important, & repeated reversions impedes that discussion. If there is a meeting, & someone acts in an obnoxious manner which prevents the meeting from continuing, that person can be ejected. That is what I'm arguing we do here: these pages are where members of Wikipedia conduct business, & must needs be kept free of reversions. What say everyone? Shall we accept this as a precedent & ban Wik, or is there a better solution? Geoff From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 11 22:23:46 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 14:23:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the censorship. Message-ID: <20040111222346.13970.qmail@web20302.mail.yahoo.com> Martin (MyRedDice) and Viajero are still engaged in censorship of the article on "Palestinian views of the peace process". While Danny deleted the entire article at once, Martin and Viajero started a series of over a dozen edits, removing each quote one at a time. They think that no one will notice, perhaps? The result is the same. They are deleting most of the _content_ of the article, resulting in the same censorship that a small but growing consensus here has condemned. Their justifications on the Talk page contain no references, no facts and no sources. They just have added dozens of paragraphs of personal opinion, and are using their own personal interpretations as grounds to delete all this material. That is not acceptable. If it is wrong when person X does it, it is wrong when anyone does it. Thus, I am reverting their mass deletions. The article, of course, does need some work. For instance, it would be a good idea to include a wider array of Palestinian views. The views of the average Palestinian are not given by the Palestinian Authority alone. A great many Palestinians sympathise with, and are members of, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They have their own views of the Peace Process with Israel, and these views should be reported. (Many members in these groups think that no such peace process should exist; they think Israel should be removed sooner rather than later.) We can also add more views of Palestinians in the pro-peace camp. Ironically, none of the pro-Arab people here have done anything of the sort. They just delete material. The only person who has added any well-referenced quotes at all showing this was *me*. So much for the false claims that people keep hurling at me. Also, we should add views of the Peace process by the European Union, Russia, the USA and Israel. What we must NOT do, however, is delete material that pro-Arab apologists find uncomfortable. That is not scholarship; that is just anti-Israeli propaganda. The censorship is POV. The only way to keep NPOV is give a wide array of Palestinian views, with quotes and sources, and allow readers to make up their own mind. On a related note, I also am disturbed that Martin is still making non-stop personal attacks on me on my own home page. As you all have seen, I was not discussing anything at all with him...he just came at me full throttle when this issue came up. He knows that such harassment is not acceptable. Stick to editing in an NPOV fashion, and stop trying to create a flame war. We have an encyclopedia to build. Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 00:48:25 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:48:25 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Edit War on Wikipedia:Conflicts between users Message-ID: <200401111648.25817.maveric149@yahoo.com> Geoff Burling wrote: >.... >But it seems to me that when someone enters into an >edit war over certain pages on Wikipedia, it should be >grounds for some kind of serious reprimand, such as a >ban for 1 to 3 days. Well we do business everywhere we edit around on Wikipedia, so I'll repeat my position that a pattern of entering into edit wars with non-obvious vandals should be considered a banable offense on a three strike basis (three such edit wars within a certain time period, perhaps). Confrontational people and those who don't care much about NPOV get into edit wars often. We want to encourage cooperation and NPOV edits, no? -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From dpbsmith at verizon.net Mon Jan 12 02:31:45 2004 From: dpbsmith at verizon.net (dpbsmith at verizon.net) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:31:45 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Genitalia Message-ID: <20040112023145.RGXO24265.out002.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Genitalia. Genitalia. Genitalia! g-e-n-I-t-a-l-i-a! Anagram for "TILE AGAIN." It's spelled with two I's. It ends in "Italia." I promised myself I wasn't going to say anything, but the subject has just been dragging on and on, and seeing the same misspelling over and over again in the subject line is like Chinese water torture. (Also: Gandhi, Nietzsche, and Charles M. Schulz. Not that I've seen any of their names misspelled here lately, but I just thought I'd deal with them now, since sooner or later they _will_ come up...) Ah, I feel much better now. Genitalia! From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 02:35:12 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 03:35:12 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop the harassment and censorship. References: <20040111045817.8F93BB848@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040111133259.71720.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400207E0.5070408@yahoo.com> Cher RK, Robert a ?crit: > Anthere writes about Danny and Jimbo: > >>I still have not really understood why he left. I can't >>help to think that it *can't* be just because of Jimbo's >>comments. > > > Your sarcasm towards Jimbo does not make Wikipedia a better > place. Please desist. You may choose to see it as sarcasm RK. It was not. You needed not to interprete in a negative way by default. I am essentially worried for Danny, and am even more worried for the impact on us all. You included. And Jimbo included. > Danny has made it clear why he left. There are over 100,000 > articles on Wikipedia, and he made sure that he had to get > his way on every one that he edited. The first time he was > rebuffed on *one* article, he deleted his account and ran > away. Now some other user is running away as well, all > because some people would rather blatantly censor > information than jointly edit articles. I do not see any blatant censorship. I just see pain and difficulty to realize we are different and will always be different. We will always have different opinions, and sometimes we will not even realize that others think different, till we are brutally confronted to the tructh. And when something is near our heart, it is seriously difficult to admit other opinions. Some take it more easily than others, because it is their nature to be less easily upset. Give time. We have plenty of time :-) > In contrast, I have seen a few regular users on this very > list get strongly rebuffed, and most of their edits > rebuffed on some articles (not just one.) Yet they don't > leave the project in a huff; most people here understand > that this is a group effort that strives to incorporate > multiple points of view. All people here are commited to the group effort. Being commited does not mean we all do it right and perfect from the first try. It is not perfection that is most valuable, it is constant improvement. > Those people that cannot stand the sight of points of view > other than their own will eventually burn out. It is up to > you which kind of user you would like to be. It is not the sight of the other points of view that is unbearable sometimes, to the point of leaving the project. It is the fact that sometimes we can't work all together with civility. All of us have a topic that can be burning, even genitalia. Is that a reason not to stay civil ? Many important things can be said without offending others. And actually, it often works better to stay polite. And not only is it best for both parties to stay polite, but it is best to assume politeness in case of a doubt. It is more confortable for the spirit. If temper is lost at some point, it works wonders to apology or at least to adopt a more friendly behavior after the crisis is resolved. In a crisis situation, some will scream hell, some will stay cold and attack the other, some will silently avoid the area for a while, some will quit entirely. All attitudes are ok. Anyone can adopt one of this attitude depending on his personality. It is respectful to accept all attitudes. As long as the group recovers from the crisis and go on respecting each member. Human capital is too precious for us. > It is not just me who feels this way: Others agree that > discussion is superior to politically motivated censorship: >>From the article's talk page. > > > "I just stumbled onto this article (I usually try to steer > clear of things like this). But it would be wrong to remain > silent on this one, Danny. This is nothing whatsoever wrong > or innacurate with the last sentence of the material you > have censored (it is factually accurate, just read the > textbooks; if you don't like the adjectives then change > those, but they are actually understated!), nor with the > bulk of the quotations. The material is entirely relevant > to the subject at hand. It is shameful of you to have > played the silly game of expunging the material time and > again. I don't intend to play that game or get involved in > this any further, but I do hope that others with not only > add back the material but make sure that Danny agrees to no > more censorship based on his obviously extreme political > biases. This is a real test for Wikipedia." > > This person is correct. > > By the way, Martin and Viajero are again *lying* about the > content of the article and are deleting vas chunks of it. > They are putting words into the mouth og Yassir Arafat and > others, makign them out to be saying the opposite of what > they actually are saying. > > I understand that both of these people have a hatred of > Israel, but that does not give them the right to falsify > information and censor material. Sadly, this "edit war" is > not over. > > I also am having problems with Martin, as AGAIN he is > treating me absuively on my own home page. I have already > made clear that this person is forbidden to do so; I will > not have people with pro-CI beliefs continually harass me. > > > Robert > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 02:40:41 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 03:40:41 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Genitalia References: <20040112023145.RGXO24265.out002.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Message-ID: <40020929.4080407@yahoo.com> OK, if you wish. Just for references, because such pictures are not easy to find. I recommand http://tropiquesante.ifrance.com/tropiquesante/biblio/doc/doc1.htm for female circonsision (or whatever the spelling). The article is very long, so can't be used as pict reference. I recommand chapter III. dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: > Genitalia. Genitalia. Genitalia! g-e-n-I-t-a-l-i-a! Anagram for "TILE AGAIN." > It's spelled with two I's. It ends in "Italia." > > I promised myself I wasn't going to say anything, but the subject has just > been dragging on and on, and seeing the same misspelling over and over again > in the subject line is like Chinese water torture. > > (Also: Gandhi, Nietzsche, and Charles M. Schulz. Not that I've seen any of > their names misspelled here lately, but I just thought I'd deal with them > now, since sooner or later they _will_ come up...) > > Ah, I feel much better now. > > Genitalia! From shebs at apple.com Mon Jan 12 02:49:01 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 18:49:01 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment In-Reply-To: <20040111134415.22495.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040111134415.22495.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40020B1D.7060607@apple.com> Robert wrote: >Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment. He won't stop >writing hateful notes to me on my home page. > Oh, the chutzpah... I'm still waiting for an apology from you for calling me a Nazi and calling Wikipedia "Nazipedia". Until that happens you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect. Stan Just as a reminder, here is a copy of what RK sent to all of us at the beginning of October: "Fuck you sick Nazi bastards. After Stevertigo was exposed for being a Nazi (and this was PROVEN, not alleged) you sick Nazi bastards began harassing me and vandalizing my home page. You lied about him and his edits, falsely accused me of saying things that SV wrote, and then attacked me? Then you accuse ME of being a Nazi? Then you harassed me on my own home page, and then BANNED me when I pointd out that such behaviour is wrong? Never in my life I have ever seen such a community of violent Jew haters. Nor, for that matter, such a bunch of cowardly Jews, who privately write me that they all agree with me, but publicly refuse to say their names. Fine. You win. Nazipedia it is. I am gone. But from now on the word will *widely* spread about the violent anti-Semitism that Wikipedia encourages, the way that it allows Nazis free reign, and the way it bans those who speak out against hatespeech. You've just bought yourselves bad publicity, and a well deserved reputation as a home for lying, leftist anti-Semites. Goodbye. Robert RK" From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 03:27:53 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:27:53 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Conflict resolution Message-ID: <200401111927.53348.maveric149@yahoo.com> OK - I have had enough of the badly organized state of conflict resolution in Wikipedia right now, so I've tried to summarize the escalating scale of conflict resolution in five easy steps. Please help me write this page and the very important associated pages [[Wikipedia:Requests for mediation]], [[Wikipedia:Mediation guidelines]], [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration]], and [[Wikipedia:Arbitration guidelines]]. Join the fun at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From jwales at bomis.com Mon Jan 12 03:37:09 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:37:09 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the harassment and censorship. In-Reply-To: <20040111133259.71720.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040111045817.8F93BB848@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040111133259.71720.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040112033709.GG3714@joey.bomis.com> Robert wrote: > Danny has made it clear why he left. There are over 100,000 > articles on Wikipedia, and he made sure that he had to get > his way on every one that he edited. No, I think the reason he threatened to leave was that I was personally rude to him in a way that's totally out of character for me, and not becoming my position around here. My actions threatened a public loss of face for him that he didn't deserve, and I deeply regret it. I do not agree with the deletion of the content in question, but my treatment of Danny was unacceptable, and I'm doing what I can to take it back and rectify the situation. This is really a proper issue for arbitration, not for me, and I should have stepped back and let the process work. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Mon Jan 12 03:44:34 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:44:34 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Going Off in a Huff In-Reply-To: <200401110702.36187.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401110702.36187.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040112034434.GH3714@joey.bomis.com> Daniel Mayer wrote: > Fred Bauder wrote: > >Regarding Jimbo: I think it is important that you create an account under > >some persona, edit some articles, get into an edit war or two, and in > >general get grounded in the realities of this project. > > Peter the Great did it - why not Jimbo? Ah, my hero. ;-) But, yes, I accept that I should not have spoken so harshly at the beginning. Here's the problem, basically. My own political opinion in the Israeli/Palestinian situation is not very far from RK's. (I don't know his position in detail, so if it's horrifying, please don't take me to be endorsing that.) Because of that, I should recuse myself from further deliberations, and offer my apologies to Danny for letting my sympathy for Rk's position to turn into sympathy for RK, which MAY have been warranted or NOT. But that's really no longer for me to decide, since we have an arbitration committee. --Jimbo From ruimu at uestc.edu.cn Mon Jan 12 04:41:52 2004 From: ruimu at uestc.edu.cn (Ruimu) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:41:52 +0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the censorship. References: <273870589.26248@uestc.edu.cn> Message-ID: <273881051.31652@uestc.edu.cn> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert" To: Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 6:23 AM Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the censorship. > The result is the same. They are deleting most of the > _content_ of the article, resulting in the same censorship > that a small but growing consensus here has condemned. I didn't see any consensus, and calling those edits censorship is unfair. Reading the [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], I feel this article is more or less a trial, with the sum of all proofs, with a public prosecutor and so on. The intent of this trial is to prove that some Palestinian officials are lying. My reaction to this is: 1/ You are trying to prove that 1+1 = 2, all successful politicians are "lying" this way, Bush and Chirac are equals in the sport, nothing new under the sun. 2/ Such a mundane trial has no place in an encyclopedia, but we may disagree on what is encyclopedic. 3/ If this article really has a place in Wikipedia, it should by written mainly by Palestinians, with a little paragraph stating that some of them may say something in English and something else in Arabic. 4/ If the complete trial has a place in Wikipedia, what I doubt, it should be balanced with a similar trial on Israelis point of view about Peace. About "consensus", what I did see here, is a consensus of people regreting the departure of Danny. And do call me "leftist", I am not. In Europe, you may find many people from the right wing (what I am not either) that /you/ would call "pro-palestinian". Things are not black and white. From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 04:45:58 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:45:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <200401110722.44670.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040112044558.66612.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Who decided which is the "primary" and the "secondary audience" of the English Wikipedia and when this decision took place? Thanks, --Optim --- Daniel Mayer wrote: > Nikos-Optim wrote: > >I consider English Wikipedia as International, and > I > >want it to be International. > > That is a rather odd statement since many languages > (esp. French, Arabic and > Spanish) are international. English just happens to > be one of the most > international (meaning there are people who speak > English in many different > nations). > > All those people are part of the English Wikipedia's > audience. > > But as I've stated before there is a primary > audience (those whose native > language is English) and a secondary audience (those > whose native language is > something other than English). > > -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 04:55:12 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:55:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Genitalia In-Reply-To: <40020929.4080407@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040112045512.47308.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> are there any similar resources in English? damn, I was learning French for many years in school but I only remember je m'appelle now :))) Thanks --Optim --- Anthere wrote: > OK, if you wish. > > Just for references, because such pictures are not > easy to find. I > recommand > http://tropiquesante.ifrance.com/tropiquesante/biblio/doc/doc1.htm > for > female circonsision (or whatever the spelling). > > The article is very long, so can't be used as pict > reference. I > recommand chapter III. > > > > dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: > > Genitalia. Genitalia. Genitalia! > g-e-n-I-t-a-l-i-a! Anagram for "TILE AGAIN." > > It's spelled with two I's. It ends in "Italia." > > > > I promised myself I wasn't going to say anything, > but the subject has just > > been dragging on and on, and seeing the same > misspelling over and over again > > in the subject line is like Chinese water torture. > > > > (Also: Gandhi, Nietzsche, and Charles M. Schulz. > Not that I've seen any of > > their names misspelled here lately, but I just > thought I'd deal with them > > now, since sooner or later they _will_ come up...) > > > > Ah, I feel much better now. > > > > Genitalia! > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in Mon Jan 12 05:46:23 2004 From: arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in (Arvind Narayanan) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 11:16:23 +0530 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading In-Reply-To: <20040111175102.50175.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>; from optim81@yahoo.co.uk on Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 09:51:02AM -0800 References: <20040111115240.A9337@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <20040111175102.50175.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 09:51:02AM -0800, Nikos-Optim wrote: > A notice for everyone who writes often on Wikipedia: > > ***Users do not read the page; they just scan it!*** > > See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html > I've read this (the whole series); it applies to marketers etc who want to "push" information on to readers and not to an academic entity where readers come to _get_ information. The style of an encyclopedia should be scholarly, more like a book than a brochure. Nonetheless several of the ideas in those articles are general and would apply to us as well, such as express only one idea per paragraph. Arvind -- Its all GNU to me From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 06:44:43 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:44:43 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Genitalia References: <40020929.4080407@yahoo.com> <20040112045512.47308.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4002425B.6020406@yahoo.com> I looked, but did not find one with such an approach :-( Nikos-Optim a ?crit: > are there any similar resources in English? > > damn, I was learning French for many years in school > but I only remember je m'appelle now :))) > > Thanks > --Optim > > --- Anthere wrote: > >>OK, if you wish. >> >>Just for references, because such pictures are not >>easy to find. I >>recommand >> > > http://tropiquesante.ifrance.com/tropiquesante/biblio/doc/doc1.htm > >>for >>female circonsision (or whatever the spelling). >> >>The article is very long, so can't be used as pict >>reference. I >>recommand chapter III. >> >> >> >>dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit: >> >>>Genitalia. Genitalia. Genitalia! >> >>g-e-n-I-t-a-l-i-a! Anagram for "TILE AGAIN." >> >>>It's spelled with two I's. It ends in "Italia." >>> >>>I promised myself I wasn't going to say anything, >> >>but the subject has just >> >>>been dragging on and on, and seeing the same >> >>misspelling over and over again >> >>>in the subject line is like Chinese water torture. >>> >>>(Also: Gandhi, Nietzsche, and Charles M. Schulz. >> >>Not that I've seen any of >> >>>their names misspelled here lately, but I just >> >>thought I'd deal with them >> >>>now, since sooner or later they _will_ come up...) >>> >>>Ah, I feel much better now. >>> >>>Genitalia! >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>WikiEN-l mailing list >>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 07:06:41 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:06:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: the price we pay Message-ID: <20040112070641.77929.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: zero 0000 Subject: the price we pay Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 05:09:58 -0800 (PST) Size: 5101 Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040111/21538157/attachment.eml From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 07:25:43 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:25:43 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401112325.43193.maveric149@yahoo.com> Optim wrote: >Who decided which is the "primary" and the "secondary >audience" of the English Wikipedia and when this >decision took place? It is called writing to your audience and is an age-old and fundamental concept. All it mainly does is instruct us on the focus and the order in which we organize information; The cultural expectations on what constitutes the proper coverage of a subject is going to be different for different cultures and in different languages. Even what constitutes an encyclopedia differs by culture and language. Same is true for the ordering of actual articles - in one culture some topics concerning the subject are more important than they are in another culture. So the order in which those topics are discussed in the article may differ. All English speakers are the audience of the English Wikipedia, but native readers - especially monolingual ones - will expect and need to have information organized in a way that is most useful and familiar to them. Replace "English" with any other language and the same applies there as well. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Mon Jan 12 08:16:08 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 02:16:08 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the harassment and censorship. In-Reply-To: <20040111133259.71720.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040111133259.71720.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400257C8.1070805@rufus.d2g.com> Robert wrote: >In contrast, I have seen a few regular users on this very >list get strongly rebuffed, and most of their edits >rebuffed on some articles (not just one.) Yet they don't >leave the project in a huff; most people here understand >that this is a group effort that strives to incorporate >multiple points of view. > > As I recall, you called us all "Nazis" and left this project in a huff over a previous edit war, so you might not be the best person to give us all advice on that particular point. -Mark From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Mon Jan 12 09:34:42 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 09:34:42 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment In-Reply-To: <20040111134415.22495.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040111134415.22495.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Robert writes: > American readers should know that "bugger off" means "fuck off". British Wikipedians (of whom Martin is one) would know full well that "Bugger Off" is *far* more polite than "fuck off". Its akin to "Piss Off" in the US. Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of endearment. It is my opinion that "Bugger Off" is also considerably more polite than: "Fuck you sick Nazi bastards" RK, while I don't agree with the sentiment, I can well understand why people want you to piss off. You're utterly incapable of playing well with others. PS : Didn't you leave, already? -- Gareth Owen "It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia." -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate From daniwo59 at aol.com Mon Jan 12 09:38:19 2004 From: daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 04:38:19 EST Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello Message-ID: Hi Well, well, it's been a while. First, I want to thank everyone for the kind words that have been said to me and about me, both publically and privately. I sincerely appreciate it. I also want to thank Jimbo, for bending over backwards to accommodate me while keeping within the Wiki guidelines. If I have been stubborn or said anything that offended him, I apologize here, publically. I admit that I was skeptical at first, but I believe that his efforts in bringing about arbitration and dialogue will lead to a greater spirit of camaraderie among everyone who participates in Wikipedia. I also believe that this spirit of camaraderie and partnership is the best way to pursue and promote knowledge, which is certainly our goal. Given all that, I would like to apologize to everyone if my (rash) departure created a stir. I have reconsidered my position and decided to accept Jimbo's offer of bringing this dispute before the arbitration committee, no strings attached. I understand that the issues to be discussed will include my behavior regarding the text in question, but I hope they will also cover the issue of bullying on a much wider level. I would also like to ask that, if possible, someone who knows how restore my personal pages. Whatever happens, I am proud of Wikipedia and would like to have some reminder somewhere that I played some little part in building it. Thanks, Danny Wool -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040112/4ab59fd9/attachment.htm From pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Mon Jan 12 11:11:34 2004 From: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org (Pedro Fortuny) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:11:34 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading In-Reply-To: <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> References: <20040111115240.A9337@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <20040111175102.50175.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> Message-ID: <20040112111134.GA12399@SDF-EU.ORG> As a matter of fact, after scannig those lines at useit.com, one gets the impression that it is the same as with books. Good readers (and people reading WP articles are -for my part- assumed to be good readers do not read word by word EVER. Even a book. It is absolutely hideous and the worst way to get information. Only in the interent people read faster because they do not look for verbose info (even less for style). One idea per paragraph is a basic style concept. highlighting, sub-headings. lists, etc.. well that is pretty obvious if the reader looks for SPECIFIC DETAILS. Not necessarily so in an encyclopedia (which needs to give also circumstancial details). etc... In any case, good sectioning, structuring and heading are the keys for any text to be started to be read. Pedro. -- Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 12:04:13 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 04:04:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. Message-ID: <20040112120413.94909.qmail@web21503.mail.yahoo.com> I want to make a serious proposal about the handling of problem pages. As we all know, there are some pages which appear to be destined to be battlegrounds forever. Many of the Middle-Eastern pages are in this category. Contrary to what we would like, such pages do NOT eventually settle into an acceptable state. What actually happens is that the current set of contestants get tired then the article remains dormant (often in a fairly appalling state) for a while until a new set of contestants come along and start the war up again. In this process, excellent portions of the article inevitably become lost or distorted and there is nearly always some arrant nonsense present. The article does NOT steadily get better over time but just oscillates between several degrees of poverty. What I'm saying is that our current model DOES NOT WORK AND WILL NEVER WORK for some types of pages. Therefore, we have to change the model. I propose that for particularly problematic topics there are two versions. One is the "official version" which is write-protected. The official version is what readers get when they click on links. The other is the "draft version", which can be editted. Then there is some standard procedure (a committee?) by which the draft version can be copied to the official version. This is better than the present system of page protection because it does not freeze page development. It allows additions and variations to be tried out and fought over off-line, then draft editions achieving some amount of consensus can be made official. The average quality of the article as seen by outsiders would be greatly improved. Anyway, please consider it or improve on it. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From viajero at quilombo.nl Mon Jan 12 12:29:44 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:29:44 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. In-Reply-To: <20040112120413.94909.qmail@web21503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Zero, welcome to the list. I agree entirely with Zero's assessment of these hot-spots, few in number but eternally contentious. Aside from content issues, many of these articles are simply BAD PROSE; they bear the scars of too many edit-wars. My only reservation is one of strictly practical grounds; since the wikipedia software, like everything else here, is written by volunteers, we probably shouldn't depend on substantial changes to the underlying software, which such a scheme, at first glance, suggests. Our best bet -- at least in the short-term -- would be to try to develop organizational strategies *within* the existing system. For example, leaving the main article read-only and shifting ALL editorial development to the corresponding Talk page and having only a committee or certain designated users update the "official" version as needed. Technically speaking, this would require no changes; perhaps just a message at the top of the page. However, I can already hear the complaints: it would be counter-intuitive, managerial, "cabal-forming", and -- above all -- counter the wiki spirit of "you can edit this page right now!". But perhaps Zero is right: perhaps the original wiki conception doesn't work for every page in the encyclopedia. V. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 14:22:09 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 09:22:09 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views Message-ID: Libertarian alleged: > It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried > mediating on at least one issue (their mind was made up > already but they were pretending to mediate), but when I > confronted them with FACTS and EVIDENCE, they quietly > withdrew from the mediation. This is a > clear case of dishonesty, but never mind. I gave you all the help you asked for; you stopped asking for help, so I stopped helping. If you want more help, please ask for it. Criticizing your helper (for not helping you enough) is not going to get you as much help as ASKING FOR HELP. Libertarian also seems to think: > If flat-earth theory is given the same legitimacy as what > science accepts the shape of the earth to be, Wikipedia > loses its credibility. This argument is not sound, because it ASSUMES that Wikipedia gives legitimacy to flat earth, and that it gives legitimacy to what science accepts. 1. The [[flat earth]] article, which I helped edit, says in its opening sentence that the theory is "opposed to the view of modern science" 2. The Wikipedia neither endorses nor opposes the findings of modern science: it merely REPORTS these findings. If scientists make a new discovery, and other scientists are able to replicate these findings, we change our science articles accordingly. If enough scientists challenge a prevalent view, then we report the existence of that minority and explain why they hold contrary views. Libertartian also complained that: > He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the > reason that it has not evolved into real storehouse of > knowledge. To some extent, this is true. I have been "shouted down" occasionally; on-line discussion is not a perfect process, and a WikiWiki is not a perfect medium. If you have alternatives, please suggest them. But to the extent that any of our articles don't provide real knowledge, I would venture to say that the biggest problem is that we have only begun, and we have only a small volunteer staff. When Britannica or Americana encyclopedias get ready to issue a new edition, they HIRE hundreds of editors and pay REAL MONEY for articles. Our goal is to make a free encyclopedia: free as in free speech, as well as free as in free beer. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 15:24:25 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:24:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly In-Reply-To: <20040112120012.12F01B844@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> This is getting really ugly. A dozen people have nmade personal attacks on me, all of them falsely saying that I am making personal attacks. Then an obviously anti-Israeli crowd is trying to define reality by voting, and is deleting vast amounts of proven facts in order to promote pro-Arab POV. Facts are not defined by votes. Only hatred is. If the consensus is that Wikipedia should promote anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and hateful crowds ganging up on one user, then that is precisely the reputation that it will get offline. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 15:29:57 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:29:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly Message-ID: Let's not gang up on Robert. If anyone feels an urge to "attack" a contributor, feel free to pick on me; I'm tough; I can take it. Hey, Sheldon Rampton, you outrageous liar, nyaah nyaah boo boo! Uncle Ed (taking the gloves off) From fredbaud at ctelco.net Mon Jan 12 15:35:51 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 08:35:51 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly In-Reply-To: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Generally, although I would not expect you to admit it, Wikipedia articles have a somewhat pro-Israeli bias. There just aren't a lot of Arabs or Palestinians showing up here. Most pro-Palestinian edits are coming from a liberal Israeli point of view such as Danny's Fred > From: Robert > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:24:25 -0800 (PST) > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly > > This is getting really ugly. A dozen people have nmade > personal attacks on me, all of them falsely saying that I > am making personal attacks. > > Then an obviously anti-Israeli crowd is trying to define > reality by voting, and is deleting vast amounts of proven > facts in order to promote pro-Arab POV. > > Facts are not defined by votes. Only hatred is. > > If the consensus is that Wikipedia should promote > anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and hateful crowds ganging up > on one user, then that is precisely the reputation that it > will get offline. > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 15:37:51 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:37:51 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the harassment and censorship. Message-ID: Mark, Robert made a general point about decorum and policy of this list. You replied with some personal remarks. * "You ... left this project in a huff" * "You ... might not be the best person" Let's try not to do that, shall we? Ed Poor Mailing List Administrator Wikien-l From gutza at moongate.ro Mon Jan 12 15:42:07 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:42:07 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly In-Reply-To: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4002C04F.2070201@moongate.ro> Robert wrote: >If the consensus is that Wikipedia should promote >anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and hateful crowds ganging up >on one user, then that is precisely the reputation that it >will get offline. > > Here we go again... I could never follow up on all the pro/anti-Semitism wars on Wikipedia, but *everything else aside*, I find it very peculiar that all have one single thing in common: you on one side and hateful crowds of anti-Zionists and anti-Semits and soon-to-be-Nazis on the other. Doesn't this strike you as too much of a coincidence as well? Maybe they're anti-RK, not anti-Semitic, ever thought of that? Seriously. Did it ever cross your mind? --Gutza From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 15:42:16 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:42:16 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. Message-ID: I like Zero's proposal about having twin versions: official and draft. I've thinking about this for several weeks, ever since the nice folks at [[talk:Silesia]] asked me to help mediate. Perhaps we could protect the official version, and trust admins to move consensus text into it. An alternate or working version could be at, e.g., [[Silesia (draft)]] and purposely left unprotected. Needless to say -- which is why I'm saying it! -- is that any admin who is a party to an edit war or otherwise is distrusted by those working on the draft, should not be the one to move "agreed-upon" text to the official article. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From ebeins at hotmail.com Fri Jan 9 17:34:05 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 09:34:05 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] The Belief (Re: WikiLyrics References: <004501c3d61b$dffd0cf0$c800a8c0@eclipse> <1073618234.2414.9.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> Message-ID: "cprompt" ???g???l???s?D :1073618234.2414.9.camel at chai.snacksoft.com... > I believe that lyrics should be under fair use, and I think that most artists would agree with me. We believe many things, few of which are legally true. Few! Many artists claim that it is their recording company/publisher that are territorial re: copyright, not themselves, that they are only open-minded freewheeling artists! Apparently they're not open-minded enough to stand up to their jefes anyway! -- ___________________________ Menchi From shebs at apple.com Mon Jan 12 16:31:09 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 08:31:09 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly In-Reply-To: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4002CBCD.3050701@apple.com> Not only have you yourself made the ugliest and most hateful personal attacks that I've yet seen on Wikipedia, you then have the unmitigated gall to pretend that you haven't done anything. It doesn't say much for Wikipedia governance that you haven't been banned forever for your unacceptable actions. Stan Robert wrote: >This is getting really ugly. A dozen people have nmade >personal attacks on me, all of them falsely saying that I >am making personal attacks. > >Then an obviously anti-Israeli crowd is trying to define >reality by voting, and is deleting vast amounts of proven >facts in order to promote pro-Arab POV. > >Facts are not defined by votes. Only hatred is. > >If the consensus is that Wikipedia should promote >anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and hateful crowds ganging up >on one user, then that is precisely the reputation that it >will get offline. > > > >__________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes >http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 16:33:54 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 11:33:54 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Avoid personal remarks Message-ID: I would like to remind all of us that discussions on this mailing list are more useful when we avoid personal remarks. Let's stick to the issues, which are difficult enough. Here are examples of personal remarks: * Sheldon, stop being an ass; yer pissing me off * you sick Nazi bastards * You lied * you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect * community of violent Jew haters I'll let you all decide who said which of these gems, but I think we'll all agree that they're not the sparkling jewels of wit we may have thought when we wrote them. (I wish I could take back my own, er, contribution to this parade of shame.) Ed Poor Wikien-l admin From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 16:43:13 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 08:43:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040112164313.50711.qmail@web60604.mail.yahoo.com> Glad to see you reconsidered, Danny. Welcome back. RickK daniwo59 at aol.com wrote: Hi Well, well, it's been a while. First, I want to thank everyone for the kind words that have been said to me and about me, both publically and privately. I sincerely appreciate it. I also want to thank Jimbo, for bending over backwards to accommodate me while keeping within the Wiki guidelines. If I have been stubborn or said anything that offended him, I apologize here, publically. I admit that I was skeptical at first, but I believe that his efforts in bringing about arbitration and dialogue will lead to a greater spirit of camaraderie among everyone who participates in Wikipedia. I also believe that this spirit of camaraderie and partnership is the best way to pursue and promote knowledge, which is certainly our goal. Given all that, I would like to apologize to everyone if my (rash) departure created a stir. I have reconsidered my position and decided to accept Jimbo's offer of bringing this dispute before the arbitration committee, no strings attached. I understand that the issues to be discussed will include my behavior regarding the text in question, but I hope they will also cover the issue of bullying on a much wider level. I would also like to ask that, if possible, someone who knows how restore my personal pages. Whatever happens, I am proud of Wikipedia and would like to have some reminder somewhere that I played some little part in building it. Thanks, Danny Wool _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040112/9b09088b/attachment.htm From sheldon.rampton at verizon.net Mon Jan 12 17:13:21 2004 From: sheldon.rampton at verizon.net (Sheldon Rampton) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 11:13:21 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: This is getting ugly In-Reply-To: <20040112163114.3C6F4B83E@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040112163114.3C6F4B83E@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Ed Poor wrote: >Hey, Sheldon Rampton, you outrageous liar, nyaah nyaah boo boo! Oh yeah? Well, your mother wears army boots! Let's meet in the playground after school and settle this once and for all! --Sheldon Rampton From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 17:13:52 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 09:13:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello In-Reply-To: <20040112164313.50711.qmail@web60604.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040112171352.60396.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Welcome back Danny. I haven't watch what happened and I don't know why you left, but I like to see old users coming back in the community. May you have PEACE PROFOUND, --Optim --- Rick wrote: > Glad to see you reconsidered, Danny. Welcome back. > > RickK > > daniwo59 at aol.com wrote: > Hi > > Well, well, it's been a while. First, I want to > thank everyone for the kind words that have been > said to me and about me, both publically and > privately. I sincerely appreciate it. > > I also want to thank Jimbo, for bending over > backwards to accommodate me while keeping within the > Wiki guidelines. If I have been stubborn or said > anything that offended him, I apologize here, > publically. I admit that I was skeptical at first, > but I believe that his efforts in bringing about > arbitration and dialogue will lead to a greater > spirit of camaraderie among everyone who > participates in Wikipedia. I also believe that this > spirit of camaraderie and partnership is the best > way to pursue and promote knowledge, which is > certainly our goal. > > Given all that, I would like to apologize to > everyone if my (rash) departure created a stir. I > have reconsidered my position and decided to accept > Jimbo's offer of bringing this dispute before the > arbitration committee, no strings attached. I > understand that the issues to be discussed will > include my behavior regarding the text in question, > but I hope they will also cover the issue of > bullying on a much wider level. > > I would also like to ask that, if possible, someone > who knows how restore my personal pages. Whatever > happens, I am proud of Wikipedia and would like to > have some reminder somewhere that I played some > little part in building it. > > Thanks, > > Danny Wool > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes> _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 17:16:35 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:16:35 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting silly (was: This is getting ugly) Message-ID: LOL :-) Ed Poor wrote: >Hey, Sheldon Rampton, you outrageous liar, nyaah nyaah boo boo! Oh yeah? Well, your mother wears army boots! Let's meet in the playground after school and settle this once and for all! --Sheldon Rampton From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 18:05:46 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:05:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Do not confuse vague allegations with specific edits In-Reply-To: <20040112163114.719F5B840@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040112180546.4998.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> > Here we go again... I could never follow up on all the > pro/anti-Semitism wars on Wikipedia, but *everything else > aside*, I find it very peculiar that all have one single > thing in common: you on one side and hateful crowds > of anti-Zionists and anti-Semits and soon-to-be-Nazis > on the other. First off, you are confused about word the word "anti-Zionist" means. Please read the new, improved article on this topic which Danny, myself, and Adam Carr all worked on. Danny is anti-Zionist...but that doesn't make him an anti-Semite out for blood. Members of my own family are non-Zionist and anti-Zionist, and they don't hate the Jews. (That being said, most anti-Zionists today also have anti-Semitic views. The problem is that people are using the same word ("anti-Zionism") to refer to many different things. Last year, no one saw this problem. After I made this point in new ways, a number of times, others here finally figured that out. Hence the new improved article. > Doesn't this strike you as too much of a coincidence as > well? Why would it be coincidence that anti-Semite would not like a Jew? It would be odd if they loved Jews! > Maybe they're anti-RK, not anti-Semitic, ever thought of > that? Seriously. Did it ever cross your mind? No, and I think the problem is that you have no idea what I was talking about. I was talking about the many explicitly anti-Semitic posts made by a number of Wikipedia users, which were well-documented. What caused trhew problem was that Martin and a few others here began to defend this explicitly anti-Semitic Nazi material as correct. (They even denied that it was anti-Semitic.) When it was proven (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that large amounts of anti-Semitic were being pushed on Wikipedia, the response on this list was to defend the Nazi material and make personal attacks on me. (People imagined that it was I who wrote the analysis. Actually, it was written by someone else. I can forward you copy of the posting.) So, no, it didn't cross my mind that people who accept Nazi propaganda are not anti-Semitic. The term "anti-Semitic" is the only one possible for people who defend NAzi (or Christian Identity) anti-Jewish propaganda. (And again, you must remember that I talking about very specific edits, which I can show you. This is not a vague allegation.) What made me sad was that other Jewish people on Wikipedia agreed with me, and wrote me letters off-line, but they refused to say so on line. They stated that their were afraid that Wiki-En users would gang up on them as well. (They were probably correct.) Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 18:08:11 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:08:11 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401112325.43193.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4002E28B.6070600@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Optim wrote: > >>Who decided which is the "primary" and the "secondary >>audience" of the English Wikipedia and when this >>decision took place? > All English speakers are the audience of the English Wikipedia, but native > readers - especially monolingual ones - will expect and need to have > information organized in a way that is most useful and familiar to them. > Replace "English" with any other language and the same applies there as well. Just for the record Mav, I use the words "international" wikipedias as opposed to "english" wikipedia as this is the terminology most used among wikipedians. It is a facility, by lack of other descriptive terms. I agree that english is one of the most international language among all those we cover. We are raising an important point I think : we are wondering who our audience is. Or rather, we are apparently not agreeing who our audience is after 3 years :-) We are 1) writers making 2) articles for 3) readers. We know who we are We know what we are doing But it seems who we are writing for, is not the same for everyone. You say the primary audience is native english speaking people, and the secondary audience is non native. Roughly, for you, the primary audience is Americans, Canadians, Australian, British, Irish (roughly, I do not want to hurt any one feelings). The secondary audience is ... others. Then you imply that articles should be carved in such way as to preferably suit the native english audience. To the point of misrepresenting a worldwide situation, to fit it better to what you perceive our audience is and would like to read. In my opinion, this separation of 1) primary audience : native english speakers and 2) secondary audience : non native is not a good idea if it comes to overinflate an issue (such as circumsision) or underunflate (hum) another (such as excision). It is important that we mention that both circumsision types exist, but if the argument justifying the overinflation of one, is just that we perceive that it is the one which will interest the audience, then we should agree on what the audience is. Some here may be here to write for the most obvious audience : americans. But not all of us. My opinion is that it would be a trap to think so and to act so. That would be a huge restriction of audience, and that would be a blow in the face of non english people here. I do not like the concept of "first" and "second" audience because that would be officially stating that we should primarily write for the first, to the detriment of the second. * First because as you stated it, english (along with spanish possibly) is international language. It is the most international of all languages. Potentially, it can reach many many more people than just native english speakers. Whether you want it or not, english is not entirely your language anymore. It is our common language. The one we can share. The one that can be a babel tower so we can understand all together. That mean, not only do WE, non native, speak to you, and write for you, to communicate with you. But that also mean that you, native, should speak to us, and write for us, to communicate with us. Something that is far less likely to happen in french, or in most languages. So, when I come to en.wikipedia, I like to write on things like the reasons why our people, your and mine, disagree upon GMO matters, islamic matters (even if I know so little of the topic that it is laughable) or iraq matters (same :-)). Because if I can explain even a tiny bit to some americans why we think differently, so they can agree that arguments exists on all sides, if I can do that, it is information sharing and it is beneficial to mutual understanding. And I would like people such as you, or as RK, or whoever, to write things, not only to explain to some americans what other americans think about this american topic, but rather to explain to ME, to MY people, what some americans think. Because if you can explain even a tiny bit to some french people why we think different, so they can agree that arguments exists on all sides, if you can do that, it is information sharing and it is beneficial to mutual understanding. If english people write only or mostly for english people, if french people write only or mostly for french people, if arab people write only or mostly for arab people, then we fail. Wikipedia fails. * Second because - most english natives are much more wealthy than most people in the world. They can purchase an encyclopedia with less pain than other people, who need their money to buy food and clothes. - most english natives have more freedom of access to information than most people in the world. They can buy a newspaper, see television. They can surf on the net. Many people do not have that freedom. Some must risk a lot to access information that is not propaganda. But they will look for information nonetheless. Free encyclopedia -------- Who are you writing for ? From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Mon Jan 12 18:12:39 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:12:39 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Do not confuse vague allegations with specific edits In-Reply-To: <20040112180546.4998.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112180546.4998.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Robert writes: > > Maybe they're anti-RK, not anti-Semitic, ever thought of > > that? Seriously. Did it ever cross your mind? > > No, and I think the problem is that you have no idea what I was talking > about. I was talking about the many explicitly anti-Semitic posts made by a > number of Wikipedia users, which were well-documented. No Robert. They're not well documented at all. You have yet to point out a single post that anyone, besides yourself, was prepared to call Anti-Semitic. > What caused trhew problem was that Martin and a few others here began to > defend this explicitly anti-Semitic Nazi material as correct. Wahey! We're Nazis again. Didn't take long, did it. > When it was proven (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that large amounts of > anti-Semitic were being pushed on Wikipedia No such thing was proved. And you are extremely deluded, if you believe that it was. -- Gareth Owen "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity" From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 18:13:25 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:13:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stick to the issue In-Reply-To: <20040109155543.GW19776@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040112181325.22122.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> here is the issue. Watch carefully what the issue, and watch the typical response. Issue: I am just trying to restore the large amounts of material that keep disappearing. We Wikipedians can't edit it or improve it unless it is there to be edited. The problem is that there is no discussion, no editing, no alternatives given. People are not offering sources or facts; they are just using their personal opinions, and anger at Israel, to remove verified and important historical facts. I also have repeatedly stated that Danny is a very smart man, and that he has been a great contributor in the past, and can be again. Check out the Talk pages and Talk archives for articles that both Danny and I have worked together on. There are dozens of such explicit and positive statements from me in the past few months. (Danny has not reciprocated, and seems to get angrier each time I say something positive about him.) In recent days I had to call Danny on his vandalism, but he seems calmer now, and has stated that he is willing to work on editing. I am certainly willing to take him at his word. This issue needs to be resolved by people sticking to facts, and not be censorship to push a pro-Arab agenda. Yet few people are responding to the above argument. Instead, this list is filled with ad homenin remarks, like the below one from Stan: "Not only have you yourself made the ugliest and most hateful personal attacks that I've yet seen on Wikipedia, you then have the unmitigated gall to pretend that you haven't done anything. It doesn't say much for Wikipedia governance that you haven't been banned forever for your unacceptable actions." This is sort of Sad. Stan continually hurls ugly personal attacks, while I am only asking that we follow our usual NPOV editing procedures. This is called projection, and it is neither helpful nor reasonable. I can only ask people to _try_ to stick the specific points that both Jimbo and I have repeatedly raised, the points that anonymous people have made (they are afraid to use their real names, due to the way that Wiki-En users gang up on people.) If you stick to the issues, and stop the non-stop personal attacks, we can get work done. If you continue the personal attacks, it only shows who is causing the real problem. Robert __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From shebs at apple.com Mon Jan 12 18:27:33 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:27:33 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stick to the issue In-Reply-To: <20040112181325.22122.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112181325.22122.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4002E715.5000505@apple.com> Robert wrote: >Yet few people are responding to the above argument. >Instead, this list is filled with ad homenin remarks, like >the below one from Stan: > >"Not only have you yourself made the ugliest and most >hateful personal attacks that I've yet seen on Wikipedia, >you then have the unmitigated gall to pretend that you >haven't done anything. It doesn't say much for Wikipedia >governance that you haven't been banned forever for your >unacceptable actions." > >This is sort of Sad. Stan continually hurls ugly personal >attacks, while I am only asking that we follow our usual >NPOV editing procedures. This is called projection, and it >is neither helpful nor reasonable. > OK, then answer this yes or no - did you or did you not say "Fuck you sick Nazi bastards" to everyone on this mailing list, and do you think this was an acceptable thing for you to do? Stan From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 18:31:20 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:31:20 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] I am resigning if this goes on Message-ID: If people continue to make personal remarks, I am going to resign as Wikien-l administrator. I am tired of all the bickering and pointless arguments. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 18:36:51 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:36:51 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stick to the issue References: <20040112181325.22122.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> <4002E715.5000505@apple.com> Message-ID: <4002E943.30902@yahoo.com> I suggest that the moderator of that mailing list (hi Ed !) do start moderating the mailing list not only for spam issues, but for uncivility as well. Those who offer only personnal comments as food for thought should be added on a non-automatically post list. The content reviewed. And only posted if it is constructive, or at least non-destructive. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 18:44:34 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:44:34 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I am resigning if this goes on References: Message-ID: <4002EB12.2060206@yahoo.com> Oh; we were just having similar thoughts somehow :-) Just not the same conclusions. You have my support to remove any not-so-useful comment, just as we would do on a talk page. Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > If people continue to make personal remarks, I am going to resign as > Wikien-l administrator. I am tired of all the bickering and pointless > arguments. > > Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From charlespodles at sympatico.ca Mon Jan 12 18:42:33 2004 From: charlespodles at sympatico.ca (Charles Podles) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:42:33 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sticking to the issue, as requested In-Reply-To: <20040112181325.22122.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112181325.22122.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4002EA99.1090106@sympatico.ca> I assume that RK is referring to the edit war over [[Palestinian views of the peace process]]? (I haven't been following this thread too closely, so correct me if I'm mistaken.) Observe, then, a very convenient memory lapse on his part. Robert wrote: > People are not offering sources or >facts; they are just using their personal opinions, and >anger at Israel, to remove verified and important >historical facts. Observe one instance where someone (me) did offer sourced and referenced historical facts (regarding the Treaty of Hudaibiya) that contradicted part of the article in question. Note that my reference was to a Wikipedia article, so RK could have checked it with one mouse click: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2125757&oldid=2125728 And observe RK's response; he responded to some of my objections, but left others (those that were sourced and referenced to a reliable source) untouched; he responded to Martin's objections on the same topic with more editorializing, instead of the sources and facts that he claims to love so much: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2131253&oldid=2131208 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2131208&oldid=2131189 But despite his lack of sourced, referenced factual information to counter my objections, he reverted the article, twice, so it included the material that I had challenged and he had not justified (and somehow, he removed the NPOV and inclusion dispute headers, but never mind -- that could have been an accident.) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2133693&oldid=2133433 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2133117&oldid=2133007 (I added further references to reliable historical sources later on, if anyone has any doubts: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2133712&oldid=2133682 ) RK continues to claim that he is trying to build an accurate, NPOV article on this topic, but his actions suggest otherwise. --Charles P. (en:User:Mirv) From shebs at apple.com Mon Jan 12 18:57:40 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:57:40 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Avoid personal remarks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4002EE24.3090407@apple.com> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >* you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect > OK, I'm sorry about that, clearly out of bounds for the list. Reminiscent of the intemperate stuff I posted to Usenet 20 years ago that Google Groups has unmercifully resurrected, ahem. :-) Stan From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Mon Jan 12 19:16:18 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:16:18 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Home pages vs Talk pages Message-ID: <4002F282.19170.26FED5@localhost> Dear Robert. I must inform you that I have yet to edit your HOME page, and have in fact only edited your TALK page. In other words, I have edited "user talk:RK", but not "user:RK". As such, when you say that > Martin is still making non-stop personal attacks on me on my own home page you are being somewhat economic with the truth. This contrasts with your own behaviour, in that you really have edited my HOME page, at "user:MyRedDice". Specifically, you deleted everything there, and wrote in its place: > I promote vandalizing other people's user pages. After all, if I can do it to others, > others can do it to me. > Or would it be hypocritical for me to do this to others, but not allow others to do > that to me? Well, its Ok to do it to Jews! I hope that this clarifies the tricky issues involved in distinguishing between HOME pages and USER TALK pages. I trust that you will formally acknowledge to the list that I have never edited your HOME page, at "user:RK", and perhaps apologise for any confusion you may have inadvertantly caused. -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Mon Jan 12 19:49:17 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:49:17 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] "censorship" Message-ID: <4002FA3D.4930.45356C@localhost> Dear Robert. I see you have decided to accuse me of censorship again. I (and Danny, and Viajero, and MIRV, and lots of other people) have already explained in great detail the reason for mercilessly editing the text in question. However. I thought I might usefully summarise the problem, with the help of an analogy. The issue, as Ed Poor notes, is that generally we wish to state "X says Y about Z". However, the removed text generally went further than that, essentially stating "X says Y about Z and they meant W". This W is an interpretation, and as such it expresses a point of view. By analogy, I might write the following: == Wikipedians who view democracy as hatred == Robert Kaiser, noted for his description of Wikipedia as a "home for lying, leftist anti- Semites", has come out strongly against democracy. In a mailing list post, to wiken-l, January 12 2004, he wrote that "Facts are not defined by votes. Only hatred is." ----- This illustrates the key problem - that by taking words out of context and placing them under a header that expresses an interpretation of those words, it is possible to have text that expresses a point of view, even though the actual quotes are precise and well-referenced. This is precisely the problem with much of the text in question. However, on the topic of censorship, I see you decided to deleted the entirety of "Support" section of the article on "alternative medicine". Given your new and heroic stand against deleting dodgy text and in favour of fixing it, I trust that we shall see you take a fresh approach on such issues in the future? -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From vr at redbird.org Mon Jan 12 19:40:26 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 14:40:26 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading In-Reply-To: <20040112111134.GA12399@SDF-EU.ORG> References: <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <20040111115240.A9337@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <20040111175102.50175.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040112143657.03460ae0@smtp.panix.com> At 12:11 PM 1/12/04 +0100, you wrote: >As a matter of fact, after scannig those lines at useit.com, >one gets the impression that it is the same as with books. Good readers >(and people reading WP articles are -for my part- assumed to be good >readers do not read word by word EVER. Even a book. It is absolutely >hideous and the worst way to get information. Only in the interent people >read faster because they do not look for verbose info (even less for >style). Many good readers--and I count myself as one--read at least some books word for word. And when we write--which is what we're doing for Wikipedia--we intend every word to be read. Yes, it is possible to scan certain documents. Textbooks in particular are often written so that readers in a hurry can get an overview by reading just the first sentence of each paragraph. But readers who have more time will learn more by reading the whole text. Otherwise, why would anyone bother writing it, instead of just writing the first sentences? Sure, we should write so that the reader can learn something even if she only has time, or desire, to read part of the article. And yes, well-organized sections and headers are helpful. But if nobody is going to read something, I see no point in writing and publishing it. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 19:57:02 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 14:57:02 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Math homework (for Martin) Message-ID: Martin, I have often taught math to kids, and my specialty is "word problems". May I help you with you math? The following statement need re-factoring: "X says Y about Z and they meant W" How about this? A says that when X said Y about Z, they meant W. Can you handle an equation with five variables? An alternate 'solution' is: X said Y about Z. A said that X meant W. I have run across nearly a dozen examples that fit this formula on Friday and today (lazy bum that I am, I took the weekend off). * Wesley Clark's statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda => "A" quotes Clark as linking Iraq being buddy-buddy with Al Qaeda a couple years ago => "A" quates Clank as saying recently that Iraq NEVER had a link with Al Qaeda Then, good reporter that he is, "A" quotes Clark as saying that the two (apparently contradictory) statements aren't really contradictory. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/politics/campaigns/12CLAR.html Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Mon Jan 12 20:21:34 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:21:34 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] "anti-Semitic" Message-ID: <400301CE.22196.62C2D0@localhost> Dear Robert. I see that you have decided to branch out from claims that I am "harrassing" and "censoring" you and decided to move back to the familiar territory of accusing me of being a Nazi and anti-Semite. Given that you have previously attacked the whole of Wikipedia as being "a community of violent Jew haters", I don't suppose anyone will pay any attention. Nor am I surprised at such attacks, given that one of the first things you said to me was that I was "engaging in neo-Nazi like revisionism" - completely without foundation, of course. However, I was interested to read the following: > (People imagined that it was I who wrote the analysis. Actually, it > was written by someone else. I can forward you copy of the > posting.) > I am talking about very specific edits, which I can show you. As I have commented before, I would like to receive this mythic analysis, which has yet to be posted publically. I have asked before, but perhaps you forgot. Robert, if you would forward me a copy I would be delighted to read it and take on board any criticisms it makes of my words or actions. Not least, I would like an opportunity to retract things I may have said too hastily, or clarify statements that I feel may have been misinterpreted. I would also like to appeal to anyone else who may have in their possession, or be able to obtain, a copy of this apparently compelling analysis, to ask if they could forward it to me, in strict confidence. You can email me at wikipedia at myreddice.co.uk Thanks, -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 20:16:34 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:16:34 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] All right, that's enough Message-ID: All this "he said, I said" stuff is off-topic. This list is about how to improve the Wikipedia. For example, mild-mannered Martin meandered into a muddy morass, and moaned: > I see that you have decided to branch out from claims that I am "harrassing" and "censoring" you and decided to move back to the familiar territory of accusing me of being a Nazi and anti-Semite. If you have personal problems, settle yourselves or ask someone for help. But keep it off the list. Or else, instead of doing something dramatic like "resigning" I just might do something practical and start "moderating" the list. I have the password, and I /can/ set the list software so it holds all or some messages for review. Don't make me do something drastic. From jwales at bomis.com Mon Jan 12 20:27:08 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:27:08 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] My view on deletions Message-ID: <20040112202708.GN24275@joey.bomis.com> At least one person has privately expressed to me the opinion that my position on deletions is that nothing should be deleted. That's absolutely not true, and I thought that this misunderstanding might be widely enough shared that I should speak to it for a moment. I think that the vast majority of deletions are perfectly fine. Deletions for vandalism seem to be pretty well not abused. Borderline cases, with a fairly open policy, are sent to VfD now, and that almost always works out just fine. But I'm unhappy with some deletions (and redirections) that happen on VfD. I call the process broken by analogy with hypothetical (and virtually all real!) criminal justice systems that get the right answer most of the time, but for various procedural reasons sometimes do exactly the wrong thing. But in no way am I saying anything even remotely supportive of the idea that vandals should be given free hand, nor that deletion or redirection should always be avoided at all costs. They are important tools, but we need to improve how we use them. --Jimbo From geoff at agora.rdrop.com Mon Jan 12 19:11:49 2004 From: geoff at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 11:11:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment In-Reply-To: <40020B1D.7060607@apple.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Stan Shebs wrote: > Robert wrote: > > >Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment. He won't stop > >writing hateful notes to me on my home page. > > > Oh, the chutzpah... I'm still waiting for an apology from you for > calling me a Nazi and calling Wikipedia "Nazipedia". Until that > happens you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect. > > Stan > > Just as a reminder, here is a copy of what RK sent to all of us > at the beginning of October: > > "Fuck you sick Nazi bastards. > [letter continues in same vein, & unnecessary to quote further from] Following this exchange, I was reminded of that same email, too. Geoff From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 20:42:29 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:42:29 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk Message-ID: I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts mentioning the word "Nazi". Ed Poor Wikien-l admin From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 20:50:36 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:50:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040112205036.40846.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> This is a test. If you see it, delete it. Dont reply. Thanks and sorry if I take unneeded space on your mailboxes. purpose of the test: to check how the filter works and see whether this message will appear on the mailing list. it's not mean to be perceived as a comment on the word ban. --Optim Nazi nazi NAZI "Nazi" "nazi" "NAZI" Nazism nazism NAZISM "Nazism" "nazism" "NAZISM" --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts > mentioning the word "Nazi". > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l admin > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 20:55:53 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 21:55:53 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nix on Nazi talk References: Message-ID: <400309D9.5010307@yahoo.com> good :-) Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts mentioning the word "Nazi". > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l admin From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 20:57:59 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:57:59 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI Message-ID: Optim, The filter is much more sophisticated than this: if (msg.indexOf("Nazi") > -1) { msg.reject(); } It's context-sensitive. Ed Poor From ebeins at hotmail.com Mon Jan 12 20:55:38 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:55:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nazi nazi NAZI References: <20040112205036.40846.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Give it a few hours. He only said it like 5 minutes ago. Maybe the mail server needs a long time to update. What a horrible looking test... ;p From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 20:59:19 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:59:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040112205919.11045.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> What do you mean? 1. A personal filter on your mailbox? 2. or a mailing list filter which prevents users from posting messages with the word "Nazi" ? thanks, --Optim --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts > mentioning the word "Nazi". > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l admin __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 21:01:54 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:01:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040112210154.43032.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I see :) thanks for replying. may you have Peace Profound, --Optim --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > Optim, > > The filter is much more sophisticated than this: > > if (msg.indexOf("Nazi") > -1) { > > msg.reject(); > > } > > It's context-sensitive. > > Ed Poor > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 21:03:06 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:03:06 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk Message-ID: It's very sophisticated, the latest in AI techniques based on Godwin's Law. I can't explain it any better than that. Ed Poor From pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Mon Jan 12 21:03:19 2004 From: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org (Pedro Fortuny) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:03:19 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040112210319.GA8404@SDF-EU.ORG> * Poor, Edmund W [2004-01-12]: > Optim, > > The filter is much more sophisticated than this: > > if (msg.indexOf("Nazi") > -1) { > > msg.reject(); > > } > > It's context-sensitive. > That was a good one, Ed. lol. Pedro. -- Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jan 12 21:08:29 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:08:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040112210829.45917.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> well, next time I should *read* mailing list messages instead just *scanning* them :) --Optim --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > It's very sophisticated, the latest in AI techniques > based on Godwin's > Law. I can't explain it any better than that. > > Ed Poor > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk Mon Jan 12 21:13:25 2004 From: grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk (Graham Burnett) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 21:13:25 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] filter References: <20040112210342.5ED97B848@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <016801c3d950$eae6a120$e2b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> >I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts mentioning the word "N***". Can we have one that filters the word "RK" as well???? Graham (Querus robur) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.560 / Virus Database: 352 - Release Date: 08/01/2004 From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 21:19:18 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:19:18 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] filter Message-ID: It's okay to mention RK, as long as it's not a "personal remark". All issues relating to Wikipedia are open for discussion. But if you want to criticize people, please follow these two simple rules: 1. Don't. 2. See rule #1 Ed Poor From saintonge at telus.net Mon Jan 12 21:14:23 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:14:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Going Off in a Huff References: <200401110702.36187.maveric149@yahoo.com> <20040112034434.GH3714@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <40030E2F.6010707@telus.net> Jimmy Wales wrote: >Daniel Mayer wrote: > >>Fred Bauder wrote: >> >>>Regarding Jimbo: I think it is important that you create an account under >>>some persona, edit some articles, get into an edit war or two, and in >>>general get grounded in the realities of this project. >>> >>Peter the Great did it - why not Jimbo? >> >Ah, my hero. ;-) > >Here's the problem, basically. My own political opinion in the >Israeli/Palestinian situation is not very far from RK's. > I think that the spirit of Fred's suggestion was to develop trench experience in the edit wars without having the article influenced by the knowledge that you are the one who is editing. The chaos of the Israeli/Palestinian situation would not be a good place to start this. I would suggest something more obscure, where some people might try to make a case for deleting it as not belonging in an encyclopedia. If you are concerned that your political opinions might bleed into the subject and make your chosen persona, then simply choose a less political subject. Some of this could be a bit trollish, but I've never felt that some controlled use of trolling was all that bad. The important thing when a person uses such a tactic is to know when to stop. Ec From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Mon Jan 12 21:28:11 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:28:11 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment Message-ID: <5f5cb5afc9.5afc95f5cb@asteroid.scranton.edu> ----- Original Message ----- From: Gareth Owen Date: Monday, January 12, 2004 4:31 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment > Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of > endearment. Well, yeah, but they also paint their sheep with lipstick.;-) John will probably get hurt by an Australian soon...:-) From saintonge at telus.net Mon Jan 12 21:21:39 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:21:39 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Genitalia References: <20040112023145.RGXO24265.out002.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Message-ID: <40030FE3.90004@telus.net> dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote: >Genitalia. Genitalia. Genitalia! g-e-n-I-t-a-l-i-a! Anagram for "TILE AGAIN." >It's spelled with two I's. It ends in "Italia." > Wow! I hadn't previously realized that they were invented by Italians. :-) From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Mon Jan 12 21:29:21 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:29:21 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Off-topic: Australians Message-ID: Try to stay on topic. That was funny, John, but we have work to do. ...term of endearment ... Lipstick Ed Poor From smolensk at eunet.yu Mon Jan 12 18:38:09 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:38:09 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. In-Reply-To: <20040112120413.94909.qmail@web21503.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112120413.94909.qmail@web21503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401121938.09671.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Monday 12 January 2004 13:04, zero 0000 wrote: > I propose that for particularly problematic topics > there are two versions. > One is the "official version" which is > write-protected. The official > version is what readers get when they click on links. > The other is the > "draft version", which can be editted. Then there is > some standard > procedure (a committee?) by which the draft version > can be copied to > the official version. I don't think that it should be done because I think that it could not be ensured that the committees assembled for that purpose will be neutral. From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 22:15:34 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 14:15:34 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401121415.34404.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >In my opinion, this separation of 1) primary audience : native >english speakers and 2) secondary audience : non native >is not a good idea if it comes to overinflate an issue (such as >circumsision) or underunflate (hum) another (such as excision). Of course not - that is why I said "within the bounds of NPOV". >Some here may be here to write for the most obvious >audience : americans. But not all of us. What?! Why the hell does this always come down to American bashing? I was talking about the /entire/ English speaking world *NOT JUST AMERICANS!!!*. >I do not like the concept of "first" and "second" audience >because that would be officially stating that we should >primarily write for the first, to the detriment of the second. No, it means we primarily write for the first and secondarily write for the second. They are /both/ part of our audience and are both important. >If english people write only or mostly for english people, >if french people write only or mostly for french people, if >arab people write only or mostly for arab people, then we >fail. Wikipedia fails. OK, that has got to be the most bizarre thing I've read in a while. I write for *all* English speaking people. Sorry but how can I write for a French audience when I don't speak French? -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 12 23:29:04 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:29:04 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience Message-ID: <200401121529.04234.maveric149@yahoo.com> Since some people will undoubtedly not have read what I said in my posts previous to the last one, let me clarify: Different languages often have different traditions on how to best organize information. This means that what passes for a great article in one language will not necessarily translate very well into another language (meaning, it would probably not be viewed as being great and may in fact be viewed as being poor - even when it is translated well). Things like dictionaries, encyclopedia, newspapers and other media are not really the same things across different languages and thus something that would be good in one language may not be seen as good if translated as-is into another. For example, what constitutes a textbook - the type of thing that it *is* - has a different tradition in different languages. Sometimes that tradition is fairly uniform between two languages, sometimes it is very different. This is why having editorially independent Wikipedia versions in many different languages is a such a great thing. A mere translation of the English Wikipedia, for example, would not meet the expectations of what an encyclopedia *is* (the way it should cover topics) by many non-English speaking people. An *encyclopedia* is really a different thing in different language traditions. *That* is what I am talking about when I say that we have primary audiences (those whose native language is one we are writing in) and secondary audiences (those whose native language is something other than the language we are writing in but who still speak in the language we are writing in). It would be internal balkanization to allow the traditions of one language to be used in an encyclopedia in another language. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From pcb21 at btconnect.com Tue Jan 13 00:51:58 2004 From: pcb21 at btconnect.com (Peter Bartlett) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 00:51:58 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] My view on deletions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >-----Original Message----- >From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales >Sent: 12 January 2004 20:27 >To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org >Subject: [WikiEN-l] My view on deletions > > >At least one person has privately expressed to me the opinion that my position on deletions is that nothing should be deleted. That's absolutely not >true, and I thought that this misunderstanding might be widely enough shared that I should speak to it for a moment. > >I think that the vast majority of deletions are perfectly fine. Deletions for vandalism seem to be pretty well not abused. Borderline cases, with a >fairly open policy, are sent to VfD now, and that almost always works out just fine. > >But I'm unhappy with some deletions (and redirections) that happen on VfD. I call the process broken by analogy with hypothetical (and virtually all > real!) criminal justice systems that get the right answer most of the time, but for various procedural reasons sometimes do exactly the wrong thing. > >But in no way am I saying anything even remotely supportive of the idea that vandals should be given free hand, nor that deletion or redirection should >always be avoided at all costs. They are important tools, but we need to improve how we use them. In my experience mistakes occur much more frequently over "instant deletion" pages rather than the VfD page. It's not a coincidence that VfD decisions are made collectively and instant delete are made individually. VfD mistakes are so few and far between (I think only the Palestinian views... article has been cited in this discussion as a VfD mistake and that is only debatably a mistake - given all our policies on page-naming) that it is probably not worth your worrying about too much. Instant deletion mistakes (in the sense that the page should've gone to VfD or even cleanup rather than instantly deleted) are made on a (I estimate) daily basis. A timely reminder to work the VfD process rather than bypassing it by insta-deleting may be in order. Pete/Pcb21 From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Tue Jan 13 01:05:49 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:05:49 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On the Middle East, on the Jimbo-RK-Danny dispute, etc. Message-ID: <693ef67294.67294693ef@asteroid.scranton.edu> All, I am not traditionally one who posts to this list. I usually watch, read, and watch some more. I do not, typically, edit either, though I will contribute to Talk pages; I simply do not feel my writing skills are up to the task. However, I am forced to take a stand on this issue, and speak up. 1. I generally am somewhat laid-back when it comes to Wikipedia; I could normally care less. However, as I believe has been recognized, consciously or unconsciously, by the combatants (all of them) in the Middle East articles, WP is becoming, online, a significant source of information. It is no longer just our plaything, our project. It is a potential part of the information battlespace. The same as TV, as radio, as the newspaper, as paper encyclopedias (which DO have political slants). The same as academic syllabi. The same as any means of disseminating information or opinions. It is no longer just the contributors'...It's a battleground, and will be (heck, probably is already (in far less obvious guises than you may expect)) used as such by communications elements on both sides. This will not change, and will likely become an issue for other controversial topics as well. 2. That being the case, I've come to the sad conclusion that maybe Wiki should just officially avoid the topic. Stay silent. It'd be sad, but perhaps necessary. 3. On the Jimbo-RK-Danny triangular dispute (including all of the others on all sides)... Cease fire? Agree to disagree. The next time this happens, make it really simple. Ban both sides. One warning, then down comes Mr. Boot. 4. In terms of audiences: I have to agree with mav here. Wiki-En's primary audience is and must be native English-speakers. That doesn't mean American, European, Indian, Filipino, Martian, Plutonian, or Vulcan. It means people who speak English as their native (and primary) language. Who may well not speak any other language. (In fact, who probably do not. I've found that knowledge of two or more langauges is primarily an attribute only of the intellectual; The average "man-on-the-street" is generally unlikely, anywhere, to speak or understand more than one language. Probably no more than 1 dialect of that 1 language, too.) Respectfully, John Penta From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 01:28:02 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:28:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software Message-ID: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Considering that we usually don't put some punctuation (; . , :) after headings (section titles), List items, See also listings where a list is utilised, etc etc... I am afraid to say that the current Wikipedia style seems to be unfair to Reading Software (software which converts text into voice, Example: Adobe 6). Reading Software uses the punctuation to make pauses, and cannot get into account the document's markup and format (headings etc). Lately I started putting : after headings and ; or . after list items, but I found the visual result disgusting and hard-to-read. If I don't use the punctuation, the problem is that Reading Software cannot recognize the necessary pauses and as a result the listener has trouble understanding the meaning. I would like to find some way to incorporate some hidden punctuation into the articles, which will be used only by reading software but will be invisible to the user who reads the text on the screen or paper. Do you have any idea on this? If impossible, I propose to think about the issue of reading software and decide on whether punctuation should be used and what kind of punctuation, as an effort to optimise our writing style for Reading Software. Thank you and may you have Peace Profound, --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 13 01:43:44 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:43:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment References: <5f5cb5afc9.5afc95f5cb@asteroid.scranton.edu> Message-ID: <40034D50.5060805@telus.net> John C. Penta wrote: > >----- Original Message ----- >From: Gareth Owen > >>Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of >>endearment. >> > >Well, yeah, but they also paint their sheep with lipstick.;-) > At which end? From tucci528 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 02:22:53 2004 From: tucci528 at yahoo.com (Tucci) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:22:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek Message-ID: <20040113022253.65567.qmail@web12823.mail.yahoo.com> As far as I can remember, I have never interacted with User:Annek in any way. Looking at his contributions, it's possible I changed something he didn't like, since he's edited [[hip hop]] and some other articles I watch. There's never been any conflict between us, however. He has changed a sentence describing me on my own userpage from "I am also homosexual" to "I am a fag". I don't appreciate it, for perhaps obvious reasons, and have let him know on his talk page. I don't know what, if anything, we want to do about this, especially if it remains a single isolated incident, but I wanted to bring it up to the mailing list. TUF-KAT __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From rjaros at shaysnet.com Tue Jan 13 03:06:01 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:06:01 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly In-Reply-To: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040112152425.36336.qmail@web20306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6AF30811-4575-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 12, 2004, at 10:24 AM, Robert wrote: > This is getting really ugly. Agreed. Definitely agreed > A dozen people have nmade > personal attacks on me, all of them falsely saying that I > am making personal attacks. Here's where it gets ugly, my friend. > Then an obviously anti-Israeli crowd is trying to define > reality by voting, and is deleting vast amounts of proven > facts in order to promote pro-Arab POV. > > Facts are not defined by votes. Only hatred is. > > If the consensus is that Wikipedia should promote > anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and hateful crowds ganging up > on one user, then that is precisely the reputation that it > will get offline. You must see that you're perpetuating the ugliness as much as your "attackers" (poor word choice of mine, but you know what I mean). Of course, the converse is true: your "attackers" are perpetuating the ugliness as much as you. It's just not necessary. People have said things. People have interpreted and misinterpreted things. It's done, it's happened, and it's now in the past. Meanwhile, the *rest* of us are working on an encyclopedia. If this is a personal battle, I personally think you (very much plural) should simply drop it. If you wish to continue I would appreciate if it were taken off-list. These accusations and counter-accusations have no place here. That said, there *is* a substantive issue hidden in this mess. The NPOV of certain articles is being questioned. Let's address that. What has happened to the articles in the past does not matter anymore. Remember, the page history may exist, but it's the latest revision that counts. Let's discuss what *is* there and what *should be* there. Without accusing each other of anti-Anythingism. We are a community. We are based tightly around the encyclopedia, but we are a community. Anyone who is here to make offensive remarks or accusations is in the wrong place. #REDIRECT [[Usenet]]. That said, we must have to trust that others' remarks are not intended as accusations or otherwise meant to offend. If we don't give each other the benefit of the doubt, we'll all end up, well, basically like we are now: wrapped up in an unproductive argument over who said what (or didn't say what). In the worst case scenario, you take an insult as constructive criticism. Who cares? If someone tries to hurt you and you don't notice, the other person's comment will just fall flat on it's face. All the better. Let's revive the substantive issues in an objective, fair, and, most importantly, calm manner. Please drop the rest, or, if you must, take it off-list. Thank you. Concerned Wikipedian otherwise uninvolved in the matter, Peter From rjaros at shaysnet.com Tue Jan 13 03:13:31 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:13:31 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. In-Reply-To: <200401121938.09671.smolensk@eunet.yu> References: <20040112120413.94909.qmail@web21503.mail.yahoo.com> <200401121938.09671.smolensk@eunet.yu> Message-ID: <77358B79-4576-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 12, 2004, at 1:38 PM, Nikola Smolenski wrote: > On Monday 12 January 2004 13:04, zero 0000 wrote: >> I propose that for particularly problematic topics >> there are two versions. >> One is the "official version" which is >> write-protected. The official >> version is what readers get when they click on links. >> The other is the >> "draft version", which can be editted. Then there is >> some standard >> procedure (a committee?) by which the draft version >> can be copied to >> the official version. > > I don't think that it should be done because I think that it could not > be > ensured that the committees assembled for that purpose will be neutral. Er, then who *would* be neutral? Someone has to be, or we'll never get anywhere... Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From ebeins at hotmail.com Tue Jan 13 03:16:37 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:16:37 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Annek References: <20040113022253.65567.qmail@web12823.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Obviously the reincarnation of another vandal who you admonished. Think hard. -- ___________________________ Menchi From rjaros at shaysnet.com Tue Jan 13 03:20:54 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:20:54 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.1.20040112143657.03460ae0@smtp.panix.com> References: <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <20040111115240.A9337@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <20040111175102.50175.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <20040112111623.A19288@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in> <5.2.0.9.1.20040112143657.03460ae0@smtp.panix.com> Message-ID: <7F6A023A-4577-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 12, 2004, at 2:40 PM, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: > Sure, we should write so that the reader can learn something even if > she > only has time, or desire, to read part of the article. And yes, > well-organized > sections and headers are helpful. But if nobody is going to read > something, > I see no point in writing and publishing it. Yes, people will read the details, but if we can make articles more accessible to people looking for only a sense of the topic, as well as people scanning a specific detail, all the better. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 03:32:02 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:32:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek In-Reply-To: <20040113022253.65567.qmail@web12823.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040113033202.92689.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> TUF-KAT refers to this edit: http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:TUF-KAT&diff=2142133&oldid=2140779 I don't know User:Annek and I haven't interacted with him/her either. I am very sad about what happened and the incident affected me deeply. I support TUF-KAT and I strongly disagree with Annek's action and attitude. I ask the community to keep an eye on Annek and if (s)he continues his/her bad behaviour to take proper action. User:Annek must explain and apologise for his/her action immediatelly. --Optim --- Tucci wrote: > As far as I can remember, I have never interacted > with > User:Annek in any way. Looking at his > contributions, > it's possible I changed something he didn't like, > since he's edited [[hip hop]] and some other > articles > I watch. There's never been any conflict between > us, > however. He has changed a sentence describing me on > my own userpage from "I am also homosexual" to "I am > a > fag". I don't appreciate it, for perhaps obvious > reasons, and have let him know on his talk page. I > don't know what, if anything, we want to do about > this, especially if it remains a single isolated > incident, but I wanted to bring it up to the mailing > list. > > TUF-KAT > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" > Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From rjaros at shaysnet.com Tue Jan 13 03:33:11 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:33:11 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3675C33A-4579-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 12, 2004, at 8:28 PM, Nikos-Optim wrote: > I would like to find some way to > incorporate some hidden punctuation into the articles, > which will be used only by reading software but will > be invisible to the user who reads the text on the > screen or paper. Do you have any idea on this? Easiest way is probably to have an equivalent to the "Printable Version" link. Users load the "Speakable Version", complete with punctuation marked-up as hidden, and feed it to the reading software. Voil?! Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 03:46:45 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:46:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek In-Reply-To: <6AF30811-4575-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> Message-ID: <20040113034645.77349.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> You might also want to check out User:LizardKing's Talk page, in which he referred to TUF-KAT as "you pellow-biting imbecile." He also suggested contacting Annek to encourage him to continue his attacks. (I assume "pellow" is supposed to be "pillow".) RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040112/11e64082/attachment.htm From tucci528 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 03:52:08 2004 From: tucci528 at yahoo.com (Tucci) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:52:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Annek In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040113035208.8649.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> --- Menchi wrote: > Obviously the reincarnation of another vandal who > you admonished. Think > hard. > I don't generally get involved in arguments. Lately, Lizard King has been an exception after the Talk:Cronus debate concerning his sketch, which has now moved on to his drawing of Bigfoot at Talk:Bigfoot. Since posting my original message to the mailing list, Lizard King changed my comments on Talk:Bigfoot to make it appear as though I liked his sketch (I don't) and that I found Bigfoot sexually appealing (I don't). Lizard King and Annek both changing my words concerning my sexual preferences in the same day is suspicious, but could just be a coincidence (he's denied having any sock puppet accounts on his talk page, but this seems highly unlikely given the number of unheard-of users who like his sketch chiming in at Talk:Bigfoot). I've never been in any real edit war, except for Michael and this doesn't seem like his style. I've been in a few arguments that have gotten heated, but not many and few of our endlessly reappearing users. Lizard King is the only one that seems a possibility to me, but Annek was making edits long before Lizard King was around. I also checked Annek's contributions, and it doesn't seem like I ever edited anything he wrote, though MyRedDice and SalsaShark reverted some changes he made to [[nigger (word)]] and [[wigger]]. I wasn't aware I had any enemies on Wikipedia (except Michael, whom I haven't even seen in months) and I can't remember the last time I blocked any IP (more than six or seven months ago, I'm sure). TUF-KAT P.S. Since I'm delurking myself anyway: not many people have given any opinions concerning the "artist's rendering" and taxobox at [[Bigfoot]]. I'm opposed to both, especially the latter, but my feelings about the sketch are actually mixed -- I'm against it, but it doesn't bother me terribly and I wouldn't normally get involved, except I already was. Some other thoughts there would be nice. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From tucci528 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 03:55:00 2004 From: tucci528 at yahoo.com (Tucci) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 19:55:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek In-Reply-To: <20040113034645.77349.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040113035500.9094.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rick wrote: > You might also want to check out User:LizardKing's > Talk page, in which he referred to TUF-KAT as "you > pellow-biting imbecile." He also suggested > contacting Annek to encourage him to continue his > attacks. (I assume "pellow" is supposed to be > "pillow".) > > RickK Yes, this makes it seem much more likely that Annek reincarnated himself as Lizard King to upload his sketches, I suppose anticipating opposition (though Annek hasn't chimed in supporting Lizard King). TUF-KAT __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From ebeins at hotmail.com Tue Jan 13 04:26:15 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:26:15 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: User:Annek References: <20040113035208.8649.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: If you think you don't deseve this defamation, you're right. If you think the vandal needs a real reason to defame you, you are wrong. Vulcan logic is not in the Dictionary of the Vandals. You needn't say something critical of the vandal. If he doesn't like whatever you said or consider you disrespectful of his "work", he'll find a way to defame/insult you. The Way of the Vandal. Do not worry about it too much. Well, a little bit is ok. -- ___________________________ Menchi From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 04:51:48 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 05:51:48 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401121415.34404.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40037964.3070603@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Anthere wrote: >>If english people write only or mostly for english people, >>if french people write only or mostly for french people, if >>arab people write only or mostly for arab people, then we >>fail. Wikipedia fails. > > > OK, that has got to be the most bizarre thing I've read in a while. > I write > for *all* English speaking people. Sorry but how can I write for a French > audience when I don't speak French? I am a representant of your french audience. You could write for me. I guess we will have both to see that we are not writing for the same audience. As long as you accept that some do not recognise these notions of *primary* and *secondary* as valid, while others do, that is fine. From smolensk at eunet.yu Tue Jan 13 06:24:40 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 07:24:40 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <3675C33A-4579-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> References: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <3675C33A-4579-11D8-9B68-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> Message-ID: <200401130724.40267.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Tuesday 13 January 2004 04:33, Peter Jaros wrote: > On Jan 12, 2004, at 8:28 PM, Nikos-Optim wrote: > > I would like to find some way to > > incorporate some hidden punctuation into the articles, > > which will be used only by reading software but will > > be invisible to the user who reads the text on the > > screen or paper. Do you have any idea on this? > > Easiest way is probably to have an equivalent to the "Printable > Version" link. Users load the "Speakable Version", complete with > punctuation marked-up as hidden, and feed it to the reading software. > Voil?! There even is no need for any special hidden punctuation: it should not be a problem for the software to automatically add a ; at the end of every heading and list item. From meelar2 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 07:38:32 2004 From: meelar2 at yahoo.com (Dan Miller) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:38:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] New deletion policy suggestion Message-ID: <20040113073832.61181.qmail@web9606.mail.yahoo.com> For those who haven't been following the discussion on Talk: Votes for Deletion, I thought I'd drag this idea into the light of debate: I agree that the VfD process is overused; look at the relatively high proportion of "keep" votes. Ideally, only pages that are relatively clear-cut cases would go here, with the rest being moved to cleanup or elsewhere. But the WikiMoney plan would harm new users, and also be quite complicated to use. Why not a better plan, such as: Before any page can be listed on regular VfD, it must be listed on cleanup and left there for some time; I'm thinking two weeks, but this is negotiable. After that, it can be moved to VfD, and a vote can be held. Of course, the regular candidates for speedy deletion could go, and the copyvio delete page would be unaffected. Not only would this solve the overuse of VfD, it would also help stop the occasional listing on VfD of copyvios. And, it could be accomplished by simply placing a notice at the top of the VfD page, rather than encumbering everyone with a complicated system of WikiMoney, which might frighten newbies and irritate old hands. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 07:48:26 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:48:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. Message-ID: <20040113074826.95632.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> I'll make some brief remarks on the responses to my proposal. 1. Viajero suggested that it needed software changes. While some software assistance would be nice, it can all be done with the present software. The official page would be, say, [[Arafat is fat]], and the draft page would be [[Arafat is fat (draft)]] or maybe [[Arafat is fat/Draft]]. 2. Nikola mentioned the partiality of the committee as an issue. There need not be a committee, that is just one possible implementation. Another is that the protagonists agree amongst themselves when some draft is better than the official page and ask a sysop to do the copy. In any case, the current system is that the page contents are decided by the most persistent fanatic, and anything has to be better than that. 3. John suggested that Wikipedia should in fact drop some issues altogether. This is actually close to the way I really feel about it. My suggestion for a process change is merely my best idea on how to avert this step. Whatever path is taken, the present system is the worst option. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 08:45:16 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 00:45:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401130045.16257.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >I am a representant of your french audience. >You could write for me. No I can't, since I don't speak French. But since you speak and read English you *are* part of the audience I write for when I write in English (just not the primary one). >I guess we will have both to see that we are not >writing for the same audience. As long as you >accept that some do not recognise these notions >of *primary* and *secondary* as valid, while others >do, that is fine. This whole discussion was more academic than practical since things naturally develop toward what I described unless unnatural force is applied to direct things down another path (which does happen for individual articles but on the whole it is not a very significant force). Those of us who speak more than one language, however, should remember that there are different notions of how to organize information in different languages. They should therefore not just assume that the way they do things in their primary language is necessarily transferable in other languages they may know. This is one thing that I have learned while working on Wikipedia. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 13 12:15:06 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:15:06 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On the Middle East, on the Jimbo-RK-Danny dispute, etc. References: <693ef67294.67294693ef@asteroid.scranton.edu> Message-ID: <00c001c3d9ce$e16db6a0$5f000450@Galasien> Also being someone who reads this list without posting much, I was trying for some perspective rather than intending to get involved. In the abstract, I assumed that WP will always encounter problems in trying to include everything; because writing contemporary history in the making is not only contentious but probably based on sources that are incomplete. The 'least bad' solution would seem to me to be a 'pendulum arbitration' plus 'cooling-off' period mechanism for edit wars: someone decides which of two versions is less unreasonable, and locks the page for a period of ten days. Here pendulum arbitration comes from labour disputes, where you don't try to find the middle point (which encourages extreme positions) but choose one or other side. As for the Middle East, I had a look at some pages. The coverage overall seems creditable, but there does seem to be plenty of POV to work on. I looked at some RK edits and wasn't impressed. Even if he's correct on the balance of lack of NPOV (which might be true), I came away disliking his advocacy. Charles From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 12:23:03 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 04:23:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40037964.3070603@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040113122303.45936.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Can I have clarifications on: 1. If native English speakers is "primary" audience while the non native speakers is "secondary", does that mean for you that an article on the next USA elections is OK, while an article on the next elections of Egypt (put here any other country) are irrelevant and of no interest to English Wikipedia's audience? 2. Or that a terrorist attack in USA should be more important than a terrorist attack in Nepal, if both attacks have the same number of killed or injured people? Thank you, --Optim --- Anthere wrote: > > > Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > > Anthere wrote: > > >>If english people write only or mostly for english > people, > >>if french people write only or mostly for french > people, if > >>arab people write only or mostly for arab people, > then we > >>fail. Wikipedia fails. > > > > > > OK, that has got to be the most bizarre thing I've > read in a while. > > I write > > for *all* English speaking people. Sorry but how > can I write for a French > > audience when I don't speak French? > > I am a representant of your french audience. You > could write for me. > > I guess we will have both to see that we are not > writing for the same > audience. As long as you accept that some do not > recognise these notions > of *primary* and *secondary* as valid, while others > do, that is fine. > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 12:27:38 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 04:27:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <200401130724.40267.smolensk@eunet.yu> Message-ID: <20040113122738.66540.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > There even is no need for any special hidden > punctuation: it should not be a > problem for the software to automatically add a ; at > the end of every heading > and list item. you mean Wikipedia's software (for the "Speakable Version" link), right? --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From viajero at quilombo.nl Tue Jan 13 12:13:44 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:13:44 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. In-Reply-To: <20040113074826.95632.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: A logical first step would be to try this scheme on one article as a test. I would suggest taking perhaps the most controversial topic in the Middle East, the Palestinian refugees. There are now two articles on this topic: [[Palestinian refugee]] and [[Palestinian exodus]]. They overlap and should be merged into one; let's call it [[Palestinian refugees]]. Adam Carr demonstrated on articles like [[Anti-zionism]] that it seems to make a huge difference if ONE individual takes charge of the article with no particular authority except the confidence of other contributors. Adam is by no means impartial (who is?) but he has a gift for synthesizing various POVs into an effective, well-written organic whole. Taking Adam's very effective work mode as a starting point, let's have one person take (temporary) responsibility for the article. What about Zero? Any objections? Or another candidate? We protect the page and move all work to [[Palestinian refugees/Draft]] and discussion to [[Talk:Palestinian refugees/Draft]]. We give it a month and see what happens At this point, we have nothing to lose. V. From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 12:32:37 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 04:32:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] New deletion policy suggestion In-Reply-To: <20040113073832.61181.qmail@web9606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040113123237.64516.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> The WikiMoney plan was mostly humourous, as I said: "dont take it very seriously". I agree to list pages first on Cleanup and then to VfD. For how much time would list the pages on Cleanup? I suggest to open a poll and let the community to vote on it. My vote is "same as VfD lag time", i.e. 5 days. But I don't really have any problem with the "2 weeks" suggestion. --Optim --- Dan Miller wrote: > For those who haven't been following the discussion > on > Talk: Votes for Deletion, I thought I'd drag this > idea > into the light of debate: > > I agree that the VfD process is overused; look at > the > relatively high proportion of "keep" votes. Ideally, > only pages that are relatively clear-cut cases would > go here, with the rest being moved to cleanup or > elsewhere. But the WikiMoney plan would harm new > users, and also be quite complicated to use. Why not > a > better plan, such as: > > Before any page can be listed on regular VfD, it > must > be listed on cleanup and left there for some time; > I'm > thinking two weeks, but this is negotiable. After > that, it can be moved to VfD, and a vote can be > held. > Of course, the regular candidates for speedy > deletion > could go, and the copyvio delete page would be > unaffected. Not only would this solve the overuse of > VfD, it would also help stop the occasional listing > on > VfD of copyvios. And, it could be accomplished by > simply placing a notice at the top of the VfD page, > rather than encumbering everyone with a complicated > system of WikiMoney, which might frighten newbies > and > irritate old hands. > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" > Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 13 12:37:04 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:37:04 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia References: <20040113122303.45936.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00c701c3d9d1$f32cfd30$5f000450@Galasien> I don't think the notion of 'native English speaker' is a particularly coherent one, when framed as the audience. Much less so than 'users of international scientific English', or francophones, for example. It makes sense to me to say that articles should be written in standard literary English, and to international scholarly standards. Charles From viajero at quilombo.nl Tue Jan 13 12:33:47 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:33:47 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon (was: Re: This is getting ugly) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/12/04 at 08:35 AM, Fred Bauder said: > Generally, although I would not expect you to admit it, Wikipedia > articles have a somewhat pro-Israeli bias. Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in December (Anthere may remember this because she was one of them) and this question came up. One person said they thought WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. Another said a pro-Palestinian bias. A third said neither POV was accurately represented. Conclusion??? > There just aren't a lot of > Arabs or Palestinians showing up here. Most pro-Palestinian edits are > coming from a liberal Israeli point of view such as Danny's One Palestinian-Canadian showed up awhile ago but alas he has not contributed since September: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&offset=0&target=Joseph_E._Saad V. From gutza at moongate.ro Tue Jan 13 13:18:17 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:18:17 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <20040113122738.66540.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040113122738.66540.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4003F019.3070506@moongate.ro> Nikos-Optim wrote: >>There even is no need for any special hidden >>punctuation: it should not be a >>problem for the software to automatically add a ; at >>the end of every heading >>and list item. >> >> > >you mean Wikipedia's software (for the "Speakable >Version" link), right? > >--Optim > > Yes, that's the idea, tweaking the Wiki's "rendering" engine as to produce proper "markup" for reading, as opposed to the two existing variants or markup (regular and print). I also proposed a "simple" rendering version some time ago IIRC, don't remember what came out of that. My idea was to be able to access the articles as plain text -- no links, no images, no markup, no nothing, just plain (maybe flowed, as in the MIME type?) text with proper spacing (one empty line between paragraphs, bullets represented as asterisks and indented lists, etc). That could be used for various purposes, for instance it would make it really easy to integrate in third-party online applications, such as multiplayer games (just one example that came to mind). --Gutza From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 13:43:41 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 08:43:41 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wall Street Journal article about Wikipedia Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal mentioned Wikipedia.org in yesterdays Business Solutions column (by Michael Totty): >> A wiki page looks like any Web page, but with a difference: With >> the click of a button, a visitor can add new material to the page >> or change what's already there. Others can see it once they >> refresh the page. This isn't as disruptive as it sounds; all >> changes are tracked, and earlier versions can be restored if >> important information is deleted. There is even a wiki >> encyclopedia (Wikipedia.org), where anyone can add or amend >> entries. >> -- Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 12, 2004 Page R4 Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 13:53:17 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 08:53:17 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek Message-ID: This is a sensitive human relations issue. It's difficult for many people to restrain their hostility towards others who have different moral or political values. We here, however, have made a working agreement that we will not make personal remarks. I openly declared myself a member of the Unification Church, a group which is highly offensive to many people. But I've made it known that I don't like being called a "Moonie" or a "cult member", and with few exceptions other contributors have respected my request. We /must/ follow the guideline of avoiding personal remarks, or the process which has brought us so much success will break down. The place to describe points of view about moral or political topics is in the articles, and the /way/ to describe these POVs is Jimbo and Larry's "neutrality doctrine" (see [[Wikipedia:NPOV]]). I will talk to user:Annek. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 14:00:06 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:00:06 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] An end to ugliness (was: This is getting ugly) Message-ID: Peter Jaros wisely observed: > That said, there *is* a substantive issue hidden in this mess. The > NPOV of certain articles is being questioned. Let's address that. > What has happened to the articles in the past does not matter anymore. > Remember, the page history may exist, but it's the latest revision that > counts. Let's discuss what *is* there and what *should be* there. > Without accusing each other of anti-Anythingism. Behind all the personal remarks probably lurks unexpressed or unresolved feelings about values. It's often easier to castigate a person, than to articulate one's values. Especially quickly. And even more so when constrained by the Neutral Point of View. "Neutral? Screw neutral, I'm going to kill those bastards!" But our only business here is to craft neutral articles, even on life and death issues. We either work together, or we leave the project. That's why I often recommend we cool off. Take a weekend, a month, and don't write about controversial stuff if you can't keep your temper in check. I follow my own advice. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From vr at redbird.org Tue Jan 13 14:03:10 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:03:10 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <20040113122303.45936.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <40037964.3070603@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040113090213.0210e0f0@smtp.panix.com> At 04:23 AM 1/13/04 -0800, Optim wrote: >Can I have clarifications on: > >1. If native English speakers is "primary" audience >while the non native speakers is "secondary", does >that mean for you that an article on the next USA >elections is OK, while an article on the next >elections of Egypt (put here any other country) are >irrelevant and of no interest to English Wikipedia's >audience? No. It does mean that more background might be needed for an article on elections in a non-English-speaking country, since the readers would almost certainly be foreign to that country. >2. Or that a terrorist attack in USA should be more >important than a terrorist attack in Nepal, if both >attacks have the same number of killed or injured >people? Of course not. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 14:02:57 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:02:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek Message-ID: Personal remarks like the following are out of place in this project: * you ... imbecile It would be better to say something like: * Can't you see that X is Y; or, * Here is a reference which explains the matter differently. I will talk to user:LizarkKing Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040113/396b1df7/attachment.htm From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 14:03:31 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:03:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <4003F019.3070506@moongate.ro> Message-ID: <20040113140331.40315.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> yes I like this idea on plain text --- Gutza wrote: > Nikos-Optim wrote: > > >>There even is no need for any special hidden > >>punctuation: it should not be a > >>problem for the software to automatically add a ; > at > >>the end of every heading > >>and list item. > >> > >> > > > >you mean Wikipedia's software (for the "Speakable > >Version" link), right? > > > >--Optim > > > > > Yes, that's the idea, tweaking the Wiki's > "rendering" engine as to > produce proper "markup" for reading, as opposed to > the two existing > variants or markup (regular and print). > > I also proposed a "simple" rendering version some > time ago IIRC, don't > remember what came out of that. My idea was to be > able to access the > articles as plain text -- no links, no images, no > markup, no nothing, > just plain (maybe flowed, as in the MIME type?) text > with proper spacing > (one empty line between paragraphs, bullets > represented as asterisks and > indented lists, etc). That could be used for various > purposes, for > instance it would make it really easy to integrate > in third-party online > applications, such as multiplayer games (just one > example that came to > mind). > > --Gutza > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 14:07:26 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:07:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wall Street Journal article about Wikipedia In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040113140726.18660.qmail@web25002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I recently requested permission to copy some very interesting articles from a major Greek translation vortal (portal) into Wikipedia and Wikisource, asking for info on their copyright status too. during our discussion about the copyright, the owner of the website told me that he uses Wikipedia very often and he likes it. --Optim --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > The Wall Street Journal mentioned Wikipedia.org in > yesterdays Business > Solutions column (by Michael Totty): > > >> A wiki page looks like any Web page, but with a > difference: With > >> the click of a button, a visitor can add new > material to the page > >> or change what's already there. Others can see it > once they > >> refresh the page. This isn't as disruptive as it > sounds; all > >> changes are tracked, and earlier versions can be > restored if > >> important information is deleted. There is even a > wiki > >> encyclopedia (Wikipedia.org), where anyone can > add or amend > >> entries. > >> -- Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 12, > 2004 Page R4 > > Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 14:12:28 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:12:28 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. Message-ID: Viajero wrote: > Adam Carr demonstrated on articles like [[Anti-zionism]] that it > seems to make a huge difference if ONE individual takes charge of > the article with no particular authority except the confidence of > other contributors. Adam is by no means impartial (who is?) but he > has a gift for synthesizing various POVs into an effective, well- > written organic whole. I think this will work for any topic, provided an individual can be found who can win the confidence of the other contributors. I myself have managed to gain a degree of trust at [[Silesia]], and I have hopes that it may be sufficient to enable me to do in the Balkans what Viajeron suggests for the Middle East. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From jwales at bomis.com Tue Jan 13 14:22:56 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:22:56 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek In-Reply-To: <20040113022253.65567.qmail@web12823.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040113022253.65567.qmail@web12823.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040113142256.GC16996@joey.bomis.com> In general, I would call that bannable behavior, but you don't seem so upset about it, since it seems like it might just be a single isolated incident. It's totally unacceptable, but if it doesn't happen again. Of course, Annek has just destroyed all credibility for himself, so... Tucci wrote: > As far as I can remember, I have never interacted with > User:Annek in any way. Looking at his contributions, > it's possible I changed something he didn't like, > since he's edited [[hip hop]] and some other articles > I watch. There's never been any conflict between us, > however. He has changed a sentence describing me on > my own userpage from "I am also homosexual" to "I am a > fag". I don't appreciate it, for perhaps obvious > reasons, and have let him know on his talk page. I > don't know what, if anything, we want to do about > this, especially if it remains a single isolated > incident, but I wanted to bring it up to the mailing > list. > > TUF-KAT > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 15:15:14 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:15:14 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon Message-ID: Viajero wrote: > Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in > December (Anthere may remember this because she was one of > them) and this question came up. One person said they thought > WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. Another said a pro-Palestinian > bias. A third said neither POV was accurately represented. I haven't seen Rashomon, but I understand the reference: three or more people saw the same event and give widely divergent accounts of it. I think this cuts to the core of the difficulty in describing Middle East history and current events. Who among us can see without using a mental filter? I do not claim this ability. Despite my high estimate of my own objectivity, I am uncomfortably aware that from time to time I am simply WRONG. I daresay portions of articles are indeed tinged (or infected) with pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian bias. We might never eliminate either of these biases entirely. But we can work at it. The key is identification: if it smells, change it. Refactor the article so that it says the same thing but /attributes/ POV to its proponent. I don't know why this is so hard, but (A) it really is hard and (B) it really is important. Let's do it. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From tarquin at planetunreal.com Tue Jan 13 17:26:14 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:26:14 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <4002E28B.6070600@yahoo.com> References: <200401112325.43193.maveric149@yahoo.com> <4002E28B.6070600@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40042A36.7030201@planetunreal.com> Anthere wrote: > > I do not like the concept of "first" and "second" audience because > that would be officially stating that we should primarily write for > the first, to the detriment of the second. > > * First because as you stated it, english (along with spanish > possibly) is international language. It is the most international of > all languages. Potentially, it can reach many many more people than > just native english speakers. Whether you want it or not, english is > not entirely your language anymore. It is our common language. The one > we can share. The one that can be a babel tower so we can understand > all together. > I agree with Anthere. In terms of material and content, we should consider the audience of all wikipedia languages to be international. (Naturally, in terms of the vocabulary and grammar, we write for competent speakers of the language.) From tarquin at planetunreal.com Tue Jan 13 17:31:46 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:31:46 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40042B82.3030405@planetunreal.com> Nikos-Optim wrote: >Considering that we usually don't put some punctuation >(; . , :) after headings (section titles), List items, >See also listings where a list is utilised, etc etc... >I am afraid to say that the current Wikipedia style >seems to be unfair to Reading Software (software which >converts text into voice, Example: Adobe 6). Reading >Software uses the punctuation to make pauses, and >cannot get into account the document's markup and >format (headings etc). Lately I started putting : >after headings and ; or . after list items, but I >found the visual result disgusting and hard-to-read. > > I am aware of this problem. I must say that in this instance, it is the reading software that is broken and must be fixed. It SHOULD know to pause after a H* HTML element!!!!! From pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tue Jan 13 17:50:07 2004 From: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org (Pedro Fortuny) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:50:07 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <40042B82.3030405@planetunreal.com> References: <20040113012802.65837.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <40042B82.3030405@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040113175007.GA5188@SDF-EU.ORG> * tarquin [2004-01-13]: > I am aware of this problem. > I must say that in this instance, it is the reading software that is > broken and must be fixed. > It SHOULD know to pause after a H* HTML element!!!!! > It sounded quite obvious to me that the software should know that: the reader (adobe) is to blame, not the writer (in this case WP), if it cannot make a heading from ordinary text. Pedro. -- Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 From erik_moeller at gmx.de Tue Jan 13 17:55:58 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:55:58 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40042A36.7030201@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <90msTbZSpVB@erik_moeller> tarquin- > In terms of material and content, we should consider the audience of all > wikipedia languages to be international. I agree, too, and I don't think that this precludes the inclusion of a circumcised penis or clitoris picture in the respective articles [[penis]] and [[clitoris]], as long as these images are put into proper context and counter balanced with images of intact organs. The English Wikipedia should be orientated toward the English *language*. I don't think it should be orientated toward the English-speaking *culture*, if there even is such a thing. That would be inherently POV. Realistically of course there will always be some cultural bias, but we should work to eliminate it. Ideally, in my opinion, Wikipedia articles in all languages should contain exactly the same information. And yes, that also means facts like "In Germany, circumcision is rarely practiced .." - we do have such "by country" sections in many articles. And yes, this also means that "cultural sensibilities" are more or less irrelevant -- the only relevant sensibilities are those that are shared among most humans. The NPOV principle is a serious thing. We can't sacrifice it at the altar of popular culture at every opportunity. Regards, Erik From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:02:30 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:02:30 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401131002.30305.maveric149@yahoo.com> Optim wrote: >1. If native English speakers is "primary" audience >while the non native speakers is "secondary", does >that mean for you that an article on the next USA >elections is OK, while an article on the next >elections of Egypt (put here any other country) are >irrelevant and of no interest to English Wikipedia's >audience? All info is OK to have. I was just talking about its organization. Please read what I said again. --mav From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:08:13 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:08:13 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Shades of Rashomon (was: Re: This is getting ugly) References: Message-ID: <4004340D.6010101@yahoo.com> Viajero a ?crit: > On 01/12/04 at 08:35 AM, Fred Bauder said: > > >>Generally, although I would not expect you to admit it, Wikipedia >>articles have a somewhat pro-Israeli bias. > > > Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in December > (Anthere may remember this because she was one of them) and this question > came up. One person said they thought WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. > Another said a pro-Palestinian bias. A third said neither POV was > accurately represented. > > Conclusion??? Yes, I remember that conversation. We were three people talking, and the three of us had a different perception. That was curious ;-) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:11:57 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:11:57 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401131011.57904.maveric149@yahoo.com> Tarquin wrote: >In terms of material and content, we should consider >the audience of all wikipedia languages to be international. >(Naturally, in terms of the vocabulary and grammar, we >write for competent speakers of the language.) Yes - of course. But I would add that what passes for an an encyclopedia article in one language - how it is organized and split up - is not necessarily going to be the same between two languages. Even what is included in an encyclopedia vs other works of reference is going to differ between different languages. Some languages have a tradition of having many articles on words, while others have a tradition of segregating articles on words into more minimal entries in dictionaries. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:15:47 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:15:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401131015.47484.maveric149@yahoo.com> Erik wrote: >The English Wikipedia should be orientated toward the English >*language*. Exactly my point. The English language has its own traditions on how to organize information - that does not mean, however, that we exclude information or not follow NPOV. >I don't think it should be orientated toward the English-speaking >*culture*, if there even is such a thing. That would be inherently >POV. I agree. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:21:10 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:21:10 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401130045.16257.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40043716.30003@yahoo.com> I agree with what Tarquin, Charles, Erik said. And we should not think "culture", just language. Those who share a language do not necessarily share a same culture. Organising information to reflect the most proeminent culture among those using a specific language is not a very good idea. Though admitedly, by default that happen, because the editors of that proeminent culture are more numerous. It is not because it happens that it should be a goal. Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Anthere wrote: >>I guess we will have both to see that we are not >>writing for the same audience. As long as you >>accept that some do not recognise these notions >>of *primary* and *secondary* as valid, while others >>do, that is fine. > > > This whole discussion was more academic than practical since things naturally > develop toward what I described unless unnatural force is applied to direct > things down another path (which does happen for individual articles but on > the whole it is not a very significant force). > > Those of us who speak more than one language, however, should remember that > there are different notions of how to organize information in different > languages. They should therefore not just assume that the way they do things > in their primary language is necessarily transferable in other languages they > may know. > > This is one thing that I have learned while working on Wikipedia. > > -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:26:14 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:26:14 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401131015.47484.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40043846.1090007@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Erik wrote: > >>The English Wikipedia should be orientated toward the English >>*language*. > > > Exactly my point. The English language has its own traditions on how to > organize information - that does not mean, however, that we exclude > information or not follow NPOV. > > >>I don't think it should be orientated toward the English-speaking >>*culture*, if there even is such a thing. That would be inherently >>POV. > > > I agree. I agree. That is why we do need to present the penis with which a baby born and grew up, if not modified, as a "penis". Not as an "uncircumsed penis". First label (penis) is oriented toward "english language". Second label (uncircumsed penis) is oriented toward "english culture" (ie, meant to fit with the number of circumsised people in english culture). English language, not english culture. That was precisely my point as well :-) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 18:52:34 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:52:34 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience Message-ID: <200401131052.34729.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >I agree. That is why we do need to present the penis with >which a baby born and grew up, if not modified, as a "penis". >Not as an "uncircumsed penis". Uh, no. If and when the article [[penis]] gets large enough, then it will make sense to have more photos. One of those photos will be one of an circumcised penis. Given that circumcision is relatively common among English readers (our audience) we can expect to have - naturally - a relatively large section at [[penis]] about circumcision. I'm sure that in languages other than English in which circumcision is much rarer, that there may never be a whole section in their [[penis]] article about that - just a sentence or two and a link in their section dealing with all penis modifications. Having more than that may bore an audience where circumcision is not as common - that sub-topic isn't really as relevant to the the subject for them as it would be to readers for whom circumcision is more common. So just because it makes sense to you as a non-native speaker that a photo of a circumcised penis is not really very relevant to the penis article, please do not think that that would make sense to a native speaker. Relevance is a relative thing. So know your audience and select information that is most useful to them and organize it accordingly. That is going to be different in different languages (even when NPOV is followed faithfully). But again this happens naturally on Wikipedia due to the fact that the different language versions give each language the opportunity to develop articles that are most useful to their readers. -- mav From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 13 19:46:22 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:46:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] New deletion policy suggestion References: <20040113123237.64516.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40044B0E.7030100@telus.net> Nikos-Optim wrote: >The WikiMoney plan was mostly humourous, as I said: >"dont take it very seriously". > Regretably, when things are said tongue-in-cheek, some readers see the tongue as being in the wrong set of cheeks. :-) >I agree to list pages first on Cleanup and then to >VfD. For how much time would list the pages on >Cleanup? I suggest to open a poll and let the >community to vote on it. My vote is "same as VfD lag >time", i.e. 5 days. But I don't really have any >problem with the "2 weeks" suggestion. > Where's the urgency for such short periods. People will work on these things when they have the time. A simple note at the top of the page will often be a sufficient warning about the nature of the problem. Rule makers sometimes forget that even if the problem article falls within a person's sphere of interest, the most valuable contributors are often busy with articles or projects of their own; they should feel no need to drop everything to take the time to properly research something that another person considers inadequate. Periodically recycling the Cleanup list through people's attention could be more productive than pressure tactics. Ec From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 19:55:09 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 20:55:09 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience References: <200401131052.34729.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40044D1D.8070801@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Anthere wrote: > >>I agree. That is why we do need to present the penis with >>which a baby born and grew up, if not modified, as a "penis". >>Not as an "uncircumsed penis". > > > Uh, no. If and when the article [[penis]] gets large enough, then it will make > sense to have more photos. One of those photos will be one of an circumcised > penis. Given that circumcision is relatively common among English readers > (our audience) we can expect to have - naturally - a relatively large section > at [[penis]] about circumcision. Right now, the internet is dominated by native english people. Mostly americans. But that will change. Soon, most europeans will be connected. And later asian people. And later african people. I think a good deal of them will speak english. And if Wikipedia is successful, many of them will read the english wikipedia. The audience that is occurring right now, is likely not the audience we will have in 10 years. I suspect that right now, if developpers checked, they would find that 95% of the hits the english wikipedia gets are from north america. I also suspect that it won't be so true in 10 years. > I'm sure that in languages other than English in which circumcision is much > rarer, that there may never be a whole section in their [[penis]] article > about that - just a sentence or two and a link in their section dealing with > all penis modifications. > Having more than that may bore an audience where circumcision is not as common > - that sub-topic isn't really as relevant to the the subject for them as it > would be to readers for whom circumcision is more common. So just because it > makes sense to you as a non-native speaker that a photo of a circumcised > penis is not really very relevant to the penis article, please do not think > that that would make sense to a native speaker. No, you did not understand me. I never said that a picture of a circumsised penis was *wrong* there. *I said it should not be seen as the FIRST picture, as if it was nearly the natural condition of it. There should be FIRST a paragraph describing what a penis is, what it is in its natural state. The state of a penis as it is created by normal development of a human. It could be the anatomic paragraph, and truely, a schematic drawing would be best here. For neutrality, as well as accuracy and detail. *Then BELOW, in another paragraph, there could be a detailed description of the fact all sort of penis can be found around us. Black, white, long, big, circumsised etc...whatever. There, you may put more on the circumsision stuff than there are in other languages perhaps. It is not correct that for cultural proeminence, the anatomy of a penis is described differently in one encyclopedia and another. The anatomy of a penis is just the same everywhere, on every human. That is what is common to all men. It is nature we are describing. We should first describing what we all have in common (well, not me naturally :-)) Then, in a second time, we give details, of what is different among them. How we differ. The second point I raised, is that it is POV to label a regular penis, as using a comparison with a *specific* state, created by *cultural* background. Imagine an article on [[woman]], where at the top of the page there are two women, one naked, and the other one entirely covered by a burka. Would you describe the picture of the naked woman by saying it is a "a woman not wearing a burka"; or would you say it is "a woman". I guess you would say a woman. There is nothing cultural here. It is just description. There is no use of being opposing a natural state with a culturally biased state. That is confusing two types of description. > Relevance is a relative thing. So know your audience and select information > that is most useful to them and organize it accordingly. That is going to be > different in different languages (even when NPOV is followed faithfully). But > again this happens naturally on Wikipedia due to the fact that the different > language versions give each language the opportunity to develop articles that > are most useful to their readers. > > -- mav Definitly we will have to conclude that we disagree Mav :-) I know my audience, you know your audience. So we both will select information that will be most useful for our audience, as we define it. And we will both organise it the way we think it best for our audience, as we define it. And as long as we disagree on the content and the organisation, we will have to talk about it :-) That is all there is to say :-) From tucci528 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 19:57:23 2004 From: tucci528 at yahoo.com (Tucci) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:57:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek In-Reply-To: <20040113142256.GC16996@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040113195723.19515.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jimmy Wales wrote: > In general, I would call that bannable behavior, but > you don't seem so > upset about it, since it seems like it might just be > a single isolated > incident. It's totally unacceptable, but if it > doesn't happen again. > > Of course, Annek has just destroyed all credibility > for himself, so... Ordinarily, the word doesn't upset me. My (mostly straight) friends and I lob all manner of racial and sexual slurs towards each other at every available opportunity, but since Annek didn't know that I can only assume he meant it as a dire insult. I agree that, as long as it is a single incident, there's no call for banning (Annek isn't very active anyway) but I am now seriously considering the possibility that he and Lizard King are the same person. Aside from both launching sexual slurs at me on the same day (in Annek's case, with no apparent provocation) is suspicious, as is Lizard King's comments at his talk page and Talk:Bigfoot, where he seems to know more about what is going on and what will be done to check his identity than a new user should know. He dared me to check the IP address for him and Annek, and I'm certain they will be different, just as he claims... Regardless, I will be monitoring Annek. For the record, anyone following the Lizard King debacle, all of my interaction with him has been on Talk:Cronus, User talk:Lizard King and Talk:Bigfoot -- I've never insulted him personally or broken any Wikipedia policies that I'm aware of. I didn't even engage in an edit war, though UtherSRG did. I believe I reverted [[Cronus]] once, and scrupulously outlined my reasoning on the talk page. I may request a ban soon, depending on how things go -- he has, after all, edited my comments to make it appear as though I agreed with him when I clearly did not and also that I was sexually attracted to Bigfoot -- isn't that an officially bannable action? Tuf-Kat __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 13 20:09:03 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:09:03 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? Message-ID: There is a legitimate question about how much human nudity should be shown in Wikipedia. On the one hand, anyone who types /wiki/penis at the end of http://www.wikipedia.org has no one to blame but himself if he finds an article there about a human penis. And if he or she is offended that the article goes beyond its excretory role to describe its role in reproduction or *shudder* "getting it on", tough luck. It's like visiting Las Vegas and being shocked to discover that gambling goes on there. On the other hand, many of us hope that the Wikipedia could produce a version suitable for distribution to schools. And we all know how prissy (or protective) some schools are about giving access to 'obscene' information or images. The general rule is, the lower the age group, the more "protection" they should get. Note that this is from the POV of the "protectors"; others say that if the kids aren't old enough to be interested, they'll just turn the page. For acceptance, however, those of us with a "no holds barred" attitude might do well to consider the feelings of the "guardians of youth". This means, either leave stuff out of Wikipedia (unthinkable!) or somehow creating an expurgated (or bowdlerized) edition. This might not be so traumatic as you'd think. Many school subjects are graded, with math probably having the finest gradations. "Age-appropriate" materials are common in U.S. public schools, and, presumably elsewhere as well. But the first "print" or "plastic" (DVD) edition of Wikipedia probably ought to be un-censored. Its target would be adults. Perhaps if enough people get their hands on a physical copy of Wikipedia, one of them will decide to make a "school edition". I don't think we (the content providers) have to worry about that right now. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com Tue Jan 13 20:52:23 2004 From: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com (Bjorn Lindqvist) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:52:23 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] anti-semites... In-Reply-To: <20040112181248.9F939B845@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040112181248.9F939B845@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040113205223.GA1540@localhost> > (That being said, most anti-Zionists today also have > anti-Semitic views. The problem is that people are using > the same word ("anti-Zionism") to refer to many different > things. Last year, no one saw this problem. After I made > this point in new ways, a number of times, others here > finally figured that out. Hence the new improved article. The article says there is a connection between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Gotta edit that. > No, and I think the problem is that you have no idea what I > was talking about. I was talking about the many explicitly > anti-Semitic posts made by a number of Wikipedia users, > which were well-documented. In my narrow world there are some things that are legal and some that are illegal, some things that I should give a fuck about and some thing I should not give a fuck about. In this case it is very legal to be the thing you describe. You will not get booted from the project if you admit to being or if someone "proves" you are an anti-Semite. Atleast thats how I think it works. Because where I live, there are quite a few anti-Semites. And while I do despise them I think it would be wrong for me to shot them or stab them with a knife (those being the only real punishments I can deal out). Maybe they deserve to be punched in the face a few times, but I don't dare that. I'm to small and they would punch me back much harder. And strangely enough it seems like the officials aren't punishing them either! I guess all cops and politicians to are anti-Semites or something. Maybe it isn't illegal in my country to be a nazi.. dunno.. And that is why I stopped caring about anti-Semites anymore. I realized it isn't my problem or duty to keep track on who is an anti-Semite and who is not. I mean I don't want to associate with them or anything but keeping track on each and every anti-Semite is just to much work for absolutely no reward. So that's what I'm curious why you are trying to find Nazis on the Wikipedia, RK. You had done a great study and proved someone was a Nazi or something, right? Well, I didn't read it because I figured that it is none of my fucking business to find out what ideology Wikipedia persons belong to. What if I am a Nazi? Would that change anything at all really? Yours truly, the sick Nazi bastard BL From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 13 20:50:04 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:50:04 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. References: Message-ID: <400459FC.5000108@telus.net> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >Viajero wrote: > >>Adam Carr demonstrated on articles like [[Anti-zionism]] that it >>seems to make a huge difference if ONE individual takes charge of >>the article with no particular authority except the confidence of >>other contributors. Adam is by no means impartial (who is?) but he >>has a gift for synthesizing various POVs into an effective, well- >>written organic whole. >> >I think this will work for any topic, provided an individual can be >found who can win the confidence of the other contributors. I myself >have managed to gain a degree of trust at [[Silesia]], and I have >hopes that it may be sufficient to enable me to do in the Balkans >what Viajeron suggests for the Middle East. > Agreed. To gain that confidence you need to be seen as listening to both sides of the dispute. It's an approach that is superior to the VfD process. Starting a discussion with "I want to delete your article." does not promote a collaborative approach to the problem. It brings out defensive attitudes. Ec From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Tue Jan 13 21:20:13 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:20:13 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4004610D.4090308@rufus.d2g.com> Viajero wrote: >Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in December >(Anthere may remember this because she was one of them) and this question >came up. One person said they thought WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. >Another said a pro-Palestinian bias. A third said neither POV was >accurately represented. > >Conclusion??? > > > >>There just aren't a lot of >>Arabs or Palestinians showing up here. Most pro-Palestinian edits are >>coming from a liberal Israeli point of view such as Danny's >> >> > >One Palestinian-Canadian showed up awhile ago but alas he has not >contributed since September: > >http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&offset=0&target=Joseph_E._Saad > > I think part of the problem, as always, is deciding what is a "neutral" point of view. IMO, it does *not* mean that it's one that all people would accept as neutral. It's one that all *reasonable* people would accept as neutral, even if somewhat grudgingly. Of course, how to define reasonable is controversial. To take one example, it is mainstream public opinion in many Arab countries that the [[Protocols of the Elders of Zion]] are an authentic document, a viewpoint that is not in keeping with the evidence (which is fairly strong on this point). To have any sort of reasonable argument, we can't help but simply saying "well, just about everyone who has examined the evidence thinks mainstream Arab public opinion is flat-out wrong on this point" (albeit phrased more politely). This is not only to pick on Arabs. Some polls last year showed that a fairly high percentage of Americans believed Iraqis were among the Sept. 11 hijackers, but as evidence shows that the hijackers were Saudis, we can't really present "they were Iraqis" as a legitimate viewpoint. -Mark From sascha at pantropy.net Tue Jan 13 22:23:02 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:23:02 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> On Tuesday 13 January 2004 03:09 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > There is a legitimate question about how much human nudity should > be shown in Wikipedia. In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it legitimate because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given the example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at their own unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. (And a sad reflection on the influence of religious fundamentalists on societies the world over.) > For acceptance, however, those of us with a "no holds barred" > attitude might do well to consider the feelings of the "guardians > of youth". This means, either leave stuff out of Wikipedia > (unthinkable!) or somehow creating an expurgated (or bowdlerized) > edition. The first suggestion is untenable. The second suggestion will have a lot of followers. Sadly. If someone wants to provide a censored (and let's not mix words here, it truly is a censorship) version of wikipedia, they are free to do so under the GFDL. As far as I'm concerned, they can leave out whatever they want: No nudity, No criticism of religion, No blasphemy, No pictures of women (special feature for the fundamentalist islamicists), No mentioning of the word "God", No criticism of Israel/Saudi Arabia. No criticism of al-Qaida/Bush. No information on anti-terrorism measures (could help the terrorists, right?) No information on birth control. Human closed-mindedness literally has no bounds. What I do vigorously object to is doing something like this under the auspices of wikimedia. This means there should be no integration of a "censor" function in either wikipedia or in the wikipedia 1.0 effort. If such a project exists under the wikimedia umbrella, I will ask that none of my donation will in any way go towards this. I know that I (and everyone else) has donated with the full knowledge that wikimedia will do with the money what they/we see fit, and that the donators don't have any real say in the process. But I would consider it ethical to establish a seperate "censorpedia fund" (you're more than welcome to use that term ;-). As an aside, I've been doing some research into the development of L'Encyclop?die (for wikipedia, of course). They too had tensions between those that wanted to censor information in order to have wider adoption, and those that believed that they should be able to publish information seen as offensive (or in the particular case of the Encyclop?die blasphemous) by portions of the population. Funny enough, they didn't seem to be as prude in regards to nudity as some of us are. I hope nobody is offended by the fact that they will see a penis in a picture from the Encyclop?die that I have added to [[anatomy]]. ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Jan 13 22:57:42 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 14:57:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia In-Reply-To: <40042A36.7030201@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <20040113225742.9507.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> yes, all Wikipedias are international. English Wikipedia is intented for all people who can read English. Greek Wikipedia is intented for all people who can read Greek. There is no discrimination between Native and Non-Native speakers. Let's get rid of discriminations. --Optim --- tarquin wrote: > > > Anthere wrote: > > > > > I do not like the concept of "first" and "second" > audience because > > that would be officially stating that we should > primarily write for > > the first, to the detriment of the second. > > > > * First because as you stated it, english (along > with spanish > > possibly) is international language. It is the > most international of > > all languages. Potentially, it can reach many many > more people than > > just native english speakers. Whether you want it > or not, english is > > not entirely your language anymore. It is our > common language. The one > > we can share. The one that can be a babel tower so > we can understand > > all together. > > > I agree with Anthere. > In terms of material and content, we should consider > the audience of all > wikipedia languages to be international. > (Naturally, in terms of the vocabulary and grammar, > we write for > competent speakers of the language.) > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 13 22:57:47 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 14:57:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040113225747.30799.qmail@web21502.mail.yahoo.com> Viajero wrote: > > Adam Carr demonstrated on articles like > [[Anti-zionism]] that it > > seems to make a huge difference if ONE individual > takes charge of > > the article with no particular authority except > the confidence of > > other contributors. Adam is by no means impartial > (who is?) but he > > has a gift for synthesizing various POVs into an > effective, well- > > written organic whole. Ed replied: > I think this will work for any topic, provided an > individual can be > found who can win the confidence of the other > contributors. I reply: This is quite correct, but it is also temporary. As soon as the respected moderating person goes away, the fighting will flare up and by the end of the first good edit war the results of all that hard work will have been swept away. I suggest that my proposed change would make this (slightly) less likely to happen. Zero __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Tue Jan 13 23:16:22 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:16:22 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <40047C46.80207@rufus.d2g.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it legitimate >because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given the >example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for >children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at their own >unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. (And a sad >reflection on the influence of religious fundamentalists on societies the >world over.) > > Ah, but should we add some graphic photographs to [[anus]], [[feces]], and a variety of other subjects people perhaps wouldn't want to see images of? After all, unless you're offended by your own bowel movements, you can't possibly find images of feces offensive, right? And even if you think that's alright, I'm sure I can find *some* image you'd prefer not to look at. We have to draw the line somewhere unless Wikipedia is just going to become rotten.com and offend absolutely everyone. Where we draw it is a subjective judgment. In any case, I'm less worried about offending people per se than in simply forcing people to see these images. What's wrong with making them a link? Many people, myself included, do not want to see a picture of [[penis]] inline in the article, and are quite capable of clicking on the link if we did at some point wish to see the picture. This is not because I am offended by penises or pictures thereof, but simply because I consider it a private matter and don't generally wish to be accosted by them for no good reason. And I think adding them inline adds very little vs. "click here", so don't consider it a good reason. Same goes for other photographs, such as [[feces]], [[car accident]], and etc. We should have all these photographs (up to some very high level--perhaps we shouldn't have goatse.cx photographs), but we shouldn't have them all inline. So those who choose to see them can see them. I don't see how this is censorship, since we are not removing the information, or even making it hard to get. It seems, on the contrary, that there is a small segment of people here trying to push a POV that nudity (or at least pictures of nudity) ought to be acceptable in public, and are resisting any efforts to compromise in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from being advanced. -Mark From dan at galleryivy.com Tue Jan 13 11:57:56 2004 From: dan at galleryivy.com (Dan Wahl) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 05:57:56 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] linked to page Message-ID: <400388E4.115.77A98B@localhost> Dear wonderful wiki, Some of the community may be interested in these links, from my page -- http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/wahld1/Dan/gender_neutral_essay.htm#_f tn2 to these pages -- www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sie_and_hir Thank you, Dan Wahl --- From erik_moeller at gmx.de Wed Jan 14 00:21:44 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 00:21:44 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <40047C46.80207@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <90qsbXeSpVB@erik_moeller> Delirium- > In any case, I'm less worried about offending people per se than in > simply forcing people to see these images. What's wrong with making > them a link? Many people, myself included, do not want to see a picture > of [[penis]] inline in the article, and are quite capable of clicking on > the link if we did at some point wish to see the picture. Many people do not want to see a picture of a woman in public without a veil, and are quite capable of clicking on the link if they did at some point wish to see the picture. > It seems, on the contrary, that there is a small segment of people here > trying to push a POV that nudity (or at least pictures of nudity) ought > to be acceptable in public, and are resisting any efforts to compromise > in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from > being advanced. "It seems that there is a small segment of people here trying to push the POV that women walking in public (or at least pictures of women walking in public) ought to be acceptable, and are resisting any efforts to compromise in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from being advanced." Exclusion of such content is fundamentally irreconcilable with our neutrality policy, and should only happen in cases where we can assume near universal offensiveness. This clearly advances an agenda - just as doing the opposite would. Neutrality is the lack of involvement -- philosophically speaking, as soon as we have decided to create an encyclopedia, we have at the very least taken the position that bringing knowledge to human beings is a good thing to do. By making our NPOV policy non-negotiable, we have also taken the position that Wikipedia does not subscribe to absolute truths, but presents all points of view instead. Combine these two "agendas" and you arrive at the inevitable outcome that we *have* to include such images. Removing them would mean that we fail in terms of providing knowledge, and hiding them as links means that we fail in terms of being free of bias. We make an exception to the latter rule in order to further the former: We link pictures that we consider almost universally offensive (sometimes with warnings) in order to avoid turning away readers, and in order to get them to actually read the article that contains the pictures. But as soon as we start pandering to local cultural biases, we inevitably fail in both regards. The inclusion itself must be allowed not because of a particular *personal* agenda. It must be allowed because it is our *collective* agenda to provide knowledge without bias, and keeping Wikipedia as free of censorship as reasonably possible is necessary to do so. Regards, Erik From maveric149 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 03:01:43 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:01:43 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia Message-ID: <200401131901.43507.maveric149@yahoo.com> Optim wrote: >There is no discrimination between Native and >Non-Native speakers. Let's get rid of discriminations. There is no discrimination. It is a matter of information organization and focus, which means that an encyclopedia in one language is not really the same thing as an encyclopedia in another language. So people who are not native speakers should respect the traditions of the second language they may be writing in. If they don't then the resulting articles will only be maximally useful to people who happen to have the same primary language as themselves. Cross pollination is nice and a good thing, but can only be taken so far. For example, if I spoke French as a second language, I would not insist that a textbook written in French follow standards of focus and organization that are common in English textbooks. To do so would make the French textbook less useful to most French speakers (except those whose primary language is English). Also, if every combination of primary/secondary language audience were written to, then the textbook would be huge and not be very useful to any audience. See what I mean? But since we are a wiki whose content is created by volunteers (most of whom who are native speakers), these rough edges will get ironed out very naturally in time - if left alone. So the point is really moot (and is more of a background effect to larger differences in personal likes and dislikes of information organization - those get ironed out in time as well). But it is still an important point because we *could* form policies that work against this natural inclination. That, IMO, would be a very bad thing. But having Wikipedias in different languages helps to ensure that each is maximally useful to their readers. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 03:28:34 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:28:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040114032834.21778.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> In the past month, Wikipedia has shown up in several online news reports, according to news.google: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/11/124803.shtml http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/78/conscious.html http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1405 http://www.pdalive.com/showarticle.php?threadid=5000 http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=7930&cid=8&cname=News http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/12/23.11.shtml RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040113/5786bb2b/attachment.htm From ebeins at hotmail.com Wed Jan 14 03:32:20 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:32:20 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Annek References: <20040113142256.GC16996@joey.bomis.com> <20040113195723.19515.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > he has, after all, > edited my comments to make it appear as though I > agreed with him when I clearly did not ....-- isn't that an > officially bannable action? > > Tuf-Kat > Malevolently changing another person's comment definitely sounds like a bannable action. Not sure if it is. Menc From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 04:58:27 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:58:27 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <40047C46.80207@rufus.d2g.com> References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> <40047C46.80207@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <200401132358.29818.sascha@pantropy.net> On Tuesday 13 January 2004 06:16 pm, Delirium wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote: >>In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it legitimate >>because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given the >>example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for >>children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at their own >>unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. (And a sad >>reflection on the influence of religious fundamentalists on societies the >>world over.) >> >> >Ah, but should we add some graphic photographs to [[anus]], [[feces]], >and a variety of other subjects people perhaps wouldn't want to see >images of? After all, unless you're offended by your own bowel >movements, you can't possibly find images of feces offensive, right? That is correct. I see my feces nearly every day, and recognise that defecation is a normal and natural act. I am not in the least bit offended by the sight of feces. People study feces of animals to infer what they ate, etc. I don't find these people to be morally reprehensible characters because they are interested in feces. Similarly for anuses. >And even if you think that's alright, I'm sure I can find *some* image >you'd prefer not to look at. We have to draw the line somewhere unless >Wikipedia is just going to become rotten.com and offend absolutely >everyone. Where we draw it is a subjective judgment. Ah, but you fail to see that even if there exist images that I would prefer not to look at, I would not seek them out. You make it sound as though I am advocating putting pictures of anuses on the cover of the encyclopedia. Another false assumption is that if (in the hypothetical) I prefer not to look at pictures of self-mutilation, I would want you to take the decision to remove an exemplary picture from the article [[self-mutilation]]. This is not the case. I would firstly not actively seek such a picture, and if I had stumbled upon it accidentally I would simply look away. >In any case, I'm less worried about offending people per se than in >simply forcing people to see these images. What's wrong with making >them a link? Many people, myself included, do not want to see a picture >of [[penis]] inline in the article, and are quite capable of clicking on >the link if we did at some point wish to see the picture. This is not >because I am offended by penises or pictures thereof, but simply because >I consider it a private matter and don't generally wish to be accosted >by them for no good reason. And I think adding them inline adds very >little vs. "click here", so don't consider it a good reason. "Forcing" is a very strong word. Do you consider yourself "forced" to see a penis when you, of your own volition visit [[penis]]? And when you visit [[anatomy]]? Who decides what is considered "force"? Regarding linking to images. I did not in any way state that I oppose the idea of having images that are almost universally offensive located on a page that people need to click to view the image, with a notice that there will be eg. an image of self-mutilation, or of eg. a car-crash. You are misrepresenting my view in order to be able to attack it. Now, I don't think that it is plausible that a version of wikipedia that is censored in accordance with the moral doctrine of the puritans would include images of a penis, anus, feces, etc. with the limitation that they would have to be clicked and not displayed inline. Don't tell me that you honestly think that they would settle for that. >Same goes for other photographs, such as [[feces]], [[car accident]], >and etc. We should have all these photographs (up to some very high >level--perhaps we shouldn't have goatse.cx photographs), but we >shouldn't have them all inline. So those who choose to see them can see >them. I don't see how this is censorship, since we are not removing the >information, or even making it hard to get. But in which encyclopedic article would you include the goatse.cx picture? Again, you are misrepresenting my position. I did not state that not having an image inline is censorship. Perhaps I should have been clearer on this point. I have made what I believe to be a well-founded argument that we should not have an officially censored version of wikipedia. If people want to have a censored version, they should (and can) go ahead and do so. But I argue against integrating any censorship into either wikipedia or wikipedia 1.0. You have not presented any argument that censorship of wikipedia or wikipedia 1.0 to remove potential and/or actual offensive material beside the one that I myself have mentioned: popularity. And this is where I find that we step onto a slippery slope. I know that some people consider the slippery slope argument a fallacy, but I shall employ it here nonetheless. If we submit to the censorship of the american puritans, why not to that of fundamental islamists? Why not to that of those who do not whish to have "God" spelled out? Why not to that of those who do not wish to see pictoral representations of deities? Then you have to start arguing that "my offense at seeing a penis is justified", whereas "your offense at seeing a depicition of a deity is not justified". >It seems, on the contrary, that there is a small segment of people here >trying to push a POV that nudity (or at least pictures of nudity) ought >to be acceptable in public, and are resisting any efforts to compromise >in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from >being advanced. As Erik said in his response to this point, our goal as an encyclopedia is to provide encyclopedic knowledge. There are probably very few people that would disagree that a picture of a penis adds encyclopedic knowledge to the article [[penis]] (otherwise why do we include pictures at all?). Note that our goal is not to provide a sanitised version of reality but, I repeat, to provide encyclopedic knowledge. The onus is therefore on the censors to justify the removal of encyclopedic knowledge from an encyclopedia. I have just latched onto the nudity issue because that seemed like a particularly relevant example of people trying to remove encyclopedic knowldge from an encyclopedia. Whether or not I find nudity offensive is not the issue - Although I will freely admit that I did not hesitate to point out the stupidity of finding nudity offensive ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From erik_moeller at gmx.de Wed Jan 14 05:13:13 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 05:13:13 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple deletion reorganization Message-ID: <90qsfRWCpVB@erik_moeller> In the midst of the numerous proposals, I hope this one does not go completely under. I have proposed a reorganization of our deletion pages, including some changes to the process which should better integrate Wikipedia:Cleanup and clarify what both "consensus" and "voting" are in this context and when to use them. Opponents of voting should note that this proposal does advocate a very conservative stance on voting, including an 80% threshold and use of voting only after consensus has failed, and only on the basis of complete summaries of past arguments. I hope that most opponents can agree to such a compromise. The proposal and associated poll is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy Please discuss. All best, Erik From shebs at apple.com Wed Jan 14 05:16:28 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:16:28 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news In-Reply-To: <20040114032834.21778.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040114032834.21778.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4004D0AC.4050501@apple.com> Rick wrote: >In the past month, Wikipedia has shown up in several online news reports, according to news.google: > > >http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/12/23.11.shtml > At first this one puzzled me, it was an announcement of a search tool called DEVONagent. The Wikipedia connection is that it comes with "plug-ins searching the Wikipedia encyclopedia, the Wiktionary online dictionary", and others. Kind of interesting to see people selling commercial software that automagically goes to WP for info. Stan From maveric149 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 07:40:04 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:40:04 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple deletion reorganization Message-ID: <200401132340.04707.maveric149@yahoo.com> Erik wrote: >Opponents of voting should note that this proposal does >advocate a very conservative stance on voting, including >an 80% threshold and use of voting only after consensus >has failed, and only on the basis of complete summaries of >past arguments. I hope that most opponents can agree to >such a compromise. >The proposal and associated poll is at: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy Opponent of voting here. Since when have we started voting on a specific proposal without discussing that specific proposal first? More is already on the linked talk page. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From erik_moeller at gmx.de Wed Jan 14 08:13:10 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:13:10 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple deletion reorganization In-Reply-To: <200401132340.04707.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <90qsgRXCpVB@erik_moeller> Daniel- > Since when have we started voting on a specific proposal without discussing > that specific proposal first? Countless times. In fact most policy pages were created that way -- the policy page is written, then the talk page contains a listing of supporters, opponents and arguments. People switch from supporter to opponent as they read the arguments. There have been plenty of "this or that article" votes (e.g. Adam Carr's Mother Teresa rewrite), and the selection of options for a poll in itself constitutes a proposal; many polls were set up with no discussion of the options whatsoever. There's no reason to be too paranoid about votes or, more accurately, polls, as you can change your opinion at any given time. There's good reason to delay the voting process for deletion in particular as it is such a drastic action that is not easily reverted. But in this case I find your reaction disturbingly dramatic and not rooted in precedent. However, this discussion reminds me that we need a more clearly defined general decision making process. Sadly, Jimbo seems to think that no such thing is necessary. Regards, Erik From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Wed Jan 14 08:24:54 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:24:54 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <90qsbXeSpVB@erik_moeller> References: <90qsbXeSpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <4004FCD6.2070008@rufus.d2g.com> Erik Moeller wrote: >Delirium- > > >>In any case, I'm less worried about offending people per se than in >>simply forcing people to see these images. What's wrong with making >>them a link? Many people, myself included, do not want to see a picture >>of [[penis]] inline in the article, and are quite capable of clicking on >>the link if we did at some point wish to see the picture. >> >> > >Many people do not want to see a picture of a woman in public without a >veil, and are quite capable of clicking on the link if they did at some >point wish to see the picture. > > > >>It seems, on the contrary, that there is a small segment of people here >>trying to push a POV that nudity (or at least pictures of nudity) ought >>to be acceptable in public, and are resisting any efforts to compromise >>in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from >>being advanced. >> >> > >"It seems that there is a small segment of people here trying to push the >POV that women walking in public (or at least pictures of women walking in >public) ought to be acceptable, and are resisting any efforts to >compromise in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda >from being advanced." > >Exclusion of such content is fundamentally irreconcilable with our >neutrality policy, and should only happen in cases where we can assume >near universal offensiveness. This clearly advances an agenda - just as >doing the opposite would. Neutrality is the lack of involvement -- >philosophically speaking, as soon as we have decided to create an >encyclopedia, we have at the very least taken the position that bringing >knowledge to human beings is a good thing to do. By making our NPOV policy >non-negotiable, we have also taken the position that Wikipedia does not >subscribe to absolute truths, but presents all points of view instead. > > It seems that you are assuming what you find personally offensive has "near universal offensiveness", and what you do not find personally offensive does not. For example, I'd argue that close-up pictures of genitalia are considered offensive by a similar proportion of the world's population as pictures of someone slitting their wrist (the latter appear quite often in mainstream movies, for example, while the former generally only appear in pornographic movies). So then we'd have to include those too. And if our article on [[feces]] has pictures of feces, our article on [[clitoris]] has a detailed photo of a clitoris, our article on [[suicide methods]] (hypothetical; I'm not sure if such an article exists and Wikipedia is too slow to check at the moment) includes photos of slit wrists, and so on, a large proportion of Wikipedia will simply be unreadable by a large number of people. I certainly wouldn't read it, anyway, and I'm more liberal in these matters than most people I know. You sound like you may be arguing that close-up pictures of a clitoris are of a similar level of offensiveness to photos of women without a veil, which is simply not true: the former are far more offensive to far more people. It is true that they do not offend everyone, but I think they offend enough people to make it a poor idea to include them inline, much as slit wrists and feces and other things that a very large proportion of people don't particularly want to see casually unless they're looking for that photo on purpose. -Mark From smolensk at eunet.yu Wed Jan 14 08:27:52 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:27:52 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software In-Reply-To: <20040113122738.66540.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040113122738.66540.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401140128.30799.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Tuesday 13 January 2004 13:27, Nikos-Optim wrote: > > There even is no need for any special hidden > > punctuation: it should not be a > > problem for the software to automatically add a ; at > > the end of every heading > > and list item. > > you mean Wikipedia's software (for the "Speakable > Version" link), right? Yes. From erik_moeller at gmx.de Wed Jan 14 09:43:51 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:43:51 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <4004FCD6.2070008@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <90qshISCpVB@erik_moeller> Delirium- > It seems that you are assuming what you find personally offensive has > "near universal offensiveness", and what you do not find personally > offensive does not. I'm willing to tolerate quite a lot of images that I find personally offensive. For example, I tolerate and defend a link to goatse.cx, even though I find that site highly offensive. I'm personally no big fan of violence, but I would defend the inclusion of such pictures where they are useful. It is simply not true that I am arguing to justify my own moral preconceptions. I am arguing for minimizing censorship. I think I have a very good track record of doing so consistently and without bias. You appear to be advocating a ban in explicit imagery, on the other hand, that purely suits your personal feelings. Before accusing me of bias, you should reflect on your own. > For example, I'd argue that close-up pictures of > genitalia are considered offensive by a similar proportion of the > world's population as pictures of someone slitting their wrist (the > latter appear quite often in mainstream movies, for example, while the > former generally only appear in pornographic movies). So then we'd have > to include those too. And if our article on [[feces]] has pictures of > feces, our article on [[clitoris]] has a detailed photo of a clitoris, > our article on [[suicide methods]] (hypothetical; I'm not sure if such > an article exists and Wikipedia is too slow to check at the moment) > includes photos of slit wrists, and so on, a large proportion of > Wikipedia will simply be unreadable by a large number of people. I > certainly wouldn't read it, anyway, and I'm more liberal in these > matters than most people I know. The fact that you compare human body parts to suicide methods and excrements is somewhat disturbing, but let's not get into this. Just some basic cause and effect. Feces are prone to carry disease, that is why most human beings are taught to avoid touching or even eating them (there may also be a biological taboo that is triggered by the smell and/or taste; note that baby feces smell differently). Similarly, most human beings with a functional brain avoid pain, as such, events that are likely to cause pain or death, as well as images of pain and death, are likely to trigger the emotional associations that have been built through a lifetime to teach avoidance thereof. I challenge you to point to a single culture that had a notable absence of the feces taboo. I doubt that one exists. However, it is easy to see that many cultures have much weaker nudity taboos or none at all (the latter usually living in warm climates where clothing is not required -- hiding our bodies constantly obviously creates a mystery about them). Some societies have condoned or required suicide in certain circumstances, but the act itself has usually been a private one. Some cultures celebrate violence and sadism, but that is simply the opposite of a taboo; we need not pander to it by including as many gory pictures as we can find (nor should we endorse a violence taboo by including none). Instead, we should apply the standard of maximizing our usefulness and neutrality. When writing about suicide methods, illustrations of different methods would be entirely appropriate. (I'm fairly certain people would trot out the "how-to" argument to prevent such an article from getting too instructive, although I disagree with that logic.) Photos and blood add little to the usefulness. In articles about body parts, photos help with the identification and should not replace but complement illustrations. In how-to articles, abstract illustrations are often more useful than photos, but if someone came up with a good, not unreasonably violent "suicide methods" video, hey, why not. As for suicides in movies, they are rarely very explicit, unless the movies are made for shocking purposes, which validates the taboo rathern than refuting it. Nudity in movies on the other hand obviously varies a great degree by culture -- I've seen full erections on regular German daytime TV, not sure about clitorises. > You sound like you may be arguing that close-up pictures of a clitoris > are of a similar level of offensiveness to photos of women without a > veil, which is simply not true: the former are far more offensive to far > more people. Yeah, because the latter are a subset of the former ;-). Current dominant western attitudes regarding sexuality are descendants of views that culminated in anti masturbation electric schock devices and [[bathing house]]s. There is a clear relationship between these attitudes that cannot realistically be denied. The "near universal" standard seems to pass your "feces and suicide" test. Feces is almost universally considered repulsing, and suicide is almost universally a private matter (justifying some toning down of the imagery). I therefore submit that this test is fully sufficient as our guideline for deciding whether and where we want to censor ourselves. Regards, Erik From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 13:07:03 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:07:03 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (a.k.a. Lir) Message-ID: Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (user:Lir) is once again listed on the Conflicts between users page (in addition to be listed under some eight pages currently or recently protected on Protected pages). For those of you who comparative newcomers to the list, since his joining Wikipedia (Fall 2002) Adam has been the source of an endless amount of grief, as can be seen by perusing the mailing list archives: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l. He was banned in November 2002, and resurfaced under various accounts (Vera Cruz, Susan Mason, Dietary Fiber, Pizza Puzzle). The same problems Adam is causing now were being debated ad nauseum by Orotolan88 and others already a year ago this month. After a protracted negotiation with Jimbo, Adam was readmitted to the community in September (see http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-September/006362.html). By all appearances, Adam was given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to start over with a clean slate. Despite the very generous reprieve, Adam has fallen back into his old habits. No one denies that Adam is capable of being a useful contributor, but it appears he is constitutionally incapable of resisting the temptation to create mischief and get involved in silly edit-wars. If other users disagree with his contributions, Adam appears unwilling or incapable of engaging in rational dialog on the Talk pages to resolve the issues. I expended considerable energy (as did 172) explaining on the Talk page why a paragraph Adam wanted to add to the introduction of [[New Imperialism]] was unsuitable (other users also questioned its utility). For all my efforts, I was rewarded with a sneer: If you don't like it, tough. That page is now *again* protected. In the final reckoning, Adam does more harm than good to Wikipedia and time devoted to dealing with him is time taken away from more constructive activities. Isn't it time for Adam to be banned *yet again*? V. From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 13:18:52 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 05:18:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040114131852.34340.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> > Viajero wrote: > > > Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in > > December (Anthere may remember this because she was one of > > them) and this question came up. One person said they thought > > WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. Another said a pro-Palestinian > > bias. A third said neither POV was accurately represented. In my experience bias is not the most serious problem in the ME pages, it is ignorance. People think they know something about the subject because they have some infantile propaganda tract (or a collection of infantile web sites) and insist on copying it into WP. Of course this is related to bias, but on the other hand there have been people in WP with strong political opinions who are nevertheless valuable contributors on account of the depth of their knowledge. Two knowledgable people with opposing biases can generally write a good article even if the road is rocky. No number of ignoramuses can write a good article regardless of their biases. One of the surest marks of a problem editor is that they insist on filling up articles with "quotations". I plan to write more on this in the near future. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Wed Jan 14 13:25:34 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex R.) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:25:34 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon References: <20040114131852.34340.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001401c3daa1$e42b5220$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> > Two knowledgable people with opposing biases can generally > write a good article even if the road is rocky. No number of > ignoramuses can write a good article regardless of their biases. What about the typing monkey paradox? Alex756 From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 13:49:36 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:49:36 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <400548F0.7060206@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes a ?crit: > On Tuesday 13 January 2004 03:09 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > >>There is a legitimate question about how much human nudity should >>be shown in Wikipedia. > > > In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it legitimate > because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given the > example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for > children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at their own > unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. Patently ridiculous ? An opinion is patently ridiculous ? From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 13:46:44 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:46:44 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: anti-semites... References: <20040112181248.9F939B845@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040113205223.GA1540@localhost> Message-ID: <40054844.4010306@yahoo.com> If there ever was a filter set, it does not seem to work :-) Bjorn Lindqvist a ?crit: >>(That being said, most anti-Zionists today also have >>anti-Semitic views. The problem is that people are using >>the same word ("anti-Zionism") to refer to many different >>things. Last year, no one saw this problem. After I made >>this point in new ways, a number of times, others here >>finally figured that out. Hence the new improved article. > > > The article says there is a connection between anti-Semitism and > anti-Zionism? Gotta edit that. > > >>No, and I think the problem is that you have no idea what I >>was talking about. I was talking about the many explicitly >>anti-Semitic posts made by a number of Wikipedia users, >>which were well-documented. > > > In my narrow world there are some things that are legal and some that > are illegal, some things that I should give a fuck about and some > thing I should not give a fuck about. > > In this case it is very legal to be the thing you describe. You will > not get booted from the project if you admit to being or if someone > "proves" you are an anti-Semite. Atleast thats how I think it > works. Because where I live, there are quite a few anti-Semites. And > while I do despise them I think it would be wrong for me to shot them > or stab them with a knife (those being the only real punishments I can > deal out). Maybe they deserve to be punched in the face a few times, > but I don't dare that. I'm to small and they would punch me back much > harder. And strangely enough it seems like the officials aren't > punishing them either! I guess all cops and politicians to are > anti-Semites or something. Maybe it isn't illegal in my country to be > a nazi.. dunno.. > > And that is why I stopped caring about anti-Semites anymore. I > realized it isn't my problem or duty to keep track on who is an > anti-Semite and who is not. I mean I don't want to associate with them > or anything but keeping track on each and every anti-Semite is just to > much work for absolutely no reward. > > So that's what I'm curious why you are trying to find Nazis on the > Wikipedia, RK. You had done a great study and proved someone was a > Nazi or something, right? Well, I didn't read it because I figured > that it is none of my fucking business to find out what ideology > Wikipedia persons belong to. > > What if I am a Nazi? Would that change anything at all really? > > Yours truly, > the sick Nazi bastard BL From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 14:00:44 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:00:44 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Shades of Rashomon References: <20040114131852.34340.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40054B8C.10704@yahoo.com> zero 0000 a ?crit: >>Viajero wrote: >> >> >>>Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in >>>December (Anthere may remember this because she was one of >>>them) and this question came up. One person said they thought >>>WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. Another said a pro-Palestinian >>>bias. A third said neither POV was accurately represented. >> > > In my experience bias is not the most serious problem in the > ME pages, it is ignorance. People think they know something > about the subject because they have some infantile propaganda > tract (or a collection of infantile web sites) and insist on > copying it into WP. I would like to mention here that I have *never* written anything about these topics :-) From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 13:54:40 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:54:40 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon In-Reply-To: <20040114131852.34340.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 01/14/04 at 05:18 AM, zero 0000 said: > One of the surest marks of a problem editor is that they insist on > filling up articles with "quotations". This reminds me of a comment Adam Carr made on [[Talk:Zionism]]: > I have written a new paragraph which avoids this stupid war of > quotations. An encyclopaedia article is supposed to be a work of > synthesis, not a collection of undigested primary source materials. > Adam 02:40, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC) I thought this was very insightful. Indeed, many articles include such "quote wars" (like [[Norman Finkelstein]]) and they look ridiculous. V. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 14:25:32 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:25:32 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia References: <200401131901.43507.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4005515C.1040204@yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Optim wrote: > >>There is no discrimination between Native and >>Non-Native speakers. Let's get rid of discriminations. > > > There is no discrimination. It is a matter of information organization and > focus, which means that an encyclopedia in one language is not really the > same thing as an encyclopedia in another language. So people who are not > native speakers should respect the traditions of the second language they may > be writing in. If they don't then the resulting articles will only be > maximally useful to people who happen to have the same primary language as > themselves. Cross pollination is nice and a good thing, but can only be taken > so far. One of the greatest things on each Wikipedia, is that there is no discrimination of language, culture, sex, color, education etc... As long as one respect copyrights, npov rules, write in the appropriate language, and do not vandalise the place, one is welcome to participate to the best of his abilities, with no hierarchy and classification of value. We all have equivalent rights and duties as editors. We can all provide content, help with setting up the rules, organise the place, build up the community, develop the software, on a piedestal of equality. With equal respect between editors, whatever their origin, since they have a common goal, building the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is empowering everyone. It is breaking up barriers of nationalities and languages, who often give more rights to one culture than another. That is neat. Wikipedia is neat :-) From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 14:24:57 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:24:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] linked to page Message-ID: I'm very glad that at least SOME of our articles are stable and comprehensive enough to be cited as footnotes to an academic paper. Someday, when we've all learned NPOV a lot better, even our Middle East political articles will be similarly cited. Ed Poor <-- ever hopeful From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 14:34:28 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:34:28 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Bannable actions (was: User:Annek) Message-ID: There is no such thing as a "bannable action" at Wikipedia. Rather, there are actions which we as a community strongly wish to discourage. It's not a matter of "he stole an apple from a street vendor, cut off his hand". There is no hard and fast rule like that. Each person is different. Some people will respond to reason, or flattery, or humor. Others require what the Cunctator might term "hard" measures like warnings, suspensions, or expulsion. I don't want us to get into a mode where we say, "He did this, so he should be banned." Rather, let us say, "He did this, let's find a way to make him stop it." I've already warned Annek, so if he keeps breaking the rules I guess this will make him a good candidate for the Arbitration Committee's first case. Or if that's not quick enough, someone can ask Jimbo to examine his edit history. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 14:39:56 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:39:56 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (a.k.a. Lir) Message-ID: Viajero, Your complaint about Lir is the /first/ I've heard in months. I was just about to mention him as an example of someone who "once was lost but now is found" (quoting 'Amazing Grace'). Please be more specific about the edits you object to, and let me see if I can mediate -- before jumping 2 or 3 steps directly to making a ban request. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 14:48:12 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:48:12 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? In-Reply-To: <400548F0.7060206@yahoo.com> References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> <400548F0.7060206@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401140948.12785.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 08:49 am, Anthere wrote: > Sascha Noyes a ?crit: > > On Tuesday 13 January 2004 03:09 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > >>There is a legitimate question about how much human nudity should > >>be shown in Wikipedia. > > > > In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it > > legitimate because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously > > given the example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad > > thing for children, they have to in the same vein consider a child > > looking at their own unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently > > ridiculous. > > Patently ridiculous ? > An opinion is patently ridiculous ? Yes, that is correct. I consider the position that it is harmful to children to look at their nude body to be ridiculous. If you want to make an assertion that something is true, you must offer some evidence that supports that claim. Do you have any such evidence? I should like to see it. I don't subscribe to the wishy-washy notion of not being able to give my opinion about that of another simply because it is their opinion. Which is what you seem to be implying. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 14:51:16 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:51:16 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal remarks, etc. (was: anti-semites...) Message-ID: Bjorn, Your post to RK raises some interesting point, but then it became heated and personal. Please try to tone down the language, and make sure to leave out the personal remarks. A couple of contributors have written me about spelling out the word F***. I understand if you /have/ to use that kind of language, but if you think you can get your point across without it please try to use different language. For example, instead of "give a @#$%", you might try: * some things that I should pay attention to / concern myself with Personal remarks like the following don't move the dialogue forward: * you are trying to find Nazis * You ... proved someone was a Nazi * none of my !@#$% business Let's try to keep our posts on topic. The topic is how we can make Wikipedia the greatest Free Encyclopedia the world has ever seen. Thank you. Ed Poor Wikien-l Administrator From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 15:00:47 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:00:47 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> <400548F0.7060206@yahoo.com> <200401140948.12785.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <4005599F.5060403@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes a ?crit: > On Wednesday 14 January 2004 08:49 am, Anthere wrote: > >>Sascha Noyes a ?crit: >> >>>On Tuesday 13 January 2004 03:09 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote: >>> >>>>There is a legitimate question about how much human nudity should >>>>be shown in Wikipedia. >>> >>>In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it >>>legitimate because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously >>>given the example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad >>>thing for children, they have to in the same vein consider a child >>>looking at their own unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently >>>ridiculous. >> >>Patently ridiculous ? >>An opinion is patently ridiculous ? > > > Yes, that is correct. I consider the position that it is harmful to children > to look at their nude body to be ridiculous. If you want to make an assertion > that something is true, you must offer some evidence that supports that > claim. Do you have any such evidence? I should like to see it. I don't > subscribe to the wishy-washy notion of not being able to give my opinion > about that of another simply because it is their opinion. Which is what you > seem to be implying. > > Best, > Sascha Noyes As long as you do not write such a thing in Wikipedia without good attribution of someone whose opinion is relevant, I have no problem with that opinion of yours :) (you might have not understood I was not speaking of the opinion it was harmful or not harmful, but rather of the comment given about such a position) Am I clear there, I dunno... From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 15:00:10 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:00:10 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (a.k.a. Lir) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Ed, please refer to the section on Lir on [[wikc]] and the conflicts he listed under on [[Wikipedia:Protected pages]] for references to specfic articles. V. From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 15:55:26 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:55:26 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? In-Reply-To: <4005599F.5060403@yahoo.com> References: <200401140948.12785.sascha@pantropy.net> <4005599F.5060403@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401141055.26468.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 10:00 am, Anthere wrote: > > Yes, that is correct. I consider the position that it is harmful to > > children to look at their nude body to be ridiculous. If you want to make > > an assertion that something is true, you must offer some evidence that > > supports that claim. Do you have any such evidence? I should like to see > > it. I don't subscribe to the wishy-washy notion of not being able to give > > my opinion about that of another simply because it is their opinion. > > Which is what you seem to be implying. > > > > Best, > > Sascha Noyes > > As long as you do not write such a thing in Wikipedia without good > attribution of someone whose opinion is relevant, I have no problem with > that opinion of yours :) > > (you might have not understood I was not speaking of the opinion it was > harmful or not harmful, but rather of the comment given about such a > position) > > Am I clear there, I dunno... Attribution is always good. I don't have a problem with the opinions of others, if they are in any way founded on some evidence. What I do have a problems with is people pushing unfounded opinions on others. By unfounded I mean "making an assertion as to the truth of a proposition without giving any evidence to support this assertion." We are presently discussing potential policy on the mailing lists, not writing encyclopedia articles, so I don't see how your comment about writing my opinions on Wikipedia is relevant. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From rjaros at shaysnet.com Wed Jan 14 16:22:24 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:22:24 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <200401132358.29818.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> <40047C46.80207@rufus.d2g.com> <200401132358.29818.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: On Jan 13, 2004, at 11:58 PM, Sascha Noyes wrote: > On Tuesday 13 January 2004 06:16 pm, Delirium wrote: >> Sascha Noyes wrote: >>> In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it > legitimate >>> because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given >>> the >>> example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for >>> children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at >>> their > own >>> unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. >>> (And a sad >>> reflection on the influence of religious fundamentalists on >>> societies the >>> world over.) >>> >>> >> Ah, but should we add some graphic photographs to [[anus]], [[feces]], >> and a variety of other subjects people perhaps wouldn't want to see >> images of? After all, unless you're offended by your own bowel >> movements, you can't possibly find images of feces offensive, right? > > That is correct. I see my feces nearly every day, and recognise that > defecation is a normal and natural act. I am not in the least bit > offended by > the sight of feces. People study feces of animals to infer what they > ate, > etc. I don't find these people to be morally reprehensible characters > because > they are interested in feces. Similarly for anuses. How many anuses do *you* see per day? I don't see any, myself. Not even my own. So what's so great about a picture of an anus? Will it help you recognize one if you see it in the wild? :) It seems like a diagram, rather than a picture, would be much more informative, which is obviously the point. And if we offend fewer people, so much the better. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 16:33:04 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:33:04 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: References: <200401132358.29818.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <200401141133.04712.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 11:22 am, Peter Jaros wrote: > On Jan 13, 2004, at 11:58 PM, Sascha Noyes wrote: > > On Tuesday 13 January 2004 06:16 pm, Delirium wrote: > >> Sascha Noyes wrote: > >>> In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it > > > > legitimate > > > >>> because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given > >>> the > >>> example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for > >>> children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at > >>> their > > > > own > > > >>> unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. > >>> (And a sad > >>> reflection on the influence of religious fundamentalists on > >>> societies the > >>> world over.) > >> > >> Ah, but should we add some graphic photographs to [[anus]], [[feces]], > >> and a variety of other subjects people perhaps wouldn't want to see > >> images of? After all, unless you're offended by your own bowel > >> movements, you can't possibly find images of feces offensive, right? > > > > That is correct. I see my feces nearly every day, and recognise that > > defecation is a normal and natural act. I am not in the least bit > > offended by > > the sight of feces. People study feces of animals to infer what they > > ate, > > etc. I don't find these people to be morally reprehensible characters > > because > > they are interested in feces. Similarly for anuses. > > How many anuses do *you* see per day? I don't see any, myself. Not > even my own. So what's so great about a picture of an anus? Will it > help you recognize one if you see it in the wild? :) > > It seems like a diagram, rather than a picture, would be much more > informative, which is obviously the point. And if we offend fewer > people, so much the better. > > Peter How many Lungs do *you* see per day? I don't see any, myself. Not even my own. So, one might ask oneself: "What's so great about a picture of an Lung"? "Will it help you recognize one if you see it in the wild"? :) Actually, it will. ;-) I think pictures add information. Not a great deal, mind you. But you could always attempt to argue that wikipedia should have no pictures, because the arguments you have presented against pictures of anuses applies equally to all other pictures. I doubt, however, that you will get very far. I share Erik's opinion that pictures should complement illustrations/diagrams. Again, the onus is on the part of the censors to justify the removal of encyclopedic knowledge from an encyclopedia. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From A Wed Jan 14 16:40:52 2004 From: A (A) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:40:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Stop slandering me. In-Reply-To: <20040114143439.BAA54B849@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040114164052.26635.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> Stop slandering me. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 16:43:38 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:43:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (a.k.a. Lir) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040114164338.33061.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> Ed, you might want to check [[Conflicts between users]]. RickK "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: Viajero, Your complaint about Lir is the /first/ I've heard in months. I was just about to mention him as an example of someone who "once was lost but now is found" (quoting 'Amazing Grace'). Please be more specific about the edits you object to, and let me see if I can mediate -- before jumping 2 or 3 steps directly to making a ban request. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040114/1287ff09/attachment.htm From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Wed Jan 14 16:40:43 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:40:43 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Stop slandering me. Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152299@backupserv.queens.harley> Adam wrote: >Stop slandering me. Who has slandered you ? From jwales at bomis.com Wed Jan 14 16:45:11 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:45:11 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040114164511.GD15938@joey.bomis.com> As is well known, I'm somewhat conservative about what I think we ought to show in Wikipedia. The bounds of good taste are very important. Having said that, I think that the current article and diagram/photo are not problematic. This is very different from the 'clitoris' picture (don't know the current status on that one), which looked "like porn" to me -- in poor taste. The diagrams and photo in this case are very "textbook" looking. As to whether this sort of thing should go into a version of Wikipedia intended for distribution to schools is perhaps a different matter, and one that we will have to address specifically at some point in the future. --Jimbo From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 16:55:34 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:55:34 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: <200401140948.12785.sascha@pantropy.net> <4005599F.5060403@yahoo.com> <200401141055.26468.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <40057486.3050503@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes a ?crit: > On Wednesday 14 January 2004 10:00 am, Anthere wrote: > >>>Yes, that is correct. I consider the position that it is harmful to >>>children to look at their nude body to be ridiculous. If you want to make >>>an assertion that something is true, you must offer some evidence that >>>supports that claim. Do you have any such evidence? I should like to see >>>it. I don't subscribe to the wishy-washy notion of not being able to give >>>my opinion about that of another simply because it is their opinion. >>>Which is what you seem to be implying. >>> >>>Best, >>>Sascha Noyes >> >>As long as you do not write such a thing in Wikipedia without good >>attribution of someone whose opinion is relevant, I have no problem with >>that opinion of yours :) >> >>(you might have not understood I was not speaking of the opinion it was >>harmful or not harmful, but rather of the comment given about such a >>position) >> >>Am I clear there, I dunno... > > > Attribution is always good. I don't have a problem with the opinions of > others, if they are in any way founded on some evidence. What I do have a > problems with is people pushing unfounded opinions on others. By unfounded I > mean "making an assertion as to the truth of a proposition without giving any > evidence to support this assertion." We are presently discussing potential > policy on the mailing lists, not writing encyclopedia articles, so I don't > see how your comment about writing my opinions on Wikipedia is relevant. > > Best, > Sascha Noyes Apology, I forgot we were not chit-chatting forum, but encyclopedia building :-). Then if we are only currently talking about a policy case, to what were you refering when you said "I will freely admit that I did not hesitate to point out the stupidity of finding nudity offensive ;-)" ? Ah, never mind, I had enough of genitalia stuff these days. From jwales at bomis.com Wed Jan 14 16:54:22 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:54:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: References: <200401131723.02709.sascha@pantropy.net> <40047C46.80207@rufus.d2g.com> <200401132358.29818.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040114165422.GE15938@joey.bomis.com> Peter Jaros wrote: > It seems like a diagram, rather than a picture, would be much more > informative, which is obviously the point. And if we offend fewer > people, so much the better. I think Peter points the way towards a principle that can resolve most, though perhaps not all, of the dilemmas we will face in this area. The goal of our articles is to be informative, not offensive. It turns out that in most cases (penis, for example) the ways of presenting the content that are offensive are also lacking in terms of informativeness. A photo "in the style of" pornography takes away from our mission of informativeness, while a photo "in the style of" a medical text comports with that mission. Consider how NPOV can help us to resolve this. Person A says "I think that including this photo is offensive". Person B says "I think that omitting it is censorship, and offensive". This is not an irreconcilable conflict *in the majority of cases*. A little creative thought may often turn up a way for both parties to be satisfied. Of course, if either side is just hell-bent on refusing to co-operate, not much can be done. But usually, a little WikiLove can go a long way... From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 17:00:46 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:00:46 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? Message-ID: We want our articles to be sensitive and exciting -- like [[clitoris]] -- warm, embracing, and all-encompassing -- like [[vagina]] -- and we also want them to be penetrating and strong and capable of endless growth -- like [[penis]]. ;-) Uncle Ed From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Wed Jan 14 17:00:17 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:00:17 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152090@backupserv.queens.harley> I work in the biology department of a UK school. The diagram is pretty standard stuff and is likely to be studied in year 7, 8 or 9 (aged 11 -14) The photo OTOH is more problematic. I've never seen a semi erect penis in a UK school textbook. However photos of flaccid penises are to be found (and are the source of much giggling among the kids. , -----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com] Sent: 14 January 2004 16:45 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How much? As is well known, I'm somewhat conservative about what I think we ought to show in Wikipedia. The bounds of good taste are very important. Having said that, I think that the current article and diagram/photo are not problematic. This is very different from the 'clitoris' picture (don't know the current status on that one), which looked "like porn" to me -- in poor taste. The diagrams and photo in this case are very "textbook" looking. As to whether this sort of thing should go into a version of Wikipedia intended for distribution to schools is perhaps a different matter, and one that we will have to address specifically at some point in the future. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 17:08:24 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:08:24 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: Message-ID: <40057788.2000108@yahoo.com> Please, could someone censor that ? ;-) Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > We want our articles to be sensitive and exciting -- like [[clitoris]] > -- warm, embracing, and all-encompassing -- like [[vagina]] -- and we > also want them to be penetrating and strong and capable of endless > growth -- like [[penis]]. > > ;-) > > Uncle Ed From rjaros at shaysnet.com Wed Jan 14 17:19:17 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:19:17 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <200401141133.04712.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401132358.29818.sascha@pantropy.net> <200401141133.04712.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: On Jan 14, 2004, at 11:33 AM, Sascha Noyes wrote: > How many Lungs do *you* see per day? I don't see any, myself. Not > even my own. So, one might ask oneself: "What's so great about a > picture of > an Lung"? "Will it help you recognize one if you see it in the wild"? > :) Point taken. I still have a feeling that a picture of a lung is more useful than a picture of an anus. But I can't think of a good reason, so maybe that's just me. > I think pictures add information. Not a great deal, mind you. But you > could > always attempt to argue that wikipedia should have no pictures, > because the > arguments you have presented against pictures of anuses applies > equally to > all other pictures. I doubt, however, that you will get very far. I > share > Erik's opinion that pictures should complement illustrations/diagrams. > Again, > the onus is on the part of the censors to justify the removal of > encyclopedic > knowledge from an encyclopedia. Hehe...you said "onus"... *giggle* *snicker* We now return you to your regularly scheduled maturity, already in progress. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Wed Jan 14 17:16:32 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:16:32 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215229B@backupserv.queens.harley> I'm sorry to have to tell you this Ed, but penises are _not_ capable of endless growth. Theresa From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 17:23:05 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:23:05 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/14/04 at 11:22 AM, Peter Jaros said: > So what's so great about a picture of an anus? Will it > help you recognize one if you see it in the wild? :) > It seems like a diagram, rather than a picture, Better yet, a poem: Sonnet: To the Asshole Dark, puckered hole: a purple carnation That trembles, nestled among the moss [...] (Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, circa 1871) Perhaps it sounds better in French. Anth?re?... V. From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 17:28:12 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:28:12 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: References: <200401141133.04712.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <200401141228.12551.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 12:19 pm, Peter Jaros wrote: > Hehe...you said "onus"... *giggle* *snicker* I guess I should add "no pun intended" in hindsight. ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From erik_moeller at gmx.de Wed Jan 14 17:32:57 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:32:57 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <20040114165422.GE15938@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <90qsvXEhpVB@erik_moeller> Jimmy- > The goal of our articles is to be informative, not offensive. It > turns out that in most cases (penis, for example) the ways of > presenting the content that are offensive are also lacking in terms of > informativeness. A photo "in the style of" pornography takes away > from our mission of informativeness, while a photo "in the style of" a > medical text comports with that mission. It's simply not true that a photo of a penis or vagina is not informative. Ironically, it is particularly informative in families where the parents would likely consider it offensive. It helps people to actually identify sexual organs and to understand the wide range in their looks and sizes (many people are anxious to find out whether they are "normal"). Every sex education book that is worth its name contains pictures of genitalia. I would also like to point out that there is near consensus for inclusion of links, and a slim majority for inclusion of photos (where the minority typically argues that not they, but mysterious "other people" might be offended). Regards, Erik From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 17:50:49 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:50:49 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? Message-ID: LOL! You're confusing the /article/ with the real thing, perhaps ;-) (I hope Anthere will forgive me...) Ed -----Original Message----- From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:17 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] How much? I'm sorry to have to tell you this Ed, but penises are _not_ capable of endless growth. Theresa _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 17:57:13 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:57:13 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <20040114165422.GE15938@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040114165422.GE15938@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <200401141257.13791.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 11:54 am, Jimmy Wales wrote: > Peter Jaros wrote: > > It seems like a diagram, rather than a picture, would be much more > > informative, which is obviously the point. And if we offend fewer > > people, so much the better. > > I think Peter points the way towards a principle that can resolve > most, though perhaps not all, of the dilemmas we will face in this > area. > > The goal of our articles is to be informative, not offensive. It > turns out that in most cases (penis, for example) the ways of > presenting the content that are offensive are also lacking in terms of > informativeness. A photo "in the style of" pornography takes away > from our mission of informativeness, while a photo "in the style of" a > medical text comports with that mission. I am in total agreement that the images should be akin to those seen medical texts. However, I think that the people wo don't want to have pictures of various parts of the human body included in wikipedia won't be satisfied by that. The question of diagrams vs. images is a very interesting one. Images and diagrams have slightly different aims, in my opinion. The aim of diagrams is to reduce the visual information to a minimum in order to illustrate either the constituent parts or the functionality of a system (or both). An image on the other hand tells us exactly how something looks. Take for example an article on the mars rover. A diagram of the rover would clearly and concisely display what parts it is made up of and how they function and interact. It would not, however give a detailed account of how it looks. While viewing an article on the mars rover which only had a diagram, I would ask myself "but what does it actually look like". As I have stated in anothe email in this thread, I think that images don't add a vast amount of information, but they add relevant and encyclopedic information nonetheless. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From ruimu at uestc.edu.cn Wed Jan 14 18:41:51 2004 From: ruimu at uestc.edu.cn (Ruimu) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 02:41:51 +0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? References: <274100280.14796@uestc.edu.cn> Message-ID: <274104191.50238@uestc.edu.cn> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Moeller" To: Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 1:32 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How much? > Jimmy- > > The goal of our articles is to be informative, not offensive. It > > turns out that in most cases (penis, for example) the ways of > > presenting the content that are offensive are also lacking in terms of > > informativeness. A photo "in the style of" pornography takes away > > from our mission of informativeness, while a photo "in the style of" a > > medical text comports with that mission. > > It's simply not true that a photo of a penis or vagina is not informative. > Ironically, it is particularly informative in families where the parents > would likely consider it offensive. It helps people to actually identify > sexual organs and to understand the wide range in their looks and sizes > (many people are anxious to find out whether they are "normal"). Every sex > education book that is worth its name contains pictures of genitalia. > > I would also like to point out that there is near consensus for inclusion > of links, and a slim majority for inclusion of photos (where the minority > typically argues that not they, but mysterious "other people" might be > offended). Those "other people" aren't "mysterious". Could be my gran'ma, for example. For me, near consensus is a nice thing, and therefore links are enough. BTW, for me, photos are not that much informative: they could be "sexually educative". Well... Does Wikipedia intends to be "educative"? (Politically "educative"? Morally "educative"? Religiously "educative"? I guess that it could be hard to find a consensus on how to be "educative" those ways.) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 19:21:14 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 20:21:14 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: Message-ID: <400596AA.1060207@yahoo.com> Viajero a ?crit: > On 01/14/04 at 11:22 AM, Peter Jaros said: > > >>So what's so great about a picture of an anus? Will it >>help you recognize one if you see it in the wild? :) > > >>It seems like a diagram, rather than a picture, > > > Better yet, a poem: > > Sonnet: To the Asshole > > Dark, puckered hole: a purple carnation > That trembles, nestled among the moss > [...] > > (Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, circa 1871) > > Perhaps it sounds better in French. Anth?re?... > > > V. L'idole.- Sonnet du Trou du Cul Obscur et fronc? comme un oeillet violet Il respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousse Humide encor d'amour qui suit la fuite douce Des Fesses blanches jusqu'au coeur de son ourlet. Des filaments pareils ? des larmes de lait Ont pleur?, sous le vent cruel qui les repousse, A travers de petits caillots de marne rousse Pour s'aller perdre o? la pente les appelait. Mon R?ve s'aboucha souvent ? sa ventouse; Mon ?me, du co?t mat?riel jalouse, En fit son larmier fauve et son nid de sanglots. C'est l'olive p?m?e, et la fl?te caline, C'est le tube o? descend la c?leste praline: Chanaan f?minin dans les moiteurs enclos ! --------- Fantastique ! Admirable ! How much love those two must have shared for such a splendor ! (feel jalous) From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 19:41:22 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:41:22 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch Message-ID: Someone other than me will have to decide if Lance Murdoch is poisoning the Wikipedia with his pro-communist POV. I think my own fervent anti-communism keeps me from being neutral enough to make an unbiased judgment. His edits to [[Red Scare]], as well as his comments to me about it, make it seem like: A. Communists did nothing wrong. B. Anti-communism of the 1950s was "hysterical". Since this cannot be the official view of Wikipedia, I need someone impartial (or at least 'neutral') to intervene. I can't "mediate" between myself and someone else. Ed Poor From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 14 19:57:41 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:57:41 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Ed, That is the Stalinist position. It just needs to be labeled as such. He's not a big reverter that I've noticed. Fred > From: "Poor, Edmund W" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:41:22 -0500 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > Someone other than me will have to decide if Lance Murdoch is poisoning > the Wikipedia with his pro-communist POV. I think my own fervent > anti-communism keeps me from being neutral enough to make an unbiased > judgment. > > His edits to [[Red Scare]], as well as his comments to me about it, make > it seem like: > > A. Communists did nothing wrong. > B. Anti-communism of the 1950s was "hysterical". > > Since this cannot be the official view of Wikipedia, I need someone > impartial (or at least 'neutral') to intervene. I can't "mediate" > between myself and someone else. > > Ed Poor > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 14 20:05:06 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:05:06 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Let's wait til the watchlist comes back before we make any judgement about his effect. Most of this stuff would have come to others attention if the watchlist was not disabled. Poor Uncle Ed, the Little Dutch Boy... Fred > From: "Poor, Edmund W" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:41:22 -0500 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > Someone other than me will have to decide if Lance Murdoch is poisoning > the Wikipedia with his pro-communist POV. I think my own fervent > anti-communism keeps me from being neutral enough to make an unbiased > judgment. > > His edits to [[Red Scare]], as well as his comments to me about it, make > it seem like: > > A. Communists did nothing wrong. > B. Anti-communism of the 1950s was "hysterical". > > Since this cannot be the official view of Wikipedia, I need someone > impartial (or at least 'neutral') to intervene. I can't "mediate" > between myself and someone else. > > Ed Poor > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 20:05:07 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:05:07 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/14/04 at 02:41 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > Someone other than me will have to decide if Lance Murdoch is poisoning > the Wikipedia with his pro-communist POV. "Poisoning" seems as yet too strong a term -- most of his edits seem reasonable and he doesn't get into silly edit wars -- but I have noticed that he has the habit of turning his edit summaries into rants on how American-centric corporate press dominates Wikipedia and the like. He definitely needs to lighten up. V. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 20:17:57 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:17:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch Message-ID: Hmm. Maybe I should follow my own advice about avoiding personal remarks: * poisoning the Wikipedia Or else the list admin will gently prod me to rephrase that as "adding unattributed POV". Sheepishly, Cousin Eddie From pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Wed Jan 14 20:27:29 2004 From: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org (Pedro Fortuny) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:27:29 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040114202729.GA4286@SDF-EU.ORG> For the record: Lancemurdoch has renamed "September 11 terrorist attack" to "September 11 attck" I guess this is not very very very very good withoug asking beforehand. Pedro. -- Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 From meelar2 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 20:36:13 2004 From: meelar2 at yahoo.com (Dan Miller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:36:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Penises In-Reply-To: <20040114173301.7DD15B84E@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040114203613.76947.qmail@web9604.mail.yahoo.com> Just wanted to make a note: Sascha, Peter, the article on "Lung" actually has no photos, just a diagram. Thought people might want to know. Meelar __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 14 20:47:43 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:47:43 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <20040114202729.GA4286@SDF-EU.ORG> Message-ID: Actually not bad. In their eyes they are just defending themselves. Fred > From: Pedro Fortuny > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:27:29 +0100 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > For the record: Lancemurdoch has renamed > > "September 11 terrorist attack" > > to > > "September 11 attck" > > I guess this is not very very very very good withoug asking beforehand. > > Pedro. > -- > Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org > Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid > C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org > pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Wed Jan 14 20:51:26 2004 From: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org (Pedro Fortuny) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:51:26 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: References: <20040114202729.GA4286@SDF-EU.ORG> Message-ID: <20040114205126.GA11855@SDF-EU.ORG> * Fred Bauder [2004-01-14]: > Actually not bad. In their eyes they are just defending themselves. > > Fred > Yes, but their eyes are not the only ones (and the move, which is quite bold, was done without asking/discussing). Pedro. > > From: Pedro Fortuny > > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:27:29 +0100 > > To: English Wikipedia > > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > > > For the record: Lancemurdoch has renamed > > > > "September 11 terrorist attack" > > > > to > > > > "September 11 attck" > > > > I guess this is not very very very very good withoug asking beforehand. > > > > Pedro. > > -- > > Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org > > Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid > > C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org > > pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 14 21:00:35 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:00:35 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: Message-ID: <4005ADF3.4060605@yahoo.com> If you show proof of that claim, certainly Edmond :-) Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > LOL! You're confusing the /article/ with the real thing, perhaps ;-) > > (I hope Anthere will forgive me...) > > Ed > > -----Original Message----- > From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:17 PM > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] How much? > > > I'm sorry to have to tell you this Ed, but penises are _not_ capable of > endless growth. > > Theresa From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Jan 14 20:59:30 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:59:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <20040114205126.GA11855@SDF-EU.ORG> Message-ID: <20040114205930.62511.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> you don't have a law which forbids anyone from promoting terrorism or making positive comments for terrorists??? --Optim --- Pedro Fortuny wrote: > * Fred Bauder [2004-01-14]: > > Actually not bad. In their eyes they are just > defending themselves. > > > > Fred > > > > Yes, but their eyes are not the only ones (and the > move, which is quite > bold, was done without asking/discussing). > > > Pedro. > > > > From: Pedro Fortuny > > > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > > > > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:27:29 +0100 > > > To: English Wikipedia > > > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > > > > > For the record: Lancemurdoch has renamed > > > > > > "September 11 terrorist attack" > > > > > > to > > > > > > "September 11 attck" > > > > > > I guess this is not very very very very good > withoug asking beforehand. > > > > > > Pedro. > > > -- > > > Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org > > > Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de > Valladolid > > > C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> > www.cmpenafiel.org > > > pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. > Nr. 34 983 298277 > > > _______________________________________________ > > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > -- > Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org > Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid > C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> > www.cmpenafiel.org > pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. > 34 983 298277 > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Wed Jan 14 21:21:25 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:21:25 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <90qshISCpVB@erik_moeller> References: <90qshISCpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <4005B2D5.5090301@rufus.d2g.com> Erik Moeller wrote: >The fact that you compare human body parts to suicide methods and >excrements is somewhat disturbing, but let's not get into this. Just some >basic cause and effect. Feces are prone to carry disease, that is why most >human beings are taught to avoid touching or even eating them (there may >also be a biological taboo that is triggered by the smell and/or taste; >note that baby feces smell differently). Similarly, most human beings with >a functional brain avoid pain, as such, events that are likely to cause >pain or death, as well as images of pain and death, are likely to trigger >the emotional associations that have been built through a lifetime to >teach avoidance thereof. > > This is an argument that feces is "correctly" considered offensive, while those who consider nudity offensive are incorrect. Such arguments are completely irrelevant to the current discussion: it is not your (or anyone's) place to decide whether it is "natural" to avoid pain or feces and "unnatural" to avoid nudity. It is a simply fact that a great many people consider explicit close-up images of a clitoris offensive--in fact, perhaps there are more people who consider such photos offensive than there are who consider photos of feces offensive. You can argue they're wrong, but I don't think that personal viewpoint ought to influence the encyclopedia. In fact, I think people who consider close-up photos of a clitoris *appropriate* for public display are probably a fairly small minority, worldwide. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Wed Jan 14 21:36:09 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:36:09 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <4005B2D5.5090301@rufus.d2g.com> References: <90qshISCpVB@erik_moeller> <4005B2D5.5090301@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <4005B649.1080203@rufus.d2g.com> To sort of clarify my viewpoint on this: I'm not advocating that we remove any of these images, unless they're simply completely uninformative. I'm merely requesting that we not put them in-line, and instead have them as a link (an internal [[media:...]] link). Simply an accurately labeled link, not a "WARNING: Some readers might find this offensive" link or anything like that. Personally, I have no problem seeing these images, but I don't want to *always* see them. Having seen our clitoris photograph once, I don't need to see it again if I happen to check the article again for some information. If, for some reason, I do wish to see it again, I can always click on "photograph of a clitoris" and do so. Same with suicide-methods photographs: I think some could be informative (say, a wrist-slitting one), but it should be possible to read the text without seeing them every time. This still, of course, requires some standards for what is potentially bothersome enough to include as a link instead of as an inline photograph, and I agree these standards should not be overly restrictive. But I do think they should be somewhat more restrictive than what some others are proposing. I'd actually be alright with nude photographs of people inline in the [[human]] article, if done in a scientific style "standing upright with arms at their sides" way. But I'd prefer close-up photographs of genitalia be placed in a link. Basically anything a large number of people are likely to be somewhat shocked by. Since it came up, same goes actually with [[lung]]: a diagram of a lung should be fine to include of course, but an actual photograph of, say, a removed lung, or a lung in situ in a cut-open chest, or so on, is something a lot of people don't want to see every time they read that article. Similarly with photos of entrails in [[intestines]], photos of open-heart surgery in [[heart]], and so on ("click here for a photograph of open-heart surgery"). I guess I don't see why it'd really be censorship either, since we're just shuffling the information around, not actually removing it or even making it hard to get. -Mark From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 14 21:38:09 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:38:09 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <20040114205930.62511.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: No, we had a revolution, and no Napolean... Fred > From: Nikos-Optim > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:59:30 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > you don't have a law which forbids anyone from > promoting terrorism or making positive comments for > terrorists??? > > --Optim > > --- Pedro Fortuny wrote: >> * Fred Bauder [2004-01-14]: >>> Actually not bad. In their eyes they are just >> defending themselves. >>> >>> Fred >>> >> >> Yes, but their eyes are not the only ones (and the >> move, which is quite >> bold, was done without asking/discussing). >> >> >> Pedro. >> >>>> From: Pedro Fortuny >>>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >> >>>> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:27:29 +0100 >>>> To: English Wikipedia >>>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch >>>> >>>> For the record: Lancemurdoch has renamed >>>> >>>> "September 11 terrorist attack" >>>> >>>> to >>>> >>>> "September 11 attck" >>>> >>>> I guess this is not very very very very good >> withoug asking beforehand. >>>> >>>> Pedro. >>>> -- >>>> Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org >>>> Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de >> Valladolid >>>> C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> >> www.cmpenafiel.org >>>> pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. >> Nr. 34 983 298277 >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> WikiEN-l mailing list >>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >>>> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> WikiEN-l mailing list >>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >>> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> -- >> Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org >> Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid >> C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> >> www.cmpenafiel.org >> pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. >> 34 983 298277 >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 21:41:43 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:41:43 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? Message-ID: There are other dimensions to nude images besides "offense". Consider modesty, privacy, and chastity. A person might not want to reveal their naked selves to others, out of modesty. They need not be "ashamed" of their nudity; just not want to let others see it. Another person might feel fine about showing their nakedness to others, provided they get to choose the others. Often people limit these displays to a small group of intimates; in a monogamous relationship, that group consists of one's current partner; in what is increasingly becoming an extreme, that sole intimate partner is one's spouse (of the opposite sex). Even rarer, perhaps, are those who do not want to be sexually stimulated by viewing the naked bodies of anyone other than their own spouse. I'm really not sure how small this minority is, even in the English-speaking West, but since I'm a member of this minority I just thought I'd mention it; it has to do with my membership in that kooky cult I belong to. Some people think that "salacious" images encourage an interest in sex. They worry that too much information too early may stimulate young people to become interested in sex at an age when they cannot channel their interest in a healthy manner: i.e., abstaining from sex and preparing for lifelong monogamy. I'm really interested in two aspects of this. First, what should our articles say about people's attitudes and beliefs about these matters? This needs to go into articles about [[sexual morality]], [[sex education]], etc. Second, how should we present information and pictures in articles? Presumably, our current audience is adults. With only 2 or 3 exceptions, no one posting to this list has admitted to being under 21 years old. And any kids looking for cheescake or porn can find it at other websites in much more potent doses. There's no question of censorship, merely of presentation. Some people approaching a complex subject might need some simple introductory matter before they get into the details. Likewise, some people might want to postpone seeing really graphic images until they're ready for them. If I click on [[felching]], because I think it's about burping (get it? Belching?), I might not want to be assaulted with a full color picture of someone's tongue going, um, where the sun doesn't shine. On the other hand, I'd feel awfully disappointed if there was nothing to click on to see it, if I had a taste for it. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed -----Original Message----- From: Delirium [mailto:delirium at rufus.d2g.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 4:21 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How much? Erik Moeller wrote: >The fact that you compare human body parts to suicide methods and >excrements is somewhat disturbing, but let's not get into this. Just some >basic cause and effect. Feces are prone to carry disease, that is why most >human beings are taught to avoid touching or even eating them (there may >also be a biological taboo that is triggered by the smell and/or taste; >note that baby feces smell differently). Similarly, most human beings with >a functional brain avoid pain, as such, events that are likely to cause >pain or death, as well as images of pain and death, are likely to trigger >the emotional associations that have been built through a lifetime to >teach avoidance thereof. > > This is an argument that feces is "correctly" considered offensive, while those who consider nudity offensive are incorrect. Such arguments are completely irrelevant to the current discussion: it is not your (or anyone's) place to decide whether it is "natural" to avoid pain or feces and "unnatural" to avoid nudity. It is a simply fact that a great many people consider explicit close-up images of a clitoris offensive--in fact, perhaps there are more people who consider such photos offensive than there are who consider photos of feces offensive. You can argue they're wrong, but I don't think that personal viewpoint ought to influence the encyclopedia. In fact, I think people who consider close-up photos of a clitoris *appropriate* for public display are probably a fairly small minority, worldwide. -Mark _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From erik_moeller at gmx.de Wed Jan 14 22:02:18 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:02:18 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? In-Reply-To: <4005B2D5.5090301@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <90qt6YNxpVB@erik_moeller> Delirium- > This is an argument that feces is "correctly" considered offensive, > while those who consider nudity offensive are incorrect. > Nonsense. It is an argument to explain why one taboo is more widespread than the other. I have no specific statistics, neither do you. Unless you can come up with them, we can only go with arguments. And the arguments I have shown clearly demonstrate why one taboo (feces) can be considered "nearly universally" widespread and the other cannot. You have utterly failed to refute this argument. We can conclude that the "nearly universal" standard is sufficient, since you used feces as a "slippery slope" argument (no pun intended). Regards, Erik From saintonge at telus.net Wed Jan 14 21:58:15 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:58:15 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: <200401140948.12785.sascha@pantropy.net> <4005599F.5060403@yahoo.com> <200401141055.26468.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <4005BB77.6020804@telus.net> Sascha Noyes wrote: >Attribution is always good. I don't have a problem with the opinions of >others, if they are in any way founded on some evidence. What I do have a >problems with is people pushing unfounded opinions on others. By unfounded I >mean "making an assertion as to the truth of a proposition without giving any >evidence to support this assertion." > I agree that being able to trace the source of information is important. The problem is not just with "pushing" opinions; sometimes a simple innocuous statement is entered as though it were a fact. It is not about a contentious issue, nor is it about something that people are likely to concern themselves. Including such unfounded material can have a long term effect on the credibility of Wikipedia. In [[Acad?mie fran?aise]] there is the statement "a musician named Gourville, who named it the Acad?mie fran?aise". Another established contributor and I both independently looked for some kind of substantiation for this statement; neither of us was successful. At the same time we did not find any information indicating that someone else was responsible for the name. This particular piece of data was contributed by an anonymous contributor on December 31, 2002. The last contribution of any sort by him was on April 12, 2003. He may still be with us, and with a real identity, but I can't know that. What do I know about 17th century musicians. I found a contemporary Gourville who was in a position to exercise such influence, but no evidence to connect him with the issue. Fact-checking is a painstaking and tedious process, and tracing the type of thing that I used as an example could take hours, and may require material that is not on the internet. Wikipedia's credibility depends on it. Everybody knows to expect bias in a hotly disputed topic like Israeli/Palestinian relations, and is on alert for that bias. This is not so with obscure little details. A credibility test for Wikipedia might be to take a random selection of obscure details and attempt to verify them, or at least find some source. How well would we do? Ec > From jwales at bomis.com Wed Jan 14 22:10:26 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:10:26 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [beatnickblanket@bellsouth.net: Wikipedia: Easter Bradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required.] Message-ID: <20040114221013.GA23149@joey.bomis.com> ----- Forwarded message from beatnickblanket at bellsouth.net ----- From: Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:34:25 -0800 To: Subject: Wikipedia: Easter Bradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required. Greetings, This email is being wrtten to demand that the Wikipedia web page for "Easter Bradford" as well as all related pages (including but not limited to the "Talk" page) be deleted from your web servers immediately. All current and former edits of this page are to be deleted. These pages contain libelous content which, if maintained, can and will result in litigious action against Wikipedia and it's owners. If this action is not taken within 48 hours of the time this email was sent, a certified and registered letter will be sent via United States Post. You will then have 7 days from the reciept of that letter to take appropriate action. I would prefer to avoid these measures, but can no longer tolerate inaction in this case. This is not the first time I have contacted you about the situation. If you are NOT the person to contact about the issue, I suggest you inform me of who that person is at once. This is the last email that will be sent in this matter, James Warnock (aka "Easter Bradford") From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 21:44:03 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:44:03 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/14/04 at 02:41 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > His edits to [[Red Scare]], as well as his comments to me about it, make > it seem like: > A. Communists did nothing wrong. Under the section "Reactions to the Red Scare" in the paragraph: > Though many of the more outr? accusations of the McCarthy > period—such as the claim that President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] > was a communist—now seem laughable, the opening of Soviet > historical archives following the collapse of the Soviet Union has > provided evidence for less grandiose accusations, such as the claim by > [[Whittaker Chambers]] that [[Alger Hiss]] worked for Soviet > intelligence. Similarly, reports of mass murders committed by communist > states including the Soviet Union under [[Josef Stalin]], China under > [[Mao Zedong]], and Cambodia under the [[Khmer Rouge]]—once > dismissed as anti-communist [[propaganda]]—are now > well-documented in the historical record. Lance removed the last sentence (Similarly --> historical record), which I am assuming is an edit Ed finds controversial. I think after due consideration that Lance /may be/ right: that this doesn't belong here because it is a bit of subtle editorializing suggesting that perhaps the anti-communists /weren't/ "paranoid" after all; moreover, Khmer Rouge were much later the Red Scares. I am guessing that what LM thinks is that central issues of the Red Scare were "infilitration" of the government and the labor movement and so forth and not atrocities in distant lands and to use these matters after the fact to justify the Red Scares may be a subtle bit of POV. I think he has a point. > B. Anti-communism of the 1950s was "hysterical". The phrase is in question "Red Scare hysteria". I did a Google search ("red scare" + "hysteria") and found more than 2,600 hits for this phrase, including a reference to a book entitled "Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920" which looks reasonably serious. I think there is a good case for stating it in the article as a "hysteria" whether or not we personally agree; it is clearly an established usage. On the Talk page, Mirv agreed, and mentioned other titles which refer to the "hysteria" of the time. In conclusion, I think his edits are ok but I think he needs to justify them on the Talk page. I'll leave a note on his Talk page. Ed, satisfied? V. From saintonge at telus.net Wed Jan 14 22:13:02 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:13:02 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How much? References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215229B@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: <4005BEEE.7030102@telus.net> KNOTT, T wrote: >I'm sorry to have to tell you this Ed, but penises are _not_ capable of endless growth. > The same can't be said about arguments on the subject. :-) Ec From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 22:19:37 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:19:37 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [beatnickblanket@bellsouth.net: Wikipedia: EasterBradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required.] Message-ID: I reverted the [[Easter Bradford]] article to the (Revision as of 11:00, 15 Oct 2002), which is credited to user:Easterbradford. What's this all about? And why no discussion first? Ed Poor From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 14 22:26:26 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:26:26 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch Message-ID: Viajero wrote a lot of stuff, ending with: > In conclusion, I think his edits are ok but I think > he needs to justify them on the Talk page. I'll leave > a note on his Talk page. > > Ed, satisfied? Yes, thank you. Sorry about my hysterical ravings. You know how it is, one man's (wiki)terrorist is another man's (wiki)freedom-fighter. Thus illustrating that when a contributor (like me!) is too close to an issue, they unaccountably lose the ability to distinguish neutral writing ABOUT a POV from writing which ASSUMES a POV. Thanks also to Fred for initially calming me down. Cousin Eddie From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 22:23:07 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:23:07 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I am guessing that what LM thinks is that > central issues of the Red Scare were "infilitration" of the government > and the labor movement and so forth and not atrocities in distant lands > and to use these matters after the fact to justify the Red Scares may > be a subtle bit of POV. I think he has a point. After sending the my last message, I noticed that he summarized this edit with: > The Red Scare was a US domestic issue, some of the issues are still disputed so my analysis was correct. V. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 14 22:38:32 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:38:32 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: His edits are not OK, they express an unidentified point of view. He says "some" think and some disagree. Who are those folks. Surely he knows. Fred > From: Viajero > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:44:03 +0100 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > > On 01/14/04 at 02:41 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > >> His edits to [[Red Scare]], as well as his comments to me about it, make >> it seem like: > >> A. Communists did nothing wrong. > > Under the section "Reactions to the Red Scare" in the paragraph: > >> Though many of the more outr? accusations of the McCarthy >> period—such as the claim that President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] >> was a communist—now seem laughable, the opening of Soviet >> historical archives following the collapse of the Soviet Union has >> provided evidence for less grandiose accusations, such as the claim by >> [[Whittaker Chambers]] that [[Alger Hiss]] worked for Soviet >> intelligence. Similarly, reports of mass murders committed by communist >> states including the Soviet Union under [[Josef Stalin]], China under >> [[Mao Zedong]], and Cambodia under the [[Khmer Rouge]]—once >> dismissed as anti-communist [[propaganda]]—are now >> well-documented in the historical record. > > Lance removed the last sentence (Similarly --> historical record), which > I am assuming is an edit Ed finds controversial. I think after due > consideration that Lance /may be/ right: that this doesn't belong here > because it is a bit of subtle editorializing suggesting that perhaps the > anti-communists /weren't/ "paranoid" after all; moreover, Khmer Rouge were > much later the Red Scares. I am guessing that what LM thinks is that > central issues of the Red Scare were "infilitration" of the government and > the labor movement and so forth and not atrocities in distant lands and to > use these matters after the fact to justify the Red Scares may be a subtle > bit of POV. I think he has a point. > >> B. Anti-communism of the 1950s was "hysterical". > > The phrase is in question "Red Scare hysteria". I did a Google search > ("red scare" + "hysteria") and found more than 2,600 hits for this phrase, > including a reference to a book entitled "Red Scare: A Study in National > Hysteria, 1919-1920" which looks reasonably serious. I think there is a > good case for stating it in the article as a "hysteria" whether or not we > personally agree; it is clearly an established usage. On the Talk page, > Mirv agreed, and mentioned other titles which refer to the "hysteria" of > the time. > > In conclusion, I think his edits are ok but I think he needs to justify > them on the Talk page. I'll leave a note on his Talk page. > > Ed, satisfied? > > > V. > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 14 22:48:03 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:48:03 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The US domestic reaction to Communist organizing is partially based on events in other countries, partially on fear, partially on experience with domestic communists and partially on the desire to continue to dominate society. To the extent it is overblown it can fairly be described as hysteria. I have (on another website) included it as an example of social mania. Fred > From: Viajero > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:23:07 +0100 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch > >> I am guessing that what LM thinks is that >> central issues of the Red Scare were "infilitration" of the government >> and the labor movement and so forth and not atrocities in distant lands >> and to use these matters after the fact to justify the Red Scares may >> be a subtle bit of POV. I think he has a point. > > After sending the my last message, I noticed that he summarized this edit > with: > >> The Red Scare was a US domestic issue, some of the issues are still disputed > > so my analysis was correct. > > > V. > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From saintonge at telus.net Wed Jan 14 22:44:18 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:44:18 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch References: <20040114202729.GA4286@SDF-EU.ORG> <20040114205126.GA11855@SDF-EU.ORG> Message-ID: <4005C642.4080705@telus.net> Even with a broad consensus that this was a terrorist attack that is a word which nevertheless expresses a POV. It is not really necessary to the title. After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly be talking about? The title can be understood without even putting the year of the attack. The word "terrorist" remains a characterization even when its application is obvious. I guess that Lance was just following the rule to be bold in one's edits. Ec Pedro Fortuny wrote: >* Fred Bauder [2004-01-14]: > >>Actually not bad. In their eyes they are just defending themselves. >> >>Fred >> >Yes, but their eyes are not the only ones (and the move, which is quite >bold, was done without asking/discussing). > >Pedro. > >>>From: Pedro Fortuny >>> >>>For the record: Lancemurdoch has renamed >>> >>>"September 11 terrorist attack" >>> >>>to >>> >>>"September 11 attck" >>> >>>I guess this is not very very very very good withoug asking beforehand. >>> From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Wed Jan 14 22:42:27 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:42:27 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [beatnickblanket@bellsouth.net: Wikipedia: EasterBradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required.] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040114224226.GA6550@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Ed Poor wrote: >I reverted the [[Easter Bradford]] article to the (Revision as of 11:00, >15 Oct 2002), which is credited to user:Easterbradford. I don't think that Jimbo's message was meant to tell us to comply; he could have reverted the article himself had he wanted to. >What's this all about? And why no discussion first? We /should/ discuss first! I strongly believe that we shouldn't give in to such threats, except to follow established legal procedures (like the DMCA takedown notices, to cover our collective ass). IIRC, this has come up before, and Bradford's charges were without merit. -- Toby From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 23:02:22 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:02:22 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? In-Reply-To: <4005BB77.6020804@telus.net> References: <200401141055.26468.sascha@pantropy.net> <4005BB77.6020804@telus.net> Message-ID: <200401141802.24098.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 04:58 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote: > In [[Acad?mie fran?aise]] there is the statement "a musician named > Gourville, who named it the Acad?mie fran?aise". Another established > contributor and I both independently looked for some kind of > substantiation for this statement; neither of us was successful. At the > same time we did not find any information indicating that someone else > was responsible for the name. This particular piece of data was > contributed by an anonymous contributor on December 31, 2002. The last > contribution of any sort by him was on April 12, 2003. He may still be > with us, and with a real identity, but I can't know that. > > What do I know about 17th century musicians. I found a contemporary > Gourville who was in a position to exercise such influence, but no > evidence to connect him with the issue. Fact-checking is a painstaking > and tedious process, and tracing the type of thing that I used as an > example could take hours, and may require material that is not on the > internet. Wikipedia's credibility depends on it. Everybody knows to > expect bias in a hotly disputed topic like Israeli/Palestinian > relations, and is on alert for that bias. This is not so with obscure > little details. A credibility test for Wikipedia might be to take a > random selection of obscure details and attempt to verify them, or at > least find some source. How well would we do? This is indeed a problem. I have begun, and plan to continue to in my edit box summaries to indicate the source of the information I add to an article (if that information is non-obvious). Which reminds me that it would be a good idea to _require_ users to fill in the edit summary box. What worries me every time is when I see an anon change numbers in wikipedia without any edit summary. Eg. changing statistics on the population of spanish speakers in California from (hypothetical) 15% to 40%. It is often impossible to tell whether this is vandalism or a correction. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 14 23:15:53 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:15:53 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Penises In-Reply-To: <20040114203613.76947.qmail@web9604.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040114203613.76947.qmail@web9604.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401141815.53148.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 14 January 2004 03:36 pm, Dan Miller wrote: > Just wanted to make a note: Sascha, Peter, the article > on "Lung" actually has no photos, just a diagram. > Thought people might want to know. And if the Johns Hopkins Autopsy Resource (JHAR) Image Archive (http://www.autopsydb.org/iadbimag.htm) were working and they had a good picture I'd probably add it. Maybe we could also include the lung of a smoker and label it "tarred lung" and the normal one "untarred lung"? ;-) (Sorry, Anthere) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Wed Jan 14 23:28:16 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:28:16 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch Message-ID: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> > After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly be talking about? I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years before 11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the aftermath over which had the most fatalities. On the other hand, "primary topic" disambiguation would probably be workable. -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From dpbsmith at world.std.com Wed Jan 14 23:34:44 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:34:44 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Genitalia, etc. In-Reply-To: <20040114224650.CF0EDB850@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040114224650.CF0EDB850@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <3BCDF6D1-46EA-11D8-8066-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> It seems to me that there's no difference between this and any other controversial or contentious issue. I have the impression that some are asserting that there's some kind of fundamental difference that has to be handled in some fundamentally different way because it involves taboos or offensiveness. That's what I don't get. It seems to me that the right word for these issues is "tastefulness." As in "de gustibus no disputandum est." Well, we know darn well there certainly est disputandum, but I don't see that's it's different from issues such as whether, say, Nazism is a kind of Socialism. This is a wikiwiki, and just recently someone moved some pictures of peni from the article on "penis" to the article on "circumcision" by the process of deciding they ought to be moved and moving them. They're there now, and they'll stay there until someone else decides to do something else, and eventually it will or will not reach a metastable state. As for diagrams versus photos, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to communicate information, not to induce sexual arousal, and deciding what picture is likely to do what is a matter of editorial judgement based on a guess as to the expected audience and on what the Supreme Court once called "contemporary community standards." You can't predict exactly what the audience is going to be, however. The "Professor Somebody" who authored the anatomy textbook mentioned in _Tom Sawyer_ probably did not expect the teen-aged Becky Thatcher to read his book or view the "handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece -- a human figure, stark naked." We had not expected our copy of "The Whole Earth Catalog," a rather Wikipedian enterprise, to serve as sex education material for our children, either. We probably don't need to be as restrained as the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. I just don't see what the big deal is. There should probably be pictures of a lot of things. If you think there should be a picture, put one in. If a picture seems much too strong, substitute on that's more toned down. If it seems absurdly prudish, substitute one that's franker. Why is there any need for this to be any different from any other controversial material requiring editorial judgement? What's the big problem? Now, for something serious to argue about: what is the correct plural of the word "clitoris?" -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 14 23:49:04 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 00:49:04 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> Message-ID: On 01/14/04 at 11:28 PM, "Martin Harper" said: > > After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly be talking about? > I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years > before 11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the > aftermath over which had the most fatalities. Perhaps you are thinking of the US-backed coup led by Pinochet against the Allende government in Chile which took place on 11 September 1973? During the coup and aftermath ~3000 killed or missing so it is comparable with the US 9/11. V. From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jan 15 01:57:11 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:57:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? In-Reply-To: <200401141802.24098.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040115015711.12331.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> just visit a government statistics page and check. --- Sascha Noyes wrote: > On Wednesday 14 January 2004 04:58 pm, Ray Saintonge > wrote: > > In [[Acad??mie fran??aise]] there is the statement > "a musician named > > Gourville, who named it the Acad??mie fran??aise". > Another established > > contributor and I both independently looked for > some kind of > > substantiation for this statement; neither of us > was successful. At the > > same time we did not find any information > indicating that someone else > > was responsible for the name. This particular > piece of data was > > contributed by an anonymous contributor on > December 31, 2002. The last > > contribution of any sort by him was on April 12, > 2003. He may still be > > with us, and with a real identity, but I can't > know that. > > > > What do I know about 17th century musicians. I > found a contemporary > > Gourville who was in a position to exercise such > influence, but no > > evidence to connect him with the issue. > Fact-checking is a painstaking > > and tedious process, and tracing the type of thing > that I used as an > > example could take hours, and may require material > that is not on the > > internet. Wikipedia's credibility depends on it. > Everybody knows to > > expect bias in a hotly disputed topic like > Israeli/Palestinian > > relations, and is on alert for that bias. This is > not so with obscure > > little details. A credibility test for Wikipedia > might be to take a > > random selection of obscure details and attempt to > verify them, or at > > least find some source. How well would we do? > > This is indeed a problem. I have begun, and plan to > continue to in my edit box > summaries to indicate the source of the information > I add to an article (if > that information is non-obvious). Which reminds me > that it would be a good > idea to _require_ users to fill in the edit summary > box. > > What worries me every time is when I see an anon > change numbers in wikipedia > without any edit summary. Eg. changing statistics on > the population of > spanish speakers in California from (hypothetical) > 15% to 40%. It is often > impossible to tell whether this is vandalism or a > correction. > > Best, > Sascha Noyes > -- > Please encrypt all email. Public key available from > www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jan 15 02:05:44 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:05:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Genitalia, etc. In-Reply-To: <3BCDF6D1-46EA-11D8-8066-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> Message-ID: <20040115020544.71821.qmail@web25003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I suggest to put this image in [[Penis]]: http://www.sporeworks.com/gal2/penisclose.jpg --Optim :) --- "Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote: > I just don't see what the big deal is. There should > probably be > pictures of a lot of things. If you think there > should be a picture, > put one in. If a picture seems much too strong, > substitute on that's > more toned down. If it seems absurdly prudish, > substitute one that's > franker. Why is there any need for this to be any > different from any > other controversial material requiring editorial > judgement? What's the > big problem? > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From ebeins at hotmail.com Thu Jan 15 03:25:13 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:25:13 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Genitalia, etc. References: <3BCDF6D1-46EA-11D8-8066-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> <20040115020544.71821.qmail@web25003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Suitable, but the rims are too sharp to be representative of normal "hunan" penses. -- ___________________________ Menchi From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 03:44:25 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:44:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] [beatnickblanket@bellsouth.net: Wikipedia: Easter Bradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required.] In-Reply-To: <20040114221013.GA23149@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040115034425.95418.qmail@web60601.mail.yahoo.com> In other words, if he can't have only his words on the article, he doesn't want any? Tell him to go to court. After all, HE created the article. RickK Jimmy Wales wrote: ----- Forwarded message from beatnickblanket at bellsouth.net ----- From: Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:34:25 -0800 To: Subject: Wikipedia: Easter Bradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required. Greetings, This email is being wrtten to demand that the Wikipedia web page for "Easter Bradford" as well as all related pages (including but not limited to the "Talk" page) be deleted from your web servers immediately. All current and former edits of this page are to be deleted. These pages contain libelous content which, if maintained, can and will result in litigious action against Wikipedia and it's owners. If this action is not taken within 48 hours of the time this email was sent, a certified and registered letter will be sent via United States Post. You will then have 7 days from the reciept of that letter to take appropriate action. I would prefer to avoid these measures, but can no longer tolerate inaction in this case. This is not the first time I have contacted you about the situation. If you are NOT the person to contact about the issue, I suggest you inform me of who that person is at once. This is the last email that will be sent in this matter, James Warnock (aka "Easter Bradford") _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040114/b042d460/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 03:52:51 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:52:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? In-Reply-To: <20040115015711.12331.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040115035251.31199.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> The US locality articles were created by RamBot from the official statistics from the US Census Bureau, so the ones that are there SHOULD be the correct ones. RickK Nikos-Optim wrote: just visit a government statistics page and check. --- Sascha Noyes wrote: > On Wednesday 14 January 2004 04:58 pm, Ray Saintonge > wrote: > > In [[Acad??mie fran??aise]] there is the statement > "a musician named > > Gourville, who named it the Acad??mie fran??aise". > Another established > > contributor and I both independently looked for > some kind of > > substantiation for this statement; neither of us > was successful. At the > > same time we did not find any information > indicating that someone else > > was responsible for the name. This particular > piece of data was > > contributed by an anonymous contributor on > December 31, 2002. The last > > contribution of any sort by him was on April 12, > 2003. He may still be > > with us, and with a real identity, but I can't > know that. > > > > What do I know about 17th century musicians. I > found a contemporary > > Gourville who was in a position to exercise such > influence, but no > > evidence to connect him with the issue. > Fact-checking is a painstaking > > and tedious process, and tracing the type of thing > that I used as an > > example could take hours, and may require material > that is not on the > > internet. Wikipedia's credibility depends on it. > Everybody knows to > > expect bias in a hotly disputed topic like > Israeli/Palestinian > > relations, and is on alert for that bias. This is > not so with obscure > > little details. A credibility test for Wikipedia > might be to take a > > random selection of obscure details and attempt to > verify them, or at > > least find some source. How well would we do? > > This is indeed a problem. I have begun, and plan to > continue to in my edit box > summaries to indicate the source of the information > I add to an article (if > that information is non-obvious). Which reminds me > that it would be a good > idea to _require_ users to fill in the edit summary > box. > > What worries me every time is when I see an anon > change numbers in wikipedia > without any edit summary. Eg. changing statistics on > the population of > spanish speakers in California from (hypothetical) > 15% to 40%. It is often > impossible to tell whether this is vandalism or a > correction. > > Best, > Sascha Noyes > -- > Please encrypt all email. Public key available from > www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040114/ee143723/attachment.htm From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 03:53:52 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:53:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] ezresults not playing fair? Message-ID: <20040115035352.85226.qmail@web14002.mail.yahoo.com> This web site is, I think, not playing fair. http://www.ezresult.com/article/Easter_Bradford See the non-links to original articles, and image of wikipedia reference. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From meelar2 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 03:58:10 2004 From: meelar2 at yahoo.com (Dan Miller) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:58:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 57 In-Reply-To: <20040115034442.C7A7DB831@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040115035810.15210.qmail@web9605.mail.yahoo.com> Message: 9 Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:05:44 -0800 (PST) From: Nikos-Optim Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Genitalia, etc. To: English Wikipedia Message-ID: <20040115020544.71821.qmail at web25003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I suggest to put this image in [[Penis]]: http://www.sporeworks.com/gal2/penisclose.jpg --Optim :) Message: 10 Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:25:13 -0800 From: "Menchi" Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Genitalia, etc. To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org Message-ID: Suitable, but the rims are too sharp to be representative of normal "hunan" penses. So why not include it under the captions "human penis" and "spore penis"? Meelar the infantile __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 04:00:19 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 20:00:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] ezresults not playing fair? In-Reply-To: <20040115035352.85226.qmail@web14002.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040115040019.45345.qmail@web14006.mail.yahoo.com> Oh great, not slashotted, wikipedia-ed... --- Christopher Mahan wrote: > This web site is, I think, not playing fair. > > http://www.ezresult.com/article/Easter_Bradford > > See the non-links to original articles, and image of wikipedia > reference. > > ===== > Christopher Mahan > chris_mahan at yahoo.com > 818.943.1850 cell > http://www.christophermahan.com/ > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Thu Jan 15 03:55:23 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:55:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> References: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> Message-ID: <20040115035523.GA10670@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Martin Harper wrote: >??? wrote: >>After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly >>be talking about? >I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years before >11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the aftermath over >which had the most fatalities. You're probably thinking of the 1973 ''coup'' in Chile that the US ''supported''. "September 11 ''attack'' should refer pretty clearly the 2001 attack on the US. >On the other hand, "primary topic" disambiguation would probably be workable. I'd rather have the year in there than the word "terrorist". Either disambiguates, but the year is more restrained. The article itself can say plenty on whether it was terrorism (I'd say obviously so in NY, but not as clearly so in DC). -- Toby From maveric149 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 04:45:49 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 20:45:49 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] ezresults not playing fair? Message-ID: <200401142045.49913.maveric149@yahoo.com> Christopher Mahan wrote: >This web site is, I think, not playing fair. > >http://www.ezresult.com/article/Easter_Bradford > >See the non-links to original articles, and image of wikipedia reference. It uses a cgi script or something like it to redirect users to the real Wikipedia article - users still get there. But they do say that the "Original article" is available under terms of the GNU FDL. For them to use our content *their* version also has to be under the GNU FDL. This, IMO, is a violation of the letter of the GNU FDL and therefore technically voids their rights to use our articles. But I'm sure they would change this if pressed. It is, IMO, a minor point considering the many other websites who have outright stolen our articles with no credit or links. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content and, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#ezResult.com -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From matt_mcl at sympatico.ca Thu Jan 15 05:12:48 2004 From: matt_mcl at sympatico.ca (Matt M.) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 00:12:48 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 57 References: <20040115034441.E41C7B81B@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <003901c3db26$37feee00$0200a8c0@oemcomputer> > > After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly > be talking about? > > I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years before > 11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the aftermath over which had > the most fatalities. The coup against Salvador Allende, IIRC. For that matter, the Catalan national day on September 11 commemorates a military defeat as well. > Now, for something serious to argue about: what is the correct plural > of the word "clitoris?" You could use either the regular plural "clitorises," or the Latinate plural "clitorides." And the Latinate plural of "penis" is "penes," not "peni." (Just like "testis" and "testes.") (Does "anal-retentive" have a hyphen?) Matt From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 15 05:30:00 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:30:00 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How much? References: <20040115015711.12331.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40062558.6030804@telus.net> The point is not about any one example in particular. Sascha's example would be a relatively easy one to check, but who would think to check it if he had not used it as an example. There are countless such unnoticed details in the 'pedia. Ec Nikos-Optim wrote: >just visit a government statistics page and check. > > >--- Sascha Noyes wrote: > >>On Wednesday 14 January 2004 04:58 pm, Ray Saintonge >>wrote: >> >>>In [[Acad?mie fran?aise]] there is the statement >>> >>"a musician named >> >>>Gourville, who named it the Acad?mie fran?aise". >>> >> Another established >> >>>contributor and I both independently looked for >>> >>some kind of >> >>>substantiation for this statement; neither of us >>> >>was successful. At the >> >>>same time we did not find any information >>> >>indicating that someone else >> >>>was responsible for the name. This particular >>> >>piece of data was >> >>>contributed by an anonymous contributor on >>> >>December 31, 2002. The last >> >>>contribution of any sort by him was on April 12, >>> >>2003. He may still be >> >>>with us, and with a real identity, but I can't >>> >>know that. >> >>>What do I know about 17th century musicians. I >>> >>found a contemporary >> >>>Gourville who was in a position to exercise such >>> >>influence, but no >> >>>evidence to connect him with the issue. >>> >>Fact-checking is a painstaking >> >>>and tedious process, and tracing the type of thing >>> >>that I used as an >> >>>example could take hours, and may require material >>> >>that is not on the >> >>>internet. Wikipedia's credibility depends on it. >>> >>Everybody knows to >> >>>expect bias in a hotly disputed topic like >>> >>Israeli/Palestinian >> >>>relations, and is on alert for that bias. This is >>> >>not so with obscure >> >>>little details. A credibility test for Wikipedia >>> >>might be to take a >> >>>random selection of obscure details and attempt to >>> >>verify them, or at >> >>>least find some source. How well would we do? >>> >>This is indeed a problem. I have begun, and plan to >>continue to in my edit box >>summaries to indicate the source of the information >>I add to an article (if >>that information is non-obvious). Which reminds me >>that it would be a good >>idea to _require_ users to fill in the edit summary >>box. >> >>What worries me every time is when I see an anon >>change numbers in wikipedia >>without any edit summary. Eg. changing statistics on >>the population of >>spanish speakers in California from (hypothetical) >>15% to 40%. It is often >>impossible to tell whether this is vandalism or a >>correction. >> >>Best, >>Sascha Noyes >> From ebeins at hotmail.com Thu Jan 15 06:39:44 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:39:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 57 References: <20040115034442.C7A7DB831@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040115035810.15210.qmail@web9605.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > So why not include it under the captions "human penis" > and "spore penis"? Why not? Of course not! That is the penis of a fungus, not spore! -- ___________________________ Menchi From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 08:11:38 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 00:11:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 57 In-Reply-To: <003901c3db26$37feee00$0200a8c0@oemcomputer> Message-ID: <20040115081138.17055.qmail@web21502.mail.yahoo.com> > > Now, for something serious to argue about: what is the correct > > plural of the word "clitoris?" > > You could use either the regular plural "clitorises," or the Latinate > plural "clitorides." Since "clitoris" is derived from a Greek word, it is certainly not permitted to use a Latin plural. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Thu Jan 15 10:54:32 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 10:54:32 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [beatnickblanket@bellsouth.net: Wikipedia: Easter Bradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required.] In-Reply-To: <20040114221013.GA23149@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040114221013.GA23149@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Jimmy Wales writes: > James Warnock (aka "Easter Bradford") Take it down. It's a vanity page for a non-entity. Boyer lite. -- Gareth Owen "Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001) From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Thu Jan 15 11:07:12 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:07:12 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <4005C642.4080705@telus.net> References: <20040114202729.GA4286@SDF-EU.ORG> <20040114205126.GA11855@SDF-EU.ORG> <4005C642.4080705@telus.net> Message-ID: Ray Saintonge writes: > After all, what other September 11 attack > could one possibly be talking about? Ask the Chileans. -- Gareth Owen "Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001) From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 11:37:06 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 03:37:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] please announce (and if necessary explain) protections Message-ID: <20040115113706.32174.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> Someone protected [[anti-Zionism]] without either an edit summary or a notice on the Talk page. I'm not arguing with the protection decision, but whoever did it should take public responsibility. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From viajero at quilombo.nl Thu Jan 15 12:31:23 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:31:23 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] please announce (and if necessary explain) protections In-Reply-To: <20040115113706.32174.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 01/15/04 at 03:37 AM, zero 0000 said: > Someone protected [[anti-Zionism]] without either an edit summary or a > notice on the Talk page. I'm not arguing with the protection decision, > but whoever did it should take public responsibility. If you look on: [[Wikipedia:Protection log]] you will see: 08:55, Jan 14, 2004 PMelvilleAustin protected Anti-Zionism Alas, he did not list it on [[Wikipedia:Protected page]] as behooves him. Just left a note on his Talk page. V. From viajero at quilombo.nl Thu Jan 15 12:38:08 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:38:08 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/14/04 at 09:05 PM, Viajero said: > most of his edits seem reasonable and he doesn't get into silly edit wars Having written this yesterday now I am not so sure. LM just edited [[Shining Path]] and I found myself in disagreement with ALL his edits. Here are just two: For one, he insists that the group be called the Peruvian Communist Party, claiming that Shining Path is a perjorative label used by the US media (!!!). For his rationale and my counterargument, please see to the Talk page. He also deleted this text > During this era, Shining Path used tactics that included conscription > of children, forced labor, executions by stoning and throat-slitting > (ostensibly to save bullets), destruction of the electricity > infrastructure, indiscrimate bombings, and targeted assassinations of > political opponents. yet left the text following it intact: > However, in fighting Shining Path, the Peruvian armed forces also > committed many atrocities. It destroyed villages and massacred > campesinos it suspected of being supporters of Shining Path. The problem is that during this period, unlike in Soviet Russia, Peru did have a relatively free media and the atrocities of Shining Path /have/ been well documented. LM seems to have a serious problem acknowledging atrocities on the part of his ideological bedmates. Jiang and I have both asked him on his Talk page to devote more effort to justifiying his edits on Talk pages; I suggest others do as well. V. From jwales at bomis.com Thu Jan 15 13:16:22 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 05:16:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [richard@adbusters.org: powered by wikipedia] Message-ID: <20040115131622.GD8730@joey.bomis.com> What's the URL for a high resolution image of the Wikipedia logo? Do we also have one for the Wikimedia Foundation logo? ----- Forwarded message from "richard at adbusters" ----- From: "richard at adbusters" Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:33:59 -0800 To: Subject: powered by wikipedia Dear Mr. Wales, We would like to do a blurb for the encyclopedia in our next issue of Adbusters magazine (circ. 120,000; see www.adbusters.org). To do so, we would need a high resolution image of the Wikipedia icon. We love the encyclopedia and, although we don't print any paid ads in the magazine, we do print some free ones. Hope to hear from you or someone on the staff at your/their convenience. All best wishes, Richard DeGrandpre Associate Editor ----- End forwarded message ----- From tarquin at planetunreal.com Thu Jan 15 13:51:17 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:51:17 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> References: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> Message-ID: <40069AD5.3000002@planetunreal.com> Martin Harper wrote: >>After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly >> >> >be talking about? > >I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years before >11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the aftermath over which had >the most fatalities. > >On the other hand, "primary topic" disambiguation would probably be workable. > > Or call it "World Trade Center attack" ? At any rate, I agree with the removal of the term "terrorist" from the title. That is was an attack, at least, is undisputed :) From a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk Thu Jan 15 13:56:42 2004 From: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk (Allan Crossman) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:56:42 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford Message-ID: <40069C1A.19022.1326F4@localhost> [[Easter Bradford]] should either be deleted for being a vanity page (but it's already been through VfD on this count) or it should be kept. I don't see how we can bow to such vague claims that a page is libelous. At the very least he should have to specify what the problem is. -- Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible) From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Thu Jan 15 14:07:50 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:07:50 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152092@backupserv.queens.harley> I don't know anything about the law, but surely if there were libellous remarks on the page, (and I'm not saying there are) it would only be necessary to remove those bits. I think I am right in saying to be libel it has to be untrue? Perhaps we should respond by asking him to state which bits of the article are untrue? As for it being a vanity page, we should deal with that later, after we decide what to do about the libel accusation. Theresa From jwales at bomis.com Thu Jan 15 14:18:19 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 06:18:19 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [beatnickblanket@bellsouth.net: Wikipedia: EasterBradford page, and all related pages - immediate action required.] In-Reply-To: <20040114224226.GA6550@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <20040114224226.GA6550@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <20040115141819.GG8730@joey.bomis.com> Toby Bartels wrote: > I don't think that Jimbo's message was meant to tell us to comply; > he could have reverted the article himself had he wanted to. Right. But, I personally think that we should just delete it and be done with it. It's not worth fighting him over. > IIRC, this has come up before, and Bradford's charges were without merit. In this case, someone is accusing him of fraud, etc., and these sort of serious charges ought not to be made, even in the article history. It seems that the simplest thing to do is delete the article. If someone wants to start a new article on him after the deletion, then save the text you want to insert, and start a new article after the deletion, taking great care to be NPOV. But, really, I'm not sure why we should care to force the guy to have an article about himself, if he doesn't want one. He's not really all that famous. It's not like Madonna is asking us not to have an article, or Tony Blair. It's just some guy. --Jimbo From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 15 16:24:15 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:24:15 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] First formal request for a Mediator Message-ID: I've been asked to be a mediator, by Jack Lynch (seconded by Danny) re: RK. This is going to be hard. First, I might wind up recusing myself early on because my "interest" in Israel might make me biased. I invite those who know me well (and who have earned my trust) to contact me privately /immediately upon/ seeing any signs of bias on my part that may tend to sabotage the mediation. Second, there haven't been enough specifics presented. I hope people will either post diffs as links, on my user talk page so I can see EXAMPLES of what they're complaining about. Third, I am sometimes pretty contentious myself, so I might turn a blind eye to someone else's contentiousness and troublesomeness. This might be easy. First, I am aware of a lot of my limitiations, and publicly acknowledging them will help keep me honest. Second, despite my weaknesses a lot of people trust me -- possibly /because/ I rather freely admit to these weaknesses, rather than trying to hide them. At least one person on each side of the current conflict (the world vs. RK ;-) has written me some very nice personal e-mail. Without revealing confidences, I can say that the contents of these e-mails inspires me the hope that a quick and lasting resolution is within our grasp. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed A member of the official Mediation Committee P.S. Gosh, I wear a lot of hats! From ReyGir at aol.com Wed Jan 14 03:19:45 2004 From: ReyGir at aol.com (ReyGir at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 22:19:45 EST Subject: [WikiEN-l] hello! Message-ID: <1c9.140a29ef.2d360f51@aol.com> Hi! I was wondering if you can tell me how the policies of the Han Dynasty helped the people live better lives. Can you give me a good answer please? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040113/2b6c66c7/attachment.htm From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 15 17:46:36 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:46:36 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch References: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> <40069AD5.3000002@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <4006D1FC.6070801@telus.net> tarquin wrote: > Martin Harper wrote: > >>> After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly >> >> be talking about? >> >> I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years >> before 11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the >> aftermath over which had the most fatalities. >> >> On the other hand, "primary topic" disambiguation would probably be >> workable. >> > > Or call it "World Trade Center attack" ? > At any rate, I agree with the removal of the term "terrorist" from the > title. That is was an attack, at least, is undisputed :) "World Trade Center attack" doesn't work because of the related attack on the Pentagon, unless there is some need to distinguish the two.. If disambiguation is needed using the year strikes me as the most obvious first line approach. Ec From viajero at quilombo.nl Thu Jan 15 17:45:56 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:45:56 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] First formal request for a Mediator In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Ed, On 01/15/04 at 11:24 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > I've been asked to be a mediator, by Jack Lynch (seconded by Danny) re: RK. First, what exactly you are mediating? "Re. RK" is a rather broad concept; moreover, mediation implies two parties. > I invite those who > know me well (and who have earned my trust) to contact me > privately /immediately upon/ seeing any signs of bias on my part that > may tend to sabotage the mediation. Second, aren't mediations handled more or less confidentially? Or do you plan to debate things on a public page or mailinglist? > P.S. Gosh, I wear a lot of hats! Well I hope for your sake that this one doesn't turn out to be a crown of thorns! V. From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 15 17:56:12 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:56:12 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford References: <40069C1A.19022.1326F4@localhost> Message-ID: <4006D43C.7060403@telus.net> Allan Crossman wrote: >[[Easter Bradford]] should either be deleted for being a vanity page >(but it's already been through VfD on this count) or it should be >kept. I don't see how we can bow to such vague claims that a page is >libelous. At the very least he should have to specify what the >problem is. > The funny thing about this name is that I have a vague recollection from my youth when it referred to a chess tournament (or congress) that would normally be held in Bradford, England around Easter time. Ec From jheiskan at welho.com Thu Jan 15 18:04:40 2004 From: jheiskan at welho.com (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:04:40 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] First formal request for a Mediator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1074190137.21117.27.camel@myhome.home> On Thu, 2004-01-15 at 18:24, Poor, Edmund W wrote: I've been asked to be a mediator, by Jack Lynch (seconded by Danny) re: RK. Brother Edmund; please understand I am writing as a "brother" = "colleague"/whatever mediation committee member. If you (personally) have been asked to be a mediator, that has yet to have been confirmed by *both sides of the dispute*, If RK has indeed asked you to mediate, I beg your forgiveness, but I hope you understand that explicit acquiescence at the very least, from both sides of the dispute, would be very nice. This is going to be hard. First, I might wind up recusing myself early on because my "interest" in Israel might make me biased. I invite those who know me well (and who have earned my trust) to contact me privately /immediately upon/ seeing any signs of bias on my part that may tend to sabotage the mediation. Second, there haven't been enough specifics presented. I hope people will either post diffs as links, on my user talk page so I can see EXAMPLES of what they're complaining about. Indeed, may I again ask my brother/colleague to rein in his enthusiasm? The institution of mediation should not bend over backwards to accommodate complaints that are merely of a trolling nature. Maybe you may have a prejudice that makes you take any complaint against RK seriously, but the first order of business should be to determine whether the complaint has any merit whatsoever. After we (the mediation committee) determine there is a reasonable case to be answered, we as a committee should confer, and decide who of us should take the case on (or alternately of course Jimbo can make the determination and appointment). Third, I am sometimes pretty contentious myself, so I might turn a blind eye to someone else's contentiousness and troublesomeness. This might be easy. First, I am aware of a lot of my limitiations, and publicly acknowledging them will help keep me honest. Second, despite my weaknesses a lot of people trust me -- possibly /because/ I rather freely admit to these weaknesses, rather than trying to hide them. At least one person on each side of the current conflict (the world vs. RK ;-) has written me some very nice personal e-mail. Without revealing confidences, I can say that the contents of these e-mails inspires me the hope that a quick and lasting resolution is within our grasp. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed A member of the official Mediation Committee P.S. Gosh, I wear a lot of hats! Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) P.S. If I am totally offbase here, I hope I can be as free in acknowledging my error as Ed habitually is. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040115/992c784a/attachment.htm From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 15 18:11:38 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:11:38 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] First formal request for a Mediator Message-ID: > > I've been asked to be a mediator, by Jack Lynch (seconded by Danny) > > re: RK. > > First, what exactly you are mediating? "Re. RK" is a rather broad > concept; moreover, mediation implies two parties. Not exactly sure. I'm getting a general sense that they "don't like him". If it doesn't get any more specific than that, this could turn into a non-starter. > > I invite those who > > know me well (and who have earned my trust) to contact me > > privately /immediately upon/ seeing any signs of bias on my part that > > may tend to sabotage the mediation. > > Second, aren't mediations handled more or less confidentially? Or do > you plan to debate things on a public page or mailinglist? Oh, not to mention: "signs of obvious incompetence". I guess we won't be mediating on wikien-l. > > > P.S. Gosh, I wear a lot of hats! > > Well I hope for your sake that this one doesn't turn out to be a crown of thorns! Interested metaphor, there was a Jewish man once, a fella from Galilee (or was it Nazareth?) ... Ed From maveric149 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 18:57:47 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 10:57:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) Message-ID: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> tarquin >Or call it "World Trade Center attack" ? Uh, no. What about the Pentagon and Flight 93? >At any rate, I agree with the removal of the term >"terrorist" from the title. Why? The term 'terrorist' is almost always in the title of the incident when it is referred to in any place I've ever seen a reference (although it is very often just called "9/11" or "September 11" in the USA but those titles are not specific enough for us). The incident also perfectly fits the definition of terrorism. So there is no reason not to use it unless it is unreasonably offensive. I would, in fact, argue that *not* having the word 'terrorist' in the title would be unreasonably offensive (IMO, that would be white-washing, or at lest sanitizing, the title). >That is was an attack, at least, is undisputed :) Taking out the word "terrorist" in light of the fact that the word is very commonly used in the title and fits the definition, goes against our common name naming convention and also creates a needlessly vague title. It also supports the POV that the incident was not a terrorist act which is absurd since it perfectly fits the definition. So if something is commonly called something, fits the definition, is not unreasonably offensive, then that term should be used. More generally (meaning not directed toward Tarquin): Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's not forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin to NPOV at all (which really deals with article *content* and not titles - titles are dealt with through our naming conventions). PC = "politically correct" . Political correctness in the United States is a political and social movement which aims to use changes in language to prevent offending people who leftists think are offended by the use of certain terms. PC also aims to help change the way other people think by changing the use of certain terms (rather Orwellian if you ask me). This is *not* at all NPOV and should *not* be associated with the 'unreasonable offensiveness' clause of our common name naming convention (which is largely agendaless, unlike PC). Wikipedia needs to *follow* common usage, not try to change it! -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 19:08:07 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:08:07 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Private email lists for mediation Message-ID: <200401151108.07962.maveric149@yahoo.com> It might be a good idea to have a private email list for mediation: list members would have to approved by a list moderator and when a particular mediation is over all list members would be unsubscribed by the moderator. There would be no public archive. If needed there could be several mediation lists so that several mediations can go on at once. Just a thought. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Thu Jan 15 18:42:50 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 10:42:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Tying Threads together (Was: ezresults not playing fair?) Message-ID: Maz's mention of ezresults misusing material form WP reminds me of a research problem I had this week -- which relates to another thread in this maillist. I've been rewriting the article on king [[Hezekiah]] of the ancient kingdom of Judah (my work is up on the English Wikipedia, if you're curious), & encountered the problem that the material an anonymous contributor added that Hezekiah's reign could be dated by an eclipse conflicts with the dates of two widely-quoted scholars. So I thought to use Google to investigate just who "Professor Aurel Ponori-Thewrewk" was, & learn just what he said in the cited article, & how reliable of an authority he was. The anon contributor only provided an incomplete citation for Ponori-Thewrewk's work, so I cut-n-pasted about ten words including his name into Google to see what I could find -- which was two different sites that were using Wikipedia material. Fortunately, both credited WP as the source, & had the proper licensing notice attached. (I couldn't find the reference page that lists known users of our material to see if they were listed. Thanks, Mav, for the link.) As for Prof. Ponori-Thewrewk? Except for some pages in German & Hungarian (the German ones appeared to be either from a college catalog of classes or a reading list; I don't understand Hungarian at all), the only explanation for who he was came from another Wikipedia page -- [[eclipses]] -- which identified him as the former director of the Budapest Planetarium. I still have no idea what he actually asserted concerning the sundial mentioned in 2 Kings 20:8-11. Just an example of why including proper citations ("X says Y") is important, not only for NPOV reasons. (To tie in still another thread.) Geoff From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 15 19:37:54 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:37:54 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) References: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4006EC12.7060300@telus.net> Daniel Mayer wrote: >tarquin > >>At any rate, I agree with the removal of the term >>"terrorist" from the title. >> > >Why? The term 'terrorist' is almost always in the title of the incident when >it is referred to in any place I've ever seen a reference (although it is >very often just called "9/11" or "September 11" in the USA but those titles >are not specific enough for us). The incident also perfectly fits the >definition of terrorism. So there is no reason not to use it unless it is >unreasonably offensive. I would, in fact, argue that *not* having the word >'terrorist' in the title would be unreasonably offensive (IMO, that would be >white-washing, or at lest sanitizing, the title). > It should be taken out because it is both a characterization and unnecesary for identifying the incident. There are numerous other incidents which might be qualified as "terrorist", but where that term might be more hotly disputed. By completely avoiding the term "terrorist", even when it seems obvious, we can avoid the need to set boundaries that define what is and what is not a terrorist act. >Taking out the word "terrorist" in light of the fact that the word is very >commonly used in the title and fits the definition, goes against our common >name naming convention and also creates a needlessly vague title. > I don't find anything vague about the title, and, if needed, there are other ways of disambiguating. The common name naming convention should not be used as an excuse for overriding good judgement. >It also supports the POV that the incident was not a terrorist act which is absurd >since it perfectly fits the definition. > The absence of the term is neutral, and neither supports nor condemns the act in question. >So if something is commonly called something, fits the definition, is not >unreasonably offensive, then that term should be used. > >More generally (meaning not directed toward Tarquin): > >Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's not >forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin to NPOV at >all (which really deals with article *content* and not titles - titles are >dealt with through our naming conventions). > This sounds very much like saying that since titles are immune to POV, naming conventions should take precedence over NPOV in the naming of articles. That makes no sense at all, and is inconsistent with the earlier statement that omitting the word would support some POV. >PC = "politically correct" . Political correctness in the United States is a >political and social movement which aims to use changes in language to >prevent offending people who leftists think are offended by the use of >certain terms. PC also aims to help change the way other people think by >changing the use of certain terms (rather Orwellian if you ask me). This is >*not* at all NPOV and should *not* be associated with the 'unreasonable >offensiveness' clause of our common name naming convention (which is largely >agendaless, unlike PC). > Political correctness is not just applied to leftist causes. There is just as much rightist political correctness. Orwell was critical of extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 15 19:49:41 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:49:41 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: How about [[9-11 Airliner Incident]]? Or, for the more deliberately inclined, [[9-11 Airliner Attack]]? Both of these titles sidestep the issue of whether it was a "terrorist" event. The opening paragraphs of the article make it clear that the US, at least, called it a "terrorist attack". Ed From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Thu Jan 15 19:53:33 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:53:33 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4006EFBD.8070203@rufus.d2g.com> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >How about [[9-11 Airliner Incident]]? > >Or, for the more deliberately inclined, [[9-11 Airliner Attack]]? > >Both of these titles sidestep the issue of whether it was a "terrorist" >event. The opening paragraphs of the article make it clear that the US, >at least, called it a "terrorist attack". > > This sounds almost comically PC to me. We could always move it to [[Reportedly Intentional Mishap Involving Several Airplanes over the United States on September 11, 2003]]. -Mark From tarquin at planetunreal.com Thu Jan 15 19:56:25 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 19:56:25 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) In-Reply-To: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4006F069.4050300@planetunreal.com> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's not >forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin to NPOV at >all (which really deals with article *content* and not titles - titles are >dealt with through our naming conventions). > > > I wonder what happens when the PC brigade come across articles that begin "So-and-so is a black British actor" From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Thu Jan 15 19:54:50 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:54:50 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <4006EFBD.8070203@rufus.d2g.com> References: <4006EFBD.8070203@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <4006F00A.1060003@rufus.d2g.com> Delirium wrote: > This sounds almost comically PC to me. > > We could always move it to [[Reportedly Intentional Mishap Involving > Several Airplanes over the United States on September 11, 2003]]. Err, 2001 of course. But I don't really see what's wrong with "September 11 terrorist attacks". It's the nearly-universally-used term, and even countries that generally strongly dislike the US--like Iran--use that term. -Mark From wikien-drbob at mellish.org.uk Thu Jan 15 19:59:13 2004 From: wikien-drbob at mellish.org.uk (Bob Mellish) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:59:13 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ezresults not playing fair? Message-ID: <003001c3dba2$0cc185a0$70c8c480@chem.arizona.edu> Actually, if you follow the "original article" link at the bottom of the page, you do eventually get back to the wikipedia version of the article, even though ezresults is doing some kind of frame-redirect so that the URL doesn't seem to change. More worrying than ezresults is WordIQ (www.wordiq.com) which not only swipes wikipedia content without link back, GFDL compliance, or even a mention of WP (see http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content), but also each article still links to wikipedia servers for all the images, thus stealing bandwidth from WP. I wonder if it would be (a) technically possible, and/or (b) a good idea, to prevent images from being served that are offsite linked from pages on either WordIQ in particular, or all non- *.wikipedia.org sites in general. The second option might break many GFDL-complient copies of WP, though, depending on whether they have local copies of article images. -- Bob [DrBob] Mellish. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 20:35:32 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:35:32 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) References: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> <4006F069.4050300@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <4006F994.30101@yahoo.com> tarquin a ?crit: > > > Daniel Mayer wrote: > >> Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's >> not forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin >> to NPOV at all (which really deals with article *content* and not >> titles - titles are dealt with through our naming conventions). >> >> > I wonder what happens when the PC brigade come across articles that > begin "So-and-so is a black British actor" I would like the PC brigade to have a look at the title of the [[anti-french sentiment in the United States]] as well From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 15 20:59:06 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 15:59:06 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11) Message-ID: I created the article in question, "Anti-French sentiment in the United States". I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-) I studied French in high school and actually did my homework for it -- unlike most of my other courses. I memorized this poem: Dejeuner du Matin Il a mis le cafe Dans la tasse Il a mis le lait Dans la tasse de cafe Il a mis le sucre Dans le cafe au lait Avec la petite cuiller Il a tourne Il a bu le cafe au lait Et il a repose la tasse Sans me parler Il a allume Une cigarette Il a fait des ronds Avec la fumee Il a mis les cendres Dans le cendrier Sans me parler Sans me regarder Il s'est leve Il a mis Son chapeau sur sa tete Il a mis Son manteau de pluie Parce qu'il pleuvait Et il est parti Sous la pluie Sans une parole Et moi j'ai pris Ma tete dans ma main Et j'ai pleure. However, many Americans (other than me) evinced anti-French sentiment because of the Iraq War. "The French should appreciate our soldiers' sacrifice during World War II," they said. "Look at all the cemeteries filled with tens of thousands of dead GIs, fallen while defending them from the Nazis." Hmm, I wonder if the 'filter' will let this post through. Oncle Edmond From magnus.manske at web.de Thu Jan 15 21:08:16 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 22:08:16 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ezresults not playing fair? In-Reply-To: <003001c3dba2$0cc185a0$70c8c480@chem.arizona.edu> References: <003001c3dba2$0cc185a0$70c8c480@chem.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <40070140.8020508@web.de> Bob Mellish wrote: > More worrying than ezresults is WordIQ (www.wordiq.com) which not only > swipes wikipedia content without link back, GFDL compliance, or even a > mention of WP (see > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content), > but also each article still links to wikipedia servers for all the images, > thus stealing bandwidth from WP. Did anyone contact them yet? Magnus From sascha at pantropy.net Thu Jan 15 21:47:27 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:47:27 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <4006F00A.1060003@rufus.d2g.com> References: <4006EFBD.8070203@rufus.d2g.com> <4006F00A.1060003@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <200401151647.28219.sascha@pantropy.net> On Thursday 15 January 2004 02:54 pm, Delirium wrote: > Delirium wrote: > > We could always move it to [[Reportedly Intentional Mishap Involving > > Several Airplanes over the United States on September 11, 2003]]. > > Err, 2001 of course. If you had written "2004" I would have reported you to Tom Ridge. ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From david at nohat.net Thu Jan 15 21:53:45 2004 From: david at nohat.net (David Friedland) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:53:45 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: High-res logo Message-ID: <4A5D568D-47A5-11D8-9555-0050E4901841@nohat.net> I have made a high-res version of the logo, including the text. It is at http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/9/91/Nohat-logo-XI-big-text.png I have already informed Mr. DeGrandpre under separate cover - David [[User:Nohat]] Jimmy Wales wrote: > What's the URL for a high resolution image of the Wikipedia logo? > Do we also have one for the Wikimedia Foundation logo? > > ----- Forwarded message from "richard-PFJODL+h6fL1P9xLtpHBDw at public.gmane.org" ----- > > From: "richard-PFJODL+h6fL1P9xLtpHBDw at public.gmane.org" > Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:33:59 -0800 > To: > Subject: powered by wikipedia > > Dear Mr. Wales, > > We would like to do a blurb for the encyclopedia in our next issue of > Adbusters magazine (circ. 120,000; see www.adbusters.org). To do so, we > would need a high resolution image of the Wikipedia icon. We love the > encyclopedia and, although we don't print any paid ads in the magazine, we > do print some free ones. > > Hope to hear from you or someone on the staff at your/their convenience. > > All best wishes, > > Richard DeGrandpre > Associate Editor > > ----- End forwarded message ----- From tucci528 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 21:58:37 2004 From: tucci528 at yahoo.com (Tucci) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:58:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Adbusters In-Reply-To: <4A5D568D-47A5-11D8-9555-0050E4901841@nohat.net> Message-ID: <20040115215837.31836.qmail@web12824.mail.yahoo.com> That's great, I love adbusters. TUF-KAT > > From: > "richard-PFJODL+h6fL1P9xLtpHBDw at public.gmane.org" > > > Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:33:59 -0800 > > To: > > > Subject: powered by wikipedia > > > > Dear Mr. Wales, > > > > We would like to do a blurb for the encyclopedia > in our next issue of > > Adbusters magazine (circ. 120,000; see > www.adbusters.org). To do so, > we > > would need a high resolution image of the > Wikipedia icon. We love the > > encyclopedia and, although we don't print any > paid ads in the > magazine, we > > do print some free ones. > > > > Hope to hear from you or someone on the staff at > your/their > convenience. > > > > All best wishes, > > > > Richard DeGrandpre > > Associate Editor > > > > ----- End forwarded message ----- > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Thu Jan 15 22:02:06 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:02:06 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040115220205.GA21807@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Tarquin wrote: >>At any rate, I agree with the removal of the term >>"terrorist" from the title. >Why? The term 'terrorist' is almost always in the title of the incident when >it is referred to in any place I've ever seen a reference (although it is >very often just called "9/11" or "September 11" in the USA but those titles >are not specific enough for us). The incident also perfectly fits the >definition of terrorism. So there is no reason not to use it unless it is >unreasonably offensive. I would, in fact, argue that *not* having the word >'terrorist' in the title would be unreasonably offensive (IMO, that would be >white-washing, or at lest sanitizing, the title). This assumes that there's a reason for it to be in the title at all. Why is that? What else could "September 11, 2001 attack" mean? Titles are not required to be maximally complete. Furthermore, the attack on the Pentagon was /not/ obviously terrorism, since it was an attack on a military target. (I would argue that it was terrorism, but only given the context of NY.) >>That is was an attack, at least, is undisputed :) >Taking out the word "terrorist" in light of the fact that the word is very >commonly used in the title and fits the definition, goes against our common >name naming convention and also creates a needlessly vague title. It also >supports the POV that the incident was not a terrorist act which is absurd >since it perfectly fits the definition. Leaving "terrorist" /out/ of the title absolutely does *not* support any position that the attack wasn't terrorist. How could it do that? There is no presumption that titles include all relevant information. (That's what the article /body/ is for. ^_^) Our "common name" naming convention also doesn't apply unless the phrase "September 11 attack" is /not/ commonly used without the word "terrorist". (That may be true, but I don't know it.) >So if something is commonly called something, fits the definition, is not >unreasonably offensive, then that term should be used. Names are not required to be complete! >More generally (meaning not directed toward Tarquin): >Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's not >forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin to NPOV at >all (which really deals with article *content* and not titles - titles are >dealt with through our naming conventions). I remember once trying to convince you of this very thing: NPOV is primarily about article bodies, not titles, and titles need to be further determined through arbitrary conventions. That was a while ago, so I won't pretend that I changed your mind (or even that your mind changed since that was a different context); still, I'm glad to see you say this. >PC = "politically correct" . Political correctness in the United States is a >political and social movement which aims to use changes in language to >prevent offending people who leftists think are offended by the use of >certain terms. PC also aims to help change the way other people think by >changing the use of certain terms (rather Orwellian if you ask me). This is >*not* at all NPOV and should *not* be associated with the 'unreasonable >offensiveness' clause of our common name naming convention (which is largely >agendaless, unlike PC). Since this is a digression, I won't go on about what slander the term "PC" is. Suffice it to say that no social movement called itself that. All that "politically correct" nonsense is neither here nor there. >Wikipedia needs to *follow* common usage, not try to change it! True, but that's really not relevant to this debate, since both "September 11 attack" and "September 11 terrorist attack" can be found, in common usage, to refer to this event. (Also, there is no particular naming convention for this sort of thing.) Thus our name is free to err on the side of caution. -- Toby From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Thu Jan 15 22:20:58 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:20:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Private email lists for mediation In-Reply-To: <200401151108.07962.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote: > It might be a good idea to have a private email list for mediation: list > members would have to approved by a list moderator and when a particular > mediation is over all list members would be unsubscribed by the moderator. > > There would be no public archive. > > If needed there could be several mediation lists so that several mediations > can go on at once. > > Just a thought. > On the other hand, it'd be useful to have some kind of record of each moderation, describing the outcome. Even if the outcome could be described in a sentence or two, e.g. "Parties involved exchanged views, understood each other's POV, agreed to minimize conflict in the future" or "Parties involved could not agree on anything, mediation failed." With enough of these records, it would help identify who plays nice on Wikipedia. Entering into mediation should be a way to identify problems in the process, & not a black mark on all parties involved. Geoff From sascha at pantropy.net Thu Jan 15 22:23:44 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:23:44 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ezresults not playing fair? In-Reply-To: <40070140.8020508@web.de> References: <003001c3dba2$0cc185a0$70c8c480@chem.arizona.edu> <40070140.8020508@web.de> Message-ID: <200401151723.44290.sascha@pantropy.net> On Thursday 15 January 2004 04:08 pm, Magnus Manske wrote: > Bob Mellish wrote: > > More worrying than ezresults is WordIQ (www.wordiq.com) which not only > > swipes wikipedia content without link back, GFDL compliance, or even a > > mention of WP (see > > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_cont > >ent), but also each article still links to wikipedia servers for all the > > images, thus stealing bandwidth from WP. > > Did anyone contact them yet? Different people did. Alltogether probably about 4 or 5 times. It is all documented on [[Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content). Summary: They've always given lame excuses and never done anything. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 15 22:43:58 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:43:58 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: I hate to be picky, but were there any civilians involved in the "military" attack on the Pentagon? Like, passengers in the hijacked airliner? Crashing a planeload of civilians seems to qualify as "terrorist". In the sense that attacking civilians is for the purposing of arousing terror. But perhaps this issue is best discussed on the talk page. Unless there is a deeper or wider issue involved. Do we need a definition of 'terrorism'? Is it a question of /whose POV/ says that the hijackings and crashes says were (or were not) justifiable or "acts of war rather than terrorism"? Perhaps the problem is that the word 'terrorism' has multiple or shifting meanings. Like 'racism' is (a) prejudice or discrimination against a member of a "race"; but also sometimes (b) /unjustifiable/ racism, as by an oppressive majority against a defenseless minority. Perhaps this issue cuts across a lot of topics: * hate crime * racism * terrorism * Communism To me, because of my simple-minded faith in my oh-so-simplistic "cult", it all boils down to a failure to love other people. Ah, if only we could apply WikiLove beyond the confines of our happy little virtual world! Uncle Ed From vr at redbird.org Thu Jan 15 22:48:26 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:48:26 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:LanceMurdoch In-Reply-To: <4006D1FC.6070801@telus.net> References: <4005D090.685.10F9843@localhost> <40069AD5.3000002@planetunreal.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040115174412.027bb240@smtp.panix.com> At 09:46 AM 1/15/04 -0800, Ec wrote: >tarquin wrote: > >>Martin Harper wrote: >> >>>>After all, what other September 11 attack could one possibly >>> >>>be talking about? >>> >>>I thought there was an attack by the US some exact number of years >>>before 11/9/2001? I seem to recall some heated discussion in the >>>aftermath over which had the most fatalities. >>> >>>On the other hand, "primary topic" disambiguation would probably be >>>workable. >>> >> >>Or call it "World Trade Center attack" ? >>At any rate, I agree with the removal of the term "terrorist" from the >>title. That is was an attack, at least, is undisputed :) > >"World Trade Center attack" doesn't work because of the related attack on >the Pentagon, unless there is some need to distinguish the two.. Also, there were two terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center; the first killed (IIRC) five people. From viajero at quilombo.nl Thu Jan 15 22:50:03 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 23:50:03 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 01/15/04 at 10:57 AM, Daniel Mayer said: > The incident also perfectly fits the > definition of terrorism. So there is no reason not to use it unless it > is unreasonably offensive. I would, in fact, argue that *not* having > the word 'terrorist' in the title would be unreasonably offensive (IMO, > that would be white-washing, or at lest sanitizing, the title). "Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!). Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously incompatible with NPOV. Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the 1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways. On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him. V. From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Thu Jan 15 23:08:19 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 15:08:19 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040115230819.GA23705@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Ed Poor wrote: >I hate to be picky, but were there any civilians involved in the >"military" attack on the Pentagon? Like, passengers in the hijacked >airliner? Crashing a planeload of civilians seems to qualify as >"terrorist". In the sense that attacking civilians is for the purposing >of arousing terror. Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed forces? Actually, I know people that claim that the Gulf War /was/ terrorism! But we're not going to put that into the article title. >But perhaps this issue is best discussed on the talk page. Unless there >is a deeper or wider issue involved. Do we need a definition of >'terrorism'? Is it a question of /whose POV/ says that the hijackings >and crashes says were (or were not) justifiable or "acts of war rather >than terrorism"? If somebody maintains that they were acts of war, then the article body -- not the title -- can cover that. We shouldn't make it [[September 11, 2001 war]] either! >Perhaps the problem is that the word 'terrorism' has multiple or >shifting meanings. Like 'racism' is (a) prejudice or discrimination >against a member of a "race"; but also sometimes (b) /unjustifiable/ >racism, as by an oppressive majority against a defenseless minority. >Perhaps this issue cuts across a lot of topics: >* hate crime >* racism >* terrorism >* Communism It does, I think. Such words generally shouldn't be in article titles. This is not to say that this is a fast rule, and obviously [[Racism]] itself is the right title. But (say) [[Racist church burnings]] is not so good. >To me, because of my simple-minded faith in my oh-so-simplistic "cult", >it all boils down to a failure to love other people. Ah, if only we >could apply WikiLove beyond the confines of our happy little virtual >world! /We/ can apply them -- even if the rest of the world does not! ^_^ -- Toby From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Thu Jan 15 23:24:27 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:24:27 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On the Middle East, on the Jimbo-RK-Danny dispute, etc. Message-ID: <144077145c73.145c73144077@asteroid.scranton.edu> ----- Original Message ----- From: Charles Matthews Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 7:15 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] On the Middle East, on the Jimbo-RK-Danny dispute, etc. > Also being someone who reads this list without posting much, I was > tryingfor some perspective rather than intending to get involved. > > In the abstract, I assumed that WP will always encounter problems > in trying > to include everything; because writing contemporary history in the > making is > not only contentious but probably based on sources that are > incomplete. No kidding. My personal rule is to keep quiet for at least 30 years in terms of "history". Why so long? After 25 to 30 years, virtually all of the democracies open up most of their classified records (with some exceptions, of course). Before then, all you have is journalism, and we all know how accurate THAT is. > The 'least bad' solution would seem to me to be a 'pendulum > arbitration'plus 'cooling-off' period mechanism for edit wars: > someone decides which of > two versions is less unreasonable, and locks the page for a period > of ten > days. Here pendulum arbitration comes from labour disputes, where > you don't > try to find the middle point (which encourages extreme positions) > but choose > one or other side. Not sure that's a good idea; It just encourages people to go nuts. Also, people may well forget an article after a week. From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Thu Jan 15 23:51:31 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:51:31 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon Message-ID: <14826d145957.14595714826d@asteroid.scranton.edu> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex R." Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 8:25 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Shades of Rashomon > > Two knowledgable people with opposing biases can generally > > write a good article even if the road is rocky. No number of > > ignoramuses can write a good article regardless of their biases. > > What about the typing monkey paradox? Aliens. From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 16 00:24:33 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:24:33 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40072F41.6040606@rufus.d2g.com> Viajero wrote: >"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries emotional >baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling someone a "vandal" in >Wikipedia!). Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously >incompatible with NPOV. Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path >terrorists, one can make the argument for labelling the US government a >terrorist organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or >destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, or causing >500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the 1990s by means of >sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways. > >On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something >awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from >every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him. > > I disagree that the word shouldn't be used--at the very least, allegations of terrorism should be mentioned; we shouldn't just pretend the word doesn't exist, since it does, and it is widespread use. For example, [[Hamas]] should and does mention that the US and EU (and many other countries) consider it a terrorist organization. [[King David Hotel bombing]] should also mention that many people consider it a terrorist attack, since, well, they do. -Mark From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 01:41:09 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:41:09 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: <200401151741.09154.maveric149@yahoo.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. >As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral >damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed >forces? No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition governments cannot commit terrorism. One reason why terrorism is often seen as being worse than atrocities committed by governments, is that there is no clear thing to retaliate against when it is committed. At least in the Cold War we could rely on the concept of mutually assured destruction to keep the Soviets from nuking us (and vice versa). We cannot rely on that for terrorist acts since the organizations the perform terrorist acts do not have nearly as much to loose as a nation performing the same act would. >Actually, I know people that claim that the Gulf War /was/ terrorism! >But we're not going to put that into the article title. And rightly so since that violates our common name naming convention. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 01:47:14 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:47:14 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) Message-ID: <200401151747.14107.maveric149@yahoo.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: >It should be taken out because it is both a characterization >and unnecesary for identifying the incident. It should only be taken out if it is deemed unnecessary for identifying the incident. Otherwise we would have to rename [[My Lai Massacre]], [[Boston Massacre]], (many, many other 'massacres'), [[Holocaust]], [[Racism]], and [[Terrorism]] itself. >There are numerous other incidents which might be qualified >as "terrorist", but where that term might be more hotly disputed. Then we dispute those! But please no blacklisting of terms. That is Newspeak and censorship. >By completely avoiding the term "terrorist", even when it seems >obvious, we can avoid the need to set boundaries that define >what is and what is not a terrorist act. Self-censorship is the worse kind. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 01:48:50 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:48:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) In-Reply-To: <4006F994.30101@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040116014850.76154.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> Well, I'm certainly confused. Are you saying that there is NO Anti-French sentiment in the United States? RickK Anthere wrote: tarquin a ?crit: > > > Daniel Mayer wrote: > >> Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's >> not forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin >> to NPOV at all (which really deals with article *content* and not >> titles - titles are dealt with through our naming conventions). >> >> > I wonder what happens when the PC brigade come across articles that > begin "So-and-so is a black British actor" I would like the PC brigade to have a look at the title of the [[anti-french sentiment in the United States]] as well _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040115/b7697e49/attachment.htm From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 02:04:44 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:04:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: <200401151804.44111.maveric149@yahoo.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >This assumes that there's a reason for it to be in the title at all. >Why is that? What else could "September 11, 2001 attack" mean? >Titles are not required to be maximally complete. Point taken. I was operating under the assumption that your reasoning was only that 'terrorist' should be blacklisted from the title because it is a "loaded term". 'September 11 Attack' is *at least* used as often as 'September 11 Terrorist Attack' (probably more so). Of course we would have the add '2001' to the title because of ambiguity reasons. >I remember once trying to convince you of this very thing: >NPOV is primarily about article bodies, not titles, >and titles need to be further determined through arbitrary >conventions. Nah - my opinions are always right for all time. ;) But I seriously don't remember holding such an opinion since it is not possible to have NPOV in titles because we have to choose just *one* title for any topic. >Since this is a digression, I won't go on about what slander the >term "PC" is. Suffice it to say that no social movement called >itself that. Well there is no political action committee whose aim is PC that I am aware of, nor any groups that have exclusively pro-PC meetings. PC is more of a cross-group "movement" to change the English language (using the word "movement" very loosely). Perhaps "trend" would be more accurate (even though there are many counter trends to PC that help to negate its progress). >All that "politically correct" nonsense is neither here nor there. Yes - political correctness is nonsense. :) -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 02:09:11 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:09:11 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Private email lists for mediation Message-ID: <200401151809.11570.maveric149@yahoo.com> Geoff Burling wrote: >On the other hand, it'd be useful to have some kind of record >of each moderation, describing the outcome. Even if the >outcome could be described in a sentence or two, e.g. "Parties >involved exchanged views, understood each other's POV, >agreed to minimize conflict in the future" or "Parties >involved could not agree on anything, mediation failed." Yes, definitely! I do think that moderation will fail if we don't set-up some way for the involved parties to easily discuss mediation disputes. IMO, the fastest and easiest way to do that is just set-up several mediation-l lists. -- mav From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 02:35:32 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:35:32 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: <200401151835.32302.maveric149@yahoo.com> Viajero wrote: >"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries >emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling >someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!). Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the articles on those topics will have to be renamed as well. >Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously >incompatible with NPOV. And NPOV obviously cannot operate in article titles since we have to choose just one term for the title (thus choosing one POV). Common usage with the caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable offensiveness is our rule for page titles. Applying NPOV to titles would result in ponderously long titles that would for practical reasons be useless as titles and near impossible to remember for linking purposes. >Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can >make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist >organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or >destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, >or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the >1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways. See my response to Toby on this point: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009600.html >On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote >something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" >should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I >am inclined to agree with him. I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you re-consider it. Not only would it result in [[Terrorism]] becoming an orphan, but it would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is relevant to say that X said Y about Z then we should say it! Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the population for it. Eliminating 'terrorist' from Wikipedia would cover-up the fact that many people consider terrorism to be a real thing and something that is in a special class of atrocities. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 03:20:04 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 04:20:04 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) References: <4006F994.30101@yahoo.com> <20040116014850.76154.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40075864.6010009@yahoo.com> ? I am confused by your question. Rick a ?crit: > Well, I'm certainly confused. Are you saying that there is NO > Anti-French sentiment in the United States? > > RickK About as much as [[September 11 terrorist attack]] ever happened in the US. About a year ago, Jimbo suggested that for example a title such as [[French American relationships]] could be more ... Well, at least the article improved. From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 16 09:23:17 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:23:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 References: <200401151741.09154.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4007AD85.7080800@telus.net> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: > >>Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. >>As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral >>damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed >>forces? >> >No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian >population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition governments >cannot commit terrorism. > We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition. >One reason why terrorism is often seen as being >worse than atrocities committed by governments, is that there is no clear >thing to retaliate against when it is committed. > Terrorism by government is no less atrocious. Destroying the homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up. >At least in the Cold War we >could rely on the concept of mutually assured destruction to keep the Soviets >from nuking us (and vice versa). We cannot rely on that for terrorist acts >since the organizations the perform terrorist acts do not have nearly as much >to loose as a nation performing the same act would. > Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why small groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre weapons to secure their freedom.. Perhaps the way to prevent them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them something to lose. >>Actually, I know people that claim that the Gulf War /was/ terrorism! >>But we're not going to put that into the article title. >> >And rightly so since that violates our common name naming convention. > Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who is taking the "terrorist" action. Ec > From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 16 09:34:20 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:34:20 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) References: <200401151747.14107.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4007B01C.803@telus.net> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Ray Saintonge wrote: > >>It should be taken out because it is both a characterization >>and unnecesary for identifying the incident. >> >It should only be taken out if it is deemed unnecessary for identifying the >incident. > With that you make it sound as though you are agreeing with me. >Otherwise we would have to rename [[My Lai Massacre]], [[Boston >Massacre]], (many, many other 'massacres'), > Perhaps. >[[Holocaust]], [[Racism]], and [[Terrorism]] itself. > These are articles about the concepts themselves, and do not necessarily imply the characterization of a particular act. >>There are numerous other incidents which might be qualified >>as "terrorist", but where that term might be more hotly disputed. >> >Then we dispute those! But please no blacklisting of terms. That is Newspeak >and censorship. > There is ample opportunity in the body of an article to discuss whether the term is applicable. That luxury is not available in the title. >>By completely avoiding the term "terrorist", even when it seems >>obvious, we can avoid the need to set boundaries that define >>what is and what is not a terrorist act. >> >Self-censorship is the worse kind. > I would call it restraint by avoiding inflammatory titles. Ec From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 16 09:42:42 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:42:42 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 References: <200401151804.44111.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4007B212.1010409@telus.net> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: > >>This assumes that there's a reason for it to be in the title at all. >>Why is that? What else could "September 11, 2001 attack" mean? >>Titles are not required to be maximally complete. >> > >Point taken. I was operating under the assumption that your reasoning was only >that 'terrorist' should be blacklisted from the title because it is a "loaded >term". 'September 11 Attack' is *at least* used as often as 'September 11 >Terrorist Attack' (probably more so). Of course we would have the add '2001' >to the title because of ambiguity reasons. > I can easily live with the year in the title. >>Since this is a digression, I won't go on about what slander the >>term "PC" is. Suffice it to say that no social movement called >>itself that. >> > >Well there is no political action committee whose aim is PC that I am aware >of, nor any groups that have exclusively pro-PC meetings. PC is more of a >cross-group "movement" to change the English language (using the word >"movement" very loosely). Perhaps "trend" would be more accurate (even though >there are many counter trends to PC that help to negate its progress). > They exist in some places. Latin American death squads fall in that category. In the United States the Ku Klux Klan had its own PC agenda. Ec From gutza at moongate.ro Fri Jan 16 09:58:59 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:58:59 +0200 Subject: [OT][WikiEN-l] Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4007B5E3.10506@moongate.ro> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-) > > You mean freedom fries. And they're Belgian. In any case, since they wanted to use "freedom", they could have used "libert?, egalit?, fraternit? fries". You say that's too long--well, it can be compressed to "Leffe" for instance. But wait, we're back to Belgium. :) (Check out [[en:French fries]] chapter 6 and [[Leffe]] if you don't know what this is about.) --Gutza P.S. Hey, it's Friday, anyone should be entitled to an attempt at humor on Fridays. From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 16 09:57:48 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:57:48 -0000 Subject: [OT][WikiEN-l] Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11) Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522A1@backupserv.queens.harley> For those of you who don't already know. Leffe is the best beer in the world. IMHO Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Gutza [mailto:gutza at moongate.ro] Sent: 16 January 2004 09:59 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [OT][WikiEN-l] Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11) Poor, Edmund W wrote: >I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-) > > You mean freedom fries. And they're Belgian. In any case, since they wanted to use "freedom", they could have used "libert?, egalit?, fraternit? fries". You say that's too long--well, it can be compressed to "Leffe" for instance. But wait, we're back to Belgium. :) (Check out [[en:French fries]] chapter 6 and [[Leffe]] if you don't know what this is about.) --Gutza P.S. Hey, it's Friday, anyone should be entitled to an attempt at humor on Fridays. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 10:14:47 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 02:14:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: <200401160214.47570.maveric149@yahoo.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: >Daniel Mayer wrote: >> by definition governments cannot commit terrorism. > >We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition. Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not characterize the dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on), but the intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the fact that few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks terrorist acts (what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions). >Terrorism by government is no less atrocious. Destroying the >homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of >terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make >sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up. This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it terrorism (esp when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or were the family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a much larger population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that population). >Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive >force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why small >groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre >weapons to secure their freedom.. Perhaps the way to prevent >them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them >something to lose. No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military spending and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the root causes of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance. >Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who >is taking the "terrorist" action. No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 16 10:13:53 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 02:13:53 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 References: <200401151835.32302.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4007B961.4010509@telus.net> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Viajero wrote: > >>"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries >>emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling >>someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!). >> >Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the articles on >those topics will have to be renamed as well. > That's trivialization. >>Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously >>incompatible with NPOV. >> > >And NPOV obviously cannot operate in article titles since we have to choose >just one term for the title (thus choosing one POV). Common usage with the >caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable offensiveness is our rule for page >titles. Applying NPOV to titles would result in ponderously long titles that >would for practical reasons be useless as titles and near impossible to >remember for linking purposes. > You apply NPOV to titles by avoiding characterizations. This makes titles shorter, not longer. >>On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote >>something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" >>should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I >>am inclined to agree with him. >> >I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you re-consider >it. Not only would it result in [[Terrorism]] becoming an orphan, but it >would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is relevant to say that >X said Y about Z then we should say it! > If so, say it in the text. >Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read in >the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The goal of >the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought control: By >dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind those terms >would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. Eliminating the word >"freedom" for example, would help to stop the transmission of >freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the population for it. > Orwell's society did not ban the word "freedom". It just reserved the right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way. Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas. >Eliminating 'terrorist' from Wikipedia would cover-up the fact that many >people consider terrorism to be a real thing and something that is in a >special class of atrocities. > I'm not saying that the word should be completely banned; there are places for it. Just not in most titles. Ec > From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 16 12:07:02 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 04:07:02 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration Message-ID: <20040116120701.GG8653@joey.bomis.com> There are a few people (Anthere, TufKat, others?) who I neglected to include in my first list, but it is past the start of the year, and we have a few outstanding controversies that need to be addressed. So I'd like to move that we get things organized. Unorganized committees with no set procedures are worse than my benevolent dictatorship, I think, because there's no clear way to say what should be done. Mediation and arbitration are very different activities. To recall, mediation is a no-penalty effort to resolve a conflict through 3rd party friendly intervention. The mediation committee seeks to find a way, on an article or in a personal conflict, for work to continue without further trouble. The arbitration committee, on the other hand, can impose a solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the exception that I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve the whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as unlikely, and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves Parliament against their wishes, i.e. basically never, but it is one last safety valve for our values. I'd like for a (relatively quick, as there's work to be done now) vote among each committee for a chairperson, who will be tasked with organizing the work. I'd say that the chair should come up with a plan of action, and propose some voting thresholds, and then with the input and consensus of the wider community, I'll stamp my official seal of approval on that. --Jimbo From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 16 12:29:44 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 04:29:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040116122944.GI8653@joey.bomis.com> I'm a bit confused about what is being discussed here. Does anyone actually argue that calling it a terrorist attack is somehow mistaken or prejudicial? Poor, Edmund W wrote: > How about [[9-11 Airliner Incident]]? > > Or, for the more deliberately inclined, [[9-11 Airliner Attack]]? > > Both of these titles sidestep the issue of whether it was a "terrorist" > event. The opening paragraphs of the article make it clear that the US, > at least, called it a "terrorist attack". > > Ed > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com Fri Jan 16 13:04:17 2004 From: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com (Bjorn Lindqvist) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 14:04:17 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Terrorist attacks In-Reply-To: <20040115224415.B1642B850@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040115224415.B1642B850@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040116130417.GA1163@localhost> > True, but that's really not relevant to this debate, > since both "September 11 attack" and "September 11 terrorist attack" > can be found, in common usage, to refer to this event. Additionally, "September 11 attack" googles much better than "September 11 terrorist attack" (22k to 9k). BL From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 16 13:11:01 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:11:01 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116122944.GI8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Yes, It is a point of view title. From Al Qaeda's viewpoint they are engaged in a defensive war against aggressive cultural, political and military expansion of the West into Islamic affairs and into Saudi Arabia particularly. Use of the word terrorist defines them very differently from their self-definition. Fred > From: Jimmy Wales > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 04:29:44 -0800 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 > > I'm a bit confused about what is being discussed here. Does anyone > actually argue that calling it a terrorist attack is somehow mistaken > or prejudicial? > > Poor, Edmund W wrote: > >> How about [[9-11 Airliner Incident]]? >> >> Or, for the more deliberately inclined, [[9-11 Airliner Attack]]? >> >> Both of these titles sidestep the issue of whether it was a "terrorist" >> event. The opening paragraphs of the article make it clear that the US, >> at least, called it a "terrorist attack". >> >> Ed >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 16 13:07:56 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 05:07:56 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040115220205.GA21807@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <200401151057.47481.maveric149@yahoo.com> <20040115220205.GA21807@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> Toby Bartels wrote: > Our "common name" naming convention also doesn't apply > unless the phrase "September 11 attack" is /not/ commonly used > without the word "terrorist". (That may be true, but I don't know it.) I won't comment much on the underlying issue, but I did do some googling, for whatever that might be worth... "September 11 attack" - 33,700 "September 11 terrorist attack" - 13,900 In Google News, "September 11 attack" - 71 "September 11 terrorist attack" - 10 So, although it would not be my first choice, it does seem that the "common name" naming convention may point us a way out of this discussion. Those who find the idea that including the word terrorism in the title is biased to be mistaken or misguided or PC might still take comfort in a different reason for changing the title -- to comport with common usage. For me, a standard policy of not using the word terrorism in such cases would be silly. The word can be overly politically loaded in some contexts, but in others it is not. But I could be comfortable with other reasons for changing the title. --Jimbo From dpbsmith at verizon.net Fri Jan 16 13:19:07 2004 From: dpbsmith at verizon.net (dpbsmith at verizon.net) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 7:19:07 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Using a dictionary considered helpful Message-ID: <20040116131907.FOZL19191.out008.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> I don't regard a dictionary as holy writ, and I don't have any illusions that using one will settle these disputes, but I really do wish, when conducting arguments--particularly in writing via email--that contenders would resort more to the dictionary, at least as a starting point, for defining terms. For example: Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons." Terrorist: "One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism." Not an answer, not unambiguous, not unchallengable, but a starting point. From gutza at moongate.ro Fri Jan 16 13:32:02 2004 From: gutza at moongate.ro (Gutza) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:32:02 +0200 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Using a dictionary considered helpful In-Reply-To: <20040116131907.FOZL19191.out008.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> References: <20040116131907.FOZL19191.out008.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Message-ID: <4007E7D2.4030601@moongate.ro> dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote: >I don't regard a dictionary as holy writ, and I don't have any illusions that >using one will settle these disputes, but I really do wish, when conducting >arguments--particularly in writing via email--that contenders would resort >more to the dictionary, at least as a starting point, for defining terms. > >For example: > >Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a >person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of >intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or >political reasons." > >Terrorist: "One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism." > >Not an answer, not unambiguous, not unchallengable, but a starting point. > > I'm not contesting your input, I don't even follow the dispute, I just think it's funny to notice that corroborating the definition above with the subjective point of view (who determines what's unlawful?), the whole of US were terrorists *by the book* in regards to the old Iraqui regime. The eye of the beholder... --Gutza From cunctator at kband.com Fri Jan 16 15:59:27 2004 From: cunctator at kband.com (The Cunctator) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:59:27 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of links in? A better google comparison would be "september 11" "attack" -terrorist vs. "september 11" "attack" "terrorist". Shorter phrases will pretty much always have more hits than longer equivalent ones. The change from "September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack" to "September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks" was in my opinion completely unnecessary. But I understand people's need to make an imprint. From cunctator at kband.com Fri Jan 16 16:04:15 2004 From: cunctator at kband.com (The Cunctator) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:04:15 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: One other point. 9-11 is universally held to be a terrorist attack. By arguing "We shouldn't use the word terrorist because we dispute the very conception of terrorism" we are engaging in political advocacy. Wikipedia should try to properly reflect the world more than it should try to shape it. We already have an excellent discussion of the fuzziness of "terrorism" in that article. That's the place for such a discussion, not in the Sep. 11 namespace. From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 16:24:56 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 08:24:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) In-Reply-To: <40075864.6010009@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040116162456.67087.qmail@web60605.mail.yahoo.com> You said the title of the article is POV. That would mean that there is no Anti-French sentiment in the US, which is obviously not true. RickK Anthere wrote: ? I am confused by your question. Rick a ?crit: > Well, I'm certainly confused. Are you saying that there is NO > Anti-French sentiment in the United States? > > RickK About as much as [[September 11 terrorist attack]] ever happened in the US. About a year ago, Jimbo suggested that for example a title such as [[French American relationships]] could be more ... Well, at least the article improved. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040116/9e6697e1/attachment.htm From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Fri Jan 16 17:06:56 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:06:56 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: <16b36216b08d.16b08d16b362@asteroid.scranton.edu> ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Saintonge Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:13 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 > Ray Saintonge wrote: > >Daniel Mayer wrote: > >> by definition governments cannot commit terrorism. > > > >We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition. > > Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not > characterize the > dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on), > but the > intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the > fact that > few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks > terrorist acts > (what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions). OK, this makes me sick. If 9/11 wasn't terrorism, WHAT IS? Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT directed against Americans or Israelis? What the hell is wrong with you people? > >Terrorism by government is no less atrocious. Destroying the > >homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of > >terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make > >sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up. > > This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it > terrorism (esp > when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or > were the > family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a > much larger > population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that > population). Must we bring the Palestinians into EVERYTHING? > >Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive > >force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why > small > >groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre > >weapons to secure their freedom.. Perhaps the way to prevent > >them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them > >something to lose. > > No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military > spending > and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the > root causes > of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance. Somehow I doubt a middle-class twenty-something, or a middle-class mom-turned-suicide-bomber, is really hit by poverty or ignorance. Try another one. > >Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who > >is taking the "terrorist" action. > > No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language. Precisely. Now, pardon me while I vomit at this unique expression of human foolishness. John From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 16 17:19:20 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:19:20 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) Message-ID: John asked, somewhat plaintively, "Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT directed against Americans or Israelis?" This is a good question, and we should develop an article to answer this question. As a start, let's consider what the definition of terrorism is, or list multiple definition. "Violence directed against civilians" Ah, but what about the bombings of Coventry or Dresden? "Not an act of a state" Ah, but what about state-supported terrorism? "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" Hmm. Maybe the issue is "injustice". That is, X will label a given act of violence against civilians "terrorist" if he considers it unjust. Like, how dare those bastards bulldoze this Arab man's house? Meanwhile, Y might say that the same act is not terrorist, because he does NOT consider it unjust. Like, we were destroying tunnels used to smuggle weapons, etc. Same logic applies to blowing up a bus or pizzeria. My side calls it an act of war, a blow against oppression (i.e., justifiable). Your side calls it cowardly, unjust, etc. It all boils down to the point of view of the person classifying the act. So let's identify the POV and its advocate. *yawn* case closed. Not too hard, eh? Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed -----Original Message----- From: John C. Penta [mailto:pentaj2 at UofS.edu] Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 12:07 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Saintonge Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:13 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 > Ray Saintonge wrote: > >Daniel Mayer wrote: > >> by definition governments cannot commit terrorism. > > > >We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition. > > Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not > characterize the > dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on), > but the > intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the > fact that > few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks > terrorist acts > (what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions). OK, this makes me sick. If 9/11 wasn't terrorism, WHAT IS? Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT directed against Americans or Israelis? What the hell is wrong with you people? > >Terrorism by government is no less atrocious. Destroying the > >homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of > >terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make > >sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up. > > This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it > terrorism (esp > when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or > were the > family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a > much larger > population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that > population). Must we bring the Palestinians into EVERYTHING? > >Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive > >force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why > small > >groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre > >weapons to secure their freedom.. Perhaps the way to prevent > >them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them > >something to lose. > > No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military > spending > and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the > root causes > of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance. Somehow I doubt a middle-class twenty-something, or a middle-class mom-turned-suicide-bomber, is really hit by poverty or ignorance. Try another one. > >Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who > >is taking the "terrorist" action. > > No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language. Precisely. Now, pardon me while I vomit at this unique expression of human foolishness. John _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From sannse at delphiforums.com Fri Jan 16 18:10:49 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 18:10:49 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration References: <20040116120701.GG8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <00e201c3dc5c$12f5b3a0$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Jimbo wrote (in part): > There are a few people (Anthere, TufKat, others?) who I neglected to > include in my first list, but it is past the start of the year, and we > have a few outstanding controversies that need to be addressed. Do you mean they weren't on the list but /are/ on one of the committees? Or are they not yet appointed? > I'd like for a (relatively quick, as there's work to be done now) vote > among each committee for a chairperson, who will be tasked with > organizing the work. I'd say that the chair should come up with a > plan of action, and propose some voting thresholds, and then with the > input and consensus of the wider community, I'll stamp my official > seal of approval on that. Perhaps as a first step the committee members could indicate whether they will be willing to take on that job? Or should we just go ahead and nominate someone as chair? Regards sannse From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 16 17:03:02 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 18:03:02 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <200401151835.32302.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: I respond below to some of the issues Mav and others have raised in recent posts, arguing that labelling people like Bin Laden "terrorists" is passing a moral judgement, and if we indiscriminantly do so, then others can insist that the actions of our governments (US/UK for the sake of argument) should also be labelled "terrorist". My conclusion is that it is not in the interest of Wikipedia for the CIA to be labelled a "terrorist network". On 01/15/04 at 06:35 PM, Daniel Mayer said: > Viajero wrote: > >"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries > >emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling > >someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!). > Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the > articles on those topics will have to be renamed as well. No, I would argue that "terrorism" is really sui generis. Given its highly controversial nature, its strongly negative connotations, and its primacy in current affairs, I don't think we should draw any general principles. > >Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can > >make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist > >organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or > >destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, > >or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the > >1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways. > See my response to Toby on this point: > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009600.html Ok, here it is: > Toby Bartels wrote: > >Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. > >As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral > >damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed > >forces? > No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian > population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition > governments cannot commit terrorism. The Gulf War is not a good example, But I think we must acknowledge that there are a lot of people in the Third World, using *their* definition of "terrorism", who believe that the US has committed "terrorists acts" against civilian targets. As others have already pointed out in this lists, a "terrorist" or a "terrorist act" is largely in the eye of the beholder. As for 3) "by definition governments cannot commit terrorism": It seems to me that this qualification is selectively applied. "State terrorism" is a contradiction in terms where Western governments are concerned but not when it involves our "official enemies". Do a Google query on "libya + support + terrorism" (190,000 hits) or "Iran + support + terrorism" (476,000 hits) and you find documents containing such texts as: Does Iran sponsor terrorism? Yes. The State Department calls the Islamic Republic of Iran the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism." (http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iran.html) Over the past twenty years, Libya has been foremost on the list of countries supporting terrorism. (http://www.ict.org.il/articles/article3.htm) If "sponsoring" or "supporting" is a meaningful distinction (I think not), than someone could argue that bin Laden is not a "terrorist"; he only supports it. In any case, it is beyond a doubt that the Reagan adminstration "supported terrorism" (first legally, later illegally) by its backing of the Contras whose goals were very much which Mav defines above, ie "to terrorize the civilian population." > One reason why terrorism is often > seen as being worse than atrocities committed by governments, is that > there is no clear thing to retaliate against when it is committed. I regard this is strictly a tactical problem -- not a moral issue! > At least in the Cold War we could rely on the concept of mutually assured > destruction to keep the Soviets from nuking us (and vice versa). We > cannot rely on that for terrorist acts since the organizations the > perform terrorist acts do not have nearly as much to loose as a nation > performing the same act would. This rationale does not hold water since countries like Libya and Iran. which we can assume do have something to loose, still appear to support it. > >On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote > >something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" > >should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I > >am inclined to agree with him. > I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you > re-consider it. Not only would it result in [[Terrorism]] becoming an > orphan, but it would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is > relevant to say that X said Y about Z then we should say it! > Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad idea I take it back. "Banning" was too strong a word. No, you are quite right: we do not want to "ban" words or ideas from Wikipedia. But I think we need to look carefully at how the term is used. To begin with, in recent days, two discussions have taken place on Talk pages ([[Osama bin Laden]] and [[Shining Path]]) over the insertion of the phrase "... is considered by many people to be a [terrorist | terrorist organization]" I am opposed (along with several others) to the inclusion of this phrase. I believe it uses weaselspeak to insert a moral judgement on the subject. We should simply allow the facts to speak for themselves. In the case of Shining Path, its atrocities were numerous, unambiguous, and well-documented. The case, as it were, speaks for itself. In [[Shining Path]], in response to the above, another user replaced it with the following text at the end of the article: Internationally, Shining Path is widely regarded as a terrorist group. The organization is on the United States Department of State's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, meaning (among other things) that it is illegal for US citizens to provide any aid to the group. The United Kingdom and European Union likewise list Shining Path as a terrorist group and prohibit providing funding or other financial support, although membership is not prohibited. This is an improvement. However, the assessment of an organization as "terrorist" is hardly just a technical, bureaucratic matter; it is not like declaring it in arrears or something. It is a moral judgement, and given that a state is not a moral agent (unlike say the Catholic Church) I would question the appropriateness of any government taking the high moral ground in this way, above all the US and the UK, given the fact they recently launched an illegal war against Iraq. "Let he without blame cast the first stone". However, in another article, [[Binational solution]], which many of you may have seen since it was one the Main page over Christmas, there is an instance of the use of the word "terrorist" which is appropriate. It forms an integral part of the historical narrative and is not included essentially as a moral judgement: The 1973 Yom Kippur War was both a military and a political disaster for the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular. The crushing defeat of the Arab armies prompted a fundamental political rethink among the Palestinian leadership. It was realised that Israel's military strength and, crucially, its alliance with the United States made it very unlikely that it could be defeated militarily. In December 1974, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) -- regarded as a terrorist group by the Israeli government - declared that a binational state was the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The change in policy was met with considerable confusion, as it was official PLO policy to replace Israel with a secular state with a full right of return for all displaced Palestinians. As I said in an earlier message, passing moral judgements -- directly or by means of weaselspeak -- goes both ways. If we insist on labelling Al Queda "terrorist", others can do the same with the CIA for example. Aside from whether I personally agree with this (an irrelevant matter), having the CIA labelled a "terrorist network" in the interest of balance is, from a strictly utilitarian point of view, counterproductive; it will only alienate an important part of our audience. Hence, lets not go down the slippery slope of labelling -- gratuitously at least -- bin Laden et al with moralistic, emotionally-laden terms like "terrorist". V. From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 16 19:43:33 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:43:33 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration In-Reply-To: <00e201c3dc5c$12f5b3a0$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> References: <20040116120701.GG8653@joey.bomis.com> <00e201c3dc5c$12f5b3a0$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Message-ID: <40083EE5.60709@rufus.d2g.com> sannse wrote: >Perhaps as a first step the committee members could indicate whether they >will be willing to take on that job? Or should we just go ahead and >nominate someone as chair? > > As a zeroeth step, can we be reminded of who's on which committee? I'm sure we all remember which ones we're on personally, but I for one don't remember who else is on which committee. Actually, this should probably be publically posted in the Wikipedia: namespace somewhere (or is it already and I missed it?). -Mark From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Fri Jan 16 19:01:37 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:01:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) In-Reply-To: <200401151747.14107.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote: > Ray Saintonge wrote: > >It should be taken out because it is both a characterization > >and unnecesary for identifying the incident. > > It should only be taken out if it is deemed unnecessary for identifying the > incident. Otherwise we would have to rename [[My Lai Massacre]], [[Boston > Massacre]], (many, many other 'massacres'), [[Holocaust]], [[Racism]], and > [[Terrorism]] itself. Speaking of massacres, a few other incidents where the term is commonly applied -- but doesn't actually fit would be the Saturday Night Massacre (where, in fact, no one died), & the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (where less than a dozen people died -- far less than at, say Katyn Wood). For those rusty on their US history, the "Saturday Night Massacre" was an episode of Watergate, where President Nixon attempted to fire a number of lawyers investigating Watergate. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre occured when either Al Capone or one of his henchmen killed a number of members of a rival gang in Chicago. Katyn Wood is an event in Polish history. The mass graves of a number of army officers, government officials, & other intelligensia were found in Katyn Wood. The Soviet Union claimed for many years that these people were killed by Nazi Germany; the Nazis claimed that the Soviets killed them. Communist Poland refused to discuss the event, & I have no idea if the post-Communist government has made an official statement concerning the event. I have not seen it referred to as a "massacre", though. > > >There are numerous other incidents which might be qualified > >as "terrorist", but where that term might be more hotly disputed. > > Then we dispute those! But please no blacklisting of terms. That is Newspeak > and censorship. I would recommend that we follow usage. If the word "terrorist" frequently or commonly is used to refer to an event, we either offer a link with that in the title, or put the word in the name of the article; if certain groups use the word & others don't, then that fact is mentioned in the article (& who calls it that). > > >By completely avoiding the term "terrorist", even when it seems > >obvious, we can avoid the need to set boundaries that define > >what is and what is not a terrorist act. > > Self-censorship is the worse kind. > I am reminded of a saying, sometimes attributed to St. Augustine. "Without justice, what difference is there between a brigand and a king?" Almost every terrorist is a freedom fighter in someone's eyes. Geoff From magnus.manske at web.de Fri Jan 16 20:12:45 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:12:45 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400845BD.4000606@web.de> I'm probably the only one who didn't participate in this discussion - until now! :-) This might be a little naive of me, but isn't terrorism defined by the very word it is based on - terror? Because that's what a terrorist does. He doesn't destroy an important military target or kill an important person - that's what military and assassins are for. A terrorist's goal is, in the end, to create _terror_. Fear that *you* or your loved ones could be next. Uncertainty. Trust in the state's ability to protect you melting like butter in the fusion reactor. And that's what 9-11 was about. Bin Laden (or whoever) didn't gain anything directly through the death of the people in the WTC or the Pentagon. The only "gain" of these peaople comes from the fear, from the *terror* their actions produce. That's why they are called terrorists, and their actions are terrorism. And it worked. Terror they got. The patriot act alone speaks volumes. Magnus Poor, Edmund W wrote: > John asked, somewhat plaintively, "Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT > directed against Americans or Israelis?" > > This is a good question, and we should develop an article to answer this > question. As a start, let's consider what the definition of terrorism > is, or list multiple definition. > > "Violence directed against civilians" > > Ah, but what about the bombings of Coventry or Dresden? > > "Not an act of a state" > > Ah, but what about state-supported terrorism? > > "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" > > Hmm. Maybe the issue is "injustice". > > That is, X will label a given act of violence against civilians > "terrorist" if he considers it unjust. Like, how dare those bastards > bulldoze this Arab man's house? > > Meanwhile, Y might say that the same act is not terrorist, because he > does NOT consider it unjust. Like, we were destroying tunnels used to > smuggle weapons, etc. > > Same logic applies to blowing up a bus or pizzeria. My side calls it an > act of war, a blow against oppression (i.e., justifiable). Your side > calls it cowardly, unjust, etc. > > It all boils down to the point of view of the person classifying the > act. So let's identify the POV and its advocate. *yawn* case closed. Not > too hard, eh? > > Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: John C. Penta [mailto:pentaj2 at UofS.edu] > Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 12:07 PM > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Ray Saintonge > Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:13 am > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 > > >>Ray Saintonge wrote: >> >>>Daniel Mayer wrote: >>> >>>>by definition governments cannot commit terrorism. >>> >>>We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition. >> >>Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not >>characterize the >>dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on), >>but the >>intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the >>fact that >>few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks >>terrorist acts >>(what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions). > > > OK, this makes me sick. > > If 9/11 wasn't terrorism, WHAT IS? Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT > directed against Americans or Israelis? > > What the hell is wrong with you people? > > >>>Terrorism by government is no less atrocious. Destroying the >>>homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of >>>terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make >>>sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up. >> >>This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it >>terrorism (esp >>when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or >>were the >>family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a >>much larger >>population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that >>population). > > > Must we bring the Palestinians into EVERYTHING? > > >>>Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive >>>force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why >> >>small >> >>>groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre >>>weapons to secure their freedom.. Perhaps the way to prevent >>>them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them >>>something to lose. >> >>No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military >>spending >>and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the >>root causes >>of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance. > > > Somehow I doubt a middle-class twenty-something, or a middle-class > mom-turned-suicide-bomber, is really hit by poverty or ignorance. > > Try another one. > > >>>Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who >>>is taking the "terrorist" action. >> >>No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language. > > > Precisely. > > Now, pardon me while I vomit at this unique expression of human > foolishness. > > John > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From sean at epoptic.org Fri Jan 16 20:15:11 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:15:11 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) In-Reply-To: (message from Geoff Burling on Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:01:37 -0800 (PST)) References: Message-ID: <200401162015.i0GKFBqX012782@orwen.epoptic.com> > Katyn Wood is an event in Polish history. The mass graves of a number of > army officers, government officials, & other intelligensia were found in > Katyn Wood. The Soviet Union claimed for many years that these people were > killed by Nazi Germany; the Nazis claimed that the Soviets killed them. > Communist Poland refused to discuss the event, & I have no idea if the > post-Communist government has made an official statement concerning the > event. I have not seen it referred to as a "massacre", though. You haven't looked it up in Wikipedia, then. -- Sean Barrett | For days, we survived on sean at epoptic.com | nothing but food and water. From sannse at delphiforums.com Fri Jan 16 20:20:48 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 20:20:48 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration References: <20040116120701.GG8653@joey.bomis.com><00e201c3dc5c$12f5b3a0$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> <40083EE5.60709@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <001701c3dc6e$3bb5f680$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Mark wrote: > As a zeroeth step, can we be reminded of who's on which committee? I'm > sure we all remember which ones we're on personally, but I for one don't > remember who else is on which committee. Actually, this should probably > be publically posted in the Wikipedia: namespace somewhere (or is it > already and I missed it?). The mediation committee is listed at [[Wikipedia:Mediation Committee]] Originally I made at least one mistake in this listing - linking to [[User:Geoff]] rather than [[User:Llywrch]] (aka Geoff on the mailing list). Below is Jimbo's original list for the mediation committee and our user names (please shout if I made any other booboos in matching Jimbo's list with accounts) Angela (User:Angela) LDan (User:LittleDan) Geoff (User:Llywrch) DanteAlighieri (User:Dante Alighieri) VancouverGuy (User:Vancouverguy) sannse (User:Sannse) Ed Poor (User:Ed Poor) Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (User:Cimon avaro) Stevertigo (User:Stevertigo) The arbitration committee is listed at [[Wikipedia:Arbitrators]] Jimbo's original list: Gutza MyRedDice NoHat Epopt Fred Bauder Delirium Maveric149 Camembert Jdforrester Kat/UninvitedCompany Cunctator Erik Moeller From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 20:25:47 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:25:47 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) References: <40075864.6010009@yahoo.com> <20040116162456.67087.qmail@web60605.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400848CB.1060009@yahoo.com> Rick a ?crit: > You said the title of the article is POV. That would mean that there is > no Anti-French sentiment in the US, which is obviously not true. > > RickK You do not read me well Rick :-) Or I do not explain myself clearly enough Here is the thread again Daniel Mayer wrote: Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's not forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin to NPOV at all (which really deals with article *content* and not titles - titles are dealt with through our naming conventions). Tarquin then said I wonder what happens when the PC brigade come across articles that begin "So-and-so is a black British actor" I commented I would like the PC brigade to have a look at the title of the [[anti-french sentiment in the United States]] as well (hint : I was talking of *having* a PC title for the antifrench sentiment, not claiming there was no antifrench sentiment) Then you said Well, I'm certainly confused. Are you saying that there is NO Anti-French sentiment in the United States? I answered About as much as [[September 11 terrorist attack]] ever happened in the US. (hint : I was thinking that if [[September 11 terrorist attack]] was renamed for PC reasons, we could perhaps do the same for the [[anti-french sentiment in the United States]], and make it more PC as well) (another hint : I was saying that it was just as funny to try to hinder the "terrorist" aspect of the attack, than trying to pretend there was no antifrench sentiment in the US) Then you commented You said the title of the article is POV. That would mean that there is no Anti-French sentiment in the US, which is obviously not true. I answer You do not read well Rick :-) (hint : that means I never wrote anywhere the title of the article was POV. That was interpretation of your part. I only commented on PC considerations. In short, we are just talking of two different things. I was also mentionning the suggestion Jimbo made a year ago : the title [[French American relationships]] is more **PC** than the current one. I often think that I write too much in length, but sometimes, it is best that I use 10 times more words, since visibly, I am so little understood. Do you understand now ? (hint : if you tell me again that I am wrong in claiming that there is no antifrench sentiment in the US, play again :-)) ------- What were you saying Ed ? School ? Text analysis ? From sascha at pantropy.net Fri Jan 16 20:24:48 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:24:48 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401161524.49773.sascha@pantropy.net> On Friday 16 January 2004 12:19 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > "Not an act of a state" Just out of interest. Does anyone know where this part of the mainstream US definition came/comes from. I have my suspicions that it might have originated from the propaganda department of some government, (maybe the british during the their squabble with america?). Anyone got any sources on this? Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 16 20:25:20 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:25:20 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration Message-ID: I vote for Angela and/or sannse for leader of the Mediators. And I hereby donate one WikiDollar each to the campaign funds of Maveric, Camembert & Delirium for Head Arbitrator (how do you arbitrate a head, anyway? ;-) Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 16 20:30:10 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:30:10 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) Message-ID: I don't think mainstream US definition of terrorism lets states off the hook. I thought "state terrorism" was a US term! Anyway, we should think about moving this discussion to [[talk:terrorism]]. I'd like to see an article come out of all this fine, intelligent, cooperative discourse. (No sarcasm implied or intended) Ed Poor From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 20:24:56 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:24:56 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Using a dictionary considered helpful In-Reply-To: <20040116131907.FOZL19191.out008.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> References: <20040116131907.FOZL19191.out008.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net> Message-ID: <20040116202456.GC2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> dpbsmith wrote: >I don't regard a dictionary as holy writ, and I don't have any illusions that >using one will settle these disputes, but I really do wish, when conducting >arguments--particularly in writing via email--that contenders would resort >more to the dictionary, at least as a starting point, for defining terms. I tend to agree; but OTOH I also tend to feel that most dictionaries suck and strongly prefer the Oxford English Dictionary (for English). >For example: >Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a >person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of >intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or >political reasons." >From the OED: Terrorism: 2. gen. A policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; the fact of terrorizing or condition of being terrorized. Notice the focus on how the victims /feel/ (terrorized, struck with terror) rather than on /who/ the perpetrators (unlawful) and victims (societies) are. Also no crap about legality; the /original/ "Terrorists" were a government! My point here is not that you have given a bad suggestion, just to show the limitations, which maybe you had already realised. It is still a good suggestion! -- Toby From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 20:39:16 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:39:16 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11) References: Message-ID: <40084BF4.2000201@yahoo.com> Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > I created the article in question, "Anti-French sentiment in the United > States". > > I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-) > > I studied French in high school and actually did my homework for it -- > unlike most of my other courses. > > I memorized this poem: > > Dejeuner du Matin > > Il a mis le cafe > Dans la tasse > Il a mis le lait > Dans la tasse de cafe > Il a mis le sucre > Dans le cafe au lait > Avec la petite cuiller > Il a tourne > Il a bu le cafe au lait > Et il a repose la tasse > Sans me parler > Il a allume > Une cigarette > Il a fait des ronds > Avec la fumee > Il a mis les cendres > Dans le cendrier > Sans me parler > Sans me regarder > Il s'est leve > Il a mis > Son chapeau sur sa tete > Il a mis > Son manteau de pluie > Parce qu'il pleuvait > Et il est parti > Sous la pluie > Sans une parole > Et moi j'ai pris > Ma tete dans ma main > Et j'ai pleure. > > However, many Americans (other than me) evinced anti-French sentiment > because of the Iraq War. "The French should appreciate our soldiers' > sacrifice during World War II," they said. "Look at all the cemeteries > filled with tens of thousands of dead GIs, fallen while defending them > from the Nazis." > > Hmm, I wonder if the 'filter' will let this post through. > > Oncle Edmond Edmond, This is a very nice poem. Very well known. From the same author, I like this one even better. Any french child learn it one day or another LE CANCRE Il dit non avec la t?te Mais il dit oui avec le c?ur Il dit oui ? ce qu?il aime Il dit non au professeur Il est debout On le questionne Et tous les probl?mes sont pos?s Soudain le fou rire le prend Et il efface tout Les chiffres et les mots Les dates et les noms Les phrases et les pi?ges Et malgr? les menaces du maitre Sous les hu?es des enfants prodiges Avec des craies de toutes les couleurs Sur le tableau noir du malheur Il desine le visage du bonheur It is up to them, what they really want to be. Listen to the teacher, tolerate the traps, and say no with their heads Or listen to their heart, draw happiness, and make yes. I hope it goes through the filter as well. From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 20:27:25 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:27:25 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040116202725.GD2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> The Cunctator wrote in part: >We already have an excellent discussion of the fuzziness of "terrorism" in >that article. That's the place for such a discussion, not in the Sep. 11 >namespace. I agree. That's why we should leave the matter out of the title. -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 20:36:52 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:36:52 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040116203652.GE2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> The Cunctator wrote: >Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of >links in? How is that? Was the move not done properly? >A better google comparison would be "september 11" "attack" -terrorist vs. >"september 11" "attack" "terrorist". Have you performed this Google search? You may be surprised! ^_^ But those are both fairly useless searches to perform. We want /phrases/ -- not the entire content of a page. Analogue: "jimmy carter" president : 335,000 "jimmy carter" -president : 221,000 So do we move [[Jimmy Carter]] to [[President Jimmy Carter]]? No ... because more people will look for just "Jimmy Carter" than for the entire phrase "President Jimmy Carter". What the search above reveals is that /most/ web pages on Jimmy Carter mention that he is president -- but that's not what we're asking for. And if /most/ web pages on September 11 mentioned that it was terrorist (my Google search suggest that they do not! but let's pretend), that would not be of any help in choosing the title. >Shorter phrases will pretty much always have more hits than longer >equivalent ones. One reason why page titles should usually be shorter. The shorter phrase is what people will more often look for. Titles are not meant to be maximally complete. OTC, they should be (barring some other useful convention) as short as will do the job (being clear and disambiguating). >The change from "September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack" to "September 11, 2001 >Terrorist Attacks" was in my opinion completely unnecessary. But I >understand people's need to make an imprint. Well, the latter name violates /more/ naming conventions than the former, if that's what you mean. ^_^ -- Toby From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 16 20:38:46 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:38:46 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: <400845BD.4000606@web.de> Message-ID: On 01/16/04 at 09:12 PM, Magnus Manske said: > isn't terrorism defined by the > very word it is based on - terror? Because that's what a terrorist does. > He doesn't destroy an important military target or kill an important > person - that's what military and assassins are for. A terrorist's goal > is, in the end, to create _terror_. What makes it complicated is that there are also things like attacks on civil infrastructure which play into the equation. In Colombia for example the FARC regularly targets things like power lines. Strictly speaking, these are probably more accurately classed as acts of sabotage; they may be more tiresome than terrifying. But attacks on things like wells, and water purification and sewage treatment plants can condemn tens or hundreds of thousands of people to slow death from diseases like cholera. Are these acts of terror? Perhaps not. But people tend to label them as such. Are they morally equivalent? Good question. Aside from the number direct victims, crashing planes into buildings certainly has a terrible psychological impact on vast numbers of people, but destroying the civil infrastucture of a country can retard economic growth for years if not generations. V. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 16 21:02:00 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:02:00 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) Message-ID: Terrorism tends to spill over into "low-level warfare". I read a lot about revolutionary strategy and tactics, and at one point in my army career I considered becoming a counter-insurgency officer. But ultimately I'm more comfortable with education. I consider my work at Wikipedia a long-term investment in home-schooling materials... Sabotoging powerlines sounds like something Marxist guerrillas would do. The object is to make life under the current regime so miserable that people are desperate for a regime change. Then your group offers yourselves as the perfect alternative. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Anyway, I hope we can move this discussion to some talk pages soon. There's lots of great material here, hint, hint. Ed From viajero at quilombo.nl Fri Jan 16 21:06:37 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 22:06:37 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/16/04 at 04:02 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > Anyway, I hope we can move this discussion to some talk pages soon. > There's lots of great material here, hint, hint. Yes, but more important at this point would to come to some concensus here on the mailing list regarding use of the term "terrorist" to serve as guideline for the varous articles. Otherwise, the issue will be hashed out over and over again on the respective Talk pages -- as is currently happening. V. From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 16 21:34:20 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:34:20 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116203652.GE2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> <20040116203652.GE2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <400858DB.8090404@rufus.d2g.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >The Cunctator wrote: > > >>Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of >>links in? >> >> > >How is that? Was the move not done properly? > > Mostly because we don't have a good automated way of moving articles that have inbound redirects. When an article is moved, its former location becomes a redirect (to the new location), so any inbound redirects to the old location are now double-redirects (redirects to a redirect) that no longer work properly (since the Wikipedia software only follows one level of redirection). The only solution at present is to manually change each of these "#REDIRECT [[September 11 Terrorist Attacks]]" pages to "#REDIRECT [[September 11, 2001 attacks]]", which whoever moved the page did not do (there are, indeed, quite a lot of them). -Mark From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 16 21:39:55 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:39:55 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reducing redirects (was: Sep 11) Message-ID: Gotta check your redirects. After you move an article, please click on the "What Links Here" link. Identify any double-redirects, and reduce them to singles. Thanks. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 21:37:23 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:37:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116122944.GI8653@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040116122944.GI8653@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040116213723.GF2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> >I'm a bit confused about what is being discussed here. Does anyone >actually argue that calling it a terrorist attack is somehow mistaken >or prejudicial? Two answers. First, I argue that it may be prejudicial. I argue that an attack on the Pentagon isn't prima facie terrorism. I argue that an attack on the Pentagon, in some situations, could be a fairly straightforward act of war, where Al Qa'ida (or whoever), believing that the Pentagon is directing military operations against them, makes a decision to retialiate in an effort to put a stop to this. Now, I /also/ argue that this was not the case in this situation. The biggest evidence is the NYC attack, which /is/ prima facie terrorism; but also, I don't see what military purpose Al Qa'ida could have accomplished. It's not as if the Pentagon was directing anything big at them -- they were investigating the Cole attack, but anything else was covert (assuming that anything else even existed), and pales in comparison with the huge and very overt war that the Pentagon waged /afterwards/. If nothing else, the attack was a gross miscalculation -- but it seems much more likely to me that the purpose was to terrorise, and not to achieve any particular military goal at all. So it was terrorism. But that fact is not obvious until you think about it. And if Al Qa'ida is trying to claim that the attack /was/ military, then it even becomes POV to /claim/ that fact (even though I agree). But the second answer is that this is mostly irrelevant. If some Al Qa'ida supporter is still maintaining that the attacks were not terrorism (which I doubt, actually), then the article /body/ is the place to explain this in an NPOV fashion. If the attacks were commonly referred to as "the September 11 terrorism", then [[September 11 terrorism]] would still be a good article /title/ -- and the body could say if that name was disputed. But that's not how they're referred to. Most often, I hear just "9/11", but that's ambiguous, so [[9/11]] and even [[September 11]] are bad titles. Among disambuated names, "the September 11 attack" /is/ more common. Now if there was some /other/ September 11 attack called just that (I don't think so -- the Chilean coup is called "coup", not "attack"), then we need to decide whether "2001" or "terrorist" disambiguates better. Generally, I would prefer a year as a policy (or convention, rather), since they almost always work when they apply -- a good convention. Moral: Short titles, as long as they aren't ambiguous, are generally better. Not so much because a longer title runs the risk introducing a POV term (indeed, a longer /article/ is almost always /less/ POV!), but because a shorter phrase will almost always be more common. That is how human language works. -- Toby From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 16 21:40:39 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:40:39 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Deciding on a chair Message-ID: <40085A57.30037.B95D74@localhost> Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency] It's possible that some of you may not have read Jimbo's recent mailing list post, so I felt a quick email shot would be appropriate. Please read through Jimbo's post, at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009614.html Please reply to all indicating whether or not you will be available to chair the committee through this initial organisational phase. If you are no longer available to be an arbitrator due to unforseen time constraints, please say so: I'm hoping to get a response from each of you. A quick reminder of who we all are: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitrators Just to add my own reply, I am still available and willing to be an arbitrator. I'm happy to be the chair too, but I feel that either Delirium (Mark) or Camembert (Lee Pilich) would be more adept in that role. Finally, apologies to Kat/Uninvited company, as I don't have his email address. If anyone does, that'd certainly be appreciated. Regards, -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 16 21:52:43 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:52:43 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair In-Reply-To: <40085A57.30037.B95D74@localhost> Message-ID: <40085D2B.7090.C468A3@localhost> My apologies, I got nohat's email address wrong. It is of course david at nohat.net, not david at oohat.net From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 16 22:14:11 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 17:14:11 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Urgent: to Arbitrators Message-ID: Martin (MyRedDice) wrote: > Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency] . . . Please don't cc to wikien-l or the software will automatically hold your post. I won't be around the next three days to "Approve" it. I think you'd better: A. Send one copy to wikien-l; or B. Send a copy to multiple recipients on your committee; or C. Both, i.e., two SEPARATE e-mails Note that option (C) is unnecessary, if committee members read the mailing list. I'm going off-line now, so if you disregard this advice you're going to get "hold" messages till Tuesday, and you don't want THAT! Not at this crucial time!! Urgently, Ed Poor Wikien-l Admin From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 22:03:44 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 14:03:44 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: References: <200401151835.32302.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040116220344.GG2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Mav wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. >>As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral damage". >>Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed forces? >No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian >population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition >governments cannot commit terrorism. 1) Yes! So one cannot argue that /because/ there were civilian deaths, the act was terrorism rather than warfare. One must look at the /intent/: an intent to terrorise. Which is what I did; that was my only point there. 2) This is also a good point. But as far as articles /titles/ go, we need to look at this more thoroughly. If more people refer to the terrorist attacks on that day as "the September 11 attack(s)" than "the September 11 terrorist attack(s)" (as one would expect), then the common-name naming convention suggests that we prefer the former. /If/ they called it, say, "the September 11 terrorism", then [[September 11 terrorism]] would be a reasonable title, despite its rather blatant POV content. But they don't. 3) That is false. (Well, IMO, it's clearly false. Our article [[Terrorism]] should be NPOV about this.) Source: OED ^_^. Viajero wrote: >>>On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote >>>something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" >>>should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I >>>am inclined to agree with him. This is far too extreme (as Viajero later admitted). But there /is/ a lesson in Zero0000's suggestion, all the same. Clich?d as this is, terrorism often /is/ in the eye of the beholder. We shouldn't leap to calling people terrorists when it's not necessary. OTOH, we should definitely cover, by the usual NPOV methods, accusations that somebody is a terrorist. Outside of such coverage, however, it'll be much more useful just to say what somebody did. Readers can decide if that's terrorism or not. -- Toby From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 22:28:19 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 23:28:19 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Urgent: to Arbitrators References: Message-ID: <40086583.6090307@yahoo.com> I will have a look in case some messages are on hold Ed :-) Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > Martin (MyRedDice) wrote: > > >>Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency] . . . > > > Please don't cc to wikien-l or the software will automatically hold your > post. I won't be around the next three days to "Approve" it. > > I think you'd better: > > A. Send one copy to wikien-l; or > B. Send a copy to multiple recipients on your committee; or > C. Both, i.e., two SEPARATE e-mails > > Note that option (C) is unnecessary, if committee members read the > mailing list. > > I'm going off-line now, so if you disregard this advice you're going to > get "hold" messages till Tuesday, and you don't want THAT! Not at this > crucial time!! > > Urgently, > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l Admin From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 22:48:27 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 14:48:27 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Newspeak (Was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: <4007B961.4010509@telus.net> References: <200401151835.32302.maveric149@yahoo.com> <4007B961.4010509@telus.net> Message-ID: <20040116224826.GI2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part: >Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote: >>Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read >>in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The >>goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought >>control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind >>those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. >>Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the >>transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the >>population for it. >Orwell's society did not ban the word "freedom". It just reserved the >right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way. >Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject >population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas. Point of information: I read 1984 again just last month, and this very word (well, the adjective "free") is addressed in the appendix. Newspeak /did/ ban the word "free" (in its political sense) /entirely/. They did /not/ merely insists that you call Ingsoc free and dissent unfree. They wanted to make it /impossible/ for somebody to say something like "Hold on a minute -- maybe Ingsoc is not free after all!". A big point of Newspeak -- and how it went /beyond/ efforts in the USSR -- was the elimination, not merely restriction, of terms, for this reason. BTW, the word "free" did survive in Newspeak, but in a different sense. You could say "My apartment is not free of cockroaches.", but not "My life under Ingsoc is not free." -- /that/ would be meaningless. All in all, comparing Newspeak to political correctness is a huge exaggeration -- Newspeak just goes beyond anything that has occured in the real world (and thank goodness!). That was part of Orwell's point -- the other part of his point being that Newspeak might not be such an exaggeration in 1984. (Thank goodness that it still is!) -- Toby From rjaros at shaysnet.com Fri Jan 16 23:05:36 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 23:05:36 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: High-res logo In-Reply-To: <4A5D568D-47A5-11D8-9555-0050E4901841@nohat.net> References: <4A5D568D-47A5-11D8-9555-0050E4901841@nohat.net> Message-ID: On Jan 15, 2004, at 4:53 PM, David Friedland wrote: > I have made a high-res version of the logo, including the text. It is > at > > http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/9/91/Nohat-logo-XI-big-text.png Just took a look at the high-res logo; it seems to be missing the breath mark (?) by the omega and breve (?) over the Cyrillic 'I' (?) (backwards 'N'). I think that's it. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 23:02:01 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:02:01 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <4007B01C.803@telus.net> References: <200401151747.14107.maveric149@yahoo.com> <4007B01C.803@telus.net> Message-ID: <20040116230201.GJ2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part: >Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote: >>Ec wrote: >>>It should be taken out because it is both a characterization >>>and unnecesary for identifying the incident. >>It should only be taken out if it is deemed unnecessary for identifying >>the incident. I basically agree with this. Somebody else noted that the name "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" is wrong, since only 7 people were killed. But [[St. Valentine's Day]] is ambiguous, and there is no good alternative. [[St. Valentine's Day gang killing]] /would/ be nice -- if anybody actually called it that! But they don't. >With that you make it sound as though you are agreeing with me. But I also agree with this. [[September 11 attack]] is probably enough. Certainly [[September 11, 2001 attack]] is enough. This leaves the question of [[September 11 terrorist attack]], /if/ [[September 11 attack]] is actually ambiguous; I'll address that below. >>Otherwise we would have to rename [[My Lai Massacre]], [[Boston >>Massacre]], (many, many other 'massacres'), Another good point about these is that they're /fixed names/. Light [[St. Valentine's Day Massacre]], they are capitalised -- not proof, but good evidence in English of some sort of standard name. There is no standard proper name for 9/11 in English yet, but there may well be in, say, 10 years. And in 10 years, if the standard proper name is [[September 11 Terrorist Attack]], then I would have to agree with that (capitalised!) title. Although if you want my prediction for the title in 10 years: [[Nine Eleven]]. Shall we take bets? ^_^ >>Self-censorship is the worse kind. >I would call it restraint by avoiding inflammatory titles. This is also a good point -- it doesn't override common names, because while [[St. Valentine's Day Massacre]] may be inflammatory, it's a /necessary/ inflammation, if we are to use a common name. The article body is the place to explain that only 7 people were killed. But in choosing between [[September 11, 2001 attack]] and [[September 11 terrorist attack]] (under the assumption that [[September 11 attack]] is ambiguous), then I believe that Ec's point becomes important. Only article bodies can go into the depth necessary to be /truly/ NPOV -- to explain the intracies of differing opinions. But article titles can still show restraint. Also, using dates to disambiguate historical events is just good policy (at the level of naming convention), since they almost always work. -- Toby From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 23:18:42 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:18:42 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation, arbitration References: <20040116120701.GG8653@joey.bomis.com> <00e201c3dc5c$12f5b3a0$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Message-ID: <40087152.5080105@yahoo.com> sannse a ?crit: > Jimbo wrote (in part): > > >>There are a few people (Anthere, TufKat, others?) who I neglected to >>include in my first list, but it is past the start of the year, and we >>have a few outstanding controversies that need to be addressed. > > > Do you mean they weren't on the list but /are/ on one of the committees? Or > are they not yet appointed? Let's see. I looked in my mail archives. Jimbo suggested candidates to write to him on the 3rd of october 2003. I answered him I was interested on the 3rd of october of the same year, but was not very clear in my answer I suppose. I was interested in practicing mediation, essentially if the conflict involved an non english; I think the issue goes much further than just the english wikipedia, since there is no arbitrator on international wikipedias, and that at least on fr, mediation is quite limited. I am interested in studying the process essentially. TufKat asked just after Jimbo asked if someone was forgotten. Lir a little bit later. Later in december, Jimbo said he was ok with us being part of the list. From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 23:13:46 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:13:46 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <200401151804.44111.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401151804.44111.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040116231345.GK2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>This assumes that there's a reason for it to be in the title at all. >>Why is that? What else could "September 11, 2001 attack" mean? >>Titles are not required to be maximally complete. >Point taken. I was operating under the assumption that your reasoning was only >that 'terrorist' should be blacklisted from the title because it is a "loaded >term". 'September 11 Attack' is *at least* used as often as 'September 11 >Terrorist Attack' (probably more so). Of course we would have the add '2001' >to the title because of ambiguity reasons. I /do/ think that the "loaded term" bit is relevant, but at a lesser level. (My immediately previous post explains this.) But no, that is not the main part of my reasoning. WARNING! The rest of this post is mostly off-topic. (Or at least secondary to the main point of the thread.) >>I remember once trying to convince you of this very thing: >>NPOV is primarily about article bodies, not titles, >>and titles need to be further determined through arbitrary conventions. >Nah - my opinions are always right for all time. ;) But I seriously don't >remember holding such an opinion since it is not possible to have NPOV in >titles because we have to choose just *one* title for any topic. That was part of my point -- also the bit about titles becoming very long. Perhaps it was somebody else that I was arguing against and not you? This came up back when Lir and I and Ec (to decreasing extents) wanted to use (for example) [[M?nchen]] as a title instead of [[Munich]]. And somebody claimed that to violate the common name convention would be POV. (Lir's argument /was/ basically a POV argument, on the grounds that [[Munich]] was somehow a "racist" name, but mine and Ec's position didn't rely on that characterisation.) I'm not going to look this up, because it's pretty much irrelevant. Not only is it a historical digression in /this/ discussion, but it was a secondary point even in /that/ discussion! (Your argument was based squarely on the "common name" convention, not on any NPOV argument.) So it's all IIRCWIPD ("if I remember correctly, which I probably don't"). ^_^ >>Since this is a digression, I won't go on about what slander >>the term "PC" is. Suffice it to say that no social movement >>called itself that. >Well there is no political action committee whose aim is PC that I am aware >of, nor any groups that have exclusively pro-PC meetings. PC is more of a >cross-group "movement" to change the English language (using the word >"movement" very loosely). Perhaps "trend" would be more accurate (even though >there are many counter trends to PC that help to negate its progress). I will accept "trend", even "a trend found in some social movements". The term "politically correct" was invented by those movements' opponents, to denigrate this trend and thereby denigrate them. -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 23:18:57 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:18:57 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <400858DB.8090404@rufus.d2g.com> References: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> <20040116203652.GE2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <400858DB.8090404@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040116231857.GA5409@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Mark (Delirium) wrote in part: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>The Cunctator wrote: >>>Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of >>>links in? >>How is that? Was the move not done properly? >The only solution at present is >to manually change each of these "#REDIRECT [[September 11 Terrorist >Attacks]]" pages to "#REDIRECT [[September 11, 2001 attacks]]", which >whoever moved the page did not do (there are, indeed, quite a lot of them). Ah! if this is so, then the move was /not/ done properly. This is a problem, but it is a different problem. One doesn't kill these links /every/ time the title is changed, only every time that it is not changed properly! ^_^ That said, according to "What links here", there are /no/ double redirects. Not a single one!!! To be honest, this is so surprising, that I'm wondering if it's a bug??? -- Toby From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 16 23:40:12 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:40:12 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116230201.GJ2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: Compare "September 11 Rerrorist Attack" with "Sneak Attack at Pearl Harbor". Fred From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 16 23:39:42 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 17:39:42 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116231857.GA5409@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> <20040116203652.GE2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <400858DB.8090404@rufus.d2g.com> <20040116231857.GA5409@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <4008763E.3010804@rufus.d2g.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >Mark (Delirium) wrote in part: > > >>The only solution at present is >>to manually change each of these "#REDIRECT [[September 11 Terrorist >>Attacks]]" pages to "#REDIRECT [[September 11, 2001 attacks]]", which >>whoever moved the page did not do (there are, indeed, quite a lot of them). >> >> >[...] >That said, according to "What links here", there are /no/ double redirects. >Not a single one!!! > >To be honest, this is so surprising, that I'm wondering if it's a bug??? > > I think the link table's gotten messed up somehow. When I checked a few hours ago (when I wrote the message you quoted above), there were quite a few double-redirects that I was pondering fixing, but I decided to wait until the dust settled before spending a lot of time doing so. The fact that they've all disappeared is a bit confusing. Hopefully we can track down these now-missing redirects and point them to the right place, or get the link table for [[September 11, 2001 attacks]] rebuilt properly. I'll post a message on the village pump about it, in case a developer who reads that but hasn't been following this rather lengthy discussion drops by. =] -Mark From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 00:00:29 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 01:00:29 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Urgent: to Arbitrators, I must say... References: Message-ID: <40087B1D.6020906@yahoo.com> I must say... It is always a good thing to have a "little ant" with you Ed. Less than 1 hour after I added my self to the admin list, I already have to liberate two mails (with the NAZI word in it). Good thing I dropped the french one... Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > Martin (MyRedDice) wrote: > > >>Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency] . . . > > > Please don't cc to wikien-l or the software will automatically hold your > post. I won't be around the next three days to "Approve" it. > > I think you'd better: > > A. Send one copy to wikien-l; or > B. Send a copy to multiple recipients on your committee; or > C. Both, i.e., two SEPARATE e-mails > > Note that option (C) is unnecessary, if committee members read the > mailing list. > > I'm going off-line now, so if you disregard this advice you're going to > get "hold" messages till Tuesday, and you don't want THAT! Not at this > crucial time!! > > Urgently, > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l Admin From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 16 23:24:29 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:24:29 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair In-Reply-To: <40085A57.30037.B95D74@localhost> Message-ID: I am available for arbitration but not for chairperson. Fred Bauder > From: "Martin Harper" > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk > Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:40:39 -0000 > To: gutza at moongate.ro, wikipedia at myreddice.co.uk, david at oohat.net, > sean at epoptic.org, fredbaud at ctelco.net, delirium at rufus.d2g.com, > maveric149 at yahoo.com, pilich at btopenworld.com, james at jdforrester.org, > cunctator at kband.com > Cc: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: Deciding on a chair > > Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency] > > It's possible that some of you may not have read Jimbo's recent mailing list > post, so I > felt a quick email shot would be appropriate. > > Please read through Jimbo's post, at > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009614.html > > Please reply to all indicating whether or not you will be available to chair > the > committee through this initial organisational phase. If you are no longer > available to > be an arbitrator due to unforseen time constraints, please say so: I'm hoping > to get a > response from each of you. > > A quick reminder of who we all are: > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitrators > > Just to add my own reply, I am still available and willing to be an > arbitrator. I'm > happy to be the chair too, but I feel that either Delirium (Mark) or Camembert > (Lee > Pilich) would be more adept in that role. > > Finally, apologies to Kat/Uninvited company, as I don't have his email > address. If > anyone does, that'd certainly be appreciated. > > Regards, > -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 16 23:35:22 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 17:35:22 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair In-Reply-To: <40085A57.30037.B95D74@localhost> References: <40085A57.30037.B95D74@localhost> Message-ID: <4008753A.2040507@rufus.d2g.com> In no particular order, I'm still willing to be on the committee. I'm willing to be the chair, if the rest of the committee so desires (and I should have sufficient free time to do so). If I were to have to pick a chair, I would most likely pick Martin (MyRedDice). Mav is also a good choice I think, but I understand he's either officially or unofficially Wikimedia's treasurer (?), so if that's the case it may be best to not have one person wearing too many administrative hats (Jimbo excepted, of course =). -Mark From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 16 23:52:55 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:52:55 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <4008763E.3010804@rufus.d2g.com> References: <20040116130756.GM8653@joey.bomis.com> <20040116203652.GE2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <400858DB.8090404@rufus.d2g.com> <20040116231857.GA5409@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <4008763E.3010804@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040116235255.GA5753@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Mark (Delirium) wrote in part: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>To be honest, this is so surprising, that I'm wondering if it's a bug??? >I think the link table's gotten messed up somehow. >I'll post a message on the village pump about it, in case a >developer who reads that but hasn't been following this rather lengthy >discussion drops by. =] There's a bug somewhere -- also check out the red links on [[September 11]]. I just reported this to the Sourgeforge business. The main relevance of this bug to the debate /here/ is that we probably shouldn't change things anymore until the bug gets fixed, so the double redirects can be fixed. (I say "anymore" since Lance's move has just been reverted, so there should be no double redirects right at this moment. I still support Lance's move if the redirects /are/ fixed.) -- Toby From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sat Jan 17 00:15:41 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:15:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch) In-Reply-To: <200401162015.i0GKFBqX012782@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Sean Barrett wrote: > > Katyn Wood is an event in Polish history. The mass graves of a number of > > army officers, government officials, & other intelligensia were found in > > Katyn Wood. The Soviet Union claimed for many years that these people were > > killed by Nazi Germany; the Nazis claimed that the Soviets killed them. > > Communist Poland refused to discuss the event, & I have no idea if the > > post-Communist government has made an official statement concerning the > > event. I have not seen it referred to as a "massacre", though. > > You haven't looked it up in Wikipedia, then. > What I meant was that I haven't seen it referred to as "The Massacre of Katyn Wood". If that is the name of the article, then I'd flag it for NPOV reasons. Of course, there's a lot of material on Wikipedia I haven't seen. And I doubt I would agree with. Geoff From saintonge at telus.net Sat Jan 17 01:30:06 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 17:30:06 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) References: Message-ID: <4008901E.5040200@telus.net> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >Sabotoging powerlines sounds like something Marxist guerrillas would do. >The object is to make life under the current regime so miserable that >people are desperate for a regime change. > It's the word Marxist that doesn't make sense in this statement. Not because Marxist guerillas don't use it, but because it suggests that somehow they are the *only* ones that do. Ec From saintonge at telus.net Sat Jan 17 01:36:06 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 17:36:06 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11) References: Message-ID: <40089186.3000608@telus.net> Viajero wrote: >On 01/16/04 at 04:02 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > >>Anyway, I hope we can move this discussion to some talk pages soon. >>There's lots of great material here, hint, hint. >> >Yes, but more important at this point would to come to some concensus here >on the mailing list regarding use of the term "terrorist" to serve as >guideline for the varous articles. Otherwise, the issue will be hashed out >over and over again on the respective Talk pages -- as is currently >happening. > Exactly. This debate is not really about the nature of terrorism or who is a terrorist, but about whether the use of the word is appropriate in the title of an article. The simple fact that such a use has generated such a lively debate involving respected Wikipedians on both sides is reason enough to omit it from the title. Ec From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 01:56:01 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 17:56:01 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 Message-ID: <200401161756.01488.maveric149@yahoo.com> Viajero wrote: >This rationale does not hold water since countries like Libya >and Iran. which we can assume do have something to loose, >still appear to support it. Supporting terrorism and having your regular troops commit acts of war are very different things. One is secretive and at least somewhat deniable (often more than somewhat), while the other is indisputable and direct. That is a very real distinction. A nation has a good chance of getting away with one, while the other will get them into a war. So 'state sponsored terrorism' is a very real thing. >The Gulf War is not a good example, But I think we must >acknowledge that there are a lot of people in the Third World, >using *their* definition of "terrorism", who believe that the US >has committed "terrorists acts" against civilian targets. Yes of course! The accuracy of their usage is not relevant; only the fact that they say that is relevant. That is the type of info that can and should be in appropriate articles on the subject. But page titles follow common usage of English speakers (again, with the caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable offensiveness). >To begin with, in recent days, two discussions have taken place >on Talk pages ([[Osama bin Laden]] and [[Shining Path]]) over the >insertion of the phrase > >"... is considered by many people to be a [terrorist | terrorist >organization]" > >I am opposed (along with several others) to the inclusion of this >phrase. I believe it uses weaselspeak to insert a moral judgement >on the subject. I thought that the phrase at OBL was "in the West he is widely regarded as a [[terrorism | terrorist]]". This is factually correct and taking it out is censorship and advocating for a certain POV. That will not be tolerated. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 02:13:51 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 18:13:51 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration Message-ID: <200401161813.51965.maveric149@yahoo.com> Ed wrote: >And I hereby donate one WikiDollar each to the campaign >funds of Maveric, Camembert & Delirium for Head Arbitrator >(how do you arbitrate a head, anyway? ;-) Thanks Ed. :) However, I'm already wearing a bunch of hats right now and would greatly appreciate it if somebody else were nominated to take the lead of the arbitration committee. I will definitely help set things up though. I also think that setting up private mediation-l and arbitration-l mailing lists would be a good idea (as explained in a previous email). http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009576.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 02:48:40 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 18:48:40 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair Message-ID: <200401161848.40719.maveric149@yahoo.com> Delirium wrote: >If I were to have to pick a chair, I would most likely pick >Martin (MyRedDice). Mav is also a good choice I think, >but I understand he's either officially or unofficially >Wikimedia's treasurer (?), so if that's the case it may >be best to not have one person wearing too many >administrative hats (Jimbo excepted, of course =). Well I'm just the guy who updates the account balances on the fundraising page and who created a spreadsheet (with Ec's help) showing all PayPal donations for 2003. Whether or not I become the official Wikimedia treasurer is up to Jimbo and the community to decide. Getting the work done is the important thing, so I'm just making sure it gets done. If somebody else wants to do the work and can be sufficiently trusted, then that would be one less hat I for me to wear and I could then concentrate on other things that need to get done. Lacking that, I would be honored to be Wikimedia's treasurer if and when I am appointed and confirmed. With that said, I hereby second the nomination of Martin and Mark. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Jan 16 23:23:01 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Nikos-Optim) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:23:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: An Open Letter to Wikipedia by Rex Mundy Message-ID: <20040116232301.92457.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- Nikos-Optim wrote: > > http://www.brianism.org/wikipedia.htm > > (dated 20 January 2004!) > > for the background, see > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brianism > > --Optim > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com Sat Jan 17 04:53:59 2004 From: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com (Bjorn Lindqvist) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 05:53:59 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <20040116170539.751AAB851@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040116170539.751AAB851@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040117045359.GA7716@h115n2fls32o850.telia.com> > "September 11 attack" - 33,700 > "September 11 terrorist attack" - 13,900 > > In Google News, > "September 11 attack" - 71 > "September 11 terrorist attack" - 10 So both names suck since they don't give hundred thousands hits. Better name needed. Think, think, think. BL From shawnmcnaughton at videotron.ca Sat Jan 17 05:02:18 2004 From: shawnmcnaughton at videotron.ca (Shawn McNaughton) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:02:18 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject) Message-ID: <007e01c3dcb7$14c66ca0$93758342@master> Hi what is Drag queen Luc D'Arcy contact or email address. I like to contact her. thanks Shawn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040117/4f80a153/attachment.htm From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 09:28:11 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 01:28:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <20040116220344.GG2477@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <20040117092811.41996.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> >>On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote >>something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" >>should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I >>am inclined to agree with him. Since my remark indicated above has now been quoted several time, I thought I might explain it. I don't -really- think that "terrorism", or any other word, should be banned. Rather, I was making a comment on the usage of the word in Wikipedia: in my opinion it is misused so much that we would be better off without any uses at all. However, of course the problem should be tackled by education and not by legislation. Let me suggest a golden rule that might be applied to many issues in addition to this one: Golden Rule: Tell the reader what the facts are; don't tell the reader what to think about them. According to this criterion, some usages of "terrorism" are just fine: "The US State Department added Microsoft Corporation to its list of terrorist organizations". Some usages are NOT fine: "A Microsoft terrorist blew himself up at the 2007 Apple Convention, killing 27 innocent Mac-heads". The reason I don't like this usage of "terrorist" is that all the information in the sentence is still there if the word is removed. Actually the word was used to sneak the writer's opinion into the sentence. We should just present the facts and allow the reader to form the opinions. Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. "Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something). Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 09:52:56 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 01:52:56 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism Message-ID: <200401170152.56993.maveric149@yahoo.com> zero 0000 wrote: >Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. >"Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least >favorite. If that is true that many people think that then we *report* it. >In my view the majority of similar sentences in >Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted >to insert their own opinions. Where? Not for Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. In those cases "widely regarded as terrorist" is factually correct, not just an opinion of the writers. >Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article >is public opinion that would be a different situation No, the key topic of the article is the subject of that article and different people will have different views on what that subject is or a part of. For a great many people Osama bin Laden is a terrorist and al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization. So we report that! >(but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something). Oh please. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be backed up with polls. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 17 11:29:11 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 04:29:11 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Characterizations of Behavior In-Reply-To: <20040117092811.41996.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding. The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need to be banned, just used consciously. Fred > From: zero 0000 > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 01:28:11 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism > >>> On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote >>> something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" >>> should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I >>> am inclined to agree with him. > > Since my remark indicated above has now been quoted several time, > I thought I might explain it. I don't -really- think that > "terrorism", or any other word, should be banned. Rather, I was > making a comment on the usage of the word in Wikipedia: in my > opinion it is misused so much that we would be better off without > any uses at all. However, of course the problem should be tackled > by education and not by legislation. > > Let me suggest a golden rule that might be applied to many issues > in addition to this one: > Golden Rule: Tell the reader what the facts are; > don't tell the reader what to think about them. > According to this criterion, some usages of "terrorism" are just > fine: "The US State Department added Microsoft Corporation to its > list of terrorist organizations". Some usages are NOT fine: > "A Microsoft terrorist blew himself up at the 2007 Apple > Convention, killing 27 innocent Mac-heads". The reason I don't > like this usage of "terrorist" is that all the information in the > sentence is still there if the word is removed. Actually the > word was used to sneak the writer's opinion into the sentence. > We should just present the facts and allow the reader to form > the opinions. > > Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. > "Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least > favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in > Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their > own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" > or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." > instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article > is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then > I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something). > > Zero. > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sat Jan 17 17:48:19 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:48:19 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject) In-Reply-To: <007e01c3dcb7$14c66ca0$93758342@master> References: <007e01c3dcb7$14c66ca0$93758342@master> Message-ID: <55E508B2-4915-11D8-993D-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 17, 2004, at 12:02 AM, Shawn McNaughton wrote: > Hi > ? > what is Drag queen Luc D'Arcy?contact or email address. I like to > contact her. > ? > thanks > ? > Shawn Shawn doesn't seem to be subscribed to this list (at least according to the roster, otherwise: Hi, Shawn!). Do we have an "official policy" on how to deal with such requests, such as a boilerplate response to modify as necessary? I'd send something, but I don't know if I'd be the first. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From tarquin at planetunreal.com Sat Jan 17 17:57:52 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:57:52 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Characterizations of Behavior In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400977A0.1010001@planetunreal.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in >this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need >to be banned, just used consciously. > Exactly. "banning" is too harsh. "use with care" is what I would say. From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 17 18:05:22 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:05:22 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <20040117092811.41996.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040117092811.41996.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40097962.6030207@rufus.d2g.com> zero 0000 wrote: >Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. >"Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least >favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in >Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their >own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" >or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." >instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article >is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then >I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something). > > The exception I take to this is cases where it *is* very widely considered terrorism. For example, Osama bin Laden is nearly universally considered a terrorist in the West, and is labeled as such by most governments in the world (including most Arab governments). I'm not sure there are any polls asking "Do you think bin Laden is a terrorist?", because in the West at least this is sort of like asking "Do you think killing an innocent person without cause is murder?" But if we were to fail to mention this fact, it would make it very confusing for the reader who wasn't already familiar with events (say, a reader 100 years from now) who might wonder why this "Islamic militant" is somehow connected to a "War on Terrorism". I'm not sure what the best way to phrase it is, but to be complete, [[Osama bin Laden]] does need to mention somewhere that he's considered an arch-terrorist of sorts by a large segment of the world's population, and an even larger proportion of the world's governments. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 17 18:36:58 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:36:58 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] sept. 11 ("terrorist") attacks vote Message-ID: <400980CA.5080307@rufus.d2g.com> To gauge Wikipedian opinion on the issue, since the various discussions are getting incredibly lengthy and hard to summarize, [[User:Arno]] has set up a vote on [[Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks]] regarding whether the article should be there or at [[September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks]]. Those of you expressing opinions in this discussion might wish to vote. (For my part, I've changed my mind to agree with the "don't use 'terrorist' in the title" faction, since "September 11 attacks" seems to be a phrase in fairly widespread use.) -Mark From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 19:30:02 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 20:30:02 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: (no subject) References: <007e01c3dcb7$14c66ca0$93758342@master> <55E508B2-4915-11D8-993D-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> Message-ID: <40098D3A.3080101@yahoo.com> that was a liberated message. Peter Jaros a ?crit: > On Jan 17, 2004, at 12:02 AM, Shawn McNaughton wrote: > >> Hi >> >> what is Drag queen Luc D'Arcy contact or email address. I like to >> contact her. >> >> thanks >> >> Shawn > > > Shawn doesn't seem to be subscribed to this list (at least according to > the roster, otherwise: Hi, Shawn!). Do we have an "official policy" on > how to deal with such requests, such as a boilerplate response to modify > as necessary? I'd send something, but I don't know if I'd be the first. > > Peter > > --- > Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The > Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. > --Harry Shearer, Le Sho > w From sascha at pantropy.net Sat Jan 17 20:07:47 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 15:07:47 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban Message-ID: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds that he is not abating with said attacks. I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox I have not looked through all of the disputes this user has had with others, but in the ones that I have looked at he has made no less than 12 personal attacks. Some of them quite vicious ("Hello, RK. Have you always suffered from mental illness and perceptual problems?"). At another time he has made an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?". Anyway, this is all documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip service to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit threats), or shall this policy be enforced? As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally RK, but numerous others as well. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From sascha at pantropy.net Sat Jan 17 20:11:39 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 15:11:39 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <200401171511.39539.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 17 January 2004 03:07 pm, Sascha Noyes wrote: > As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally RK, but > numerous others as well. "personally attacked RK" that should read Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 17 20:16:00 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:16:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation Message-ID: <20040117201600.10524.qmail@web60502.mail.yahoo.com> Dear all I hope I did not overstep because I was bold. I had time last night :-) I edited/created the articles having the do with mediation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AMediation_Committee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AMediation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_mediation Here is how I perceive things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AMediation_Committee *list all the current mediators, and give means to contact them (among user talk page, email, irc, icq, phone...) *explanation of what a mediator is (duties and rights to respect within that role) and how it differs from an arbitrator * how the commitee works as an entity : private mailing list, report from a mediator to the others, advices given within the group, external counsellor (alex756) *how to be a mediator yourself *requests to be appointed *mention of availability among the current mediators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_mediation *short point list of the most important points about mediation - what is and what is not mediation - which type of conflicts it may handle - rights and duties of those asking mediation (confidentiality?) - how and when to request mediation - the basic of the procedure - what will happen if that fails? (I expect all this to remain short and very explicit) *current cases in mediation and state of each case *pending requests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3Amediation A fairly detailed page on what mediation is or should be With *description of what mediation is "in the real world" *application to wikipedia case Currently, the first part comes mostly from our article on mediation, and from what was previously written on the matter in several places The second part (if I remember well) mostly from Jussy work on meta I think this article should mostly be seen as a ressource for the mediators (for any mediator, including those out of the commitee) * ideas for how to face the possibly very heated editors at the beginning of the process, and cool down things * suggestions for various steps (I believe each case is particular, but a bit of structure is often beneficial) * perhaps some links to ressources about fallacies ? * previous cases ? * external links with ressources about mediation ? * ? ------- I would like to mention two points I think are important References : http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation_oversight_procedure Jussi suggested on meta the use of a silent observer, whom role would be to monitor the mediation session. I disagree with this as a requirement (I however think it is potentially useful, and potentially a learning tool as well). But it complicates a process which should stay fluid. By default, it does not trust the process and the people involved. And finally, at any point in the process, any one is free (and big enough) to say there is a problem, and mediation can't proceed properly in the given situation. I think this idea should be discussed more in any cases. The second point is about the type of conflict which could be fixed. Jussi, you wrote " The main purpose of Wikipedia mediation framework is to provide a means to resolve disputes over articles when the standard consensus editing model is not working." Well?.In the two years on Wikipedia, I have seen enough to say many disputes are not only content (article) dispute, disagreements over the title of the article, an image to insert here rather than there, the undeletion of a page, a consensus over a rule, the label of a picture, the insertion over an opinion, whatever. We all have our bad days, when we are a bit stubborn, jump on the first motive to flame someone, or answer to the first provocation, misunderstand a statement. If we care about the community, or if we care about the other editor, chance is we get over the conflict alone. More or less easily. But sometimes not. Sometimes the group has to come to help; sometimes we need someone to come help us regain our wits. Sometimes these conflicts will escalate pretty badly, with screams to unsysop people, or ban them, threats, community name calling, to the point not only the people directly involved, but the whole community will suffer of it. It might express itself upon articles. Or not. The articles themselves are sometimes the origin of a conflict, sometimes they are just the reflect, the mirror of an inner conflict between 2 people, or a core disagreement between an editor and the community. When 2 people flame themselves, every couple of weeks, or spread the flame all over wikipedia, chance is the conflict to solve is not just over an article. Fixing the article dispute will fix the article, but will not uncover the root of the personal conflict. But it will certainly provide a lot of work to the mediator weeks after weeks. Most conflicts are people conflicts. These cases, conflict over content, or conflict between personnalities, or conflicts over core principles, need to be fixed. Not article only. Because all impact on community health, discourage people to participate, to collaborate. It is not good that a personal conflict is confused with a conflict over content. When someone comes to discuss a conflict between persons, and he is answered over article content issues, it is just *missing the point*. Badly. Human capital is essential. Without the people, there is no community building. Without community, there is no project building. Without project, there is no encyclopedia. In short (do I ever succeed to do that ?), mediation can make wonders over article conflicts. But it should help conflicts user/user and user/community as well. And if it does not help, that will be for the arbitration team to cut things short. Ie, to ban the one not respecting the core principles. Or to ban the asocial. -------- Just my opinions?I hope some will comment on the relevant pages :-) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From rjaros at shaysnet.com Sat Jan 17 21:58:20 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 16:58:20 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: (no subject) In-Reply-To: <40098D3A.3080101@yahoo.com> References: <007e01c3dcb7$14c66ca0$93758342@master> <55E508B2-4915-11D8-993D-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> <40098D3A.3080101@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <43961B96-4938-11D8-993D-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> Still, what should we do? Perhaps this one is ignorable, but there have been legitimate but misdirected requests for knowledge in the past. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show On Jan 17, 2004, at 2:30 PM, Anthere wrote: > that was a liberated message. > > Peter Jaros a ?crit: >> On Jan 17, 2004, at 12:02 AM, Shawn McNaughton wrote: >>> Hi >>> what is Drag queen Luc D'Arcy contact or email address. I like to >>> contact her. >>> thanks >>> Shawn >> Shawn doesn't seem to be subscribed to this list (at least according >> to the roster, otherwise: Hi, Shawn!). Do we have an "official >> policy" on how to deal with such requests, such as a boilerplate >> response to modify as necessary? I'd send something, but I don't >> know if I'd be the first. >> Peter From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 17 23:31:41 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:31:41 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <4009C5DD.7040001@rufus.d2g.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has >repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks on >other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds that he >is not abating with said attacks. > > Given the current state of things, it seems we have two choices here: 1) Quickly get some working provisional policies for the mediation and arbitration committee in place to deal with this issue 2) Appeal to Jimbo to handle this case, subject to input from everyone (as usual), since our dispute-resolution processes are still not put together I'd personally prefer #1, so if the mediation committee wants to try to sort out the mess, or at least determine whether it is a mess of the sort-out-able kind, feel free. =] -Mark From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 18 01:05:49 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 20:05:49 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <4009C5DD.7040001@rufus.d2g.com> References: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> <4009C5DD.7040001@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <200401172005.49656.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 17 January 2004 06:31 pm, Delirium wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote: > >Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has > >repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks on > >other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds that > > he is not abating with said attacks. > > Given the current state of things, it seems we have two choices here: > 1) Quickly get some working provisional policies for the mediation and > arbitration committee in place to deal with this issue > 2) Appeal to Jimbo to handle this case, subject to input from everyone > (as usual), since our dispute-resolution processes are still not put > together > > I'd personally prefer #1, so if the mediation committee wants to try to > sort out the mess, or at least determine whether it is a mess of the > sort-out-able kind, feel free. =] My thoughts on this: I'm not hellbent on a ban or anything, but MNH has been reminded time and again of our policy of not making personal attacks. Obviously to no avail. Also, I'm not quite sure whether the framework of mediation/arbitration is the correct one. Allow me to demonstrate by way of analogy to the legal system of most "western" countries: There is a difference between a criminal and a civil trial. If certain laws of a society are broken, then the state will prosecute a case. If, on the other hand there is some squabble between two parties (eg. a contract dispute), then one party will seek to prosecute the other. I submit that the problem with MNH is of the former kind. It is not primarily a dispute between him and me. Or for that matter all the other people he has attacked. Rather, he is in violation of one of wikipedia's important rules: no personal attacks. I therefore think that I should not be the prosecution, but rather a witness for the prosecution. I'm not sure how this would work with the current framework. But I'd be most interrested in everyone's opinion on this matter. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From chris_mahan at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 01:19:50 2004 From: chris_mahan at yahoo.com (Christopher Mahan) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:19:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401172005.49656.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040118011950.85124.qmail@web14010.mail.yahoo.com> --- Sascha Noyes wrote: > There is a difference between a criminal and a civil trial. If > certain laws of > a society are broken, then the state will prosecute a case. If, on > the other > hand there is some squabble between two parties (eg. a contract > dispute), > then one party will seek to prosecute the other. I submit that the > problem > with MNH is of the former kind. It is not primarily a dispute > between him and > me. Or for that matter all the other people he has attacked. > Rather, he is in > violation of one of wikipedia's important rules: no personal > attacks. I > therefore think that I should not be the prosecution, but rather a > witness > for the prosecution. I'm not sure how this would work with the > current > framework. But I'd be most interrested in everyone's opinion on > this matter. I agree. I think we need a Wikipedia Prosecutor's office, where an elected prosecutor would hire deputies and go out and investigate the matter. Then, they would be the ones bringing the accused to the mediation/arbitration. If the accused does not wish to face the arbitration/mediation, he will be considered a fujitive, and all rights and proviledges of a law abiding citizens of the W will be revoked and the user permanently banned, until such time as either the Prosecutor ends the search or the accused submits anew to the arbitration/mediation. I suggest an interesting punishment for petty offenders: community service on the W. Edit theses 400 articles to match them to this format, and you can come back full-fledged. ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan at yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 01:36:55 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:36:55 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban Message-ID: <200401171736.55122.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009686.html I responded: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2004-January/000239.html Please respond on the legal list since this is very obviously a legal issue. WikiLegal-l sign-up page: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilegal-l -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sun Jan 18 03:19:37 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 19:19:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote: > Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has > repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks on > other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds that he > is not abating with said attacks. > > I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this user on > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox > I've taken a look at these, & while MNH's behavor is not exemplary, I don't see any smoking gun that justifies banning. Two of the people MNH has exchanged barbs with -- RK & Adam -- haven't been models of restraint themselves, making a few attacks on MNH themselves. His response to Teresa Knox does appear unjustified, though, & I would like better proof that he was the person acting from those IP addresses. [snip] > (...) At another time he has made > an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi from > New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?". I'm not clear how identifying one's home location is a threat. And having read quite a few emails on this mailling list from RK where he accuses people of being a Nazi for disagreeing with him, I read this as a sardonic descriptioin. > all documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip service > to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit threats), or shall > this policy be enforced? > > As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally [attacked] > RK, but numerous others as well. > I've seen a fair number of people called "kooks", "zanies", etc. here on Wikipedia, & I was unaware that was not approved behavior. (After reading Sacha's article, I followed the link to find a forum on Meta from a few months ago about this very matter, which I somehow missed.) If a contributor to Wiki can get banned for certain behavior, then these terms should be made clear somewhere on Wiki, & not merely discussed on Yet Another Meta Page. Geoff Geoff From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 18 04:54:06 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 22:54:06 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401171736.55122.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401171736.55122.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400A116E.4020808@rufus.d2g.com> Daniel Mayer wrote: >Sascha Noyes wrote: >http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009686.html > >I responded: >http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2004-January/000239.html > >Please respond on the legal list since this is very obviously a legal issue. > >WikiLegal-l sign-up page: >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilegal-l > > I don't think this is a legal issue. If I understand him correctly, he was making an analogy between the sort of process followed in civil and criminal trials. Obviously, this is an internal administrative matter, akin to a private school keeping a child in from recess, not either a civil or a criminal trial (and thus not a legal matter). I think Sascha's point, unless I misunderstand him, was that we ought in this case to use a model more closely analogous to a criminal trial, where there is a prosecutor for the public interest (in this case Wikipedians' interest), rather than one analogous to a civil trial, where two people (two users) are set up in opposition to each other. -Mark From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 18 05:00:45 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:00:45 -0500 Subject: [Wikilegal-l] Civil/Criminal law on Wikipedia (was: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban) In-Reply-To: <200401171734.30509.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401171734.30509.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401172359.04891.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 17 January 2004 08:34 pm, Daniel Mayer wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote on WikiEN-l: > >There is a difference between a criminal and a civil trial. > > Yeah so? Everything we do here is covered under contract/civil law, thus > mediation and arbitration is perfectly fine. If somebody breaks our rules, > they break the contract we have with them. We cannot imprison anybody, nor > levy fines - all we can do is consider our contract with a certain person > broken, and not allow them further access to editing our website. > > Criminal law does not apply unless they break a real law (such as libel or > giving a serious threat of physical harm). Then we call the cops and let > the real criminal justice system take over. > > >If certain laws of a society are broken, then the state will > >prosecute a case. > > But we are not a society, we are a community of people who hang out at a > website with a particular goal in mind. > >It is not primarily a dispute between him and me. Or for that matter > >all the other people he has attacked. Rather, he is in violation of > >one of wikipedia's important rules: no personal attacks. > > Rules and policies are not laws. No reason to set-up sham/mock courts and > confuse the whole distinction. I did not equate the legal system with wikipedia processes, I merely suggested it as an analogy for better understanding how wikipedia conflict resolution processes might look. This seems to have failed, but that is OK. Wikilegal is the wrong forum for this, as I used the legal system as an *analogy* (so I am cross-posting this message to wiki-en). That said, let's get back to the issue. MNH has repeatedly made personal attacks in direct contravention of wikipedia policy. From [[wikipedia:No personal attacks]], the first sentence is "No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period." and "Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy". My question is: Is MNH such an extreme case? I submit that it is, as documented on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox If the body that is to decide whether or not his personal attacks are extreme wants more proof, then I shall supply that. But I also suggest that the above documented personal attacks are indeed sufficiently extreme (in volume and in tone). Other people have suggested that somehow MNH's personal attacks are actually tolerable because he "just" made them against persons such as Adam Carr and RK. I think that this is faulty logic, it doesn't matter who you make personal attacks against. I shall quote from the policy again: "No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period." I had a look at earlier bans, and found this ([[User:Khranus/ban]]): "In response to Kosebamse's complaint about "ramblings, contempt, insults, hostility", etc. -- the owner of this website user:Jimbo Wales, asks that you contact him via e-mail." I level those same complaints against MNH (except for "ramblings", which I don't believe to be sufficient to warrant such action). Now that Jimbo (very understandably) doesn't want to be the person that enforces wikipedia rules and policies anymore, who will? Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 18 05:18:58 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:18:58 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 17 January 2004 10:19 pm, Geoff Burling wrote: > On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote: > > Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has > > repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks > > on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds > > that he is not abating with said attacks. > > > > I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this > > user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox > > I've taken a look at these, & while MNH's behavor is not exemplary, I don't > see any smoking gun that justifies banning. > > Two of the people MNH has exchanged barbs with -- RK & Adam -- haven't > been models of restraint themselves, making a few attacks on MNH > themselves. His response to Teresa Knox does appear unjustified, though, & > I would like better proof that he was the person acting from those IP > addresses. [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks) states: "No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period." and "Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy, i.e. grounds for banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold." The question is not whether he argued with users that have not been "models of restraint", but rather whether his personal attacks were sufficiently extreme to warrant a banning. I submit, with documentation of no less than 11 instances, that his behaviour has been sufficiently extreme, and a proper refutation of this should be made for each instance of his use of personal attacks. > > [snip] > > > (...) At another time he has made > > an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi > > from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?". > > I'm not clear how identifying one's home location is a threat. And having > read quite a few emails on this mailling list from RK where he accuses > people of being a Nazi for disagreeing with him, I read this as a sardonic > descriptioin. I agree with you that RK has at times behaved extremely badly on wikipedia, but that is not at issue here. I have stated that I believe that MNH's statement that he is a german Nazi from NY who is extremely proud of his heritage is indeed an implicit threat to RK: RK is a jew who lives in NY. MNH stating that he is a Nazi from NY implies firstly that he is ideologically motivated to kill RK, and secondly that he lives close to RK. It might be assumed that MNH did not know that RK lived in NY, but: 1.Why mention that on his talk page then? 2.With that same post, MNH said something to the effect that "people wanted you [RK] banned many months ago" This means that he is not as new as his November 2003 signup date would suggest, and that he obviously knows a bit about the whole RK situation, and therefor also perhaps that RK lives in NY. > > > all documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip > > service to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit > > threats), or shall this policy be enforced? > > > > As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally > > [attacked] RK, but numerous others as well. > > I've seen a fair number of people called "kooks", "zanies", etc. here on > Wikipedia, & I was unaware that was not approved behavior. (After reading > Sacha's article, I followed the link to find a forum on Meta from a few > months ago about this very matter, which I somehow missed.) If a > contributor to Wiki can get banned for certain behavior, then these terms > should be made clear somewhere on Wiki, & not merely discussed on Yet > Another Meta Page. The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I have quoted above. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 18 05:30:57 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:30:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401180030.31226.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 17 January 2004 10:19 pm, Geoff Burling wrote: > I've taken a look at these, & while MNH's behavor is not exemplary, I don't > see any smoking gun that justifies banning. > > Two of the people MNH has exchanged barbs with -- RK & Adam -- haven't > been models of restraint themselves, making a few attacks on MNH > themselves. His response to Teresa Knox does appear unjustified, though, & > I would like better proof that he was the person acting from those IP > addresses. I would like it as well. It is obvious to me personally that the person from those IP addresses is indeed MNH, as he seemlessly edits those articles ([[Alternative medicine]]) with MNH, and is only interrested in those pages. Also, 12.77.5.190 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=12.77.5.190) gave in his _very first_ edit summary: "Hello, RK. Have you always suffered from mental illness and perceptual problems?" This could hardly be a new contributor. Of course the easiest way to get proof would be for a devel to check MNH's IP when editing around that time. I'm not sure what wikipedia's privacy policy is in regards to revealing IP addresses of contributors. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 05:39:16 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:39:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal to link [[Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] from every edit window Message-ID: <200401172139.16836.maveric149@yahoo.com> I propose that we link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Submission_Standards from every edit window starting on Wednesday 21 January unless there are major outstanding problems with that page at that time. Visit that talk page to discuss this issue. Two of the biggest pros, IMO, is that it gives our mediation and arbitration processes legal force and it also designates the Wikimedia Foundation as "your non-exclusive agent for copyright compliance". BTW, Alex, our de-facto pro-bono lawyer, wrote the submission standards. But I'm sure he would be the first to say that they do not constitute a legal opinion. This line would be added to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning By clicking "save page" you agree to [Wikipedia:Submission Standards] and affirm that you submission does not violate those terms. Since Copyrightwarning does not parse wiki, [Wikipedia:Submission Standards] would actually be Wikipedia:Submission Standards An example of how this would work is already on Meta: http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Meta:Sandbox&action=edit This was done by editing: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 05:47:36 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:47:36 -0800 Subject: [Wikilegal-l] Civil/Criminal law on Wikipedia (was: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban) Message-ID: <200401172147.36903.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >I level those same complaints against MNH (except for "ramblings", which I >don't believe to be sufficient to warrant such action). Now that Jimbo (very >understandably) doesn't want to be the person that enforces wikipedia rules >and policies anymore, who will? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution We are working out the procedures right now. --mav From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 05:56:40 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:56:40 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban Message-ID: <200401172156.40888.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of >wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that >page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks Well you have convinced me that MNH has violated our policy on this issue, but until we have [[Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] linked from every edit window I don't think we can ban anybody until after we know for sure that they are aware of our policies (even then we should always give people a couple chances to reform their behavior). I suggest to the list then, that MNH be made aware of the policy and asked not to violate it again. Then come back to the list if/when he has continued this behavior. At that point we may decide to start a mediation/arbitration proceeding. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From charlespodles at sympatico.ca Sun Jan 18 05:58:51 2004 From: charlespodles at sympatico.ca (Charles Podles) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:58:51 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <400A209B.4080309@sympatico.ca> Sascha Noyes wrote: >>(snip) It might be assumed that MNH did not know that RK lived in NY RK says on his user page that he lives in New York, so I think it's safe to assume that Mr. Nutty H knew that, and therefore knew what identifying himself as a German Nazi from New York would mean. --Charles Podles (en:user:Mirv) From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 18 06:20:03 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 01:20:03 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401172156.40888.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401172156.40888.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401180120.03261.sascha@pantropy.net> On Sunday 18 January 2004 12:56 am, Daniel Mayer wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote: > >The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of > >wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] > >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that > >page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to > >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] > >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks > > Well you have convinced me that MNH has violated our policy on this issue, > but until we have [[Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] linked from every edit > window I don't think we can ban anybody until after we know for sure that > they are aware of our policies (even then we should always give people a > couple chances to reform their behavior). I suggest to the list then, that > MNH be made aware of the policy and asked not to violate it again. > > Then come back to the list if/when he has continued this behavior. At that > point we may decide to start a mediation/arbitration proceeding. OK, I see the expedience and wisdom in not seeking a ban until the procedures are formalised. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From saintonge at telus.net Sun Jan 18 09:15:41 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 01:15:41 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism References: <20040117092811.41996.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400A4EBD.2000004@telus.net> zero 0000 wrote: >>>On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote >>>something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" >>>should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I >>>am inclined to agree with him. >>> >Since my remark indicated above has now been quoted several time, >I thought I might explain it. I don't -really- think that >"terrorism", or any other word, should be banned. Rather, I was >making a comment on the usage of the word in Wikipedia: in my >opinion it is misused so much that we would be better off without >any uses at all. However, of course the problem should be tackled >by education and not by legislation. > I agree. "Terrorism", however, is not the only word in this class, Using them perpetrates misunderstanding. >Let me suggest a golden rule that might be applied to many issues >in addition to this one: > Golden Rule: Tell the reader what the facts are; > don't tell the reader what to think about them. >According to this criterion, some usages of "terrorism" are just >fine: "The US State Department added Microsoft Corporation to its >list of terrorist organizations". Some usages are NOT fine: >"A Microsoft terrorist blew himself up at the 2007 Apple >Convention, killing 27 innocent Mac-heads". The reason I don't >like this usage of "terrorist" is that all the information in the >sentence is still there if the word is removed. Actually the >word was used to sneak the writer's opinion into the sentence. >We should just present the facts and allow the reader to form >the opinions. > This is a good approach. >Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. >"Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least >favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in >Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their >own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" >or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." >instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article >is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then >I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something). > "Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop It applies the logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to be true, then it must in fact be true. A statement founded on public opinion should be subject to verification just as much as anything else. Ec From sannse at delphiforums.com Sun Jan 18 10:23:09 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 10:23:09 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban References: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net><4009C5DD.7040001@rufus.d2g.com> <200401172005.49656.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <003d01c3ddad$131c2c40$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Sascha said in part: > Also, I'm not quite sure whether the framework of mediation/arbitration is the > correct one. Allow me to demonstrate by way of analogy to the legal system of > most "western" countries: > > There is a difference between a criminal and a civil trial. If certain laws of > a society are broken, then the state will prosecute a case. If, on the other > hand there is some squabble between two parties (eg. a contract dispute), > then one party will seek to prosecute the other. I submit that the problem > with MNH is of the former kind. It is not primarily a dispute between him and > me. Or for that matter all the other people he has attacked. Rather, he is in > violation of one of wikipedia's important rules: no personal attacks. I > therefore think that I should not be the prosecution, but rather a witness > for the prosecution. I'm not sure how this would work with the current > framework. But I'd be most interrested in everyone's opinion on this matter. This analogy does /not/ work for mediation. IMO a better analogy would be of marriage guidance counselling. The idea is not to decide who is wrong, or to make judgements between "complainants" and "problem users" but to help those in disagreement to find mutually satisfactory solutions. If it comes down to a situation where there can't be an agreement then sadly it's time to decide whether divorce is necessary. This situation is one where Anthere's comments about mediation between personalities rather than mediating only on specific article disputes applies. I'm still thinking about that - I think she is right in that problems are more often about personal differences than really about article text and so on, but am not sure how mediation can effectively help. Especially when we have such limited means - if we could all get together physically (especially with a few pints ;) then maybe we could make a difference in personal conflicts, but with the limited means we have I'm not sure how effective we will be. (that doesn't mean we shouldn't try of course) Regards, sannse From sannse at delphiforums.com Sun Jan 18 10:52:57 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 10:52:57 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list Message-ID: <006201c3ddb1$3c58ac60$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> I think we really need that mailing list - it's very difficult to follow developments and discusions at the moment. How do we set this up? I have absolutely no experience of such things. Regards, sannse From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 11:08:17 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:08:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism Message-ID: <200401180308.17907.maveric149@yahoo.com> Ray Saintonge wrote: >"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop It applies the >logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to be >true, then it must in fact be true. No it doesn't. If something is true, then it is true. If in fact a great many people say and think a certain way, then the statement needs to be made. >A statement founded on public >opinion should be subject to verification just as much as anything else. Sorry, but polls do not exist for everything. Some things are just plain common sense because they are views so widely held. For example, the statement that OBL is a terrorist or that Al-Queda is a terrorist organization. Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It is also in line with NPOV. Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not terrorist. Oh and some things are so widely held that there is no real need to be wishy-washy about it. For example that the 9/11 attacks were terrorist acts. However, as I stated on that talk page the word 'terrorist' should be taken out of that title for other reasons (not common as shorter title and not needed for disambiguation). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 11:20:31 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:20:31 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list Message-ID: <200401180320.31352.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sannse wrote: >I think we really need that mailing list - it's very difficult to follow >developments and discusions at the moment. I was thinking of several. A mediation-l that all mediators would be subscribed to (not sure if this should be a members only, private list), and a series of mediation-# lists that each would be used for a specific mediation. These would definitely be private and members only. They would also not have a publicly available archive. All list members of these numbered lists would be automatically un-subscribed after the mediation is over. The list would then be used for the next mediation. >How do we set this up? I have absolutely no experience of such things. I think the Jason is the only person who can set up new lists. Brion might also be able, but I don't know for sure. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 12:02:57 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 04:02:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <200401180308.17907.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040118120257.23343.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> --- Daniel Mayer wrote: > Ray Saintonge wrote: > >"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop It applies the > > >logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to > be > >true, then it must in fact be true. > > No it doesn't. If something is true, then it is true. If in fact a > great many > people say and think a certain way, then the statement needs to be > made. It isn't the truth of it that I am questioning. I am questioning that the "statement needs to be made". Consider whether you would like to see the statement "Some people consider that his teeth are crooked" in (say) the article on George Bush even if the truth of that statement could be positively established. I guess that you would take it out, which (if I'm right) shows that the mere truth of a statement is not really your criterion for including it. You must have an additional reason. Not referring specificially to yourself, I suggest that the main reason that people include statements like "Some people believe that X is a terrorist" is that they WANT to attach that label to that person and not because they have a disinterested intention to report a fact. They should instead devote more effort to reporting hard data about X ("X has been responsible for many attacks on civilians, including ... and ..."), then readers who like labels like "terrorism" will have no trouble attaching them. I think this shows respect for the intelligence of the reader. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From sannse at delphiforums.com Sun Jan 18 12:03:43 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 12:03:43 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list References: <200401180320.31352.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <007401c3ddbb$1f199920$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> mav wrote: > Sannse wrote: > >I think we really need that mailing list - it's very difficult to follow > >developments and discusions at the moment. > > I was thinking of several. A mediation-l that all mediators would be > subscribed to (not sure if this should be a members only, private list), and > a series of mediation-# lists that each would be used for a specific > mediation. These would definitely be private and members only. They would > also not have a publicly available archive. All list members of these > numbered lists would be automatically un-subscribed after the mediation is > over. The list would then be used for the next mediation. That sounds good to me. I think that the mediation-l (and the arbitration-l) should probably be private, to allow mediators to discuss cases between themselves and ask for advice without breaking confidentiality. But I can see that this might be considered as overly secretive and elitist (if that's the word)- so I'm open to argument. > >How do we set this up? I have absolutely no experience of such things. > > I think the Jason is the only person who can set up new lists. Brion might > also be able, but I don't know for sure. What's the best way to contact them to ask for a list to be started? Perhaps we could start with a private list - to be opened up if that is the consensus? Regards, sannse From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sun Jan 18 12:28:54 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 12:28:54 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list In-Reply-To: <200401180320.31352.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <915um4khpVB@erik_moeller> Daniel- > Sannse wrote: >> I think we really need that mailing list - it's very difficult to follow >> developments and discusions at the moment. > I was thinking of several. A phpBB board is already set up and can be used as soon as our servers are in better shape. Regards, Erik From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 12:31:14 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 04:31:14 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism Message-ID: <200401180431.14489.maveric149@yahoo.com> Zeno wrote: >They should instead devote more effort to >reporting hard data about X ("X has been responsible for many >attacks on civilians, including ... and ..."), then readers who >like labels like "terrorism" will have no trouble attaching them. >I think this shows respect for the intelligence of the reader. No problem with having more info. But the info that a very large number of people think that person X is a terrorist is /highly/ relevant to have in an article about that person. This is oftentimes a distinguishing characteristic that can and should be in the lead section of the article. Not doing so is to discount this very important piece of information. This in my opinion is whitewashing and censorship. The quip about George Bush and crooked teeth isn't very relevant to an article on him. Meaning his crooked teeth is not even a minor reason why he is famous and it may even be completely fine to leave that out of the article alltogether. On the other hand the fact that a great many people regard OBL to be a terrorist is one of the big reasons why he is famous. Thus a prominant statement indicating that information is needed in the lead section of an article about him. Then we go into detail. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 12:37:37 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 04:37:37 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list Message-ID: <200401180437.37822.maveric149@yahoo.com> Erik wrote: >A phpBB board is already set up and can be used as soon as our >servers are in better shape. That sounds like a great idea, but we need something now, not in the Neverneverland of when the servers are in better shape. ;) The server situation has been almost constantly bad since early summer 2003. This in spite of near super-human efforts by Brion, Jason and co. -- mav From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Sun Jan 18 13:34:55 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 13:34:55 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban Message-ID: <400A8B7F.32115.4A9C1D@localhost> > I think we need a Wikipedia Prosecutor's office If Sascha considers that Mr. N-H's attacks are disruptive to her Wikipedia experience, then she is entitled to take that problem, personally or in a group of like- minded citizens, to mediation and/or arbitration. Even if the attacks were not made against her, she may still feel that they are unpleasant to witness. If someone breaks Wikipedia's rules, but nobody minds enough to request mediation or arbitration, then nothing will happen. I rather feel this is a feature, not a bug. > an elected prosecutor would hire deputies and go out and investigate the matter Past experience suggests that were someone is being obnoxious, there will be no shortage of Wikipedians willing to supply evidence of such obnoxiousness. Mediators are of course free to do additional investigation if it allows them to reach a mutually acceptable end to the conflict. Arbitrators are likewise free to do additional investigation if it is necessary to come to the right judgement. -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From dpbsmith at world.std.com Sun Jan 18 14:17:15 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 09:17:15 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..." In-Reply-To: <20040118120006.1C371B83E@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040118120006.1C371B83E@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <04563A4A-49C1-11D8-9521-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> At least in the case of contemporary, political matters: If it is really true that "many people" in the contemporary mainstream believe something, it should not be hard to find a well-known public figure, or political columnist, or major-newspaper editorial writer, who expresses that belief. For example, "some people regard the situation in Iraq as a guerrilla war" can be replaced with "Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said that forces in Iraq were 'conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us.'" The big problem with attributing a view to "some people" or "many people" is that it is an unverifiable source. (It's sometimes suggested that opinion polls be cited, but suitable poll results are generally hard to find. Polling organizations sell their services; you can't just go online and access the full results of every Harris/Interactive poll that's ever been conducted, search for relevant results, and snip out fair-use extracts). Ideally the person cited should have more stature or neutrality than, Al Franken or Ann Coulter. But even the use of a Franken or Coulter IMHO fixes the problem. It establishes several things, fairly objectively. 1) the point of view is being expressed really in the contemporary mainstream (not just held by single-taxers or hollow-earthers). 2) The accuracy of the quotation/citation can be checked. 3) The reader either already has, or can easily form, an opinion about the source's point of view and reliability. -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/ From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 15:15:10 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 16:15:10 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: mediation mailing list References: <200401180437.37822.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400AA2FE.6060907@yahoo.com> I know one thing. It is painful to send mails, through wikimail, one after the other. Without counting those who have no registered email. Must wait minutes for the talk page to load. Daniel Mayer a ?crit: > Erik wrote: > >>A phpBB board is already set up and can be used as soon as our >>servers are in better shape. > > > That sounds like a great idea, but we need something now, not in the > Neverneverland of when the servers are in better shape. ;) The server > situation has been almost constantly bad since early summer 2003. This in > spite of near super-human efforts by Brion, Jason and co. > > -- mav From pcb21 at btconnect.com Sun Jan 18 17:26:30 2004 From: pcb21 at btconnect.com (Peter Bartlett) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:26:30 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..." In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >-----Original Message----- >From D.P.B Smith >Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..." See also http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words where it is says that many people regard the phrase "many people regard" as a legitimate rhetorical device. Pete From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sun Jan 18 18:09:53 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 10:09:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote: > On Saturday 17 January 2004 10:19 pm, Geoff Burling wrote: > > On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote: > > > Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has > > > repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks > > > on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds > > > that he is not abating with said attacks. > > > > > > I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this > > > user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox > > [snip] > > > > > (...) At another time he has made > > > an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi > > > from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?". > > > > I'm not clear how identifying one's home location is a threat. And having > > read quite a few emails on this mailling list from RK where he accuses > > people of being a Nazi for disagreeing with him, I read this as a sardonic > > description. > > I agree with you that RK has at times behaved extremely badly on wikipedia, > but that is not at issue here. I have stated that I believe that MNH's > statement that he is a german Nazi from NY who is extremely proud of his > heritage is indeed an implicit threat to RK: > > RK is a jew who lives in NY. MNH stating that he is a Nazi from NY implies > firstly that he is ideologically motivated to kill RK, and secondly that he > lives close to RK. I think you are making a logical fallicy here. You assume that because MNH calls himself a Nazi, therefore he wants to kill RK. As I argued, one can describe oneself -- or another person -- a Nazi for many reasons. In my last email, I suggested it was in response to RK's habit of calling anyone he disagrees with "a Nazi"; another possible meaning would be the "Soup Nazi" from the Seinberg sitcom, who is not clearly anti-semitic, merely despotic in how he runs his restaurant. IIRC my high school years, I had one or two teachers describe themselves semi-humorously as "a Nazi", meaning they tolerated no dissent. One other point I shuld have mentioned was that when I looked at for the quote in question, I could not find it. Did someone delete it? If so, was it MNH? And if it was him, did he do it because he regretted his choice of words -- or because he wanted to hide his indiscression? > > It might be assumed that MNH did not know that RK lived in NY, but: > > 1.Why mention that on his talk page then? > 2.With that same post, MNH said something to the effect that "people wanted > you [RK] banned many months ago" > > This means that he is not as new as his November 2003 signup date would > suggest, and that he obviously knows a bit about the whole RK situation, and > therefor also perhaps that RK lives in NY. > Or it could be that MNH has either been reading the archive of the maillist, or lurking here. If so he, would not be the only one. I find it surprising that about the same time there was a thread here whether or not the September 11 attacks should be labelled "terrorist" or not, Wik arbitrarily decided to remove that word from all of relevant articles. This matter is far less obvious than you think, Sascha. And I would hope that the principle of Wikilove means that any request for banning requires at least a preponderance of evidence. Geoff From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sun Jan 18 18:50:02 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 18:50:02 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list In-Reply-To: <200401180437.37822.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <915updhSpVB@erik_moeller> Daniel- > That sounds like a great idea, but we need something now, not in the > Neverneverland of when the servers are in better shape. ;) That shouldn't be so far ahead, since 8 new machines have been ordered. It doesn't make much sense to come up with an elaborate mailing list setup and ditch it two weeks later. FWIW, I've just tried three times to post something to the Village pump and failed three times. With such response times, mediation is really not something to worry about. Regards, Erik From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 18 19:08:51 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:08:51 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401181408.52325.sascha@pantropy.net> On Sunday 18 January 2004 01:09 pm, Geoff Burling wrote: > > RK is a jew who lives in NY. MNH stating that he is a Nazi from NY > > implies firstly that he is ideologically motivated to kill RK, and > > secondly that he lives close to RK. > > I think you are making a logical fallicy here. You assume that because MNH > calls himself a Nazi, therefore he wants to kill RK. As I argued, one can > describe oneself -- or another person -- a Nazi for many reasons. In my > last email, I suggested it was in response to RK's habit of calling anyone > he disagrees with "a Nazi"; another possible meaning would be the "Soup > Nazi" from the Seinberg sitcom, who is not clearly anti-semitic, merely > despotic in how he runs his restaurant. > > IIRC my high school years, I had one or two teachers describe themselves > semi-humorously as "a Nazi", meaning they tolerated no dissent. Answered below > > One other point I shuld have mentioned was that when I looked at for the > quote in question, I could not find it. Did someone delete it? If so, was > it MNH? And if it was him, did he do it because he regretted his choice > of words -- or because he wanted to hide his indiscression? If wikipedia weren't so slow I'd check again, but I am fairly sure that the comment was deleted by RK because he found it to be hostile. I would have done so as well. > > > It might be assumed that MNH did not know that RK lived in NY, but: > > > > 1.Why mention that on his talk page then? > > 2.With that same post, MNH said something to the effect that "people > > wanted you [RK] banned many months ago" > > > > This means that he is not as new as his November 2003 signup date would > > suggest, and that he obviously knows a bit about the whole RK situation, > > and therefor also perhaps that RK lives in NY. > > Or it could be that MNH has either been reading the archive of the > maillist, or lurking here. If so he, would not be the only one. I find it > surprising that about the same time there was a thread here whether or not > the September 11 attacks should be labelled "terrorist" or not, Wik > arbitrarily decided to remove that word from all of relevant articles. Your criticisms of my interpretation of his statement are all valid. However, what you have failed to dispel (in my mind), is the possibility that it was meant as a threat. Implicit threats function not by being overt threats, but rather by having the property that they can be interpreted as a threat. I concede that one has to also employ a measure of likelihood. Your suggestion that this statement was meant as an attack on RK for calling others Nazis has in my mind lowered the possibility that it was meant as a threat. But I am still of the opinion that it is a possibility. I don't think that your charge that my interpretation is a logical fallacy is correct. But I concede that this was due to my poor wording of the matter. I did not mean to suggest that his statement is *only* interpretable as a threat. Merely that it is a possible interpretation. In the interpretation that I submit as a possibility, the term "Nazi" is taken in its original meaning. A meaning that is accompanied by the ideological baggage that the only sollution to the "Judenproblem" is the extermination of all Jews. I know of the common usage of the word Nazi to humerously or combatively refer to someone who displays certain behaviour characteristic of 'proper' Nazis. And I agree with you that MNH could be using it in that sense. However, it is characteristically employed in conjunction with other attributes: eg. "soup-nazi", "feminazi", etc. This was not the case here. > > This matter is far less obvious than you think, Sascha. And I would hope > that the principle of Wikilove means that any request for banning requires > at least a preponderance of evidence. My case is founded first and foremost on his personal attacks. Whether or not the "Nazi from NY" statement is seen as an implicit threat does not at all affect the validity of my request for a ban. I do regard his "Nazi from NY" as an implicit threat, but as with all implicit threats, it is a matter of interpretation. I don't think that it can be argued, however, that this remark was not hostile and not combative. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From tucci528 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 20:38:41 2004 From: tucci528 at yahoo.com (Tucci) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 12:38:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..." In-Reply-To: <04563A4A-49C1-11D8-9521-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> Message-ID: <20040118203841.12776.qmail@web12824.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote: > At least in the case of contemporary, political > matters: > > For example, "some people regard the situation in > Iraq as a guerrilla > war" can be replaced with "Army Gen. John P. Abizaid > said that forces > in Iraq were 'conducting what I would describe as a > classical > guerrilla-type campaign against us.'" I agree with the idea but also want to point out that we must be careful not to imply that Abizaid is the only person that feels this way. Ultimately, each situation is slightly different and must be handled differently, but "some people" or "many people" is too vague -- being too specific can also be a problem. TUF-KAT __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From saintonge at telus.net Sun Jan 18 20:46:43 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 12:46:43 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Characterizations of Behavior References: Message-ID: <400AF0B3.2070407@telus.net> Fred Bauder wrote: >Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could >be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a >shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in >place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and >attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding. > >The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in >this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need >to be banned, just used consciously. > What's important about your comments is that they show that the same kind of problem can arise when the word in question has positive overtones. Ec From saintonge at telus.net Sun Jan 18 21:09:38 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 13:09:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban References: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> <400A209B.4080309@sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <400AF612.7000807@telus.net> Charles Podles wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote: > >>> (snip) It might be assumed that MNH did not know that RK lived in NY >> > RK says on his user page that he lives in New York, so I think it's > safe to assume that Mr. Nutty H knew that, and therefore knew what > identifying himself as a German Nazi from New York would mean. If you are going to complain about somebody's personal attacks then using personal attacks yourself, like calling him "Mr. Nutty H.", negates the credibility of your accusations. Ec From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 18 22:16:45 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:16:45 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 In-Reply-To: <200401161756.01488.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401161756.01488.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040118221645.GA15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote in part: >Viajero wrote: >>I am opposed (along with several others) to the inclusion of this >>phrase. I believe it uses weaselspeak to insert a moral judgement >>on the subject. >I thought that the phrase at OBL was "in the West he is widely regarded as a >[[terrorism | terrorist]]". This is factually correct and taking it out is >censorship and advocating for a certain POV. That will not be tolerated. What does that mean, "That will not be tolerated."? >From here, it sounds like you are dictating to Viajero what the content of Wikipedia articles is going to be. But I know that you know that you cannot do this (anymore than he can dictate the content to you), so it's not clear to me what you meant. -- Toby From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 22:36:21 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:36:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401171507.48365.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040118223621.74928.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> He also likes to list EVERY person with whom he has edit disagreements on [[Conflicts between users]]. RickK Sascha Noyes wrote: Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds that he is not abating with said attacks. I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox I have not looked through all of the disputes this user has had with others, but in the ones that I have looked at he has made no less than 12 personal attacks. Some of them quite vicious ("Hello, RK. Have you always suffered from mental illness and perceptual problems?"). At another time he has made an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?". Anyway, this is all documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip service to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit threats), or shall this policy be enforced? As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally RK, but numerous others as well. Best, Sascha Noyes --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040118/951f1ee9/attachment.htm From nrussell at buffalo.edu Sun Jan 18 22:41:50 2004 From: nrussell at buffalo.edu (Nathan Russell) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:41:50 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <20040118223621.74928.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040118223621.74928.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400B0BAE.60205@buffalo.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Rick wrote: | He also likes to list EVERY person with whom he has edit | disagreements on [[Conflicts between users]]. | | RickK | | */Sascha Noyes /* wrote: | | Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health | has repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal | attacks on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user | on the grounds that he is not abating with said attacks. | | I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by | this user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox | | I have not looked through all of the disputes this user has had | with others, but in the ones that I have looked at he has made no | less than 12 personal attacks. Some of them quite vicious ("Hello, | RK. Have you always suffered from mental illness and perceptual | problems?"). At another time he has made an implicit threat to RK | on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi from New York. I am | proud of my German heritage, how about you?". Anyway, this is all | documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip | service to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit | threats), or shall this policy be enforced? | | As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally | RK, but numerous others as well. | | Best, Sascha Noyes Michael, in particular, seems to make death threats a LOT, and I don't believe any action outside WP has been taken in regard to this. Anyone who has spent a half-hour banning Michael clones (which is most of the active admins) knows that death threats start showing up in edit summaries within 5 minutes. Nathan aka pakaran -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFACwuuMUlnNfyqpaMRAizeAJ9E9jcA7NiTDEhgB7Gspk5D5T6LbgCdE1qW kLJTIr2cyHjjk+V7BcyNczY= =BDkk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From nrussell at buffalo.edu Sun Jan 18 22:47:12 2004 From: nrussell at buffalo.edu (Nathan Russell) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:47:12 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400B0CF0.5020607@buffalo.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Geoff Burling wrote: | On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote: | | |>On Saturday 17 January 2004 10:19 pm, Geoff Burling wrote: |> |>>On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote: |>> |>>>Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has |>>>repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks |>>>on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds |>>>that he is not abating with said attacks. |>>> |>>>I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this |>>>user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox |>> | [snip] | |>>>(...) At another time he has made |>>>an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi |>>>from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?". |>> |>>I'm not clear how identifying one's home location is a threat. And having |>>read quite a few emails on this mailling list from RK where he accuses |>>people of being a Nazi for disagreeing with him, I read this as a sardonic |>>description. |> |>I agree with you that RK has at times behaved extremely badly on wikipedia, |>but that is not at issue here. I have stated that I believe that MNH's |>statement that he is a german Nazi from NY who is extremely proud of his |>heritage is indeed an implicit threat to RK: |> |>RK is a jew who lives in NY. MNH stating that he is a Nazi from NY implies |>firstly that he is ideologically motivated to kill RK, and secondly that he |>lives close to RK. | | | I think you are making a logical fallicy here. You assume that because MNH | calls himself a Nazi, therefore he wants to kill RK. As I argued, one can | describe oneself -- or another person -- a Nazi for many reasons. In my | last email, I suggested it was in response to RK's habit of calling anyone | he disagrees with "a Nazi"; another possible meaning would be the "Soup Nazi" | from the Seinberg sitcom, who is not clearly anti-semitic, merely despotic | in how he runs his restaurant. However, when one thinks of historic Nazis, killing Jews IS one of the first characteristics to come to mind. I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, but that's a separate issue. If I told (picking random user names here) Angela that I thought she was a terrorist because she protected an article on someone else's version, would that justify Uncle Ed telling me he was a terrorist and was going to kill me? Nathan aka Pak -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFACwzwMUlnNfyqpaMRAuU4AJ4+43MgTb3SiL06Tl4k+TpKQHPPyQCdE0cC 5O3mxlTlpc/fuMU0F3RKRDw= =p2yC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 18 22:40:50 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:40:50 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040118224049.GD15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Sascha Noyes wrote: >The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of >wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that >page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I have >quoted above. Number 9 on a list of 50 items /is/ obscure. If this is going to be used as material for a ban, then I agree that it should be made less obscure! -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 18 22:51:16 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:51:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <200401180308.17907.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401180308.17907.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040118225116.GF15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote in part: >Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both >widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national >governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It >is also in line with NPOV. >Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not >terrorist. You've said this a couple times now, but I must disagree strongly. /Failing/ to state X is *not* equivalent to /denying/ X!!! So you and Ec may disagree over whether the statement "Many people consider Osama Bin Laden to be a terrorist.", in the absence of additional facts, is sufficiently NPOV; but his position (to remove it in the absence of such facts) does not advocate the opposite POV. -- Toby From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 23:10:02 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 15:10:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Characterizations of Behavior In-Reply-To: <400AF0B3.2070407@telus.net> Message-ID: <20040118231002.4738.qmail@web60607.mail.yahoo.com> As I have been saying on the discussion about [[List of war heroes]]. RickK Ray Saintonge wrote: Fred Bauder wrote: >Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could >be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a >shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in >place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and >attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding. > >The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in >this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need >to be banned, just used consciously. > What's important about your comments is that they show that the same kind of problem can arise when the word in question has positive overtones. Ec --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040118/4e968f47/attachment.htm From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 18 23:02:03 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 15:02:03 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <400B0CF0.5020607@buffalo.edu> References: <400B0CF0.5020607@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <20040118230203.GH15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Nathan Russell wrote in part: >I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, but that's a >separate issue. If I told (picking random user names here) Angela that >I thought she was a terrorist because she protected an article on >someone else's version, would that justify Uncle Ed telling me he was a >terrorist and was going to kill me? You're analogy goes too far here -- and that's rather the point. Would it justify Uncle Ed telling you he was a terrorist, *period*? No, it wouldn't -- but Sascha was claiming more than that MNH was unjust. Then, would it be reasonable for us to /conclude/ that Uncle Ed /meant/ (but did *not* literally say!) that he was going to kill you? IMO, that would not be a reasonable conclusion. -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Sun Jan 18 23:11:37 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 15:11:37 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401181408.52325.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401181408.52325.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040118231136.GI15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Sascha Noyes wrote in part: >Geoff Burling wrote: >>I think you are making a logical fallicy here. You assume that because MNH >>calls himself a Nazi, therefore he wants to kill RK. As I argued, one can >>describe oneself -- or another person -- a Nazi for many reasons. In my >>last email, I suggested it was in response to RK's habit of calling anyone >>he disagrees with "a Nazi"; >Your criticisms of my interpretation of his statement are all valid. However, >what you have failed to dispel (in my mind), is the possibility that it was >meant as a threat. Implicit threats function not by being overt threats, but >rather by having the property that they can be interpreted as a threat. I >concede that one has to also employ a measure of likelihood. Your suggestion >that this statement was meant as an attack on RK for calling others Nazis has >in my mind lowered the possibility that it was meant as a threat. But I am >still of the opinion that it is a possibility. Sure, it's a possibility. But if you want MNH to be banned on this basis (in part on this basis I mean, since you charge further reasons), then the burden lies with you to convince /us/ (or Jimbo, or the arbitrator) that it really was a threat. I know that if I saw A say to B ?I am a Z.? in the course of a fight, and B has a habit of calling people Zs, then I would assume that B had called A a Z earlier in the course of the fight, and that now A was being sarcastic in a bitter response. I would /not/ assume that A really intended to claim to be a Z. Now, this does not excuse A's outburst, but it puts considerable doubt on any claim that A was /threatening/ B, even though a Z is a threat to B. I don't know if RK ever called MNH a Nazi before that comment appeared, but I'd at least have to establish that he hadn't done so if I wanted to argue that MNH intended to threaten RK. So I would drop the threat charge for now and stick to this: >My case is founded first and foremost on his personal attacks. -- Toby From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 18 23:39:17 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 15:39:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <20040118120257.23343.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040118120257.23343.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400B1925.8090903@rufus.d2g.com> zero 0000 wrote: >--- Daniel Mayer wrote: > > >>Ray Saintonge wrote: >> >> >>>"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop It applies the >>> >>> >>>logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to >>> >>> >>be >> >> >>>true, then it must in fact be true. >>> >>> >>No it doesn't. If something is true, then it is true. If in fact a >>great many >>people say and think a certain way, then the statement needs to be >>made. >> >> > >It isn't the truth of it that I am questioning. I am questioning >that the "statement needs to be made". Consider whether you would >like to see the statement "Some people consider that his teeth >are crooked" in (say) the article on George Bush even if the >truth of that statement could be positively established. >I guess that you would take it out, which (if I'm right) shows >that the mere truth of a statement is not really your criterion >for including it. You must have an additional reason. Not >referring specificially to yourself, I suggest that the main >reason that people include statements like "Some people believe >that X is a terrorist" is that they WANT to attach that label to >that person and not because they have a disinterested intention >to report a fact. They should instead devote more effort to >reporting hard data about X ("X has been responsible for many >attacks on civilians, including ... and ..."), then readers who >like labels like "terrorism" will have no trouble attaching them. >I think this shows respect for the intelligence of the reader. > > In this case, I think the statement does need to be made. OBL is widely referred to as "terrorist" or "terrorist mastermind". If it were particularly notorious and commonly discussed that GWB had crooked teeth, or if perhaps he were widely referred to as "the man with the crooked teeth", we should of course report that fact as well. But as far as I know, that's not the case, so we don't. If a label is very widely attached to something, we ought to report that the label is very widely attached, and if possible discuss at least briefly who commonly attaches it. Otherwise, we're very conspicuously omitting a well-known and relevant fact. In the case of OBL, the label is relevant to a number of worldwide conflicts, and especially relevant to US politics, both domestic and as regards foreign relations. In short, OBL may or may not be a terrorist, but it is a fact that he is called such by nearly all governments in the world, and by public opinion in the West, and that fact is one that ought to be reported, as it is both relevant and has important consequences. -Mark From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 18 23:59:08 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 15:59:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <20040118225116.GF15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <20040118235908.83178.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> --- Toby Bartels wrote: > Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote in part: > > >Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both > >widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national > >governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It > >is also in line with NPOV. > > >Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not > >terrorist. > > You've said this a couple times now, but I must disagree strongly. > > /Failing/ to state X is *not* equivalent to /denying/ X!!! > > So you and Ec may disagree over whether the statement > "Many people consider Osama Bin Laden to be a terrorist.", > in the absence of additional facts, is sufficiently NPOV; > but his position (to remove it in the absence of such facts) > does not advocate the opposite POV. A lie of omission is still a lie. So to take out the word 'terrorist' from [[Osama Bin Laden]] is dishonest and gives the impression that Wikipedia is saying that, in direct opposition to what most of the western world thinks, that OBL is not a terrorist. And when I say that something will not be tolerated, I mean that that behavior will be countered and negated. So in this case the correct NPOV sentence about what many in the West feel is going to be continuously put back into that article one way or the other. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 00:29:16 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 16:29:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fixing "many people regard..." Message-ID: <200401181629.16662.maveric149@yahoo.com> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote: >For example, "some people regard the situation in Iraq as a guerrilla >war" can be replaced with "Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said that forces >in Iraq were 'conducting what I would describe as a classical >guerrilla-type campaign against us.'" Being so specific doesn't work in a lead paragraph and different high-ranking people have a multitude of POVs that are very often not representative of the population in general. -- mav From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Mon Jan 19 00:46:01 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 16:46:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <200401180308.17907.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote: > Ray Saintonge wrote: > >"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop It applies the > >logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to be > >true, then it must in fact be true. > > No it doesn't. If something is true, then it is true. If in fact a great many > people say and think a certain way, then the statement needs to be made. My thinking about this issue revolves around the utility of this statement. Saying that 9/11 was considered by many people as a terrorist act is a useful statement, because it then leads to explaining the various responses: visible signs of patriotism in the US, a number of public shows of support for not only the US but for the Fire Department and Police Departments of New York City, passage of the US PATRIOT act. Saying that Usama ben Laden is considered by many people as a terrorist doesn't offer anything more than a possible widespread opinion -- unless it is linked to the fact that he is currently hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan from the US government, who are looking for him for that very reason. > > >A statement founded on public > >opinion should be subject to verification just as much as anything else. > > Sorry, but polls do not exist for everything. Some things are just plain > common sense because they are views so widely held. For example, the > statement that OBL is a terrorist or that Al-Queda is a terrorist > organization. > > Of course more info is needed! Refining that we could say that they are both > widely regarded as terrorist in the West and by nearly all national > governments in the Arab world. That is attributing a POV to its adherents. It > is also in line with NPOV. > Having written more than once words to the efect "it is widely believed that", my excuse is that I can prove this statement, but in the press to get _something_ into Wikipedia, I'll use those 5 words, or a variation on them. However, I also try to qualify those words with something like: "a significant minority, however thinks Y because" or "an eloquent minority dissents". There are people who think Usama ben Laden is a freedom fighter, & I think their reaons are worth noting -- although I may not agree with them. [snip] > > Oh and some things are so widely held that there is no real need to be > wishy-washy about it. For example that the 9/11 attacks were terrorist acts. > However, as I stated on that talk page the word 'terrorist' should be taken > out of that title for other reasons (not common as shorter title and not > needed for disambiguation). > It is nice that on Wikipedia we are allowed to call a spade a spade. However, some people misunderstand statements like this, & think we are talking about African Americans, when we are alluding to Tacitus' desire to use lofty language. That is where we get into nasty conflicts. Geoff From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 01:49:16 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:49:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism Message-ID: <200401181749.16081.maveric149@yahoo.com> Geoff Burling wrote: >Saying that Usama ben Laden is considered by many people as a >terrorist doesn't offer anything more than a possible widespread >opinion -- unless it is linked to the fact that he is currently hiding >in Pakistan or Afghanistan from the US government, who are looking >for him for that very reason. A linkage would of course improve such a statement. But if a very large percentage of the population in the West would define OBL as a terrorist, then that opinion is very valid and relevant to an article about him. Like I said before, that widespread opinion about him is one of the major, perhaps /the/ major, reason why he is famous. That type of info needs to go in the lead section of an article about him (probably in the lead paragraph). >Having written more than once words to the efect "it is widely >believed that", my excuse is that I can prove this statement, >but in the press to get _something_ into Wikipedia, I'll use those >5 words, or a variation on them. However, I also try to qualify those >words with something like: "a significant minority, however thinks Y >because" or "an eloquent minority dissents". There are people who >think Usama ben Laden is a freedom fighter, & I think their reaons >are worth noting -- although I may not agree with them. Adding qualifiers stating counter opinions is always a good thing. I in fact did this for the OBL article but my qualifier stating that 'in large parts of the Islamic world he is viewed as a freedom fighter' was first neutered by somebody taking out "large" and then the whole qualifier was taken out. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From sascha at pantropy.net Mon Jan 19 02:12:48 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 21:12:48 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <20040118224049.GD15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> <20040118224049.GD15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <200401182112.49070.sascha@pantropy.net> On Sunday 18 January 2004 05:40 pm, Toby Bartels wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote: > >The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of > >wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] > >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that > >page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to > >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] > >(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I > > have quoted above. > > Number 9 on a list of 50 items /is/ obscure. > If this is going to be used as material for a ban, > then I agree that it should be made less obscure! That is a matter of contention. How would you make it less obscure? Would you have all the policies listed on the "policy page" actually displayed on that page? The page would become very large indeed. Your obscurity argument would constitute a somewhat valid criticism had it not been the case that MNH was informed by various different wikipedians approximately six times that "no personal attacks, period." was an official wikipedia policy. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Mon Jan 19 02:34:59 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 18:34:59 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism In-Reply-To: <20040118235908.83178.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040118225116.GF15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <20040118235908.83178.qmail@web12826.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040119023459.GB16705@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>Maveric149 wrote: >>>Taking that out would be expressing the minority POV that they are not >>>terrorist. >>You've said this a couple times now, but I must disagree strongly. >>/Failing/ to state X is *not* equivalent to /denying/ X!!! >A lie of omission is still a lie. I'm sorry, mav, but you've completely lost me here. I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out, but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement. This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion. And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement. The only deception would be if we described Osama Bin Laden in such a way that people might get the impression that many people /don't/ think that he's a terrorist. Then by failing to point out that this is wrong, we deceive. That's definitely not the situation that Ec was talking about. If instead we take the position, as you seem to advocate, that failing to mention an important fact about somebody is a "lie of omission", then NPOV is an unworkable policy. Disputants with no documentation or evidence on either side will have nothing to do but revert each other over and over; it will be impossible to settle on any sort of compromise. Instead, Wikipedia should take the position that we include information only when it well established, and disputants that want to include text must back that up. Silence from Wikipedia must always indicate ''incompleteness'' (and Wikipedia is always incomplete), never denial. It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a terrorist. In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the west", and Ec may not know it in any case. OK, so we're wrong! But this is where NPOV comes in and says "If people don't agree on the claim, then state the reasons instead." Common knowledge cannot replace NPOV when it's not, in fact, common. -- Toby From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Mon Jan 19 02:44:37 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 18:44:37 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <200401182112.49070.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401180018.58122.sascha@pantropy.net> <20040118224049.GD15252@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> <200401182112.49070.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040119024437.GC16705@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Sascha Noyes wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>Sascha Noyes wrote: >>>The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of >>>wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] >>>(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that >>>page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to >>>[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] >>>(http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I >>> have quoted above. >>Number 9 on a list of 50 items /is/ obscure. >>If this is going to be used as material for a ban, >>then I agree that it should be made less obscure! >That is a matter of contention. How would you make it less obscure? Would you >have all the policies listed on the "policy page" actually displayed on that >page? The page would become very large indeed. It /is/ a matter of contention? Sorry, I thought that you had said that you wanted this matter clarified before people were banned for it. (But I may have confused this with something that somebody else wrote.) Mav already gave a good suggestion for making it less obscure, which is to list it on the submission requirements page that he wants linked to from every edit page. Then it would clearly be a requirement for any submission, not merely one of 50 "guidelines to consider". I trust that you're not arguing that people should be banned for violating any of the 50 items listed as "guidelines to consider". This particular rule is special -- more than just for our consideration. But that is /not/ how it explained now -- it's obscure. >Your obscurity argument would constitute a somewhat valid criticism had it not >been the case that MNH was informed by various different wikipedians >approximately six times that "no personal attacks, period." was an official >wikipedia policy. Then say that! My obscurity argument was a response to what you wrote above. If you're going to rely on something else, then my response doesn't apply. But I stand by my response to *what*you*wrote*above* (with ">>>"). That placement /is/ obscure! -- Toby From sascha at pantropy.net Mon Jan 19 04:33:38 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:33:38 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban In-Reply-To: <20040119024437.GC16705@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> References: <200401182112.49070.sascha@pantropy.net> <20040119024437.GC16705@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <200401182333.38535.sascha@pantropy.net> On Sunday 18 January 2004 09:44 pm, Toby Bartels wrote: > It /is/ a matter of contention? Sorry, I thought that you had said > that you wanted this matter clarified before people were banned for it. > (But I may have confused this with something that somebody else wrote.) My apologies for not reading [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] carefully. I missed the part under the heading stating: "In addition to the generally accepted policies listed above, the following guidelines have been suggested by various participants:" under which the "no personal attacks is placed. I propose moving it up to the section of generally accepted policies. How does a policy become generally accepted? Because the policy of not making personal attacks is listed as a "suggested policy" on [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]], I have edited [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] to reflect that fact. The matter that I had said I wanted clarified is the exact procedure for getting someone to act according to the guidelines. Now that you have made me (all of us?) aware of the fact that it is not actually a generally accepted policy, that will also have to be resolved. > Mav already gave a good suggestion for making it less obscure, > which is to list it on the submission requirements page > that he wants linked to from every edit page. > Then it would clearly be a requirement for any submission, > not merely one of 50 "guidelines to consider". I agree that this is the correct way to bring the policies to the attention of wikipedians. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 06:15:35 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 22:15:35 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism Message-ID: <200401182215.35624.maveric149@yahoo.com> Toby Bartels wrote: >I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out, >but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute >when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement. >This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion. >And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position >is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement. And there is nothing wrong with making the statement better, It makes for a better article. >It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say >that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a >terrorist. Why? Some things just go without saying because they are so pervasive. That is common sense. Taking out attributed references to OBL being a terrorist and then having to prove that he is (or is widely regarded as so) in order to have those references put back it, would be like having to defend statements in our article on the Apollo moon landings that indicate that they actually happened. When things go against common sense like that the burden of proof should be on the opposing party. And don't give my any of the relativistic crap stating that there is no such thing as common sense - I don't buy it in this case. We needn't entertain the the ravings of every kook by having to defend very obvious things. >In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the >west", and Ec may not know it in any case. OK, so we're >wrong! But this is where NPOV comes in and says >"If people don't agree on the claim, then state the >reasons instead." Common knowledge cannot replace >NPOV when it's not, in fact, common. That's all nice and academic, but has little to do over the fact the OBL is widely considered to be a terrorist in West. We could even add *especially* in the United States too. Sorry, but polls don't exist for everything - why would somebody think to have a poll on such an obvious thing? But his article last time I saw it stated that he was the head of Al-Queda, which is widely regarded as terrorist organization in the West. That is OK (but not ideal) with me. The same question applied to other people, such as Arafat, would be much less clear cut. Arafat at one time was considered to be a terrorist, but I've seen far fewer remarks to that effect since he changed hats from head of the PLA to the PLO. So we could not state "in the West Arafat is widely considered a terrorist", because that would not be true (unless you parse "widely" liberally). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From maveric149 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 06:23:40 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 22:23:40 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a ban Message-ID: <200401182223.40348.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >My apologies for not reading [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] carefully. This is exactly why policies and rules to consider /should not/ be on the same page. I'll go ahead and split this up next weekend if there are no complaints. >I missed the part under the heading stating: "In addition to the generally >accepted policies listed above, the following guidelines have been suggested >by various participants:" under which the "no personal attacks is placed. I >propose moving it up to the section of generally accepted policies. How does >a policy become generally accepted? "No personal attacks" /is/ a policy because it is already stated at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiquette which is a clear policy linked from the policy page from the policy section. All the No personal attacks page is, is a longer discussion of that particular part of the policy. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From magnus.manske at web.de Mon Jan 19 09:36:35 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 10:36:35 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reducing redirects (was: Sep 11) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400BA523.6050309@web.de> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >Gotta check your redirects. > >After you move an article, please click on the "What Links Here" link. >Identify any double-redirects, and reduce them to singles. > > Once we have a decent DB server again, we can re-enable the maintenance page functions and fix them by the dozen :-) I expect that there have been many double redirects piling up. Magnus From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 09:51:08 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 01:51:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism Message-ID: <20040119095108.44052.qmail@web21508.mail.yahoo.com> Daniel Mayer wrote: > On the other hand the fact that a great many people regard > OBL to be a terrorist is one of the big reasons why he is > famous. No, most of his fame is due to his organizing a couple of planes to fly into the WTC. Some is due to his other attacks. Some is due to the manhunt and invasion of Afganistan that followed Sep 11. Lots is due to the media focus on him. However, that isn't what I wanted to reply for. My mail on this subject was not in relation to OBL or Sep 11 specifically. I wanted to address the issue in general and of course most cases are much less clearcut than OBL. Nor would I want to prevent reporting on public opinion about something PROVIDED that public opinion has some actual significance to the case and PROVIDED the report is made in a way that doesn't look like the disguised opinion of the writer. In the case of OBL, in addition to being a terrorist he is a sort of celebrity. This aspect of him is interesting, and there's no reason to avoid reporting on it. A well-researched section on OBL's public image in various parts of the world would be an excellent addition to his page, and reporting there that OBL's image in the USA is "arch-terrorist" would be fine. However, OBL is unusual in this respect. In most cases where I see things like "Many people regard ..." in Wikipedia there is far less excuse and I stand by my judgment that it is often (if not usually) just the POV of whoever wrote it. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 15:54:43 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 07:54:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. In-Reply-To: <20040118225246.7BD2DB82B@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040119155443.59339.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Nat, > I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, > but that's a separate issue. I have tried to stay silent for a week, but the threats and personal attacks just keep on coming. Do you really believe this craziness about me? I did no such thing. I have made many hundreds of edits on over a hundreds of different Wikipedia articles. Just like everyone else here, I often have had disagreements with other people. So what? We don't go around attacking each other as Nazis. That is simply a fabrication. Your problem is that you are taking a specific set of related incidents that happened here, and then incorrectly assume that I write the same thing about every person I disagree with. That's absolutely false, as well as insulting. Do you have any idea of what the specific issue actually was? An anonymous Wiki-En contributor wrote a detailed analysis proving that Stevertigo was posting anti-Semitic material, and posting Holocaust denial. Every one of these edits was made in accord with either Nazi or Christian Identity ideology. Stevertigo was then supported by Martin Harper ("MyRedDice") who supported and encouraged all of these Jew-baiting edits. A number of other anonymous people dropped by to help Martin and Stevertigo as well. Many of the edit lines had Jew-baiting comments. (Which, fortunately, a few fellow Wikipedians recognized and commented on. I was not alone by a long shot in this phase of the process.) Did you actually read this analysis? However, when this issue was brought to the attention of the Wiki-En list, I was slandered, called a liar, and worst of all, many Wiki-En supporters wrote in support of Stevertigo and Martin Harper. Incredibly, no one was publicly willing to speak out against anti-Semitic propaganda and Holocaust denial. (A few people wrote me in private to support me, but they stated that they were afraid to post publicly here. I can now see why; they were right all along about this place.) Look, when people write in support of Nazi propaganda (and there is no debate about the edits in question), then in those select cases we are forced to admit that they are, by definition, anti-Semitic. The same would be true of people who wrote in support of racist anti-black propaganda. The Wiki-En list is currently ruled by an elite clique of political left-wingers who won't allow any un-PC writings about Arabs, gays, blacks, Asians, women or socialists. Yet this same clique is so anti-Zionist that they will support outright anti-Semitism and Christian identity or Nazi propaganda, just as a way to make the "enemy" look bad. In recent weeks BL and Mr-Natural-Health have been trying to scare my off of Wikipedia by implying that they might be, or actually are, Nazis. This isn't a joke. This is violent hatespeech. No one on Wikipedia would allow a group of contributors to drive away a black person by others posing as members of the Ku Klux Klan. Such a person would be banned immediately. Yet the only case when such hateful and violent actions are allowed here are when people say they are Nazis, and when they are targeting Jews. When Wiki-En members are supportive of such actions, that (by definition) is anti-Semitism. If this doesn't bother someone, then this tells us how they really feel about Jews: That Jews are only allowed to contribute here if they follow a pro-Arab left-wing line. Otherwise, let the self-proclaimed Nazis drive them off. On the other hand, if you do not support such harassment, then you are morally obligated to speak out, and to ask for these people to be banned. We should not allow sucvh violent hatespeech to drive people away. Editing encyclopedia articles should depend on facts, sources and historical considerations alone. Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 17:41:41 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:41:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: pictures at an exhibition Message-ID: <20040119174141.19762.qmail@web60503.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dreger wrote: > From: "Dreger" > To: > Subject: pictures at an exhibition > Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:50:42 +0100 > > Dear Wikipedia team, > I would like to know, if the pictures from "pictures > at an exhibition" are actually exhibited somewhere > and if there is possability to view them. > > Thank you for answering my question, E.Dreger. > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From church at classicnet.net Mon Jan 19 15:28:55 2004 From: church at classicnet.net (Timothy R. Matas) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:28:55 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance Message-ID: Good morning! I am a degreed journalist with three decades of experience. I have minors in math, poly sci, English and general science. In addition I have an extensive back ground in the Christian religion, have taking technical courses, courses in fire fighting and police science and for eight years took classes (without credit) in agriculture and land/water management. I can read well out loud but have trouble absorbing, however; anything I have ever been told that I felt was significant, I can recall -- that includes numbers, laws, reasons etc. I was rendered disabled by a medical doctor and now have extra time on my hands. I love to write, am working on a book, become inspired to write a poem every year or so and would like to be a regular contributor to your fine project. I am a genealogist and have side of my family traced back to 1726. My aim is the truth and perfection so I welcome those who would edit my work for that improves me. It is my belief that one should be either learning or teaching most of one's life in order to make it worthwhile. Could I be of help in your operation? Sincerely, Tim R. Matas 104 S. Buckeye Abilene, an. 67410 785-263-0415 Evenings are the best time to call church at classicnet.net From kayaga at ntlworld.com Mon Jan 19 17:06:34 2004 From: kayaga at ntlworld.com (Sam Kayaca) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:06:34 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sociology course work Message-ID: <000801c3deae$994704f0$12f90550@Studyroom> Hi I am finding it hard to my course work My course work title is TO INVESTIGATE THE POSSIBLE IMPACT OF CULTURAL DEPRIVATION ON EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT I don't know what to put in my aim. Can you please help me Asingura -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040119/1509eebc/attachment.htm From anthere8 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 18:12:23 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:12:23 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Volunteering my assistance References: Message-ID: <400C1E07.3030507@yahoo.com> Timothy R. Matas a ?crit: > Good morning! > I am a degreed journalist with three decades of experience. I have minors > in math, poly sci, English and general science. In addition I have an > extensive back ground in the Christian religion, have taking technical > courses, courses in fire fighting and police science and for eight years > took classes (without credit) in agriculture and land/water management. > I can read well out loud but have trouble absorbing, however; anything I > have ever been told that I felt was significant, I can recall -- that > includes numbers, laws, reasons etc. > I was rendered disabled by a medical doctor and now have extra time on my > hands. I love to write, am working on a book, become inspired to write a > poem every year or so and would like to be a regular contributor to your > fine project. > I am a genealogist and have side of my family traced back to 1726. > My aim is the truth and perfection so I welcome those who would edit my > work for that improves me. It is my belief that one should be either > learning or teaching most of one's life in order to make it worthwhile. > Could I be of help in your operation? > Sincerely, > > Tim R. Matas Yes ! Come over, we need you in the agriculture and land/water management department ! (just supporting my chapel here :-)). Sincerely Anthere From fredbaud at ctelco.net Mon Jan 19 18:18:17 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 11:18:17 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. In-Reply-To: <20040119155443.59339.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: You exaggerate Robert, Partly as PC, as you put it, is so long as interpreted sensibly, is simply courtesy and avoidance of prejudicial conclusionary statements unsupported by evidence. Partly when you characterize them as an "elite clique of political left-wingers". These are real people, usually with an academic background (graduates of the Gulag would not fit in) but to say they "rule" Wikipedia is simply false. They are simply people who lack practical experience. But Wikipedia to a great extent by its nature reflects academic knowledge. Could you please (I know well how difficult this would be) give at least one instance (please give the Wikipedia URL's of the statement and its removal or modidication) of an un-PC writing which was not allowed by them in each of the fields: Arabs Gays Blacks Asians Women Socialists Fred > From: Robert > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 07:54:43 -0800 (PST) > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. > > The Wiki-En list is currently ruled by an elite clique of > political left-wingers who won't allow any un-PC writings > about Arabs, gays, blacks, Asians, women or socialists. Yet > this same clique is so anti-Zionist that they will support > outright anti-Semitism and Christian identity or Nazi > propaganda, just as a way to make the "enemy" look bad. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Mon Jan 19 18:25:59 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 11:25:59 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sociology course work In-Reply-To: <000801c3deae$994704f0$12f90550@Studyroom> Message-ID: Goto http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en (Google advanced search) and in the top box, "with all of the words", type in "educational achievement". In the second box, "with the exact phrase" type in "cultural deprivation". You'll get 884 hits many of which appear useful. Reversing what you put in the boxes might get you a few more. Fred From: "Sam Kayaca" Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:06:34 -0000 To: Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sociology course work Hi I am finding it hard to my course work My course work title is TO INVESTIGATE THE POSSIBLE IMPACT OF CULTURAL DEPRIVATION ON EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT I don't know what to put in my aim. Can you please help me Asingura _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040119/89e33238/attachment.htm From saintonge at telus.net Mon Jan 19 19:10:15 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 11:10:15 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. References: <20040119155443.59339.qmail@web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400C2B97.40502@telus.net> Robert wrote: >Nat, > >>I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, >>but that's a separate issue. >> >I have tried to stay silent for a week, but the threats and >personal attacks just keep on coming. > Personal attacks are not acceptable behaviour, and should be condemned in their own right. On the other hand extrapolating those attacks on one individual into evidence of generalized anti-semitism is not a logical consequence. To the extent that apparently anti-semitic comments are made, I would suggest that they do not really reflect that attitude. Some people simply use them because they know that one particular individual will have excessive reactions. This sort of thing happens all the time on playgrounds. Although neither practice is socially acceptable, a distinction still needs to be made between generalized jew-baiting and baiting one specific Jew. >However, when this issue was brought to the attention of >the Wiki-En list, I was slandered, called a liar, and worst >of all, many Wiki-En supporters wrote in support of >Stevertigo and Martin Harper. Incredibly, no one was >publicly willing to speak out against anti-Semitic >propaganda and Holocaust denial. > Some of us might think that jumping into these topics would be feeding trolls. Directly confronting Holocaust denial gives it a credibility that it could never achieve by itself. >Look, when people write in support of Nazi propaganda (and >there is no debate about the edits in question), then in >those select cases we are forced to admit that they are, by >definition, anti-Semitic. > This is a non-sequitur. Nazi propaganda dealt with many more issues than just anti-semitic ones. As with any political party, a general support of that party does not imply supporting every policy on that party's platform. With a limited number of parties one is often confronted at an election with trying to choose the least evil. >The Wiki-En list is currently ruled by an elite clique of >political left-wingers who won't allow any un-PC writings >about Arabs, gays, blacks, Asians, women or socialists. Yet >this same clique is so anti-Zionist that they will support >outright anti-Semitism and Christian identity or Nazi >propaganda, just as a way to make the "enemy" look bad. > That is outright nonsense. In U.S. politics I've seen Jews, to their credit, more often associated with the Democratic Party and left-wing causes. The real hardcore fundamentalist anti-semites have a greater affinity with the other side of the spectrum. And please don't confuse anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. >When Wiki-En members are supportive of such actions, that >(by definition) is anti-Semitism. > No, it is anti-RK-ism. Ec From cprompt at tmbg.org Mon Jan 19 19:37:49 2004 From: cprompt at tmbg.org (cprompt) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:37:49 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1074539865.14455.5.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 10:28, Timothy R. Matas wrote: > Could I be of help in your operation? No need to ask, but thanks for introducing yourself! Everyone is allowed to edit any Wikipedia article, even without an account. If you decide to establish an account (rather than edit anonymously), feel free to mention your account name on the list, so we know who you are. A common idea here is that no article is ever "finished", so you can begin editing wherever you like. If you're looking to begin a new article, try checking out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles once the site is usable again. Looking forward to seeing your contributions. --cprompt From saintonge at telus.net Mon Jan 19 19:32:54 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 11:32:54 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance References: Message-ID: <400C30E6.9040509@telus.net> Timothy R. Matas wrote: >Good morning! > I am a degreed journalist with three decades of experience. I have minors >in math, poly sci, English and general science. In addition I have an >extensive back ground in the Christian religion, have taking technical >courses, courses in fire fighting and police science and for eight years >took classes (without credit) in agriculture and land/water management. > I can read well out loud but have trouble absorbing, however; anything I >have ever been told that I felt was significant, I can recall -- that >includes numbers, laws, reasons etc. > I was rendered disabled by a medical doctor and now have extra time on my >hands. I love to write, am working on a book, become inspired to write a >poem every year or so and would like to be a regular contributor to your >fine project. > I am a genealogist and have side of my family traced back to 1726. > My aim is the truth and perfection so I welcome those who would edit my >work for that improves me. It is my belief that one should be either >learning or teaching most of one's life in order to make it worthwhile. > Could I be of help in your operation? > Welcome. The three decades of journalistic experience should give you the thick skin needed for copng with hostile edits. You probably know the hot-button items that are best avoided. Genealogy tends to be a discouraged pursuit, since it tends to produce lists of people that are of interest only to limited audiences. but general contributions about how it's done are worthwhile. There is much in what you say that can produce valuable articles, so as a final piece of advice I would say, "Just pitch in, and do it." Eclecticology From cwitty at newtonlabs.com Mon Jan 19 19:46:09 2004 From: cwitty at newtonlabs.com (Carl Witty) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:46:09 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list In-Reply-To: <200401180320.31352.maveric149@yahoo.com> References: <200401180320.31352.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1074540523.3851.1.camel@flare> On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 03:20, Daniel Mayer wrote: > Sannse wrote: > >I think we really need that mailing list - it's very difficult to follow > >developments and discusions at the moment. > > I was thinking of several. A mediation-l that all mediators would be > subscribed to (not sure if this should be a members only, private list), and > a series of mediation-# lists that each would be used for a specific > mediation. These would definitely be private and members only. They would > also not have a publicly available archive. All list members of these > numbered lists would be automatically un-subscribed after the mediation is > over. The list would then be used for the next mediation. Be careful to make sure that the participants in the "new" mediation-57 can't access the archives from the previous mediation-57. (Maybe it would be better to never reuse these mailing lists -- if, of course, we use mailing lists at all.) Carl Witty From grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk Mon Jan 19 19:50:13 2004 From: grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk (Graham Burnett) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:50:13 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. References: <20040119193919.A85C6B830@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <00df01c3dec5$7a3f7ad0$67b02252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 07:54:43 -0800 (PST) From: Robert Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org Message-ID: <20040119155443.59339.qmail at web20308.mail.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Nat, > >I do disagree with RK calling anyone he dislikes a Nazi, > >but that's a separate issue. > I did no such thing. Ah so you didn't call the project a 'Nazipedia'? I must have imagined that then. Graham (quercus robur) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.560 / Virus Database: 352 - Release Date: 08/01/2004 From littledanehren at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 20:50:27 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 12:50:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. In-Reply-To: <400C2B97.40502@telus.net> Message-ID: <20040119205027.70809.qmail@web41811.mail.yahoo.com> > And > please don't confuse > anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. > > Ec Although you're right that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are different, you're not likely to get very far just saying it considering the recent New Yorker cover article saying the opposite. Even if someone in Wikipedia is anti-semetic, unless he or she is making threats, I don't see why any of it is Wikipedia's buisness. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From demolli at unice.fr Mon Jan 19 20:55:51 2004 From: demolli at unice.fr (Eric Demolli) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 21:55:51 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism References: <200401182215.35624.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <008d01c3dece$9fff16f0$0102a8c0@bidouille> I would suggest to avoid the world terrorist to qualify people. After all people change Arafat was a terrorist Menahem Begin was also a terrorist before being a respected politician. A lot of ex-OAS members are today well respected man in France but were clearly terrorists during the Algerian war. Even if I'm quite sure than OBL is a terrorrist and will stay a terrorist until the end of is life (is he's still alive), qualifying someone as terrorist in is bio is implies a strong moral judgement. If you were terrorist at 20 are you still a terrorist at 60 ? A terrorist act can be defined in a neutral way. They are obviously terrorist acts. The 9/11 is a terrorist action OBL is responsible for several terrorist acts. I hope I want be misunderstood, I'm not really at ease when I try to express my POV on this subject in English. Eric Demolli . ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Mayer" To: Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 7:15 AM Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism > Toby Bartels wrote: > >I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out, > >but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute > >when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement. > >This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion. > >And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position > >is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement. > > And there is nothing wrong with making the statement better, It makes for a > better article. > > >It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say > >that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a > >terrorist. > > Why? Some things just go without saying because they are so pervasive. That is > common sense. Taking out attributed references to OBL being a terrorist and > then having to prove that he is (or is widely regarded as so) in order to > have those references put back it, would be like having to defend statements > in our article on the Apollo moon landings that indicate that they actually > happened. > > When things go against common sense like that the burden of proof should be on > the opposing party. And don't give my any of the relativistic crap stating > that there is no such thing as common sense - I don't buy it in this case. We > needn't entertain the the ravings of every kook by having to defend very > obvious things. > > >In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the > >west", and Ec may not know it in any case. OK, so we're > >wrong! But this is where NPOV comes in and says > >"If people don't agree on the claim, then state the > >reasons instead." Common knowledge cannot replace > >NPOV when it's not, in fact, common. > > That's all nice and academic, but has little to do over the fact the OBL is > widely considered to be a terrorist in West. We could even add *especially* > in the United States too. Sorry, but polls don't exist for everything - why > would somebody think to have a poll on such an obvious thing? But his article > last time I saw it stated that he was the head of Al-Queda, which is widely > regarded as terrorist organization in the West. That is OK (but not ideal) > with me. > > The same question applied to other people, such as Arafat, would be much less > clear cut. Arafat at one time was considered to be a terrorist, but I've > seen far fewer remarks to that effect since he changed hats from head of the > PLA to the PLO. So we could not state "in the West Arafat is widely > considered a terrorist", because that would not be true (unless you parse > "widely" liberally). > > -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Mon Jan 19 22:43:22 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:43:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Any idea on when Wikipedia will be useable again? In-Reply-To: <1074540523.3851.1.camel@flare> Message-ID: <20040119224322.61277.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> I can get to the front page, and I can click on links, but I can't search, I can't bring up my contributions page or Recent Changes, and when I change something and save it, my browser dies, but the save seems to take. RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040119/fbfdb914/attachment.htm From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Mon Jan 19 22:50:32 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:50:32 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Any idea on when Wikipedia will be useable again? In-Reply-To: <20040119224322.61277.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040119224322.61277.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400C5F38.40001@rufus.d2g.com> Rick wrote: > I can get to the front page, and I can click on links, but I can't > search, I can't bring up my contributions page or Recent Changes, and > when I change something and save it, my browser dies, but the save > seems to take. If you've been reading Jimbo's mailing list posts, you'd know the answer. =] Probably tomorrow sometime, from what I understand, since some equipment is being installed tonight. -Mark From jwales at bomis.com Mon Jan 19 23:37:31 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:37:31 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Bylaws Message-ID: <20040119233707.GD23339@joey.bomis.com> Accessible now from http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/ The link is on the left hand side. From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 20 00:03:15 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:03:15 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism Message-ID: <200401191603.15525.maveric149@yahoo.com> zero wrote: Daniel Mayer wrote: >> On the other hand the fact that a great many people regard >> OBL to be a terrorist is one of the big reasons why he is >> famous. > >No, most of his fame is due to his organizing a couple of >planes to fly into the WTC. Some is due to his other attacks. Hello!! Slamming civilian commercial jets into civilian office buildings killing thousands and destroying a national icon is terrorism no matter how you parse it! I for one was depressed for a month after I saw the towers fall on live television even though I live on the opposite coast and do not directly know a single person killed that day. That's terrorism. The attack on the Pentagon is only half terrorism by some interpretations due to the fact that the Pentagon itself is a military target. Flight 93 also may or may not be considered terrorism based on ones own interpretation. The people on the plane were certainly innocent civilians, however (except for the suicide hijackers of course). But the WTC attack was certainly a terrorist act. That makes whoever planned them a terrorist. Since we do not know for certain that OBL did in fact plan them, we can only state, as fact, that the suicide hijackers in the WTC attack were terrorists. OBL is just widely considered to be a terrorist since he is the number one mastermind suspect. -- mav From maveric149 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 20 00:24:23 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:24:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism Message-ID: <200401191624.23634.maveric149@yahoo.com> Eric Demolli wrote: >I would suggest to avoid the world terrorist to qualify people. >After all people change Arafat was a terrorist Menahem Begin >was also a terrorist before being a respected politician. If and when the prevailing public perception of a person changes, then we edit the article about them to reflect the change. >The 9/11 is a terrorist action OBL is responsible for >several terrorist acts. Actually I don't like that sentence: We don't know for certain (beyond a reasonable doubt) that OBL was the mastermind of 9/11. So juxtaposing '9/11 is a terrorist action' (a fact as far as the WTC part is concerned) and 'OBL is responsible for several terrorist acts' (not sure if this is known for certain), leads the reader, IMO, to surmise that OBL is a terrorist and is - by implication - responsible for the 9/11 attack. I don't think there is enough information for us to imply such a thing. We must therefore attribute POVs to their adherents. So we could say that the U.S. Justice Department consideres OBL as the number one suspect in mastermining the 9/11 attacks and that in the West (especially in the United States) he is widely regarded as a terrorist (it would be nice to have polls on that, but I don't think they exist). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From ebeins at hotmail.com Tue Jan 20 01:52:37 2004 From: ebeins at hotmail.com (Menchi) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:52:37 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Volunteering my assistance References: Message-ID: Just come! Just write! Just do it! :-) Do not hesitate. ___________________________ Menchi From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Tue Jan 20 09:40:58 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:40:58 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152095@backupserv.queens.harley> You are most welcome to help. Go to any page in which you have an interest. Click on the link which says "edit this page" towards the bottom of all pages. An edit box will appear. Just start typing. In the edit summary box state that you are a new user and ask for formatting help. You will find the community very willing to help. If you like Wikipedia try logging in. You do not have to give any personal info. You don't even have to give an email address if you don't want to. You can use your real name like I do or give a pseudo name if you prefer. Let me know if you need any more help. Theresa Knott -----Original Message----- From: Timothy R. Matas [mailto:church at classicnet.net] Sent: 19 January 2004 15:29 To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Volunteering my assistance Good morning! I am a degreed journalist with three decades of experience. I have minors in math, poly sci, English and general science. In addition I have an extensive back ground in the Christian religion, have taking technical courses, courses in fire fighting and police science and for eight years took classes (without credit) in agriculture and land/water management. I can read well out loud but have trouble absorbing, however; anything I have ever been told that I felt was significant, I can recall -- that includes numbers, laws, reasons etc. I was rendered disabled by a medical doctor and now have extra time on my hands. I love to write, am working on a book, become inspired to write a poem every year or so and would like to be a regular contributor to your fine project. I am a genealogist and have side of my family traced back to 1726. My aim is the truth and perfection so I welcome those who would edit my work for that improves me. It is my belief that one should be either learning or teaching most of one's life in order to make it worthwhile. Could I be of help in your operation? Sincerely, Tim R. Matas 104 S. Buckeye Abilene, an. 67410 785-263-0415 Evenings are the best time to call church at classicnet.net _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From kwang at kwang.org Tue Jan 20 11:28:57 2004 From: kwang at kwang.org (Kent Wang) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 05:28:57 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis Message-ID: <017c01c3df48$9b0b3c30$c800a8c0@eclipse> Dear all, I am very enthusiastic about the concept of wikis and think that it is The Next Big Thing since blogs (though I hate blogs). Unfortunately wikis are still in an immature stage and only a small portion of technology enthusiasts are aware of them; I'm a very active web developer and only a few months ago was introduced to Wikipedia. Therefore I propose that a website be created - let's call it WikiWorld for now - that is dedicated to news about wikis and wiki software. Important subjects about the application of wikis as a corporate or an egalitarian could be discussed on WikiWorld forums. Although I am the one proposing this project I'm afraid I do not have the time to create and administrate such a site (video games, parties, reading Wikipedia, etc). But I can think of no one but the chaps behind the largest wiki in the world to found this project. The only disadvantage I can think of to Wikimedia's involvement is impartiality, but the alternative - a totally neutral party - would lack the not insignificant experience that Wales, et al wield. I eagerly await everyone's comments on this idea. Kent Wang From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 20 11:49:22 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:49:22 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis References: <017c01c3df48$9b0b3c30$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <003401c3df4b$720f1c40$5f000450@Galasien> Kent Wang wrote > Therefore I propose that a website be created - let's call it WikiWorld > for now - that is dedicated to news about wikis and wiki software. Kent, you might want to look first at http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiInTheNews on the Meatball Wiki site, for some perspective. My guess is that 'promoting' wiki is still an unsolved problem. The reasons being that the concept doesn't make anyone money, nor save them time; in fact, just the opposite. Charles From kwang at kwang.org Tue Jan 20 12:14:55 2004 From: kwang at kwang.org (Kent Wang) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 06:14:55 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis In-Reply-To: <20040120120005.1AC75B846@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <017d01c3df4f$06f49ad0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Charles, That is indeed a good page and perhaps the primary contributors of that wikipage would be interested in this proposal. But it is lacking more comprehensive features like discussion pages and a more news-appropriate layout, e.g. Slashdot. Surely The Next Big Thing deserves more than just a wikipage? The role of WikiWorld in the promotion of wikis can be as much as Slashdot is in the promotion of technology - in other words, not very much at all; I see this project primarily as a centralized source for those already interested in wikis. I've thrice made comparisons to Slashdot with good reason; what I imagine would be very much a news site just like Slashdot, simply with a narrow focus on wiki technology. Kent Wang P.S. - Thanks for your late-hour response. You must be a night owl, an early-riser or live in a different timezone! ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:49:22 -0000 From: "Charles Matthews" Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis To: "English Wikipedia" Message-ID: <003401c3df4b$720f1c40$5f000450 at Galasien> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Kent Wang wrote > Therefore I propose that a website be created - let's call it WikiWorld > for now - that is dedicated to news about wikis and wiki software. Kent, you might want to look first at http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiInTheNews on the Meatball Wiki site, for some perspective. My guess is that 'promoting' wiki is still an unsolved problem. The reasons being that the concept doesn't make anyone money, nor save them time; in fact, just the opposite. Charles ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 81 *************************************** From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 20 12:22:50 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 12:22:50 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis References: <017d01c3df4f$06f49ad0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <003b01c3df50$1ee381f0$5f000450@Galasien> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kent Wang" To: Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 12:14 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis > Charles, > > That is indeed a good page and perhaps the primary contributors of that > wikipage would be interested in this proposal. But it is lacking more > comprehensive features like discussion pages and a more news-appropriate > layout, e.g. Slashdot. Surely The Next Big Thing deserves more than just > a wikipage? > > The role of WikiWorld in the promotion of wikis can be as much as > Slashdot is in the promotion of technology - in other words, not very > much at all; I see this project primarily as a centralized source for > those already interested in wikis. > > I've thrice made comparisons to Slashdot with good reason; what I > imagine would be very much a news site just like Slashdot, simply with a > narrow focus on wiki technology. > > Kent Wang > > P.S. - Thanks for your late-hour response. You must be a night owl, an > early-riser or live in a different timezone! > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:49:22 -0000 > From: "Charles Matthews" > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis > To: "English Wikipedia" > Message-ID: <003401c3df4b$720f1c40$5f000450 at Galasien> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Kent Wang wrote > > > Therefore I propose that a website be created - let's call it > WikiWorld > > for now - that is dedicated to news about wikis and wiki software. > > Kent, you might want to look first at > > http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiInTheNews > > on the Meatball Wiki site, for some perspective. > > My guess is that 'promoting' wiki is still an unsolved problem. The > reasons > being that the concept doesn't make anyone money, nor save them time; in > fact, just the opposite. > > Charles > > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 81 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 20 12:24:28 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 12:24:28 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis References: <017d01c3df4f$06f49ad0$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <004001c3df50$5928a700$5f000450@Galasien> Kent Wang wrote > P.S. - Thanks for your late-hour response. You must be a night owl, an > early-riser or live in a different timezone! I'm in the UK. (Sorry about unedited reply sent just before this.) Charles From jheiskan at welho.com Tue Jan 20 13:43:10 2004 From: jheiskan at welho.com (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:43:10 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Time to clean out my closet. Message-ID: <1074606497.30672.57.camel@myhome.home> Okay. I an committed. I will post this. First off. The whole situation about the mediation committee has two/three nasty connotations. There is an advertisement with a dog that says: "Do as we like, or the dog dies!" I (personally) think that the mediation committee is under a similar threat, and for similar reasons. The truth is that we should not upholdd the mediation committee any longer than it has a practical justification. The puppy has to catch the rabbit, or off to the butchers with it!! I personally have no idea why Jimbo qualified me for the mediation committee. Maybe perhaps because to do otherwise would mean that he would have to explain any and all other similar decicions. I know Angela and Stevertigo from the process of bringing up the cleanup process. My own intent was to improve the process of wikipedia in a manner that would remain an improvement, rather than a shackle on its further developement. I hope I can restrain myself into not playing any part in its further developement. Geoff (llwyrch) I know not at all. Sannse (did I misspell the username?) I know even less, except a vague, and I must claim irrelevant impression (no justification, please lambast me if it is crappy; I will be the last person to require definitive determination) that she is a female. Uncle Ed; I personally do not trust, even though I have seen his actions and speech on this forum. To me he is much like I see myself; an unsolved equation, maybe negative, maybe positive, maybe the very zero point of the equation... Anthere: I would be much more comfortable about contributing in the meditiation group, if you were not a member of it! PLEASE anthere, think long before getting offended by the previous sentence! I think you can perform a valuable part in forming the limitations of the mediation group, but I honestly don't see that you can offer anything positive to it's developement as a member of it. Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040120/65746b46/attachment.htm From sheldon.rampton at verizon.net Tue Jan 20 14:20:17 2004 From: sheldon.rampton at verizon.net (Sheldon Rampton) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 08:20:17 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal: News site about wikis In-Reply-To: <20040120120005.1AC75B846@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040120120005.1AC75B846@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Charles Matthews wrote: >My guess is that 'promoting' wiki is still an unsolved problem. The reasons >being that the concept doesn't make anyone money, nor save them time; in >fact, just the opposite. Actually, the Wikipedia *can* save time. It has saved time for me on occasion. I use it the way I'd use a non-wiki encyclopedia, to look up information about topics. Recently, for example, I was doing some writing and research about the California recall election, and I used the Wikipedia article on Arnold Schwarzenegger to look up some basic facts about his life and career, such as the names of movies in which he appeared. Of course, I could have found that information elsewhere on the web by doing a Google search, but the Wikipedia had already pulled it together in a neat little synthesized summary, saving me the time it would take to wade through several dozen Google hits looking for the same information. -- -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception -------------------------------- From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 20 15:27:57 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:27:57 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, and our Neutral Point of View policy Message-ID: Maveric said, > Slamming civilian commercial jets into civilian office > buildings killing thousands and destroying a national icon > is terrorism no matter how you parse it! I for one was > depressed for a month after I saw the towers fall on live > television even though I live on the opposite coast and do > not directly know a single person killed that day. That's > terrorism. > > The attack on the Pentagon is only half terrorism by some > interpretations due to the fact that the Pentagon itself is > a military target. Even if I agree with you, it's still nothing more than your point of view (POV) and mine. Even if 50% or 80% or 95% of Americans (or Westerners in general) maintain this POV, it's still a "point of view". There is no universally agree-upon definition of terrorism, no formula into which we can "plug in" some values to distinguish what as "really" terrorism and what isn't. Even formulas which mention "innocent people" fail, because of a hot dispute over who is "innocent". Are anonymous Israeli civilians riding a bus or sitting in a caf? "innocent", from the perspective of the group which sends a 'human bomb' on a 'mission' to blow them up? You and I may think so, but I gather that the Arab nationalist groups which the US labels "terrorist" regard these civilians as somehow complicit in the "crimes" of their regime. Anyway, the solution is to back away from anything that smacks of official Wikipedia endorsement, when there is a hot controversy. Just figure out as accurately as we can, which groups of people (like "Americans" or "Westerners") espouse a particular POV, and say that they espouse it. The great thing about Wikipedia is that it does NOT have any particular slant on current events or history. We can get into all the in's and out's of public opinion. A conservative news outlet or radio commentator or historian can get away with cherishing a bias. He can easily twist things to support his POV; easiest way is to quote a lot of people who agree with you and omit mention of (or say nasty discrediting things about) anyone who disagrees. Liberals can (and do) join in the fun, too! Unlike the Bush Administration or the New York Times, this revolutionary, ground-breaking, historically unique scholarly project -- Wikipedia -- has no axe to grind, no point of view to defend. So we can delve into the issues and report accurately about all the major and minor variations of thought on any subject, no matter how controversial. This is so wonderful, that maybe some of us are still reeling from the shock of such freedom and haven't figured out how to handle it. I'm still trying to get a grip on it, myself. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Tue Jan 20 15:54:17 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:54:17 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522A9@backupserv.queens.harley> I'm sorry but I accidentally wiped my old emails. Did we decide to do anything about Mr Natural Health ? Theresa From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Tue Jan 20 16:06:59 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 08:06:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A Useful Insight on Disputes Message-ID: Following a flamewar on one of my other mailling lists (& no, I'm still not sure what it's all about), someone posted the following link concerning these kinds of arguments: http://members.aol.com/intwg/flamewars.htm (Yes, sometimes there is useful information on AOL.) Something to consider next time someone appears to be acting like a pest. Geoff From billy.mills at thomson.com Tue Jan 20 16:09:58 2004 From: billy.mills at thomson.com (Mills, Billy) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:09:58 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health Message-ID: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE05903792@eagle.netg.ie> New to the list, so I missed previous discussion, but we need to do something, I think. Billy Mills -----Original Message----- From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] Sent: 20 January 2004 15:54 To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health I'm sorry but I accidentally wiped my old emails. Did we decide to do anything about Mr Natural Health ? Theresa _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040120/a38ab091/attachment.htm From tarquin at planetunreal.com Tue Jan 20 16:36:45 2004 From: tarquin at planetunreal.com (tarquin) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:36:45 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: News site about wikis In-Reply-To: <017c01c3df48$9b0b3c30$c800a8c0@eclipse> References: <017c01c3df48$9b0b3c30$c800a8c0@eclipse> Message-ID: <400D591D.6040104@planetunreal.com> Kent Wang wrote: >Therefore I propose that a website be created - let's call it WikiWorld >for now - that is dedicated to news about wikis and wiki software. >Important subjects about the application of wikis as a corporate or an >egalitarian could be discussed on WikiWorld forums. > > Sounds fun, but Wikipedia / Wikimedia is probably not the place to do it. We may the largest wikis, but we are just one corner of wikispace, and a very specific application of the wiki concept at that. Talk to people at MeatBall maybe? From fredbaud at ctelco.net Tue Jan 20 17:00:48 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:00:48 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522A9@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: We decided we better get busy organizing the mediation and arbitration committees. If you are having trouble please ask Mr. Natural Health and the Mediation committee for Mediation. Fred Bauder > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:54:17 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health > > I'm sorry but I accidentally wiped my old emails. Did we decide to do > anything about Mr Natural Health ? > > Theresa > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 20 17:03:33 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 12:03:33 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. Message-ID: I think it's too scary to be tolerated, if someone declares themselves to be a "Nazi", especially when publicly e-mailing a person of Jewish ancestry. It's an implicit threat, if one takes "Nazi" as one who wishes or intends to kill as many Jews as he can lay his hands on. Let's come up with a policy for this. Ed Poor From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 20 18:04:32 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:04:32 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Interpersonal conflicts on Wikipedia (should be: One Big Happy Family) Message-ID: The definitive respones to all the "attacks", "counterattacks" and "judgments" can be found here: http://www.unitedmedia.com/creators/onebighappy/archive/images/onebighap py20040111045668.gif Uncle Ed From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 20 18:06:34 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:06:34 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Another alternative to interpersonal conflict Message-ID: http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/roseisrose/archive/images/roseisrose20 040112199317.gif From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 20 18:24:24 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:24:24 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Two servers (for speed) Message-ID: Maybe we need 2 database servers: one for reading and writing articles; the other for maintenance functions, occasional testing, updating watchlists, lengthy searches, etc. That way most users would get a quick response most of the time. And people doing time-consuming stuff wouldn't slow down the rest of us. Ed Poor Software Architect Original Ideal Systems From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 20 19:20:11 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:20:11 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Time to clean out my closet. References: <1074606497.30672.57.camel@myhome.home> Message-ID: <400D7F6B.2010409@yahoo.com> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen a ?crit: > > Okay. I an committed. I will post this. This was courageous. I am glad you finally left your silence. > First off. The whole situation about the mediation > committee has two/three nasty connotations. > > There is an advertisement with a dog that says: > "Do as we like, or the dog dies!" Why ? Anyone is welcome to go on helping resolving conflicts. Ideally, no one should ever reach these two stages. It is also up to you to make it that it never happen. Second, you are also supposed to help build something decent with your own ideas. I am not aware that the committee did not listen to you, since you said nothing, but complain when I tried to fix some pages. I also made comments to your proposal on meta, and you never answered these comments. Is not that a bit easy of you to write such a comment ? How do you expect things to go on and to improve if you stay silent but to criticize ? > I (personally) think that the mediation committee > is under a similar threat, and for similar reasons. > > The truth is that we should not upholdd the mediation > committee any longer than it has a practical > justification. Agreed. But right now, there is justification. So are you talking about a fluttery future ? > The puppy has to catch the rabbit, or off to the > butchers with it!! You do not even give time for the puppy to born... > I personally have no idea why Jimbo qualified me for the > mediation committee. Maybe perhaps because to do otherwise > would mean that he would have to explain any and all other > similar decicions. I would tend to say because you ask... Did you ask ? But if you want not to have anything to do with that, just say you are not interested. If you want to have something to do with arbitration, just ask for that. > I know Angela and Stevertigo from the process of bringing > up the cleanup process. My own intent was to improve the > process of wikipedia in a manner that would remain an > improvement, rather than a shackle on its further > developement. I hope I can restrain myself into not > playing any part in its further developement. ? You made a great job on the meta pages. What changed between december and january ? Are you just unhappy because the page about monitoring is not something some of us seem to agree with ? Is that the problem ? What is the problem ? > Geoff (llwyrch) I know not at all. It was the perfect opportunity to get to know him :-) > Sannse (did I misspell the username?) I know even less, > except a vague, and I must claim irrelevant > impression (no justification, please lambast me if it > is crappy; I will be the last person to require definitive > determination) that she is a female. Yes, she is. > Uncle Ed; I personally do not trust, even though I have seen > his actions and speech on this forum. To me he is much like > I see myself; an unsolved equation, maybe negative, maybe > positive, maybe the very zero point of the equation... You do not see you in a very positive manner. If you think other people should be part of it, do you suggested them to be ? > Anthere: I would be much more comfortable about contributing > in the meditiation group, if you were not a member of it! > > PLEASE anthere, think long before getting offended by the > previous sentence! I think you can perform a valuable part > in forming the limitations of the mediation group, but I > honestly don't see that you can offer anything positive to > it's developement as a member of it. I am currently failing to see how I could not be offended by this statement, as you provide no justification for such a comment. In any cases, you might have noticed that my name was not in the current list. So, feel free to join if this is the main point stopping you. If the developpement of such a project shall be impaired by my presence, I will certainly stop participating in it. I think I gave my reasons for participating to its development, and those who read them should understand the limits it will inherently put. Did you read what I wrote ? If so, what is the sense in what you write here ? Honestly, I do not think you can make such statements without more input. At least to me privately. I think that would be fair. > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) I am sorry you feel so disinchanted From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 20 20:41:12 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:41:12 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Toxins are good for you Message-ID: Sheldon, Since you are the author of "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You", I wonder what your considered opinion is of hormesis. Too much arsenic will kill you, but does that mean the less the better? Advocates of the hormesis theory say that the optimum amount of arsenic and some other stuff is significantly greater than zero. Kind of like, a no-salt diet is bad for you, because that leads to dehydration or something (I don't know the language of science as well as you). But too much salt is bad, too. Or, like, not enough water and you die of thirst, but drinking gallons and gallons of can kill ya. Before I start [[Hormesis]], I'd like to hear from someone we can trust: an expert. Ed Poor From viajero at quilombo.nl Tue Jan 20 21:09:57 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 22:09:57 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, and our Neutral Point of View policy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01/20/04 at 10:27 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > Unlike the Bush Administration or the New York Times, this > revolutionary, ground-breaking, historically unique scholarly project > -- Wikipedia -- has no axe to grind, no point of view to defend. The NYT would no doubt make the same claim -- that it has no axe to grind. V. From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 20 21:54:27 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:54:27 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, and our Neutral Point of View policy References: Message-ID: <400DA393.7060801@telus.net> Viajero wrote: >On 01/20/04 at 10:27 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" said: > >>Unlike the Bush Administration or the New York Times, this >>revolutionary, ground-breaking, historically unique scholarly project >>-- Wikipedia -- has no axe to grind, no point of view to defend. >> >The NYT would no doubt make the same claim -- that it has no axe to grind. > You would have a hard time convincing the trees of that. :-) Ec From lywrch at agora.rdrop.com Tue Jan 20 23:19:12 2004 From: lywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:19:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Time to clean out my closet. In-Reply-To: <1074606497.30672.57.camel@myhome.home> Message-ID: On 20 Jan 2004, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Okay. I an committed. I will post this. > > First off. The whole situation about the mediation > committee has two/three nasty connotations. > > There is an advertisement with a dog that says: > "Do as we like, or the dog dies!" > I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that the mediation committee is under a death threat, or that people with disagreements must seek mediation? AFAIK, mediation is entirely voluntary. It's a way to cut thru the misunderstandings & try to communicate with other people. The only time either mediation or arbitration could be seen as a threat is if a contributor refuses all entreaties to "explain her/his side", & continues with troubling behavior, e.g., blanking certain pages. But since we are supposed to be all working together here on Wikipedia, refusing to talk to the other contributors would seem to be an odd way to behave. > [snip] > > I personally have no idea why Jimbo qualified me for the > mediation committee. Maybe perhaps because to do otherwise > would mean that he would have to explain any and all other > similar decicions. Perhaps he thought you'd be good at mediating? > [snip] > > Geoff (llwyrch) I know not at all. I sent Jimbo a private letter & volunteered for the task. As for knowing me, I have posted to the wiki-EN list a bit, & have stated my opinions on a few Talk: pages. > [snipping a number of evalutations] I'm not sure there is any reason why we should like each other. It will definitely benefit us all if we act respectfully towards one another, though. The committee is a list of people who are willing to try to keep people talking to each other, to find some kind of common ground, & keep people from engaging in wasteful activities like reversion & edit wars. I would imagine if two people wanted mediation, but with a person who wasn't a member of the committee, that there would be no problem with their choice -- as long as that person was willing to mediate. Some people won't ever be happy with how things are at Wikipedia. Mediation is (hopefully) a way to address those folks who could be happy here. Geoff From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 00:13:41 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:13:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040121001341.55576.qmail@web21507.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > I think it's too scary to be tolerated, if someone declares > themselves > to be a "Nazi", especially when publicly e-mailing a person of Jewish > ancestry. It's an implicit threat, if one takes "Nazi" as one who > wishes or intends to kill as many Jews as he can lay his hands on. I think that's way overboard. This "threat" would be laughed out of court. A real threat is when someone says "I'm going to ..", or "watch your back", or "I know where you live", or a similar formulation. If someone made such a real threat on WP then the appropriate response would be to call the cops. Just saying "I'm a Nazi" is not a threat without additional words that suggest action towards the "threatened" person. Actually I find the idea that calling oneself a Nazi is a worse offence than calling someone else a Nazi to be astonishing. This is also true in law, as calling someone else a Nazi is libel but calling oneself a Nazi is perfectly legal. > Let's come up with a policy for this. Obviously personal threats cannot be tolerated. Nor can criminal libels. Both should be capital offences. If some litigous person one day decides to sue WP for publishing a libel against him/herself, just the costs will close us down even if the case is weak. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 00:31:57 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:31:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, Message-ID: <20040121003157.36D74B826@mail.wikipedia.org> and our Neutral Point of View policy Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:30:58 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200401201630.58342.maveric149 at yahoo.com> Status: RO X-Status: Q X-KMail-EncryptionState: X-KMail-SignatureState: Ed wrote: >Even if I agree with you, it's still nothing more than your >point of view (POV) and mine. Even if 50% or 80% or 95% of >Americans (or Westerners in general) maintain this POV, it's >still a "point of view". Ed, I know you mean well, but you are way off base here since nobody but extreme kooks and liars seriously state that the WTC attack was not terrorism (the other attacks on that day, as I said, are less clear). NPOV does not mandate that extreme minority views be expressed to the same extent - given the same exposure - as other views. It just states that, were relevant, those views can and should be explained and attributed. Nearly everything is disputed by somebody, but we only attribute POVs and explain them when those POVs are significant and relevant to what we are talking about. That is why the Reciprocal System of Theory (a crank theory) does not get a mention in our main articles on physics. Nor does the existence of that "theory" make us hedge our statements in the main physics articles that directly relate to RST's claims. However, mentioning RST in an article on alternative theories of physics is very relevant to the topic and should be mentioned. Then, if anything, the alternative theories article would be the one linked from the main physics article. So unless there is a serious controversy in the outside world over a fact or a statement as it relates to the article subject, then we just call a spade a spade. >There is no universally agree-upon definition of terrorism, no >formula into which we can "plug in" some values to distinguish >what as "really" terrorism and what isn't. No, but all of ones I know of that have any significance would classify the WTC attacks as terrorism. Other cases are less clear. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 00:40:40 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:40:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, In-Reply-To: <20040121003157.36D74B826@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040121004040.87660.qmail@web21503.mail.yahoo.com> Since there seems to be some confusion over it, let me say that the WTC attack was obviously terrorism in my opinion. I did not ever say or imply that it wasn't. Apparently the point I was making was too subtle, but I don't want to repeat it. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Wed Jan 21 01:27:42 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 01:27:42 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism Message-ID: <400DD58E.5513.18ABE80@localhost> zero wrote: Daniel Mayer wrote: >> On the other hand the fact that a great many people regard >> OBL to be a terrorist is one of the big reasons why he is >> famous. > >No, most of his fame is due to his organizing a couple of >planes to fly into the WTC. Some is due to his other attacks. I'd just like to show the broader implications of Zero's point here, because I recognise the similarity to another argument put on the ill-fated "list of heterosexuals" page. There, Oliver P discussed Errol Flynn, who had been listed as an example of a famous heterosexual. Oliver pointed out that Errol was actually famous for his promiscuity, not his heterosexuality. He did this by pointing out that if Errol had been a promiscuous bisexual or a promiscuous homosexual, he would still have been famous. Similarly, Zero is making a similar "what if?" point. Suppose that Osama bin Laden was not a terrorist, but had still crashed two aircraft into the WTC. Perhaps he wrote some buggy software, or was an incompetent air traffic controller, or turned on his mobile phone in the cabin, or was a drunk pilot. He'd still be a household name. Kill three thousand people in a single day, and you're going to be famous, no matter how you do it. By contrast, suppose that Osama bin Laden had not crashed two aircraft into the WTC, but was a terrorist. With the exception of people interested in Middle East politics, nobody would know who he was. Indeed, prior to attacking the WTC, Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, and wasn't famous enough to get onto "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here". Being regarded as a terrorist doesn't get you a lot of fame. There must be hundreds of ex-IRA members wandering about Ireland as we speak, and I don't know any of their names. Fame comes from what you DO. How you are regarded also comes from what you do. However, fame does not come from how you are regarded (well, I guess porn stars are maybe an exception). All of this discussion is of course completely irrelevant to the vital debate of whether or not Osama bin Laden is in fact a porn star. -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From littledanehren at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 03:21:00 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:21:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, and our Neutral Point of View policy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040121032100.69301.qmail@web41811.mail.yahoo.com> --- Viajero wrote: > On 01/20/04 at 10:27 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" > said: > > > Unlike the Bush Administration or the New York > Times, this > > revolutionary, ground-breaking, historically > unique scholarly project > > -- Wikipedia -- has no axe to grind, no point of > view to defend. > > The NYT would no doubt make the same claim -- that > it has no axe to grind. > > > V. Exactly what point of view is the NYT pushing, then? LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From littledanehren at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 03:23:58 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:23:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Toxins are good for you In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040121032358.92264.qmail@web41803.mail.yahoo.com> "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > Sheldon, > > Since you are the author of "Toxic Sludge Is Good > For You", I wonder > what your considered opinion is of hormesis. Too > much arsenic will kill > you, but does that mean the less the better? > Advocates of the hormesis > theory say that the optimum amount of arsenic and > some other stuff is > significantly greater than zero. > > Kind of like, a no-salt diet is bad for you, because > that leads to > dehydration or something (I don't know the language > of science as well > as you). But too much salt is bad, too. > > Or, like, not enough water and you die of thirst, > but drinking gallons > and gallons of can kill ya. > > Before I start [[Hormesis]], I'd like to hear from > someone we can trust: > an expert. > > Ed Poor I'm sure you're aware that hormesis is still largely unproven. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From sheldon.rampton at verizon.net Wed Jan 21 04:50:26 2004 From: sheldon.rampton at verizon.net (Sheldon Rampton) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 22:50:26 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Toxins are good for you In-Reply-To: <20040120232143.B743DB826@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040120232143.B743DB826@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Ed Poor wrote: >Since you are the author of "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You", I wonder >what your considered opinion is of hormesis. [SNIP] >Before I start [[Hormesis]], I'd like to hear from someone we can trust: >an expert. I'm not a medical expert or a scientist, so it wouldn't be right for me to claim expertise about this topic. I do have some opinions, however. I've shared my opinions with Ed off-list because I don't think this topic is likely to be of much interest to the rest of the members of this list. -- -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception -------------------------------- From jheiskan at welho.com Wed Jan 21 04:54:15 2004 From: jheiskan at welho.com (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 04:54:15 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Time to clean out my closet. In-Reply-To: <400D7F6B.2010409@yahoo.com> References: <1074606497.30672.57.camel@myhome.home> <400D7F6B.2010409@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1074661169.31416.125.camel@myhome.home> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 21:20, Anthere wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen a ?crit: > > Okay. I an committed. I will post this. This was courageous. I am glad you finally left your silence. Thank you. I subtly dislike e-mail bc of its lack of immediacy; a BulletinBoard would be much better. > The puppy has to catch the rabbit, or off to the > butchers with it!! You do not even give time for the puppy to born... I think you misunderstand me. What I wrote was quite confusing, looking at it in hindsight. Allow me to clarify... What I meant was that the whole mediation idea is very much on a trial basis, and can be revoked by Jimbo if it does not pan out. The fact that I _do_ think it will work, does not remove the damoclean sword hanging over the institution. And the conclusion I want to draw from that, is that we have to make every effort to assure that it does not fail, but is such a wonderful success that it need not, and indeed can not be revoked. Every institution that fails its charter is a millstone around the neck of further attempts at founding such at a later time. You made a great job on the meta pages. What changed between december and january ? Are you just unhappy because the page about monitoring is not something some of us seem to agree with ? Is that the problem ? What is the problem ? There is no problem. The silent observer bit was mostly to lend an enchanced perception of legitimacy to the process, and though extremely useful IMO, is _not_ at all crucial. Such a crucial thing though would be who does the mediation and how they are selected to do it, on which see below. My latest bout of inactivity was brought on by a juxtaposition of the server problems, and some personal matters which I will not speak on publicly. The major part were the serverproblems, which manifest themself in a much exacerbated form because of the hardware configuration at my end (basically I have a too small box to surf efficiently). > Uncle Ed; I personally do not trust, even though I have seen > his actions and speech on this forum. To me he is much like > I see myself; an unsolved equation, maybe negative, maybe > positive, maybe the very zero point of the equation... You do not see you in a very positive manner. I try to be brutally honest with myself. BTW, let me emphasize that I _don't_ mistrust my or Ed's ability to a good job as a mediator in the cases for which we are suited but, merely, whether we can do so always, and in every case. A big problem with the mediation process, as it stands is that although those users who know the personalities of the mediators, can choose their mediator accordingly, those who do not (e.g. newcomers), are essentially buying a pig in a poke. (This was a problem BTW, that the proposed silent observer institution would have partially addresssed.) The ideal situation would be such that we have a group of mediators with which it would be possible to just draw lots for the mediation assignment, and always come up with a winner. This means that the question of who we have on the mediation committee is not totally irrelevant. > Anthere: I would be much more comfortable about contributing > in the meditiation group, if you were not a member of it! > > PLEASE anthere, think long before getting offended by the > previous sentence! I think you can perform a valuable part > in forming the limitations of the mediation group, but I > honestly don't see that you can offer anything positive to > it's developement as a member of it. I am currently failing to see how I could not be offended by this statement, as you provide no justification for such a comment. In any cases, you might have noticed that my name was not in the current list. So, feel free to join if this is the main point stopping you. If the developpement of such a project shall be impaired by my presence, I will certainly stop participating in it. I think I gave my reasons for participating to its development, and those who read them should understand the limits it will inherently put. Okay. In clarification, In _most_emphatically_ endorse your input into the development of the mediation process, without which the institution would be at an even more half-finished state than it is currently. What I meant was just to express plainly that you should not actually be chosen as an actual mediator in any disputes. The justification for this is purely your command of english, and no other factor. Part of the problem here lies in the unfinished and unclear mandate of the mediation & arbitration committees. Are they to be purely actors in the process of wikipedia editing, or are they eventually to develop organically into political bodies of their own right? The matter of arbitrators being selected by a vote yearly, would suggest that morphing into a political actor is not totally untenable. If the mediation committee changes into a political body whose function is not solely to effect acts of mediation, your presence on it would be most valuable, but I personally doubt whether it would be useful for it to thus transform itself. Did you read what I wrote ? If so, what is the sense in what you write here ? Honestly, I do not think you can make such statements without more input. At least to me privately. I think that would be fair. I hope the above clarifies my position slightly. > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) I am sorry you feel so disinchanted I am sorry if I left you with the impression that I am disenchanted. This is not the case at all. Although the mediation & arbitration process and institutions have had bit of a handbrake start, I am sure the motor will start revving on all cylinders eventually. With the greatest of respect; as always, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/03907948/attachment.htm From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 21 04:57:52 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:57:52 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522A9@backupserv.queens.harley> References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522A9@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: <200401202357.52877.sascha@pantropy.net> On Tuesday 20 January 2004 10:54 am, KNOTT, T wrote: > I'm sorry but I accidentally wiped my old emails. Did we decide to do > anything about Mr Natural Health ? > > Theresa Unfortunately we decided not to do anything. This is in part due to the fact that no arbitration procedures have been finalised. Oh, and in case anyone is still wondering whether MNH is still making personal attacks - He added the following a couple of minutes ago to [[Talk:Alternative medicine]]. (A couple of disclaimers/notes: I am not at all involved in the talk page of [[Alternative medicine]] - or indeed the article, I have given up on that article because of MNH; The user he attacks is "User:David Gerard") "Are you dense, or are you just not too bright?" This bumps up the documented personal attack count to 12. I shall add a note to that comment referring to [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks.]] Ceterum censeo, Carthaginem esse delendum. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 04:58:34 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:58:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] How long do we have to put up with Mr-Natural-Health? In-Reply-To: <20040121032100.69301.qmail@web41811.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040121045834.30426.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> He blanked the content of [[Wikipedia:Conflicts between users/Mr-Natural-Health]], and said on my Talk page that he will continue to do so. RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040120/4b1e9804/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 05:01:08 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:01:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr Natural Health In-Reply-To: <200401202357.52877.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040121050108.19939.qmail@web60604.mail.yahoo.com> 13. He called me a troll on my Talk page. RickK Sascha Noyes wrote: Oh, and in case anyone is still wondering whether MNH is still making personal attacks - He added the following a couple of minutes ago to [[Talk:Alternative medicine]]. (A couple of disclaimers/notes: I am not at all involved in the talk page of [[Alternative medicine]] - or indeed the article, I have given up on that article because of MNH; The user he attacks is "User:David Gerard") "Are you dense, or are you just not too bright?" This bumps up the documented personal attack count to 12. I shall add a note to that comment referring to [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks.]] --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040120/50473b2e/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 05:12:59 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:12:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again In-Reply-To: <20031103221452.45559.qmail@web12803.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040121051259.34273.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Mr-Natural-Health has indicated on Teresa Knott's Talk page that he has no interest in participating in the Arbitration process. OK, now what? Is he going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040120/4c97e599/attachment.htm From saintonge at telus.net Wed Jan 21 07:40:53 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:40:53 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks,threats, etc. References: <20040121001341.55576.qmail@web21507.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400E2D05.80301@telus.net> zero 0000 wrote: >Obviously personal threats cannot be tolerated. Nor can criminal >libels. Both should be capital offences. > That's an extreme penalty for that. To be consistent with my general objection to the death penalty, I would need to oppose that. >If some litigous person one day >decides to sue WP for publishing a libel against him/herself, just the >costs will close us down even if the case is weak. > They'll do that where many people would so no libel, and often without any reasonalble cause whatsoever. We can do nothing to prevent that. Censoring ourselves to conform with libel chill is a siaervice to free speech. If something is true and factual we should not be afraid to say it. We do still need to be able to know the difference between fact and opinion. Ec From maveric149 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 08:23:17 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:23:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism Message-ID: <200401210023.17835.maveric149@yahoo.com> Martin wrote: >By contrast, suppose that Osama bin Laden had not crashed two aircraft >into the WTC, but was a terrorist. With the exception of people interested in >Middle East politics, nobody would know who he was. Indeed, prior to >attacking the WTC, Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, and wasn't famous >enough to get onto "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here". Not sure about the "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" reference, but OBL was a widely-known terrorist before 9/11. Remember the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and Clinton's response by bombing Al-Queda bases in Afghanistan with cruise missiles? OBL was mentioned many times in reference to that attack as the probable mastermind. In fact his name came-up rather quickly in the news as a possible suspect in the 9/11 attack due to previous exposure. >Similarly, Zero is making a similar "what if?" point. Suppose that Osama >bin Laden was not a terrorist, but had still crashed two aircraft into the >WTC. Perhaps he wrote some buggy software, or was an incompetent >air traffic controller, or turned on his mobile phone in the cabin, or was >a drunk pilot. He'd still be a household name. Kill three thousand people >in a single day, and you're going to be famous, no matter how you do it. Disasters resulting from accidents and incompetence do not result in terror rocking a nation. Intent has a lot to do with that. 'They are targeting us', is massively different from 'what a horrible accident'. Accidents happen, that is part of life. Most people are perfectly fine accepting that and continue to get in their autos every day (which BTW killed 10 times as many people in 2001 than 9/11 did). But when we *know* that others are out to get us; well that has a tendency to change one's life. This added dimension to the loss of human life greatly changes the dynamic of the whole event. It elevates it way beyond terms of just the lives and property that were lost - a whole nation is attacked in a profound and personal way. That's terrorism. >Being regarded as a terrorist doesn't get you a lot of fame. There must be >hundreds of ex-IRA members wandering about Ireland as we speak, and I >don't know any of their names. Yeah, so. Plenty of minor actors in Hollywood too. >Fame comes from what you DO. How you are regarded also comes >from what you do. However, fame does not come from how you are >regarded (well, I guess porn stars are maybe an exception). What terrorists DO is far more than just kill people and destroy property (see above). And just as some actors get better parts and thus become more famous, some terrorists are able to commit higher profile terrorist acts and thus become more famous. But the name of their profession can and should be mentioned in articles about them. Even if it is attributed in cases where there is a significant dispute about that in the outside world. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Wed Jan 21 09:49:50 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152098@backupserv.queens.harley> Rick K wrote: >OK, now what?? Is he going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? Is would seem so. For the time being at least. Note though that most of his edits or now to talk pages rather than article pages, this is because his constant vandalism has got his favourite pages protected. So no real harm is being done to Wikipedia's content. OTOH a great deal of harm is being done to Wikipedia's community. What will newbies think if they come across him? If we allow him to continue to insult us, delete our work, insert POV rants all over the place, and refuse to work with anyone (and I do mean anyone!) then we are condoning his behaviour. Let's face facts. Anyone who has had any dealings with Mr NH knows that we are going to have to ban him sooner or later. I don't mean to be so pessimistic, but he has shown no willingness to cooperate. What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out quickly? In the meantime, I have decided to try and stay away from his rants on talk pages. If he starts editing articles again I will intervene to keep them as NPOV as I can make them, but let him say what he likes on talk pages. I have better things to do with my time than to pander to his attention seeking. Theresa ? From saintonge at telus.net Wed Jan 21 09:55:09 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 01:55:09 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism, certainty, and our Neutral Point of View policy References: Message-ID: <400E4C7D.2000708@telus.net> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >Maveric said, > >>Slamming civilian commercial jets into civilian office >>buildings killing thousands and destroying a national icon >>is terrorism no matter how you parse it! I for one was >>depressed for a month after I saw the towers fall on live >>television even though I live on the opposite coast and do >>not directly know a single person killed that day. That's >>terrorism. >> >Even if I agree with you, it's still nothing more than your >point of view (POV) and mine. Even if 50% or 80% or 95% of >Americans (or Westerners in general) maintain this POV, it's >still a "point of view". > A lot of this comes down to the nature of a point of view. I can sympathize with someone's month-long depression over these events, but I can hardly take that as evidence that someone responsible for events on the opposite coast is a terrorist. The real issue is the distinction between fact and opinion. That it should come up over the application of the word "terrorist" is secondary; it could have come up in relation to many other contentious term. These terms can have either a positive or negative import. Critical thinking is one of the most important elements in the good education of a child. (As strongly as I may believe that, it is still an opinion.) It is important to learn how to read, but that skill is wasted if the child is unable to interpret what he has read and make it meaningful. Critical thinking is also important in evaluating TV toy commercials where the only factual statement contained is often, "Each sold separately." Critical thinking allows a child to think independently even when majority opinion is overwhelming; it gives the child the skill to recognize those dangerous situations when he must say, "No!" The first lesson in critical thinking is to know the difference between a fact and an opinion. Knowing and understanding that distinction is essential to maintaining intellectual rigour; it is important to the scientific method, it is important to the development of an objective and neutral encylopedia such as we claim to be developing. It is most important in the context of evaluating those ideas which we hold most strongly. It is not always easy to distinguish between fact and opinion, and a lot of the agreed facts themselves depend on arbitrary assumptions. Having an undisputed definition of something helps. That definition tends to be lacking in many "-isms" and the "-ists" who practise them. If there is serious opposition to our claim that something is factual, then we would do well to stop treating it as factual. In this regard we can certainly do better than resort to weasel words purporting truth by innuendo. >There is no universally agree-upon definition of terrorism, no >formula into which we can "plug in" some values to distinguish >what as "really" terrorism and what isn't. > That's a big part of the problem. >Even formulas which mention "innocent people" fail, because of >a hot dispute over who is "innocent". Are anonymous Israeli >civilians riding a bus or sitting in a caf"innocent", from >the perspective of the group which sends a 'human bomb' on a >'mission' to blow them up? You and I may think so, but I >gather that the Arab nationalist groups which the US labels >"terrorist" regard these civilians as somehow complicit in the >"crimes" of their regime. > Even "innocent" can be a loaded opinion word used with the intent of evoking an emotional response. Some will only regard the civilians in the occupied lands as complicit, while accepting that those within the internationally recognized borders have a right to be there. >Anyway, the solution is to back away from anything that smacks >of official Wikipedia endorsement, when there is a hot >controversy. Just figure out as accurately as we can, which >groups of people (like "Americans" or "Westerners") espouse a >particular POV, and say that they espouse it. > But simply saying "Americans" is inappropriate when American public opinion is divided. >The great thing about Wikipedia is that it does NOT have any >particular slant on current events or history. We can get into >all the in's and out's of public opinion. A conservative news >outlet or radio commentator or historian can get away with >cherishing a bias. He can easily twist things to support his >POV; easiest way is to quote a lot of people who agree with >you and omit mention of (or say nasty discrediting things >about) anyone who disagrees. Liberals can (and do) join in the >fun, too! > Indeed! >Unlike the Bush Administration or the New York Times, this >revolutionary, ground-breaking, historically unique scholarly >project -- Wikipedia -- has no axe to grind, no point of view >to defend. So we can delve into the issues and report >accurately about all the major and minor variations of thought >on any subject, no matter how controversial. > We do have a point of view to defend, the neutral point of view. Alas, some of us don't defend it very well. >This is so wonderful, that maybe some of us are still reeling >from the shock of such freedom and haven't figured out how >to handle it. I'm still trying to get a grip on it, myself. > This is perhaps more true than even you may believe. Freedom is pretty shocking stuff. If freedom is taught with hierarchical techniques, in the course of which we are told that we are free and that such and such are the characteristics of freedom that we must show on an examination paper, are we really free? People who are apparently free can have a tough time with the responsibility part of it. Sometimes I read and hear things that leave me terribly pessimistic. Ec > From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Wed Jan 21 10:27:55 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:27:55 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Toxins are good for you In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Poor, Edmund W" writes: > Too much arsenic will kill you, but does that mean the less the better? Too much of anything is bad for you. Thats what "too much" means. -- Gareth Owen "It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia." -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 10:34:50 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 03:34:50 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again In-Reply-To: <20040121051259.34273.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: No matter, first mediation must be attempted anyway. Fred From: Rick Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:12:59 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again Mr-Natural-Health has indicated on Teresa Knott's Talk page that he has no interest in participating in the Arbitration process. OK, now what? Is he going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? RickK Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/bf27f05f/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 10:36:50 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 03:36:50 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] How long do we have to put up with Mr-Natural-Health? In-Reply-To: <20040121045834.30426.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Sounds like you might request mediation to get the ball rolling. (Not sure whether they are ready for that yet though) Fred From: Rick Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:58:34 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] How long do we have to put up with Mr-Natural-Health? He blanked the content of [[Wikipedia:Conflicts between users/Mr-Natural-Health]], and said on my Talk page that he will continue to do so. RickK Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/d0bc393d/attachment.htm From sannse at delphiforums.com Wed Jan 21 10:40:02 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:40:02 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again References: <20040121051259.34273.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003801c3e00a$ee1bcd00$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> RickK wrote: > Mr-Natural-Health has indicated on Teresa Knott's Talk page that he has no interest in participating in the Arbitration process. OK, now what? Is he going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? It's still the *mediation* process at this point. We are still attempting to persuade him to try mediation - if that fails then I guess we will have to pass this over to the arbitration committee. This is where my pessimism starts rising. Regards sannse From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 10:44:28 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 03:44:28 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152098@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on the stick. You can keep the pressure on... Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out quickly? From magnus.manske at web.de Wed Jan 21 13:50:11 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:50:11 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400E8393.8080008@web.de> I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. That way, he can * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, * or use them more wisely, * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some figures. Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going anon will result in immediate banning. Magnus (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) Fred Bauder wrote: >The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on the >stick. You can keep the pressure on... > >Fred > > > >>From: "KNOTT, T" >>Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>To: "English Wikipedia" >>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >> >>What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out quickly? >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 14:01:13 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 07:01:13 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Less than a ban In-Reply-To: <400E8393.8080008@web.de> Message-ID: This is one thing the arbitration committee could do, likewise banning can be for a day, a week, a month, a year, life. Fred > From: Magnus Manske > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:50:11 +0100 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): > As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a > "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. > That way, he can > * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, > * or use them more wisely, > * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits > > As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some > figures. > > Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going > anon will result in immediate banning. > > Magnus > (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on the >> stick. You can keep the pressure on... >> >> Fred >> >> >> >>> From: "KNOTT, T" >>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>> To: "English Wikipedia" >>> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >>> >>> What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out quickly? >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 14:01:42 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 06:01:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Time to clean out my closet. In-Reply-To: <20040121045423.1EDB8B843@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040121140142.92450.qmail@web60510.mail.yahoo.com> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 21:20, Anthere wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen a ??crit: > > Okay. I an committed. I will post this. This was courageous. I am glad you finally left your silence. >Thank you. I subtly dislike e-mail bc of its lack of >immediacy; a >BulletinBoard would be much better. Hi Jussi. I entirely agree with you. Btw, Angela has started looking for a bb to be set up yesterday night (well today early morning :-)). I doubly agree with you, as I had a lot of pain accessing Wikipedia myself. I could not at all during 24 hours. That made me double difficult, to connect to the web site, to be able to sent you, and the five, then four, then three, then two others mediators who did not provided an email adress, a wikimail. I also took time to write to Dante, to suggest him to offer an email adress. I just wanted to get things rolling. It is not funny to have to go to a user page each time you wish him to follow what is happening, especially when the server is so slow. For that reason, and your yesterday email actually, I stopped doing so. I stopped forwarding emails. You may ask to the other mediators to forward you the discussions if you feel like it. So, yes, I understand you. >And the conclusion I want to draw from that, is that >we have to >make every effort to assure that it does not fail, but >is such >a wonderful success that it need not, and indeed can >not be >revoked. Every institution that fails its charter is a >millstone >around the neck of further attempts at founding such >at a later >time. I entirely agree with you Jussi. >>What is the problem ? >There is no problem. The silent observer bit was >mostly to lend >an enchanced perception of legitimacy to the process, >and though >extremely useful IMO, is _not_ at all crucial. The silent observer is not burried :-) Ed expressed his interest for such a process, mentionning he was thriving on feedback. I mentionned how teaching the experience would be. However, I still believe that the system might help legitimacy as well, if we are two or three people together, to reinforce one another, to help, to collaborate, to keep the mediator on the right tracks. But a silent one, who would report to the big chief Jimbo, as if were were under constant supervision like kids ? No thank you. I do not believe in this kind of operation. >My latest bout of inactivity was brought on by a >juxtaposition >of the server problems, and some personal matters >which I will >not speak on publicly. I am glad it was not a silence on purpose :-) >Ed >(This was a problem BTW, that the proposed silent >observer institution >would have partially addresssed.) The silent observer is not burried as I said above :-) Ed in particular was interested in it. Nothing is ever lost :-) >The ideal situation would be such that we have a group >of mediators >with which it would be possible to just draw lots for >the mediation >assignment, and always come up with a winner. This >means that the >question of who we have on the mediation committee is >not totally >irrelevant. True. Which is why I think my suggestion to only be involved with cases that implicated non native english people, was not entirely irrelevant, as I had the feeling I could understand how far in conflict a misunderstanding could lead. Since you ask that I should not do that, I wonder who will in case there is need to take care of a conflict, if there is one, with someone hardly speaking a word of english, but speaking french, or someone like HeKeIsDa a few weeks ago on meta. Are you claiming that you would be more relevant in this case than I ? > Anthere: I would be much more comfortable about contributing > in the meditiation group, if you were not a member of it! > > PLEASE anthere, think long before getting offended by the > previous sentence! I think you can perform a valuable part > in forming the limitations of the mediation group, but I > honestly don't see that you can offer anything positive to > it's developement as a member of it. I am currently failing to see how I could not be offended by this statement, as you provide no justification for such a comment. In any cases, you might have noticed that my name was not in the current list. So, feel free to join if this is the main point stopping you. If the developpement of such a project shall be impaired by my presence, I will certainly stop participating in it. I think I gave my reasons for participating to its development, and those who read them should understand the limits it will inherently put. Okay. In clarification, In _most_emphatically_ endorse your input into the development of the mediation process, without which the institution would be at an even more half-finished state than it is currently. What I meant was just to express plainly that you should not actually be chosen as an actual mediator in any disputes. The justification for this is purely your command of english, and no other factor. Part of the problem here lies in the unfinished and unclear mandate of the mediation & arbitration committees. Are they to be purely actors in the process of wikipedia editing, or are they eventually to develop organically into political bodies of their own right? The matter of arbitrators being selected by a vote yearly, would suggest that morphing into a political actor is not totally untenable. If the mediation committee changes into a political body whose function is not solely to effect acts of mediation, your presence on it would be most valuable, but I personally doubt whether it would be useful for it to thus transform itself. I thank you for that statement. But do you really think I am not aware of that, of the fact my poor english puts obvious limitations to what I can do ? Do you really think other mediators do not know that also? And that editors noticed nothing ? Seriously ? :) I do deeply think that editors and mediators should have their say in who should be part of the committee. However, I do not think that just a person has a veto power (but Jimbo, or perhaps the chair leader though that is controversial). And none of the last discussions on the topic suggested so. Consequently, I do not consider you thinking I must not be part of it is enough to automatically exclude me. However, since you raised the topic, and question the wiseness of my participation, I suppose the discussion should be public. So, to defend my point, here is what I have said from the very beginning (that is, to Jimbo privately in october, in a mail I sent to the list in december, and in the past days committee discussions). I hope this is the last time. I'll do it very short. We need mediation on the french wikipedia. And imho the english wikipedia needs a new mediation/arbitration process. I am interested in mediation itself. I want to learn more about it. On the french wikipedia, I only learn by trial and errors. Here, I can learn by watching people practicing it, and discussing it with them. I can also perhaps give ideas and make other people benefit of what I know myself. I want to help set the process itself. When it is done, I want to make mediation a true activity on fr:, not what it is considered right now : troll feeding. I am perfectly aware of my limitations, which is why I mentionned I could help in conflicts involving non-native people, in particular french. I hope you will agree that if french speaking people are involved, my being french might help clearing misunderstandings. I suppose I could also help a bit for conflicts based on contents in topics I know well. And that is probably all about it. What is the big deal ? Mediators whom people think can't help, just won't be picked up, neither chosen by disputants, nor suggested by other mediators. And at any time, a disputant may refuse a mediator who is suggested to him. So where is the problem ? I do not speak well enough => My help is not requested => I am not messing things => you should not feel like I will damage the whole process Here is a thought I propose to you. 2 days ago, someone reminded me of this "I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem" Let's focus on this Cimon please. We are all different, and we will ever stay different. We are not good in everything. But we all are good in at least one thing. Each of us brings a different piece to the puzzle. I know I am great at bugging people :-) (ask Erik in doubt). More seriously, what about considering mediation not *just* as a distinguishable unit, one mediator, two disputants, but rather as a more holistic process, where each individual has a different input ? You mention that you do not know one, do not trust another, can't figure what a third is doing here, plainly state that the existence of a forth might be preventing you to join etc... But have you considered that it is the whole that might be the best ? That these are our different personnalities which will perhaps make a difference ? That is not seeing us as separated mediators, but just as people who want things to work better ? And who want to do that together ? > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) I am sorry you feel so disinchanted >>I am sorry if I left you with the impression that I >>am disenchanted. >This is not the case at all. Although the mediation & >arbitration >process and institutions have had bit of a handbrake >start, I am >sure the motor will start revving on all cylinders >eventually. To your opinion, who tried to get it started precisely ? >With the greatest of respect; as always, >Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro) Let's meet in front of our groupleader then Cimon :-) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Wed Jan 21 14:12:57 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:12:57 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning shot - will it work ? Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152099@backupserv.queens.harley> How will we know when a limited edit user has gone anon ? Even if we suspect that IP such and such is user so and so we couldn't prove it was them. IPs identify the machine not the user. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] Sent: 21 January 2004 13:50 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. That way, he can * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, * or use them more wisely, * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some figures. Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going anon will result in immediate banning. Magnus (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) Fred Bauder wrote: >The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on the >stick. You can keep the pressure on... > >Fred > > > >>From: "KNOTT, T" >>Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>To: "English Wikipedia" >>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >> >>What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out quickly? >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 14:27:07 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 07:27:07 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C82152099@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: When a quacking duck flys into view, one knows. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:12:57 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning shot - will it work ? > > How will we know when a limited edit user has gone anon ? Even if we > suspect that IP such and such is user so and so we couldn't prove it was > them. IPs identify the machine not the user. > > Theresa > > -----Original Message----- > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] > Sent: 21 January 2004 13:50 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): > As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a > "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. > > That way, he can > * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, > * or use them more wisely, > * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits > > As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some > figures. > > Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going > > anon will result in immediate banning. > > Magnus > (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on > the >> stick. You can keep the pressure on... >> >> Fred >> >> >> >>> From: "KNOTT, T" >>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>> To: "English Wikipedia" >>> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >>> >>> What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out > quickly? >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Wed Jan 21 14:34:51 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:34:51 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209A@backupserv.queens.harley> Wes yes I know we'll recognise them fairly quickly. But I suspect that most users under this sort of ban will flout it very quickly. I suspect that we be spending much of our time catching them out. Also 10 edits a day is plenty enough to be rude about people. What's to stop them posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? I don't want to put too much of a downer on the idea. It might make some people shape up. It's certainly nice to give some sort of warning to give them a chance. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at ctelco.net] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:27 To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck When a quacking duck flys into view, one knows. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:12:57 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning shot - will it work ? > > How will we know when a limited edit user has gone anon ? Even if we > suspect that IP such and such is user so and so we couldn't prove it was > them. IPs identify the machine not the user. > > Theresa > > -----Original Message----- > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] > Sent: 21 January 2004 13:50 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): > As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a > "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. > > That way, he can > * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, > * or use them more wisely, > * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits > > As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some > figures. > > Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going > > anon will result in immediate banning. > > Magnus > (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on > the >> stick. You can keep the pressure on... >> >> Fred >> >> >> >>> From: "KNOTT, T" >>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>> To: "English Wikipedia" >>> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >>> >>> What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out > quickly? >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From billy.mills at thomson.com Wed Jan 21 14:40:30 2004 From: billy.mills at thomson.com (Mills, Billy) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:40:30 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck Message-ID: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE05903795@eagle.netg.ie> KNOTT, T wrote: >What's to stop them >posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? Maybe an immediate ban if they do so? Billy -----Original Message----- From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:35 To: English Wikipedia Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck Wes yes I know we'll recognise them fairly quickly. But I suspect that most users under this sort of ban will flout it very quickly. I suspect that we be spending much of our time catching them out. Also 10 edits a day is plenty enough to be rude about people. What's to stop them posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? I don't want to put too much of a downer on the idea. It might make some people shape up. It's certainly nice to give some sort of warning to give them a chance. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at ctelco.net] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:27 To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck When a quacking duck flys into view, one knows. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:12:57 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning shot - will it work ? > > How will we know when a limited edit user has gone anon ? Even if we > suspect that IP such and such is user so and so we couldn't prove it was > them. IPs identify the machine not the user. > > Theresa > > -----Original Message----- > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] > Sent: 21 January 2004 13:50 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): > As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a > "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. > > That way, he can > * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, > * or use them more wisely, > * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits > > As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some > figures. > > Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going > > anon will result in immediate banning. > > Magnus > (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on > the >> stick. You can keep the pressure on... >> >> Fred >> >> >> >>> From: "KNOTT, T" >>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>> To: "English Wikipedia" >>> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >>> >>> What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out > quickly? >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/3d5f9cde/attachment.htm From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 21 14:41:29 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:41:29 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Edit quota as alternative to banning (was: MNH, again) Message-ID: I like Magnus's idea about a one-week period of 10 edits per day. It's less drastic than a complete ban, and it can serve as a sort of probationary period. The contributor could decide to "prove himself" and conform to our Courtesy and Neutrality policies during that period, hoping to get the quota lifted. A little discipline won't hurt the project, but tolerating just a bit too much discourtesy will hurt it. Not everyone has the iron determination to plow through the muddy battle fields of edit wars and personal attacks. (Maybe all those years of being teased for my last name "Poor Ed!" or my religion "You brainwashed zombie!" have strengthened my resolve, but even I thrive better in a congenial environment.) Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation P.S. I'm thinking of changing my ~~~ signature... From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 21 15:09:37 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:09:37 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unsolved Equation (was: Uncle Ed (was: Request for a ban)) Message-ID: I'm not going to kill anyone -- neither literally nor figuratively, neither physically nor spiritually. That's why I got out of the army: I finally realized that I didn't want to eliminate my nation's enemies by taking their lives; rather I wanted to eliminate their enmity by improving their lives (as with education, etc.). I don't believe in "tit for tat" retaliation, so one person saying something nasty doesn't give another the right to "get back at them" by also saying something nasty. WikiLove, which traces its heritage back to the Bible, suggests rather that "A soft answer turns away wrath". (Recently I made the mistake of 'jokingly' insulting JTD, but to my dismay he took me seriously and I ended up by offending him. I really regret this.) It will be better if Robert (RK) makes the effort to restrain himself from slapping people with the N-word; and it will also be better if others make the effort to avoid antagonizing Robert with personal remarks. I know it's hard to stick to the subject matter; so many times I think to myself, "What's wrong with these @#$% people? Can't they understand something so simple as A? How can they be so stupid as to persistently confuse B with C?" *sigh* If you only knew how many posts and/or edits I delete instead of sending... Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 16:24:09 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 08:24:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again In-Reply-To: <003801c3e00a$ee1bcd00$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Message-ID: <20040121162409.84228.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> So, when is the so-called Mediation process going to start, and why hasn't it already? RickK sannse wrote: RickK wrote: > Mr-Natural-Health has indicated on Teresa Knott's Talk page that he has no interest in participating in the Arbitration process. OK, now what? Is he going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? It's still the *mediation* process at this point. We are still attempting to persuade him to try mediation - if that fails then I guess we will have to pass this over to the arbitration committee. This is where my pessimism starts rising. Regards sannse _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/d2b1d4ed/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 16:28:56 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 08:28:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck In-Reply-To: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE05903795@eagle.netg.ie> Message-ID: <20040121162856.85720.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> That doesn't seem to be an option any longer. No, instead, we're going to have a months-long runup to a mediation process, a months-long mediation process, a months-long runup to an arbitration process, a months-long arbitration process, and then maybe, just maybe, somebody will, someday when they get around to it, propose banning. RickK "Mills, Billy" wrote: KNOTT, T wrote: >What's to stop them >posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? Maybe an immediate ban if they do so? Billy -----Original Message----- From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:35 To: English Wikipedia Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck Wes yes I know we'll recognise them fairly quickly. But I suspect that most users under this sort of ban will flout it very quickly. I suspect that we be spending much of our time catching them out. Also 10 edits a day is plenty enough to be rude about people. What's to stop them posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? I don't want to put too much of a downer on the idea. It might make some people shape up. It's certainly nice to give some sort of warning to give them a chance. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at ctelco.net] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:27 To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck When a quacking duck flys into view, one knows. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:12:57 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning shot - will it work ? > > How will we know when a limited edit user has gone anon ? Even if we > suspect that IP such and such is user so and so we couldn't prove it was > them. IPs identify the machine not the user. > > Theresa > > -----Original Message----- > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] > Sent: 21 January 2004 13:50 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): > As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a > "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. > > That way, he can > * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, > * or use them more wisely, > * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits > > As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some > figures. > > Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going > > anon will result in immediate banning. > > Magnus > (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on > the >> stick. You can keep the pressure on... >> >> Fred >> >> >> >>> From: "KNOTT, T" >>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>> To: "English Wikipedia" >>> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >>> >>> What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out > quickly? >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/47092d2c/attachment.htm From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 21 16:33:03 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:33:03 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names Message-ID: Wik raised an interesting point in an edit summary re: [[Gdansk]]: > there never has been any English name for this city, > so the local name is used, which since 1945 is Gdansk On one level, I think he's right, but I think he's drawing the wrong conclusion. Bear with me here... Does Michael Jackson have a Russian name? I don't think so; he's an American pop artist. He's not "Mikhail Jakovitch" or any such thing. Even if some Russians decided to translate his name into their language, that wouldn't mean it was his real name. Gdansk doesn't "have an English name". It has an official Polish name, and it has also had a German name. On the other hand, English speakers and map-makers and geography teachers have /applied/ English names to countless places. We used to call the capital of mainland China "Pekin" or "Peking", but around 10 or 20 years ago there was a big re-shuffle and we adopted a closer transliteration: "Beijing". The capital of the USSR (and still capital of Russia) is Moskva (or Moscow, I forget which). We're an English-language encyclopedia, we have to call places /something/. Moscow doesn't have an English name per se; it's a Russian city with a Russian name. But English-speaking people have been referring to it with the /English word/ 'Moscow'. Now, whether its Oder River or Odra River, Gdansk or Danzig, we English speakers /give/ English names to everything. We have to, if we are to speak of them at all. This doesn't mean we are changing its name or endorsing some version of its name. One of the first thing any English speaker does when learning a foreign language is to find out the native names for the countries which speak that language. No one in Japan calls it "Japan"; it's Nihon or Nippon, without any hint of a "J" sound. French call it "Japon", but that doesn't mean Japan has a French name. It just means that French speakers use the word /Japon/ to refer to it. Its real name is not disturbed or altered by what foreigners call it. I hope this provides a basis for ending the year-long battle over Gdansk and Odra/Oder. Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 16:45:51 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:45:51 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck In-Reply-To: <20040121162856.85720.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: You grossly exaggerate. We'll catch em at dawn, mediate em in the morning, arbitrate em in the afternoon, hang em and be home in time for supper. Fred From: Rick Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 08:28:56 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck That doesn't seem to be an option any longer. No, instead, we're going to have a months-long runup to a mediation process, a months-long mediation process, a months-long runup to an arbitration process, a months-long arbitration process, and then maybe, just maybe, somebody will, someday when they get around to it, propose banning. RickK "Mills, Billy" wrote: KNOTT, T wrote: >What's to stop them >posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? Maybe an immediate ban if they do so? Billy -----Original Message----- From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:35 To: English Wikipedia Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck Wes yes I know we'll recognise them fairly quickly. But I suspect that most users under this sort of ban will flout it very quickly. I suspect that we be spending much of our time catching them out. Also 10 edits a day is plenty enough to be rude about people. What's to stop them posting huge long rants where they insult a number of users at once? I don't want to put too much of a downer on the idea. It might make some people shape up. It's certainly nice to give some sort of warning to give them a chance. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at ctelco.net] Sent: 21 January 2004 14:27 To: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck When a quacking duck flys into view, one knows. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:12:57 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning shot - will it work ? > > How will we know when a limited edit user has gone anon ? Even if we > suspect that IP such and such is user so and so we couldn't prove it was > them. IPs identify the machine not the user. > > Theresa > > -----Original Message----- > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] > Sent: 21 January 2004 13:50 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again > > I just had this idea (not necessarily related to MNH): > As a "warning shot" from one of out countless committees, a > "problematic" user could be limited to a fixed number of edits per day. > > That way, he can > * either waste these edits on stuff that gets reverted anyway, > * or use them more wisely, > * or leave if he doesn't think he can limit himself to "decent" edits > > As example, I'd say 10 edits per day, for one week. Just to have some > figures. > > Circumventing these measures by creating an alternate user name or going > > anon will result in immediate banning. > > Magnus > (who thinks a little discipline won't harm the project;-) > > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> The members of the mediation and arbitration committees need to get on > the >> stick. You can keep the pressure on... >> >> Fred >> >> >> >>> From: "KNOTT, T" >>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia >>> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:49:50 -0000 >>> To: "English Wikipedia" >>> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again >>> >>> What do we need to do to get the arbitration process sorted out > quickly? >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/a97c5085/attachment.htm From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 21 17:07:19 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 12:07:19 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) Message-ID: Fred Bauder wrote: > You grossly exaggerate. We'll catch em at dawn, mediate > em in the morning, arbitrate em in the afternoon, hang em > and be home in time for supper. That makes mediation seem like a mere formality. Don't you think we should actually try to mediate? You know, find common ground as a basis for a harmonious relationship? Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/a8dafa55/attachment.htm From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Wed Jan 21 17:26:36 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:26:36 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names References: Message-ID: <006901c3e043$c55d42c0$5f000450@Galasien> Ed Poor wrote >Gdansk doesn't "have an English name". It has an official Polish name, and it has also had a German name. Can't agree with that. It was always called Dantzig in the past. From the Lech Walesa/Solidarity period onwards it was called Gdansk very prominently. That's what we call it now. Charles From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 17:29:47 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:29:47 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well, them flying ducks just say fuck off when you try that. Fred From: "Poor, Edmund W" Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 12:07:19 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) Fred Bauder wrote: > You grossly exaggerate. We'll catch em at dawn, mediate > em in the morning, arbitrate em in the afternoon, hang em > and be home in time for supper. That makes mediation seem like a mere formality. Don't you think we should actually try to mediate? You know, find common ground as a basis for a harmonious relationship? Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/fd813114/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 17:33:50 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:33:50 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names In-Reply-To: <006901c3e043$c55d42c0$5f000450@Galasien> Message-ID: Yes, but to a stamp collecter it will always be Danzig. Fred > From: "Charles Matthews" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:26:36 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] English names > > Ed Poor wrote > >> Gdansk doesn't "have an English name". It has an > official Polish name, and it has also had a German > name. > > Can't agree with that. It was always called Dantzig in the past. From the > Lech Walesa/Solidarity period onwards it was called Gdansk very prominently. > That's what we call it now. > > Charles > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Wed Jan 21 17:46:35 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex T.) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 12:46:35 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names References: Message-ID: <001c01c3e046$8388d0a0$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> And to a member of the Solidarity movement it will always be Gdansk. From: "Fred Bauder" To: "English Wikipedia" Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 12:33 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] English names > Yes, but to a stamp collecter it will always be Danzig. > > Fred > > > From: "Charles Matthews" > > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:26:36 -0000 > > To: "English Wikipedia" > > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] English names > > > > Ed Poor wrote > > > >> Gdansk doesn't "have an English name". It has an > > official Polish name, and it has also had a German > > name. > > > > Can't agree with that. It was always called Dantzig in the past. From the > > Lech Walesa/Solidarity period onwards it was called Gdansk very prominently. > > That's what we call it now. > > > > Charles > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Wed Jan 21 17:48:27 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:48:27 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names References: Message-ID: <006f01c3e046$d05638f0$5f000450@Galasien> > Yes, but to a stamp collecter it will always be Danzig. > > Fred Right. And I still have stamps from Nyasaland ... Philately will get you nowhere, with me. Charles From sannse at delphiforums.com Wed Jan 21 17:58:14 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:58:14 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Time to clean out my closet. References: <1074606497.30672.57.camel@myhome.home> Message-ID: <00ad01c3e048$254d5cc0$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote (In part): > Sannse (did I misspell the username?) I know even less, > except a vague, and I must claim irrelevant > impression (no justification, please lambast me if it > is crappy; I will be the last person to require definitive > determination) that she is a female. Gosh, with that build up I thought you were going to say you thought I was an axe murderer! ;) Yes, as Anthere said, I'm a woman. I /am/ also rather obscure, partly I think because of my areas of interest and partly because I tend to avoid conflict. I guess joining the mediation committee is risking a big change in the latter area. Regards sannse From Dawn.Chavez at hood.army.mil Wed Jan 21 15:43:47 2004 From: Dawn.Chavez at hood.army.mil (Chavez, Dawn N A1C 712ASOS) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:43:47 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick Message-ID: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> This is A1C Chavez from Ft. Hood, i have a quick question for you. do you know the shelf life of a Maverick? thanks A1C Chavez From gmc at badgervision-link-exchange.com Wed Jan 21 18:40:45 2004 From: gmc at badgervision-link-exchange.com (Greg Chernoff) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:40:45 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Interested in exchanging links with wikipedia.org Message-ID: <200401211740.MAA19647@twister.bcentralhost.com> Hello, I am interested in exchanging links with your website wikipedia.org. My site offers a large variety of baseball bats and other baseball equiptment. My sites information is as follows: Title: USA Baseball Bats & Supply Url: http://store.usa-baseballbats.com or here is the html for the link to my site:

USA Baseball Bats & Supply

Upon response to this email I will place a link to wikipedia.org on http://store.thepromotionspot.com This site is a new site and already has a 8PR and receives allot of traffic through search engines. I look foward to working with you! Jessica Hartman P.S. If you do not wish to recieve link exchange requests please reply with remove in the subject From grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk Wed Jan 21 18:14:01 2004 From: grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk (Graham Burnett) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:14:01 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Enough is enough References: <20040121163313.2651AB840@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <001a01c3e04a$611f5170$30b22252@yourllwwtqhjzx> > > Mr-Natural-Health has indicated on Teresa Knott's Talk page that he has no > interest in participating in the Arbitration process. OK, now what? Is he > going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people > names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? > > It's still the *mediation* process at this point. We are still attempting > to persuade him to try mediation - if that fails then I guess we will have > to pass this over to the arbitration committee. > > This is where my pessimism starts rising. > > Regards > > sannse Why is everybody tip-toeing around this arsehole? Surely enough is enough. Sod 'mediation', if somebody was behaving like this in my local pub they'd have been shown the door long ago. Graham (Quercus robur) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.560 / Virus Database: 352 - Release Date: 08/01/2004 From sannse at delphiforums.com Wed Jan 21 18:17:27 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:17:27 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again References: <20040121162409.84228.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <011901c3e04a$d415b520$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> RickK wrote: > So, when is the so-called Mediation process going to start, and why hasn't it already? > > RickK > It has. Teresa has invited MrMH to take part in a mediation (with admirable politeness). He refused and so Jussi-Ville Heiskanen approached him as a member of the mediation committee. He hasn't yet responded directly to that approach (although he may have indirectly). Let's give him a little time to respond - then we will look at what needs to be done next (for example if he responds positively a mediator will have to be agreed and so on). Regards sannse From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 18:35:26 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:35:26 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court In-Reply-To: <001a01c3e04a$611f5170$30b22252@yourllwwtqhjzx> Message-ID: Well, we could have a summary procedure for egregious cases, couldn't call it Kangaroo Court, maybe Duck Court. It could be evoked by Ed Poor and a few others of his status, say also Daniel Mayers. They could then briefly consider the matter and ban the offender until the matter could be considered by the mediation and arbitration committees. Kind of like a preliminary injunction. Grounds would be the likelyhood of permanent damage to the project resulting from serious offenses combined with a general refusal to listen. Fred > From: "Graham Burnett" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:14:01 -0000 > To: > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Enough is enough > > > >>> Mr-Natural-Health has indicated on Teresa Knott's Talk page that he has > no >> interest in participating in the Arbitration process. OK, now what? Is he >> going to get to continue to mess up article after article and call people >> names forever because nobody wants to do anything about him? >> >> It's still the *mediation* process at this point. We are still attempting >> to persuade him to try mediation - if that fails then I guess we will have >> to pass this over to the arbitration committee. >> >> This is where my pessimism starts rising. >> >> Regards >> >> sannse > > Why is everybody tip-toeing around this arsehole? Surely enough is enough. > Sod 'mediation', if somebody was behaving like this in my local pub they'd > have been shown the door long ago. > > Graham (Quercus robur) > > > > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). > Version: 6.0.560 / Virus Database: 352 - Release Date: 08/01/2004 > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From uninvited at nerstrand.net Wed Jan 21 19:55:27 2004 From: uninvited at nerstrand.net (uninvited at nerstrand.net) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 12:55:27 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: MNH, again Message-ID: <20040121195527.14456.qmail@webmail-2-3.mesa1.secureserver.net> Have we made any determination whether or not MNH is a previously-banned user? His writing style and modus operandi remind me of a user that has been banned several times. UninvitedCompany From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 21 20:09:56 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:09:56 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] The Process (was: MNH) Message-ID: We all agreed to do this -- or Jimbo suggested this, I forget which: 1. Make a good faith effort for mediation. That's what the Mediation Committee was formed to do. 2. If this results in a good solution, announce the solution and that's the end of it. 3. In case mediation fails, the Arbitration Committee will do its thing and render a decision. Hang 'em at sunrise or slap his wrists: i.e., permanent hard-ban, temporary ban, edit quota, whatever they decide. 4. If this works, that's probably the end of it. (Reincarnation to evade a ban is usually handled by developers examining IP logs, etc.) 5. A "banned" user can appeal to Jimbo, who may veto the Arbitrators' decision. We are still at step #1 on MNH. It's our first case, and we want to do this right: please give us extra time. Ed Poor Member Mediation Committee From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Wed Jan 21 20:58:05 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 20:58:05 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #1 Message-ID: <400EE7DD.5703.793592@localhost> Dear all, We've been spending the last few days getting in contact, organising ourselves, getting acquainted, and informally exploring the various issues that may arise. For the time being we're using a private mailing list for most of our discussions. Jimbo asked us to choose a chair, and I've been chosen for now. Sadly, we're yet to make contact with Gutza and The Cunctator - if anyone knows where they might be, that'd be helpful. We're very interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions on all aspects of the job - we suggest either [[Wikipedia talk:Administrators]] or here. Once we have an agenda, we'll post that, and keep you informed of what we're currently discussing, what we've decided, and so forth. Thanks for your patience, -Martin From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 21 20:57:40 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:57:40 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] The Process (was: MNH) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401211557.41730.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 03:09 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > We all agreed to do this -- or Jimbo suggested this, I forget which: > > 1. Make a good faith effort for mediation. That's what the Mediation > Committee was formed to do. > > 2. If this results in a good solution, announce the solution and that's > the end of it. I've said it before, I'll say it again: There is no "solution" to come up with. The primary point is that MNH must abide by the "no personal attacks" policy/rule/guideline/whatever. > > We are still at step #1 on MNH. It's our first case, and we want to do > this right: please give us extra time. No we're not. See above. Ceterum censeo, Carthaginem esse delendum. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From maveric149 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 21:13:36 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 13:13:36 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] MNH, again Message-ID: <200401211313.36003.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sannse wrote: >It has. Teresa has invited MrMH to take part in a mediation >(with admirable politeness). He refused and so Jussi-Ville >Heiskanen approached him as a member of the mediation >committee. He hasn't yet responded directly to that >approach (although he may have indirectly). Let's give >him a little time to respond - then we will look at what needs >to be done next (for example if he responds positively a >mediator will have to be agreed and so on). All the more reason to turn our submission standards page into policy and link it from edit windows. Then everybody who edits will have agreed to submit to our conflict resolution process. If MrNH then outright refuses to enter mediation, then he will have broke the contract he signed, and can be safely banned. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 21 21:15:26 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:15:26 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #1 In-Reply-To: <400EE7DD.5703.793592@localhost> References: <400EE7DD.5703.793592@localhost> Message-ID: <200401211615.26559.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 03:58 pm, Martin Harper wrote: > Dear all, > > We've been spending the last few days getting in contact, organising > ourselves, getting acquainted, and informally exploring the various issues > that may arise. For the time being we're using a private mailing list for > most of our discussions. Why the secrecy? Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From littledanehren at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 21:19:22 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 13:19:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #1 In-Reply-To: <200401211615.26559.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040121211922.1999.qmail@web41807.mail.yahoo.com> > Why the secrecy? > > Best, > Sascha Noyes Lazyness, mostly. We're just send the mail to a list of people, no real formal mailing list yet. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From maveric149 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 21:19:16 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 13:19:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court Message-ID: <200401211319.16278.maveric149@yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >Well, we could have a summary procedure for egregious cases, >couldn't call it Kangaroo Court, maybe Duck Court. It could be >evoked by Ed Poor and a few others of his status, say also Daniel >Mayers. They could then briefly consider the matter and ban the >offender until the matter could be considered by the mediation and >arbitration committees. Kind of like a preliminary injunction. Grounds >would be the likelyhood of permanent damage to the project resulting >from serious offenses combined with a general refusal to listen. I wouldn't leave it to Ed or I. I would feel far more comfortable with a quorum of the arbitration committee. In these cases, we could impose a temporary ban pending a full arbitration process on what to do next. But IMO, we cannot do such a thing until the submission standards go live on edit windows. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Wed Jan 21 21:22:16 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:22:16 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls, how to feed them: not Message-ID: I'm losing patience with trolls. If it's not a borderline case or a misunderstanding or the outgrowth of some longstanding POV dispute, but a clear case of someone just making trouble to get attention... With a username like The Fellowship of the Troll, tFotT seems like a clone of Entmoot of Trolls. Both names are an obvious Lord of the Rings reference, and both users act the same: obnoxiously. He's even managed to tick off the mild-mannered Pakaran and the unflappable Angela. Eloquence gave him a ban warning. I don't care if the ISP is different. The behavior is the same. Let's not make this the first case for Mediation or Arbitration. I hereby request Jimbo to contact this guy directly and lay down the law to him. Ed Poor From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Wed Jan 21 21:47:20 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 21:47:20 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Arbitration progress report #1 Message-ID: <400EF368.15398.A64E9C@localhost> Sascha asked: > Why the secrecy? Email gives a nice fast response, and one of us happened to have the facilities to quickly set up a mailing list. It's not necessarilly intended as a long term solution. -Martin From saintonge at telus.net Wed Jan 21 08:17:03 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:17:03 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] On continued personal attacks, etc.(repeat without typo) References: <20040121001341.55576.qmail@web21507.mail.yahoo.com> <400E2D05.80301@telus.net> Message-ID: <400E357F.5070500@telus.net> zero 0000 wrote: > Obviously personal threats cannot be tolerated. Nor can criminal > libels. Both should be capital offences. That's an extreme penalty for that. To be consistent with my general objection to the death penalty, I would need to oppose that. > If some litigous person one day > decides to sue WP for publishing a libel against him/herself, just the > costs will close us down even if the case is weak. > They'll do that where many people would see no libel, and often without any reasonalble cause whatsoever. We can do nothing to prevent that. Censoring ourselves to conform with libel chill is a disservice to free speech. If something is true and factual we should not be afraid to say it. We do still need to be able to know the difference between fact and opinion. Ec From sascha at pantropy.net Wed Jan 21 21:47:03 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:47:03 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Arbitration progress report #1 In-Reply-To: <400EF368.15398.A64E9C@localhost> References: <400EF368.15398.A64E9C@localhost> Message-ID: <200401211647.03795.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 04:47 pm, Martin Harper wrote: > Email gives a nice fast response, and one of us happened to have the > facilities to quickly set up a mailing list. It's not necessarilly intended > as a long term solution. I'm happy to hear that, but why the "necessarilly"? Are there any good reasons for keeping the proceedings of the arbitration committee secret? Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From littledanehren at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 22:36:19 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:36:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Interested in exchanging links with wikipedia.org In-Reply-To: <200401211740.MAA19647@twister.bcentralhost.com> Message-ID: <20040121223619.44063.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> > Hello, > > I am interested in exchanging links with your > website wikipedia.org. My site offers a large > variety of baseball bats and other baseball > equiptment. > > My sites information is as follows: > > Title: USA Baseball Bats & Supply > Url: http://store.usa-baseballbats.com > > or here is the html for the link to my site: > >

href="http://store.usa-baseballbats.com">USA > Baseball Bats & Supply

> > Upon response to this email I will place a link to > wikipedia.org on http://store.thepromotionspot.com > > This site is a new site and already has a 8PR and > receives allot of traffic through search engines. > > I look foward to working with you! > Jessica Hartman > > P.S. If you do not wish to recieve link exchange > requests please reply with remove in the subject As far as I can tell, Wikipedia isn't looking into advertizing. We don't need anyone to publicise us and we have no real need to have a link to us on your website. At this time, I don't think we would accept such an offer. You are wecome to write an article about yourself on Wikipedia, so long as it is strictly informational and not promotional. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From littledanehren at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 22:41:29 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:41:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040121224129.15051.qmail@web41811.mail.yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > Well, we could have a summary procedure for > egregious cases, couldn't call > it Kangaroo Court, maybe Duck Court. It could be > evoked by Ed Poor and a few > others of his status, say also Daniel Mayers. They > could then briefly > consider the matter and ban the offender until the > matter could be > considered by the mediation and arbitration > committees. Kind of like a > preliminary injunction. Grounds would be the > likelyhood of permanent damage > to the project resulting from serious offenses > combined with a general > refusal to listen. > > Fred Do we really need temporary bans? We didn't have the need for them before and they would be very damaging to the Wiki principle. Remember: Wikipedia is a Wiki Encyclopedia, not a courtroom. There's no real danger of letting someone off, aside from the chance that they might vandalize a few pages, something which is easily reversible. In the past, we've had a lot of trouble with unilateral bans, and they have always been condemned after the fact by almost everyone. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 22:49:12 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:49:12 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Grounds for temporary ban In-Reply-To: <20040121224129.15051.qmail@web41811.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Grounds would be the likelyhood of permanent damage to the project resulting from serious offenses combined with a general refusal to listen. > From: Daniel Ehrenberg > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:41:29 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court > > > Do we really need temporary bans? We didn't have the > need for them before and they would be very damaging > to the Wiki principle. Remember: Wikipedia is a Wiki > Encyclopedia, not a courtroom. There's no real danger > of letting someone off, aside from the chance that > they might vandalize a few pages, something which is > easily reversible. In the past, we've had a lot of > trouble with unilateral bans, and they have always > been condemned after the fact by almost everyone. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Wed Jan 21 22:51:15 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:51:15 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Arbitration progress report #1 In-Reply-To: <200401211647.03795.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: There is some discussion of that. Only reason I can think of is if someone using their own name (or identifiable) was so libeled that they might find grounds to sue. Fred > From: Sascha Noyes > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:47:03 -0500 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] re: Arbitration progress report #1 > > On Wednesday 21 January 2004 04:47 pm, Martin Harper wrote: >> Email gives a nice fast response, and one of us happened to have the >> facilities to quickly set up a mailing list. It's not necessarilly intended >> as a long term solution. > > I'm happy to hear that, but why the "necessarilly"? Are there any good reasons > for keeping the proceedings of the arbitration committee secret? > > Best, > Sascha Noyes > -- > Please encrypt all email. Public key available from > www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Wed Jan 21 22:59:32 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex R.) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:59:32 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court References: <20040121224129.15051.qmail@web41811.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001f01c3e072$3be4cd90$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> I tend to agree with you Little Dan, most of the damage done can be rectified by reverting edits. Sure if someone is really destructive it might be a lot of edits, but then we have a list of all the contributions there only needs to be someone who is willing to revert them all. If you are too quick at banning someone you may not even have enough material to show that the person should not be allowed to contribute. better that they demonstrate their bad behaviour before they undergo the "arbitration" ordeal. There might be a really, really rare case that could be done by the Wikimedia board, you will notice that Art III: sec. 4.4. of the bylaws gives the Board of Trustees the right to suspend member privileges in the cases of misconduct. Someone would have to apply to the Board to get them to suspend the member in that case. I guess you have to convince the Board members or make an application to them: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/bylaws.pdf Alex756 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" To: "English Wikipedia" Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 5:41 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court > Fred Bauder wrote: > > Well, we could have a summary procedure for > > egregious cases, couldn't call > > it Kangaroo Court, maybe Duck Court. It could be > > evoked by Ed Poor and a few > > others of his status, say also Daniel Mayers. They > > could then briefly > > consider the matter and ban the offender until the > > matter could be > > considered by the mediation and arbitration > > committees. Kind of like a > > preliminary injunction. Grounds would be the > > likelyhood of permanent damage > > to the project resulting from serious offenses > > combined with a general > > refusal to listen. > > > > Fred > > Do we really need temporary bans? We didn't have the > need for them before and they would be very damaging > to the Wiki principle. Remember: Wikipedia is a Wiki > Encyclopedia, not a courtroom. There's no real danger > of letting someone off, aside from the chance that > they might vandalize a few pages, something which is > easily reversible. In the past, we've had a lot of > trouble with unilateral bans, and they have always > been condemned after the fact by almost everyone. > > LDan > From nrussell at acsu.buffalo.edu Wed Jan 21 21:31:43 2004 From: nrussell at acsu.buffalo.edu (Nathan Russell) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:31:43 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls, how to feed them: not In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400EEFBF.1080509@acsu.buffalo.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Poor, Edmund W wrote: | I'm losing patience with trolls. | | If it's not a borderline case or a misunderstanding or the outgrowth of | some longstanding POV dispute, but a clear case of someone just making | trouble to get attention... | | With a username like The Fellowship of the Troll, tFotT seems like a | clone of Entmoot of Trolls. Both names are an obvious Lord of the Rings | reference, and both users act the same: obnoxiously. He's even managed | to tick off the mild-mannered Pakaran and the unflappable Angela. | Eloquence gave him a ban warning. | | I don't care if the ISP is different. The behavior is the same. As long as we're on the subject, would you mind cross-checking the IPs when you have a few free minutes. If this is an *obvious* return of EoT, he can be banned without going to Jimbo. Thanks. Nathan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFADu+/MUlnNfyqpaMRAomLAJ9WBWjYBHS0zVmwst9LdUu8x+1MwgCdF1Vr 24+GqhHQnWtrBnn03sfJ3bU= =KIMO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 23:18:02 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:18:02 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Trolls, how to feed them: not References: <400EEFBF.1080509@acsu.buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <400F08AA.3020908@yahoo.com> Nathan, Would you be ever so kind please, as to register to the mailing list if you are going to post to it Thank you :-) Anthere The current list admin (Ed, by the way, ain't you back ?) Nathan Russell a ?crit: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Poor, Edmund W wrote: > | I'm losing patience with trolls. > | > | If it's not a borderline case or a misunderstanding or the outgrowth of > | some longstanding POV dispute, but a clear case of someone just making > | trouble to get attention... > | > | With a username like The Fellowship of the Troll, tFotT seems like a > | clone of Entmoot of Trolls. Both names are an obvious Lord of the Rings > | reference, and both users act the same: obnoxiously. He's even managed > | to tick off the mild-mannered Pakaran and the unflappable Angela. > | Eloquence gave him a ban warning. > | > | I don't care if the ISP is different. The behavior is the same. > > As long as we're on the subject, would you mind cross-checking the IPs > when you have a few free minutes. > > If this is an *obvious* return of EoT, he can be banned without going to > Jimbo. > > Thanks. > > Nathan > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFADu+/MUlnNfyqpaMRAomLAJ9WBWjYBHS0zVmwst9LdUu8x+1MwgCdF1Vr > 24+GqhHQnWtrBnn03sfJ3bU= > =KIMO > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From littledanehren at yahoo.com Wed Jan 21 23:57:03 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:57:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040121235703.81787.qmail@web41810.mail.yahoo.com> --- Fred Bauder wrote: > Well, them flying ducks just say fuck off when you > try that. > > Fred Remember that we haven't had this overwhelming need for binding arbitration in the past. Mediation will help, but when you get into arbitration, you start banning too many people. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 00:13:03 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:13:03 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: <20040121235703.81787.qmail@web41810.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Remains to be saw. I know I'm going to advocate slaps on the rist from time to time to git them dux attention/ Fred > From: Daniel Ehrenberg > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:57:03 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) > > > --- Fred Bauder wrote: >> Well, them flying ducks just say fuck off when you >> try that. >> >> Fred > > Remember that we haven't had this overwhelming need > for binding arbitration in the past. Mediation will > help, but when you get into arbitration, you start > banning too many people. > > LDan > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 00:24:09 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:24:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck In-Reply-To: <20040121162856.85720.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040122002409.68812.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Rick wrote: > That doesn't seem to be an option any longer. No, > instead, we're going to have a months-long runup to > a mediation process, a months-long mediation > process, a months-long runup to an arbitration > process, a months-long arbitration process, and then > maybe, just maybe, somebody will, someday when they > get around to it, propose banning. > > RickK I thought we were going to have somewhat unofficial mediation, which is just talking, and then we go through the old banning procedures if we felt we needed to. The goal of this is to prevent banning, not delay it, but if needed (eg. if there's lots of active vandalization, not just an edit conflict), there might be a ban instead of mediation. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 00:28:25 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:28:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quacks Like a Duck In-Reply-To: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE05903795@eagle.netg.ie> Message-ID: <20040122002825.79533.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Mills, Billy" wrote: > KNOTT, T wrote: > > >What's to stop them > >posting huge long rants where they insult a number > of users at once? > > Maybe an immediate ban if they do so? > > Billy Just a rant isn't enough to ban someone. You need to do something big, like vandalizing a bunch of pages or making personal threats. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From erik_moeller at gmx.de Thu Jan 22 00:29:08 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:29:08 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion reorg vote Message-ID: <91LwXPdhpVB@erik_moeller> After much discussion, there is now a vote to reorganize the various deletion-related pages and to split the VfD process into two stages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy This was initially one big vote, based on feedback I've now separated it into different parts. The most significant proposed change is to split [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] into two stages, [[Wikipedia:Deletion requests]] and [[Wikipedia:Deletion votes]]. The problem is that right now, different people have contradictory ideas as to what VfD is supposed to be. Some regard it as a "consensus only" page and oppose all voting, others have effectively already started deleting pages according to a 2/3 threshold. This proposal tries to find a compromise between the "no voting, ever" faction and the "vote on everything" faction. It requires those who want a vote to undergo a 7 day consensus seeking stage, and to do the job of summarizing the arguments that have been brought up in that stage. If no consensus can be reached, they can list the page at "Deletion votes" (with the aforementioned argument summary being a mandatory part of such a listing), and if 80% of support can be reached, the page may be deleted. I would like to urge the voting opponents to consider this compromise. It is very favorable to them, as it requires a high threshold (80%) and generally encourages consensus seeking over voting. I would also like to urge the voting advocates, who I suspect to be more numerous, to accommodate the opponents in this regard to avoid escalation. The proposal is tied to a 30 day trial period. After that period we can argue and vote once again on whether we want to continue using this scheme, refine it, or go back to the old "VfD" scheme, whatever that is. Please participate in this decision. Regards, Erik From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 00:34:47 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:34:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040122003447.81504.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > Remains to be saw. I know I'm going to advocate > slaps on the rist from time > to time to git them dux attention/ > > Fred BTW, what's Wikinfo's policy on this? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From cunctator at kband.com Thu Jan 22 00:46:24 2004 From: cunctator at kband.com (The Cunctator) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:46:24 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #1 In-Reply-To: <400EE7DD.5703.793592@localhost> Message-ID: <000001c3e081$29ce1300$74001c12@reflection> > From: Martin Harper > Jimbo asked us to choose a chair, and I've been chosen for now. Sadly, > we're yet to > make contact with Gutza and The Cunctator - if anyone knows where they > might be, > that'd be helpful. > Part of the reason I haven't participated is because I've been very busy with other things and my email has been problematic. Another major part is because I strongly dislike the discussion on a private mailing list. Laziness is not an acceptable excuse for those who accept the reins of power when the result is secrecy. The other reason is that I haven't really felt like there's that much that's important to contribute. I've tried to make my basic positions on what I believe are healthy governance processes and what are not. I'm participating in the "arbritrary cabal" because I feel I have to, not because I want to. --tc From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Thu Jan 22 00:42:42 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:42:42 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names In-Reply-To: <006901c3e043$c55d42c0$5f000450@Galasien> References: <006901c3e043$c55d42c0$5f000450@Galasien> Message-ID: <400F1C82.7050307@rufus.d2g.com> Charles Matthews wrote: >Ed Poor wrote > > >>Gdansk doesn't "have an English name". It has an >> >> >official Polish name, and it has also had a German >name. > >Can't agree with that. It was always called Dantzig in the past. From the >Lech Walesa/Solidarity period onwards it was called Gdansk very prominently. >That's what we call it now. > > Yes, but using Gdansk exclusively is sometimes a bit confusing in historical context, especially when dealing with Germans (such as Arthur Schopenhauer) who were from what they (and English-speakers at the time) called "Danzig", since it is often referred to as Danzig in contemporary historical works as well (modern biographies of Schopenhauer, for example). I think we should just say something like "German philosopher from from Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland)", possibly with alternate wording. -Mark From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 00:50:39 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:50:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court In-Reply-To: <001f01c3e072$3be4cd90$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> Message-ID: <20040122005039.47737.qmail@web41807.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Alex R." wrote: > I tend to agree with you Little Dan, most of the > damage done > can be rectified by reverting edits. Sure if someone > is really > destructive it might be a lot of edits, but then we > have a list > of all the contributions there only needs to be > someone who > is willing to revert them all. > > If you are too quick at banning someone you may not > even > have enough material to show that the person should > not > be allowed to contribute. better that they > demonstrate their > bad behaviour before they undergo the "arbitration" > ordeal. > > There might be a really, really rare case that could > be done > by the Wikimedia board, you will notice that Art > III: sec. 4.4. of > the bylaws gives the Board of Trustees the right to > suspend > member privileges in the cases of misconduct. > Someone would > have to apply to the Board to get them to suspend > the > member in that case. I guess you have to convince > the Board > members or make an application to them: > http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/bylaws.pdf > > Alex756 Who's on the board of trustees? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 00:59:55 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:59:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls, how to feed them: not In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040122005955.85965.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > I'm losing patience with trolls. > > If it's not a borderline case or a misunderstanding > or the outgrowth of > some longstanding POV dispute, but a clear case of > someone just making > trouble to get attention... > > With a username like The Fellowship of the Troll, > tFotT seems like a > clone of Entmoot of Trolls. Both names are an > obvious Lord of the Rings > reference, and both users act the same: obnoxiously. > He's even managed > to tick off the mild-mannered Pakaran and the > unflappable Angela. > Eloquence gave him a ban warning. > > I don't care if the ISP is different. The behavior > is the same. > > Let's not make this the first case for Mediation or > Arbitration. I > hereby request Jimbo to contact this guy directly > and lay down the law > to him. > > Ed Poor This isn't what mediation and arbitration were intended for. This should probably go to the normal system of discussing it for a few days until a consensus forms that it is the same person (or it might not, but I think they are the same). Jimbo might use his discresion on this, but that would be the first time I can think of that he does something like that without significant discussion. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 01:01:26 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:01:26 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Banned for a Day In-Reply-To: <20040122003447.81504.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I think sometimes a ban for a day may do more good than a ban for a year. Fred > From: Daniel Ehrenberg > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 16:34:47 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) > > Fred Bauder wrote: >> Remains to be saw. I know I'm going to advocate >> slaps on the rist from time >> to time to git them dux attention/ >> >> Fred > > BTW, what's Wikinfo's policy on this? > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Thu Jan 22 02:05:25 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 02:05:25 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for a day, hi to Cunc Message-ID: <400F2FE5.16711.192A088@localhost> Fred: > I think sometimes a ban for a day may do more good than a ban > for a year. Just a link: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?TrialByExile Btw, don't edit it. We have too many Wikipedians on meatball already. Just appreciate the sublime beauty(horror) of the ideas... ;-) Cunctator: >I've been very busy with other things and my email has been problematic. Ahh, understood. Hi anyway, glad you could make it. Now we just need Gutza, but sie's been editing Wikipedia quite recently, so sie should turn up soon. -Martin From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Thu Jan 22 02:47:46 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex R.) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 21:47:46 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court References: <20040122005039.47737.qmail@web41807.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004801c3e092$1e4792c0$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" > > --- "Alex R." wrote: > > I tend to agree with you Little Dan, most of the > > damage done > > can be rectified by reverting edits. Sure if someone > > is really > > destructive it might be a lot of edits, but then we > > have a list > > of all the contributions there only needs to be > > someone who > > is willing to revert them all. > > > > If you are too quick at banning someone you may not > > even > > have enough material to show that the person should > > not > > be allowed to contribute. better that they > > demonstrate their > > bad behaviour before they undergo the "arbitration" > > ordeal. > > > > There might be a really, really rare case that could > > be done > > by the Wikimedia board, you will notice that Art > > III: sec. 4.4. of > > the bylaws gives the Board of Trustees the right to > > suspend > > member privileges in the cases of misconduct. > > Someone would > > have to apply to the Board to get them to suspend > > the > > member in that case. I guess you have to convince > > the Board > > members or make an application to them: > > http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/bylaws.pdf > > > > Alex756 > > Who's on the board of trustees? > There are a total of five seats on the Board. One is Jimbo Wales, and there are two other initial trustees: Michael Davis and Tim Shell. It states that at Art. IV sec. 2.2. There are also two elected positions that have to be elected within 90 days of the adoption of the bylaws (no word on when they were adopted). These two positions are "Member Representatives" as it states in sec. 2.1. They should be elected one from "contributing members" and one from "active members" (see pages 3-4 of the pdf.). The two types of members that are entitled to be elected are: (1) Contributing Active Members. These people are entitled to vote in this category if they have paid a membership fee and (2) Volunteer Active Members, who make contributions. I've started a page on this on the Meta-Wiki here: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees Jimbo just posted this a few days ago, so it is new to everyone. Alex R. From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 02:48:30 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:48:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040122024830.75334.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> And how do you propose to do that, when one of the parties has publicly stated he has no interest in the process? RickK "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: Fred Bauder wrote: > You grossly exaggerate. We'll catch em at dawn, mediate > em in the morning, arbitrate em in the afternoon, hang em > and be home in time for supper. That makes mediation seem like a mere formality. Don't you think we should actually try to mediate? You know, find common ground as a basis for a harmonious relationship? Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/9ea2958e/attachment.htm From smolensk at eunet.yu Thu Jan 22 03:06:31 2004 From: smolensk at eunet.yu (Nikola Smolenski) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 04:06:31 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401220406.31592.smolensk@eunet.yu> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 17:33, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > The capital of the USSR (and still capital of Russia) > is Moskva (or Moscow, I forget which). We're an > English-language encyclopedia, we have to call places > /something/. Moscow doesn't have an English name per > se; it's a Russian city with a Russian name. But > English-speaking people have been referring to it with > the /English word/ 'Moscow'. The way I see it, Moscow and Japan have their English names, which are not same as their original names. From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 03:11:31 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:11:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls, how to feed them: not In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040122031131.15917.qmail@web60604.mail.yahoo.com> Well, it COULD be Kwantus. He's called himself a Troll before. RickK "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: I'm losing patience with trolls. If it's not a borderline case or a misunderstanding or the outgrowth of some longstanding POV dispute, but a clear case of someone just making trouble to get attention... With a username like The Fellowship of the Troll, tFotT seems like a clone of Entmoot of Trolls. Both names are an obvious Lord of the Rings reference, and both users act the same: obnoxiously. He's even managed to tick off the mild-mannered Pakaran and the unflappable Angela. Eloquence gave him a ban warning. I don't care if the ISP is different. The behavior is the same. Let's not make this the first case for Mediation or Arbitration. I hereby request Jimbo to contact this guy directly and lay down the law to him. Ed Poor --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/e18732bc/attachment.htm From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 03:15:14 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:15:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: <20040122024830.75334.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040122031514.11501.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> Rick wrote: > And how do you propose to do that, when one of the > parties has publicly stated he has no interest in > the process? > > RickK Then arbitration won't help either. It's understandable why someone might think it's overkill. If they're really terrible, then we can move into old banning procedures, but if they just don't like the system and they're only a mild annoyance, I don't see the harm in leaving them be. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 03:15:15 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:15:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Interested in exchanging links with wikipedia.org In-Reply-To: <20040121223619.44063.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040122031515.81676.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> Um, Dan, I would question the autobiography as being "welcome". Not unless he has something to offer other than selling baseball bats. RickK Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > Hello, > > I am interested in exchanging links with your > website wikipedia.org. My site offers a large > variety of baseball bats and other baseball > equiptment. > > My sites information is as follows: > > Title: USA Baseball Bats & Supply > Url: http://store.usa-baseballbats.com > > or here is the html for the link to my site: > > > href="http://store.usa-baseballbats.com">USA > Baseball Bats & Supply > > Upon response to this email I will place a link to > wikipedia.org on http://store.thepromotionspot.com > > This site is a new site and already has a 8PR and > receives allot of traffic through search engines. > > I look foward to working with you! > Jessica Hartman > > P.S. If you do not wish to recieve link exchange > requests please reply with remove in the subject As far as I can tell, Wikipedia isn't looking into advertizing. We don't need anyone to publicise us and we have no real need to have a link to us on your website. At this time, I don't think we would accept such an offer. You are wecome to write an article about yourself on Wikipedia, so long as it is strictly informational and not promotional. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/ef8db96b/attachment.htm From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 03:17:18 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:17:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court In-Reply-To: <004801c3e092$1e4792c0$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> Message-ID: <20040122031718.1587.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> > There are a total of five seats on the Board. One is > Jimbo Wales, > and there are two other initial trustees: Michael > Davis and Tim Shell. > Alex R. Who are they? Daniel Ehrenberg __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From sean at epoptic.org Thu Jan 22 03:27:10 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:27:10 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick In-Reply-To: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> (Dawn.Chavez@hood.army.mil) References: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> Message-ID: <200401220327.i0M3RAZb031730@orwen.epoptic.com> > This is A1C Chavez from Ft. Hood, i have a quick question for you. > do you know the shelf life of a Maverick? Alliant's Web page http://www.atk.com/aerospace/descriptions/tactical-propulsion/maverick.htm indicates that a Maverick's rocket motor has been demonstrated to have a "15+ year" service life. And I must add that I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking for that kind of information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... -- Sean Barrett | A child of five would understand this. sean at epoptic.com | Send someone to fetch a child of five. | --Groucho Marx From sascha at pantropy.net Thu Jan 22 03:36:44 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:36:44 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick In-Reply-To: <200401220327.i0M3RAZb031730@orwen.epoptic.com> References: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> <200401220327.i0M3RAZb031730@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <200401212236.44712.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 10:27 pm, Sean Barrett wrote: > And I must add that I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking > for that kind of information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... I get the impression that Dawn Chavez was asking this out of personal interest. But it would be prudent not to use a .mil email address for those sorts of things. I did get a bit of a laugh out of that one, though. ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 03:37:02 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:37:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) In-Reply-To: <20040122031514.11501.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040122033702.21940.qmail@web60604.mail.yahoo.com> At last count, Mr-Natural-Health had made personal attacks on 13 people. Is this violation of Wikiquette to be allowed to continue forever? RickK Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: Rick wrote: > And how do you propose to do that, when one of the > parties has publicly stated he has no interest in > the process? > > RickK Then arbitration won't help either. It's understandable why someone might think it's overkill. If they're really terrible, then we can move into old banning procedures, but if they just don't like the system and they're only a mild annoyance, I don't see the harm in leaving them be. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040121/9c6ae794/attachment.htm From sascha at pantropy.net Thu Jan 22 03:38:49 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:38:49 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court In-Reply-To: <20040122031718.1587.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040122031718.1587.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200401212238.49842.sascha@pantropy.net> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 10:17 pm, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > > There are a total of five seats on the Board. One is > > Jimbo Wales, > > and there are two other initial trustees: Michael > > Davis and Tim Shell. > > Alex R. > > Who are they? They're Jimbo's shills that ensure a 3/5 majority. ;-) (/ducks and hides) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Thu Jan 22 03:41:55 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex R.) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:41:55 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Duck Court References: <20040122031718.1587.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <005e01c3e099$ae9a6d00$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" > > There are a total of five seats on the Board. One is > > Jimbo Wales, > > and there are two other initial trustees: Michael > > Davis and Tim Shell. > > Alex R. > > Who are they? You willl have to ask Jimbo. > > Daniel Ehrenberg > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From sean at epoptic.org Thu Jan 22 03:55:18 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:55:18 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick In-Reply-To: <200401212236.44712.sascha@pantropy.net> (message from Sascha Noyes on Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:36:44 -0500) References: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> <200401220327.i0M3RAZb031730@orwen.epoptic.com> <200401212236.44712.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <200401220355.i0M3tIi2031792@orwen.epoptic.com> > > And I must add that I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking > > for that kind of information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... > > I get the impression that Dawn Chavez was asking this out of personal > interest. But it would be prudent not to use a .mil email address for those > sorts of things. I did get a bit of a laugh out of that one, though. ;-) I would say that having a personal interest in the shelf life of Maverick missiles is rather scary, too, except that many of my interests are similarly scary. Maybe Dawn and I should ... no, we probably shouldn't; my wife wouldn't understand. -- Sean Barrett | Ask not what your country can do for you, sean at epoptic.com | ask what your country can do to you. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 05:59:44 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 06:59:44 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Quacks Like a Duck References: <20040121162856.85720.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> <20040122002409.68812.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400F66D0.6000105@yahoo.com> Daniel Ehrenberg a ?crit: > Rick wrote: > >>That doesn't seem to be an option any longer. No, >>instead, we're going to have a months-long runup to >>a mediation process, a months-long mediation >>process, a months-long runup to an arbitration >>process, a months-long arbitration process, and then >>maybe, just maybe, somebody will, someday when they >>get around to it, propose banning. >> >>RickK > > > I thought we were going to have somewhat unofficial > mediation, which is just talking, and then we go > through the old banning procedures if we felt we > needed to. The goal of this is to prevent banning, not > delay it, but if needed (eg. if there's lots of active > vandalization, not just an edit conflict), there might > be a ban instead of mediation. > > LDan One thing that will require to be watched with attention will be "how many people will be in effect banned in the next weeks". Whether what we will gain in efficiency, we won't lose it in openness. And the amount of pressure which will be applied on both committee, to ban people as soon as possible. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 06:08:45 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:08:45 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for a day, hi to Cunc References: <400F2FE5.16711.192A088@localhost> Message-ID: <400F68ED.6060302@yahoo.com> Martin Harper a ?crit: > Fred: > >>I think sometimes a ban for a day may do more good than a ban >>for a year. > > > Just a link: > http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?TrialByExile > > Btw, don't edit it. We have too many Wikipedians on meatball already. Just > appreciate the sublime beauty(horror) of the ideas... ;-) Where is the protection button ? :-) I think no one should be short banned without a clear process and global agreement upon using this sort of action. Currently, we do not know who could decide of such an action, and we do not have any arguments laid down. Plus we confuse "short ban" as a mean to cool down the editor, "short ban" as a mean to give a break to the group, and "short ban" as a way to get around due process. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 06:11:53 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:11:53 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) References: <20040122024830.75334.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <400F69A9.3080602@yahoo.com> Rick a ?crit: > And how do you propose to do that, when one of the parties has publicly > stated he has no interest in the process? Mr-Natural-Health mentionned on Wikipedia:Requests for mediation that he agreed to arbitration. ? From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 06:40:46 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:40:46 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for a day, hi to Cunc In-Reply-To: <400F68ED.6060302@yahoo.com> Message-ID: I don't think anyone is proposing short bans without due process. We're just considering whether short bans might be an effective remedy in certain circumstances. Apparently they are according to Meatball. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:08:45 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for a day, hi to Cunc > > > > Martin Harper a ?crit: >> Fred: >> >>> I think sometimes a ban for a day may do more good than a ban >>> for a year. >> >> >> Just a link: >> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?TrialByExile >> >> Btw, don't edit it. We have too many Wikipedians on meatball already. Just >> appreciate the sublime beauty(horror) of the ideas... ;-) > > Where is the protection button ? :-) > > I think no one should be short banned without a clear process and global > agreement upon using this sort of action. Currently, we do not know who > could decide of such an action, and we do not have any arguments laid > down. Plus we confuse "short ban" as a mean to cool down the editor, > "short ban" as a mean to give a break to the group, and "short ban" as a > way to get around due process. > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 06:42:17 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:42:17 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Quacks Like a Duck In-Reply-To: <400F66D0.6000105@yahoo.com> Message-ID: Yes, there is pressure, but we are dragging our feet. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 06:59:44 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Quacks Like a Duck > > > > Daniel Ehrenberg a ?crit: >> Rick wrote: >> >>> That doesn't seem to be an option any longer. No, >>> instead, we're going to have a months-long runup to >>> a mediation process, a months-long mediation >>> process, a months-long runup to an arbitration >>> process, a months-long arbitration process, and then >>> maybe, just maybe, somebody will, someday when they >>> get around to it, propose banning. >>> >>> RickK >> >> >> I thought we were going to have somewhat unofficial >> mediation, which is just talking, and then we go >> through the old banning procedures if we felt we >> needed to. The goal of this is to prevent banning, not >> delay it, but if needed (eg. if there's lots of active >> vandalization, not just an edit conflict), there might >> be a ban instead of mediation. >> >> LDan > > One thing that will require to be watched with attention will be "how > many people will be in effect banned in the next weeks". > > Whether what we will gain in efficiency, we won't lose it in openness. > > And the amount of pressure which will be applied on both committee, to > ban people as soon as possible. > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jan 22 06:46:29 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:46:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC: Votes for merge; Proposed New Wikipedia Utility Page In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040122064629.44851.qmail@web25006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Some people vote pages to delete, when a merge is the solution. If there was a Votes for merge page, we could avoid unnecessary VfD entries. VfD also tends to be very big and people with slow connections have a hard time downloading all the entries. A VfM (votes for merge) may help to keep VfD clean from unrelated entries. Please have a look at [[User:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge]] and tell me your opinion on [[User talk:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge]]. This is for the English Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes_for_merge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes_for_merge --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Thu Jan 22 09:10:28 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:10:28 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names References: <006901c3e043$c55d42c0$5f000450@Galasien> <400F1C82.7050307@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <001601c3e0c7$9449e3d0$5f000450@Galasien> > I think we should just say something like "German philosopher > from Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland)", possibly with alternate > wording. > > -Mark I agree with that. Trivia question: what do Woody Allen and Kaliningrad have in common? Charles From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Thu Jan 22 09:19:29 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:19:29 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names In-Reply-To: <001601c3e0c7$9449e3d0$5f000450@Galasien> References: <006901c3e043$c55d42c0$5f000450@Galasien> <400F1C82.7050307@rufus.d2g.com> <001601c3e0c7$9449e3d0$5f000450@Galasien> Message-ID: "Charles Matthews" writes: > Trivia question: what do Woody Allen and Kaliningrad have in common? Formerly called K?nigsberg. What do I win? -- Gareth Owen "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity" -- W. B. Yeats forsees the standard of debate on wikipedia-l From billy.mills at thomson.com Thu Jan 22 09:33:37 2004 From: billy.mills at thomson.com (Mills, Billy) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:33:37 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names Message-ID: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE05903797@eagle.netg.ie> A full reading of the Yeats poem cited by Gareth Owen would be salutary for all Wikipedians: it speaks to many current live debates on this list and elsewhere. Billy Mills > -----Original Message----- > From: Gareth Owen [mailto:wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk] > Sent: 22 January 2004 09:17 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] English names > > > "Charles Matthews" writes: > > > Trivia question: what do Woody Allen and Kaliningrad have in common? > > Formerly called K?nigsberg. What do I win? > -- > Gareth Owen > "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of > passionate intensity" > -- W. B. Yeats forsees the standard of > debate on wikipedia-l > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040122/7aa56303/attachment.htm From irastoll at hotmail.com Thu Jan 22 10:22:17 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 04:22:17 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] You guys are great! Message-ID: I resisted subscribing to the mailing list for a very long time do to a comment I saw at [[Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians]] placed by a "??? aka BigFatBuddha". He said he had read the mailing list and found it full of gossip regarding him. I don't know if I have a large ego or what, but a large part of my intent in coming to the mailing list now was to see what gossip there would be about me. What I found was no mention of myself, but rather a great deal of positive, agreeable, reasonable posts. When I first came to the wikipedia I was in awe of the egalitarianism and benevolent dictatorship. After some of my recent troubles, I had a much grimmer view of wikipolitics. I found the wikipedia to be a scary 16th century new england town, full of finger pointing and mob-mentality witch hunts. I was concerned that the process of codifying authority was unfinished. Really, I wasn't sure if this could all work out in the end, if a quality reference source (one I can cite on my term papers!) could be created. Now I am sure it can. I see now more clearly, that the pleasant goodwill, and respect for truth and progress and I have found in the IRC chat room is not exclusive, but rather is growing. I compliment you sincerely, and I predict slow but steady success in all areas of the wikipedia. Jack _________________________________________________________________ Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1 From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 22 09:07:46 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 01:07:46 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick References: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> <200401220327.i0M3RAZb031730@orwen.epoptic.com> <200401212236.44712.sascha@pantropy.net> <200401220355.i0M3tIi2031792@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <400F92E2.2050304@telus.net> Sean Barrett wrote: >>>And I must add that I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking >>>for that kind of information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... >>> >>I get the impression that Dawn Chavez was asking this out of personal >>interest. But it would be prudent not to use a .mil email address for those >>sorts of things. I did get a bit of a laugh out of that one, though. ;-) >> >I would say that having a personal interest in the shelf life of >Maverick missiles is rather scary, too, except that many of my >interests are similarly scary. Maybe Dawn and I should ... no, we >probably shouldn't; my wife wouldn't understand. > It took a while to figure out that she wasn't refering to our long time member Mav, and even to understand what her possible personal attack on him was all about. Now that others better versed in such matters have explained that we are dealing with some kind of missile and not the Ford product, I think that I can safely conclude that this lady is not officer material. No wonder Sean's wife wouldn't understand! :-) Ec From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 12:58:36 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 05:58:36 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Requesting Arbitration Message-ID: I have written an introduction to the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration article. I suggest that all requests for arbitration be initiated by the posting of a request for arbitration on that page. Such a posting should not be made until mediation has been tried and failed. Not sure how that should be established. I also posted this in the arbitration forum: http://boards.wikimedia.org/viewtopic.php?p=7#7 Which parties interested in our arbitration procedures and proceeding might wish to use. Fred From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Thu Jan 22 14:11:27 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:11:27 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck) Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209B@backupserv.queens.harley> Anthere [mailto:anthere8 at yahoo.com] wrote: >Mr-Natural-Health mentionned on Wikipedia:Requests for mediation >that he agreed to arbitration. > >? I think that this is a misunderstanding on his part. I think he really agreeing to mediation rather than arbitration. Let's not worry about it. The point is he has agreed to cooperate, which is a huge step forward. I thought he'd never agree. I would really like to see mediation work here. A success early on will boost the status of the mediation process. Theresa From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 14:22:23 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:22:23 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] List admin (was: Trolls, how to feed them: not) Message-ID: Anthere sweetly wrote, > Nathan, > > Would you be ever so kind please, > as to register to the mailing list if > you are going to post to it > > Thank you :-) > > Anthere > The current list admin > > (Ed, by the way, ain't you back ?) I'm back, but since you are doing such a good job of list administration, I would like to take this opportunity to sit this one out. May I have the rest of the year off, please? Ed Poor Last year's list admin From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 14:32:05 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:32:05 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please ban Mr. Natural Health (was: Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck)) Message-ID: RickK wrote: > At last count, Mr-Natural-Health had made personal attacks > on 13 people. Is this violation of Wikiquette to be allowed to > continue forever? If I had bothered to keep my ssh account current when I changed computers last year, I would just ban him myself, announce it to the mailing list, and take my chances on being deluged with complaints for being autocratic and unilateral. But I'll leave that to Erik (Eloquence). He's a sufficient judge of consensus, and he's got his finger on the ban button. How about it, my eloquent friend? Do we have to put up with MHN, or will you eliminate this nuisance for us? Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040122/986f0739/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 14:39:40 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:39:40 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Ed's Flustration In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Ed must be getting flustrated. Mr. Natural Health may soon agree to mediation and if he does not, a request for arbitration will be made which can probably be dealt with very promptly if he does not participate. I don't see any emergency. Fred From: "Poor, Edmund W" Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:32:05 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please ban Mr. Natural Health (was: Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck)) RickK wrote: > At last count, Mr-Natural-Health had made personal attacks > on 13 people. Is this violation of Wikiquette to be allowed to > continue forever? If I had bothered to keep my ssh account current when I changed computers last year, I would just ban him myself, announce it to the mailing list, and take my chances on being deluged with complaints for being autocratic and unilateral. But I'll leave that to Erik (Eloquence). He's a sufficient judge of consensus, and he's got his finger on the ban button. How about it, my eloquent friend? Do we have to put up with MHN, or will you eliminate this nuisance for us? Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040122/ca82fc57/attachment.htm From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 14:44:52 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:44:52 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names Message-ID: Charles agreed with Mark's suggestion: > > I think we should just say something like "German philosopher from > > Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland)", possibly with alternate wording. > > > > -Mark But I deplore the constant mention of alternate names. Why can't whoever writes the sentence include a link? Then we only have to ensure that the reader will see the alternate name immediately upon clicking the link? * German philosopher from [[Danzig]] Upon clicking the /Danzig/ link, the user should see:

Gdansk

(redirected from Danzig) * '''Gda?sk''' (formerly '''Danzig''') is a city on the southern coast of ... For places whose English names are controversial, the first Heading can be something like Origins of its Name Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 14:50:09 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:50:09 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Ed's Flustration Message-ID: Fred Bauder wrote: > Ed must be getting frustrated. Mr. Natural Health may soon agree to > mediation and if he does not, a request for arbitration will be made which > can probably be dealt with very promptly if he does not participate. > I don't see any emergency. Okay, I'll cool down. And, by the way, remind me not to "volunteer" to be the Mediator in case he really does agree to mediation. I might be biased... ;-) Ed Poor, aka Unsolved Equation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040122/c235d89c/attachment.htm From jnc at lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 22 15:28:27 2004 From: jnc at lcs.mit.edu (J. Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:28:27 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20040122102659.009e8a50@mailhub.exis.net> > From: Sean Barrett >> This is A1C Chavez from Ft. Hood > I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking for that kind of > information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... Ah, I think Ft. Hood is an Army base, actually (which is why it's called "Ft." Hood, and not Hood "AFB"). Agree with you about someone in the military looking to *us* for weapons data, though... :-) Noel From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 15:57:53 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:57:53 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation mailing list Message-ID: There's a Mediator message board set up on the Web. Here's who signed up so far: Angela Wolfram norse LittleDan Fred Bauder Anthere llywrch Cimon Avaro JamesF Ed Poor We're still saying "hi" to each other and figuring out how to use this new communications mechanism. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed P.S. I'm dropping the Unsolved Equation handle, at Erik's request From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Thu Jan 22 16:02:54 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:02:54 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names References: Message-ID: <006301c3e101$4890c550$5f000450@Galasien> Ed Poor wrote >But I deplore the constant mention of alternate names. Why can't whoever >writes the sentence include a link? Then we only have to ensure that the >reader will see the alternate name immediately upon clicking the link? >* German philosopher from [[Danzig]] Only once per article, anyway. For me, it depends a bit on prominence. For example, I think 'Constantinople (present-day Istanbul)' is over-the-top, 'Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik)' is helpful (especially since it turns out that there is another Ragusa) and 'New Amsterdam (present-day New York)' saves me from a guilty feeling that I should have learned this sometime, but am not quite sure when. Charles From sean at epoptic.org Thu Jan 22 18:13:28 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:13:28 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20040122102659.009e8a50@mailhub.exis.net> (jnc@lcs.mit.edu) References: <5.0.2.1.0.20040122102659.009e8a50@mailhub.exis.net> Message-ID: <200401221813.i0MIDSTg000822@orwen.epoptic.com> > Ah, I think Ft. Hood is an Army base, actually (which is why it's called > "Ft." Hood, and not Hood "AFB"). > > Agree with you about someone in the military looking to *us* for weapons > data, though... :-) > > Noel Fort Hood is an Army base, and the "army.mil" address gives us another clue -- both of which are overridden by Dawn's rank of A1C; ie, Airman First Class. (Or is that Airperson First Class?) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 18:35:00 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:35:00 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: List admin (was: Trolls, how to feed them: not) References: Message-ID: <401017D4.9060009@yahoo.com> Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > Anthere sweetly wrote, > > >>Nathan, >> >>Would you be ever so kind please, >>as to register to the mailing list if >>you are going to post to it >> >>Thank you :-) >> >>Anthere >>The current list admin >> >>(Ed, by the way, ain't you back ?) > > > I'm back, but since you are doing such a good job of list > administration, I would like to take this opportunity to > sit this one out. May I have the rest of the year off, > please? > > Ed Poor > Last year's list admin No way dear Ed. Hummm...I'll do it till the end of the month :-) Then, what about setting turns between good, dedicated and trusted wikipedians ? I already had a year duty on the fr: list, and at the end of it, it was really eating me up. What did I do ? Easy. I '''complained''' each time an editor posted without being registered for example. To the point, a couple of people just said "poor Anthere, she is really having a lot to do, she can't do everything...Anthere, do you need help ?" YESSSSSS. I did. They got the job :-) So, here is the deal... I suggest some nice people offer help, and we will turn them the job, provided that they agree to block messages with the Nazi word in it, but agree to let go through messages about baseball stuff, or Maverick missiles (that was fun, no ?) Otherwise, I will complain. I am really good at that :-) ------- but it was a pleasure to help you Ed. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 16:47:31 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:47:31 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Message boards Message-ID: As of this morning, it looks like Erik is the administrator of the 2 Wikipedia message boards. Anyone can sign up, with read/write access to both Mediation and Arbitration. I suppose it will take us around a week to figure out if either team wants to configure this differently. The message board software has "usergroups", which could be used to separate Mediators from Arbitrators, if closed door sessions are needed. I'm leaning toward an open forum with what I call "eavesdropping", e.g., only Mediators will contribute comments to the Mediation message board, but registered users can read every comment. Another alternative is to limit read AND write access for each board to its members. We should discuss this before doing it. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed Mediation Committee -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040122/18836d8e/attachment.htm From bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com Thu Jan 22 19:03:01 2004 From: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com (Bjorn Lindqvist) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:03:01 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for a day, hi to Cunc In-Reply-To: <20040122091044.6A247B89A@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040122091044.6A247B89A@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040122190301.GA1071@localhost> > I think no one should be short banned without a clear process and global > agreement upon using this sort of action. Currently, we do not know who > could decide of such an action, and we do not have any arguments laid > down. Plus we confuse "short ban" as a mean to cool down the editor, > "short ban" as a mean to give a break to the group, and "short ban" as a > way to get around due process. Or "short ban" as a mean to publicly and wikipedia-globally humiliate someone and declare that person to be "wrong"? Short bans are a bad idea. BL From jwales at bomis.com Thu Jan 22 19:22:22 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:22:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Inquiry from a reporter Message-ID: <20040122192219.GH11102@joey.bomis.com> 1. Is there a graph or chart somewhere showing the number of wikipedia articles at different points in time? 2. Some time ago, I saw where someone had done a comparison of Britannica versus Wikipedia articles, some 200 articles compared as I recall. Where is that? How old is it? Have there been other comparisons done? 3. If you're a prominent Wikipedian in the San Francisco area who would be interested in being interviewed, please email me and let me know your contact info so I can pass it along. --Jimbo From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 19:41:09 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:41:09 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Creative Alternatives to Bans In-Reply-To: <20040122190301.GA1071@localhost> Message-ID: Before a "short ban" would be considered the editor would have lost an arbitration dispute. How about some creative alternatives to bans as results? For example, an editor may only be having trouble in certain areas, for example, Fred Bauder, should he lose an arbitration might be forbidden from editing any philosophy articles.... Fred > From: Bjorn Lindqvist > Reply-To: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:03:01 +0100 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for a day, hi to Cunc > >> I think no one should be short banned without a clear process and global >> agreement upon using this sort of action. Currently, we do not know who >> could decide of such an action, and we do not have any arguments laid >> down. Plus we confuse "short ban" as a mean to cool down the editor, >> "short ban" as a mean to give a break to the group, and "short ban" as a >> way to get around due process. > > Or "short ban" as a means to publicly and wikipedia-globally humiliate > someone and declare that person to be "wrong"? > Short bans are a bad idea. > > BL > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 20:26:39 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:26:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Creative Alternatives to Bans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040122202639.32195.qmail@web41803.mail.yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > Before a "short ban" would be considered the editor > would have lost an > arbitration dispute. How about some creative > alternatives to bans as > results? For example, an editor may only be having > trouble in certain areas, > for example, Fred Bauder, should he lose an > arbitration might be forbidden > from editing any philosophy articles.... > > Fred Sounds good but how would you enforce that? For most people that would work, but many trolls would just ignore it without something like a threat of banning. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 22 20:37:55 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 13:37:55 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Enforcement of mild penalties In-Reply-To: <20040122202639.32195.qmail@web41803.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The arbitration committee might retain jurisdiction, or at least be able to reopen the matter in case. They could then impose a hard long ban if really necessary. Fred > From: Daniel Ehrenberg > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:26:39 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Creative Alternatives to Bans > > Fred Bauder wrote: >> Before a "short ban" would be considered the editor >> would have lost an >> arbitration dispute. How about some creative >> alternatives to bans as >> results? For example, an editor may only be having >> trouble in certain areas, >> for example, Fred Bauder, should he lose an >> arbitration might be forbidden >> from editing any philosophy articles.... >> >> Fred > > Sounds good but how would you enforce that? For most > people that would work, but many trolls would just > ignore it without something like a threat of banning. > > LDan > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 20:40:55 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:40:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Inquiry from a reporter In-Reply-To: <20040122192219.GH11102@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040122204055.61448.qmail@web41813.mail.yahoo.com> Jimmy Wales wrote: > 1. Is there a graph or chart somewhere showing the > number of > wikipedia articles at different points in time? There's the Webalizer (http://en.wikipedia.org/stats/), but that's only how many people access the website. There's also [[Wikipedia:Awareness statistics]], but that's still not number of articles. Oh, here it is. There's a graph at [[Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia]], but it hasn't been updated since last November. There's data up to today, though. Here's the picture itself: [[Image:English_language_wikipedia_article_count_jan_2001_-_nov_2003.png]] . > > 2. Some time ago, I saw where someone had done a > comparison of > Britannica versus Wikipedia articles, some 200 > articles compared as I > recall. Where is that? How old is it? Have there > been other > comparisons done? I'm not sure what you mean, but there's always the making fun of Britannica thing at the meta: [[m:Making_fun_of_Britannica]]. > > 3. If you're a prominent Wikipedian in the San > Francisco area who > would be interested in being interviewed, please > email me and let me > know your contact info so I can pass it along. > > --Jimbo LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From pcb21 at btconnect.com Thu Jan 22 21:03:44 2004 From: pcb21 at btconnect.com (Peter Bartlett) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:03:44 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] You guys are great! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Jack, Just wondering who you are on wikipedia - there are several users called Jack and your email name (an anagram of "is a troll" by the way!) doesn't give it away. Pete/User:Pcb21 -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ira Stoll Sent: 22 January 2004 10:22 To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] You guys are great! >I resisted subscribing to the mailing list.... From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 22 21:20:59 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:20:59 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for a day, hi to Cunc References: <20040122091044.6A247B89A@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040122190301.GA1071@localhost> Message-ID: <40103EBB.1060104@yahoo.com> Bjorn Lindqvist a ?crit: >>I think no one should be short banned without a clear process and global >>agreement upon using this sort of action. Currently, we do not know who >>could decide of such an action, and we do not have any arguments laid >>down. Plus we confuse "short ban" as a mean to cool down the editor, >>"short ban" as a mean to give a break to the group, and "short ban" as a >>way to get around due process. > > > Or "short ban" as a mean to publicly and wikipedia-globally humiliate > someone and declare that person to be "wrong"? > Short bans are a bad idea. > > BL just a more pc term : short block rather than short ban From pcb21 at btconnect.com Thu Jan 22 21:32:36 2004 From: pcb21 at btconnect.com (Peter Bartlett) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:32:36 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] English names In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >* '''Gda?sk''' (formerly '''Danzig''') is a city on the southern coast of ... I was just about to say "eh... Poland doesn't have a southern coast (and neither does Germany)"... But then realized that seas have coasts too :-) The people who've figured out the naming conventions for Gdansk (and other places that have changed names of the years) might like to add them to [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)]] - at the moment that page is basically devoted to the much-discussed policy on English counties.. But a more general policy statement, as much as it is possible, would be useful for the future. Pete/Pcb21 From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 22 21:46:31 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:46:31 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Not a joking matter Message-ID: I'm really pissed off. I guess I better take a few days off. I don't want to deal with trolls. Anyone who calls themselves a troll or hints (however playfully) that they might be a troll, is like someone who jokes about hijacking a plane. If the passenger next to me on a plane said, "I'm thinking of hijacking this plane," my first impulse would be . . . (well, usage guidelines for this mailing list don't let me say any more). Bottom line: I'll be back when there's an agreement that trolls aren't allowed here. I mean it: you can have trolls, or you can have me. The choice is yours, people. Ed Poor From fun at thingy.apana.org.au Thu Jan 22 22:43:59 2004 From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:43:59 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please ban Mr. Natural Health (was: Kill the puppy (was: Quacks Like a Duck)) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4010522F.3000100@thingy.apana.org.au> On 01/22/04 14:32, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > If I had bothered to keep my ssh account current when I changed > computers last year, I would just ban him myself, announce it to the > mailing list, and take my chances on being deluged with complaints for > being autocratic and unilateral. > But I'll leave that to Erik (Eloquence). He's a sufficient judge of > consensus, and he's got his finger on the ban button. > How about it, my eloquent friend? Do we have to put up with MHN, or will > you eliminate this nuisance for us? Speaking as one of those tangling with Mr-Natural-Health ... check his contributions list. He's writing articles that are good and useful, except for the (IMO) gross and overwhelming POV. (IMO, they're rants and/or advocacy, not encyclopaedia articles.) They have good material in them for articles, but that requires MNH not getting upset by the editing process. It would be a loss for him to leave if he could play nicer than others. I have been on Wikipedia about 2 seconds, so I may be hopelessly naive here. - d. From fun at thingy.apana.org.au Thu Jan 22 22:46:40 2004 From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:46:40 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please ban Mr. Natural Health In-Reply-To: <4010522F.3000100@thingy.apana.org.au> References: <4010522F.3000100@thingy.apana.org.au> Message-ID: <401052D0.9060906@thingy.apana.org.au> On 01/22/04 22:43, David Gerard wrote: > It would be a loss for him to leave if he could play nicer than others. With. Nicer with. Meh! - d. From sascha at pantropy.net Thu Jan 22 23:14:43 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:14:43 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please ban Mr. Natural Health (was: Kill the puppy (=?iso-8859-1?q?was=3A=09Quacks_Like_a?= Duck)) In-Reply-To: <4010522F.3000100@thingy.apana.org.au> References: <4010522F.3000100@thingy.apana.org.au> Message-ID: <200401221814.43729.sascha@pantropy.net> On Thursday 22 January 2004 05:43 pm, David Gerard wrote: > On 01/22/04 14:32, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > > If I had bothered to keep my ssh account current when I changed > > computers last year, I would just ban him myself, announce it to the > > mailing list, and take my chances on being deluged with complaints for > > being autocratic and unilateral. > > But I'll leave that to Erik (Eloquence). He's a sufficient judge of > > consensus, and he's got his finger on the ban button. > > How about it, my eloquent friend? Do we have to put up with MHN, or will > > you eliminate this nuisance for us? > > Speaking as one of those tangling with Mr-Natural-Health ... check > his contributions list. He's writing articles that are good and useful, > except for the (IMO) gross and overwhelming POV. (IMO, they're rants > and/or advocacy, not encyclopaedia articles.) They have good material > in them for articles, but that requires MNH not getting upset by the > editing process. > > It would be a loss for him to leave if he could play nicer than others. What you're forgetting in your "usefulness calculation" is that people who engage in reversion wars and hopelessly POV edits waste a lot of time of other contributers. That having been said, I take the approach that his contributions are not of interest in deciding whether or not he should be banned for repeatedly and after many warnings violating the "no personal attacks" rule. Ceterum censeo, Carthaginem esse delendum. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From saintonge at telus.net Thu Jan 22 23:52:58 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 15:52:58 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] List admin (was: Trolls, how to feed them: not) References: Message-ID: <4010625A.3010204@telus.net> Poor, Edmund W wrote: >Anthere sweetly wrote, > >>Anthere >>The current list admin >> >>(Ed, by the way, ain't you back ?) >> > >I'm back, but since you are doing such a good job of list >administration, I would like to take this opportunity to >sit this one out. May I have the rest of the year off, >please? > A fine thing to say in January! :-) Ec From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 01:34:19 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:34:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick In-Reply-To: <200401220355.i0M3tIi2031792@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <20040123013419.72722.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> I notice that maveric has yet to respond. :) RickK Sean Barrett wrote: > > And I must add that I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking > > for that kind of information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... > > I get the impression that Dawn Chavez was asking this out of personal > interest. But it would be prudent not to use a .mil email address for those > sorts of things. I did get a bit of a laugh out of that one, though. ;-) I would say that having a personal interest in the shelf life of Maverick missiles is rather scary, too, except that many of my interests are similarly scary. Maybe Dawn and I should ... no, we probably shouldn't; my wife wouldn't understand. -- Sean Barrett | Ask not what your country can do for you, sean at epoptic.com | ask what your country can do to you. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040122/9a4ce432/attachment.htm From irastoll at hotmail.com Fri Jan 23 01:37:18 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:37:18 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] You guys are great! Message-ID: Gee, maybe I spoke too soon. That anagram thing really threw me. Anyways, I'm JackLynch. I donno how it ended up giving my actual name, but then I havn't been on many mailing lists. Maybe my email did it automatically or some such? Anyways, thats who I am. Jack _________________________________________________________________ Get a FREE online virus check for your PC here, from McAfee. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From littledanehren at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 01:38:23 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:38:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Interested in exchanging links with wikipedia.org In-Reply-To: <20040122031515.81676.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040123013823.4802.qmail@web41803.mail.yahoo.com> Rick wrote: > Um, Dan, I would question the autobiography as being > "welcome". Not unless he has something to offer > other than selling baseball bats. > > RickK I said only if it was non-promotional. It's a company and we have articles on companies. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 02:27:03 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:27:03 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: You guys are great! References: Message-ID: <40108677.8090705@yahoo.com> Jack When you registered to the mailing list yesterday or two days ago, you indicated "Jack" as a name reference. Jack, I know you are testing us in turns, to check our processes and make things move on. It is good, and nice of you to feel so much interested in participating to the process, but do remember to let us time to build things as well. Do not test the mailing list administration please. Ira Stoll a ?crit: > Gee, maybe I spoke too soon. That anagram thing really threw me. > Anyways, I'm JackLynch. I donno how it ended up giving my actual name, > but then I havn't been on many mailing lists. Maybe my email did it > automatically or some such? Anyways, thats who I am. Jack From irastoll at hotmail.com Fri Jan 23 02:45:58 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:45:58 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions Message-ID: == Policy suggestions == Most of the conflict I have had here (IMO) was due to disputes over quality of information (and citations), or the inclusion or exclusion of POV (Interpretations of said information, and citations). I'd like to propose a few things, which might make my job here (assuming I get to keep it) and yours a bit easier. Don't take this the wrong way, I'm well aware that I am a dubious source of information, and I don't think I'm giving orders (I'm pretty low on the totem pole, clearly) but I would like you to hear my policy suggestions. *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented *Multiple POV '''should''' be expressed, and differing citations given. wiki is not paper. There is room for everyone to be heard, history shows us many examples of minority opinion later being found correct. There is room for all POV's so long as citations are given. *There is always room for respectable citations that differ. *The quality expected of the citations should be based on the number of editors, and thus number of citations involved. The more citations provided, the higher the standard (thus in an article with only one editor, a lower standard of citation would be expected than in an article where numerous editors are present and there are plentiful citations). *NPOV can be promoted best by providing citations of differing POV's and presenting said POV's in as impartial a manner as possible, thereby providing the highest quality, objective information possible. *I think some sort of forum for debate over POV should be made available, as there seems to be no end of desire for it among some. **editors who have proof of particular expertise should be considered a citation in and of themselves (on the subjects that they have such proof of expertise in). p.s. I previously posted this on [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitrators]], and I also posted it on village pump and wikipedia:policy and guidelines. JackLynch _________________________________________________________________ Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1 From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 04:26:12 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:26:12 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Replacing Text In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This would be a change from the usual blanket deletions and reversions our partisian warriors usually engage in. > From: "Ira Stoll" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:45:58 -0600 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions > > *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it > with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable > difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 04:30:21 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:30:21 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Citations of Authority In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Generally there is a near absence of citations made in most of our wars. Mainly there is bald assertion of "authoritative" point of view, usually accompanied by repeated references to NPOV. Fred > From: "Ira Stoll" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:45:58 -0600 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions > > == Policy suggestions == > > Most of the conflict I have had here (IMO) was due to disputes over quality > of information (and citations), or the inclusion or exclusion of POV > (Interpretations of said information, and citations). I'd like to propose a > few things, which might make my job here (assuming I get to keep it) and > yours a bit easier. Don't take this the wrong way, I'm well aware that I am > a dubious source of information, and I don't think I'm giving orders (I'm > pretty low on the totem pole, clearly) but I would like you to hear my > policy suggestions. > > *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it > with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable > difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented > *Multiple POV '''should''' be expressed, and differing citations given. wiki > is not paper. There is room for everyone to be heard, history shows us many > examples of minority opinion later being found correct. There is room for > all POV's so long as citations are given. > *There is always room for respectable citations that differ. > *The quality expected of the citations should be based on the number of > editors, and thus number of citations involved. The more citations provided, > the higher the standard (thus in an article with only one editor, a lower > standard of citation would be expected than in an article where numerous > editors are present and there are plentiful citations). > *NPOV can be promoted best by providing citations of differing POV's and > presenting said POV's in as impartial a manner as possible, thereby > providing the highest quality, objective information possible. > *I think some sort of forum for debate over POV should be made available, as > there seems to be no end of desire for it among some. > **editors who have proof of particular expertise should be considered a > citation in and of themselves (on the subjects that they have such proof of > expertise in). > > p.s. I previously posted this on [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitrators]], and I also > posted it on village pump and wikipedia:policy and guidelines. > JackLynch > > _________________________________________________________________ > Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime > features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1 > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 23 04:27:23 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:27:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Citations of Authority In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4010A2AB.3000400@rufus.d2g.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >Generally there is a near absence of citations made in most of our wars. >Mainly there is bald assertion of "authoritative" point of view, usually >accompanied by repeated references to NPOV. > > I'm personally a little wary of using citations overmuch. Obviously in many cases they can provide some backing for claims, but especially on contentious issues a citation can be produced to back up essentially any arbitrary claim. This includes "scientific" fields, where for example I can probably produce at least one study to back up any claim you'd care to make about anti-depressants (they work, they don't work, they sometimes work, they're better than nothing, they're worse than nothing, they're the best current solution, there are better current solutions, etc., etc.). "The devil can cite scripture for his purposes" and all that. -Mark From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 04:33:12 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:33:12 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] I have a doctorate, by God! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Heh, enough of associate professors of philosophy or political science citing their "authority" when all they do is regurgitate what some other professor filled them up with. Fred > From: "Ira Stoll" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:45:58 -0600 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions > > **editors who have proof of particular expertise should be considered a > citation in and of themselves (on the subjects that they have such proof of > expertise in). From irastoll at hotmail.com Fri Jan 23 05:10:45 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 23:10:45 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Citations of Authority Message-ID: This is exactly the kind of problem I want to have solved. Everybody thinks they are right, and maybe they are, but can't they at least cite a reference and portray the POV in a NPOV manner? JackLynch >Generally there is a near absence of citations made in most of our wars. >Mainly there is bald assertion of "authoritative" point of view, usually >accompanied by repeated references to NPOV. _________________________________________________________________ Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1 From irastoll at hotmail.com Fri Jan 23 05:19:06 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 23:19:06 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] RE:You guys are great! Message-ID: I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but it seems you may have a misperception of my intent. Unless we difine the word "test" differently, I do not mean to "test" anybody here, but rather be part of making things better. Also, as far "Do not test the mailing list administration" I must insist I'm not aware of what is ment by that, but I would really appreciate a tutorial on how to use the mailing list, and rules and regulations regarding it. I've been having problems recieving mail, I have thus far been reading mail thru the archive, accessed by the "Welcome to the "WikiEN-l" mailing list" letter I recieved. When I asked for help on IRC, they described recieving a great deal of mail (perhaps one letter for every post? I have selected NOT to recieve mail in "digest mode" which some felt to be my problem (doesn't seem to have made any difference). Thanks so much for any help, JackLynch >Jack >When you registered to the mailing list yesterday or two days ago, you >indicated "Jack" as a name reference. >Jack, I know you are testing us in turns, to check our processes and make >things move on. It is good, and nice of you to feel so much interested in >participating to the process, but do remember to let us time to build >things as well. >Do not test the mailing list administration please. _________________________________________________________________ High-speed users?be more efficient online with the new MSN Premium Internet Software. http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=byoa/prem&ST=1 From maveric149 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 06:00:43 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:00:43 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick Message-ID: <200401222200.43620.maveric149@yahoo.com> RickK wrote: >I notice that maveric has yet to respond. :) I noticed it and assumed it had nothing to do with me. -- mav From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 23 10:54:44 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:54:44 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the community Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209D@backupserv.queens.harley> Mr natural health has refused mediation with the community. He appears to feel that he has done nothing wrong and wants his "harassers" punished. I'm just writing this email to keep the pressure on really. How far down the line are we on finalizing the arbitration process? When will the arbitration committee be able to something about the Mr NH situation? Theresa From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 11:37:30 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 04:37:30 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting mediation In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209D@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: Theresa, I've been following this. Please go to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration and briefly set forth your complaint and the relief you request. (at the bottom of the page). Others who wish to join in her complaint should also add their comments to hers under the same heading, ==Theresa v. Mr. Natural Health== A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. We are still working on procedure, but these are the commonsense steps we will probably come up with. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:54:44 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the > community > > > Mr natural health has refused mediation with the community. He appears to feel > that he has done nothing wrong and wants his "harassers" punished. > > I'm just writing this email to keep the pressure on really. How far down the > line are we on finalizing the arbitration process? When will the arbitration > committee be able to something about the Mr NH situation? > > Theresa > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 11:41:53 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 04:41:53 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209D@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: Theresa, I've been following this. Please go to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration and briefly set forth your complaint and the relief you request. (at the bottom of the page). Others who wish to join in her complaint should also add their comments to hers under the same heading, ==Theresa v. Mr. Natural Health== A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. We are still working on procedure, but these are the commonsense steps we will probably come up with. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:54:44 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the > community > > > Mr natural health has refused mediation with the community. He appears to feel > that he has done nothing wrong and wants his "harassers" punished. > > I'm just writing this email to keep the pressure on really. How far down the > line are we on finalizing the arbitration process? When will the arbitration > committee be able to something about the Mr NH situation? > > Theresa > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:54:44 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the > community > > > Mr natural health has refused mediation with the community. He appears to feel > that he has done nothing wrong and wants his "harassers" punished. > > I'm just writing this email to keep the pressure on really. How far down the > line are we on finalizing the arbitration process? When will the arbitration > committee be able to something about the Mr NH situation? > > Theresa > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 23 11:54:58 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 11:54:58 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522B1@backupserv.queens.harley> OK I've tried to list him but I'm having problems at the moment with time outs. I'm not sure if my complaint made it onto the page or not, and not attempted to put a notice on Mr NH's page. I'll try again after lunch. Theresa >Others who wish to join in her complaint should also add their comments to hers under the same heading, ==Theresa v. Mr. Natural Health== From billy.mills at thomson.com Fri Jan 23 12:11:10 2004 From: billy.mills at thomson.com (Mills, Billy) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:11:10 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration Message-ID: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE059037A2@eagle.netg.ie> I also want to post him there but am having time-out problems, too. Billy > -----Original Message----- > From: KNOTT, T [mailto:TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk] > Sent: 23 January 2004 11:55 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration > > > > > OK I've tried to list him but I'm having problems at the > moment with time outs. I'm not sure if my complaint made it > onto the page or not, and not attempted to put a notice on Mr > NH's page. I'll try again after lunch. > > Theresa > > >Others who wish to join in her complaint should also add > their comments to > hers under the same heading, ==Theresa v. Mr. Natural Health== > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040123/c4d78196/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 12:18:16 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 05:18:16 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522B1@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: You did succeed. I'm trying now to access his talk page. Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 11:54:58 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration > > > > OK I've tried to list him but I'm having problems at the moment with time > outs. I'm not sure if my complaint made it onto the page or not, and not > attempted to put a notice on Mr NH's page. I'll try again after lunch. > > Theresa > >> Others who wish to join in her complaint should also add their comments to > hers under the same heading, ==Theresa v. Mr. Natural Health== > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 23 12:48:44 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:48:44 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522B2@backupserv.queens.harley> >You did succeed. I'm trying now to access his talk page. > >Fred I've just managed to do it. Theresa From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 13:26:58 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 06:26:58 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522B2@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: I put a bit more. Red and Bold Fred > From: "KNOTT, T" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:48:44 -0000 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting arbitration > > > >> You did succeed. I'm trying now to access his talk page. >> >> Fred > > I've just managed to do it. > > Theresa > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 16:21:11 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 08:21:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040123162111.66298.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Wikipedia is not a list of citations. RickK Ira Stoll wrote: *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040123/c8951152/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 16:25:34 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 08:25:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting mediation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040123162534.90383.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. RickK Fred Bauder wrote: A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040123/6c959973/attachment.htm From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 23 16:25:11 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:25:11 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting mediation Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522B8@backupserv.queens.harley> >He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. >? >RickK That doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted though. Theresa From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 17:23:17 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:23:17 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration In-Reply-To: <20040123162534.90383.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: If he does I will revert it and protect the page. Fred From: Rick Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 08:25:34 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Procedure for requesting mediation He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. RickK Fred Bauder wrote: A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040123/3b4f59aa/attachment.htm From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 17:37:26 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:37:26 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy suggestions References: <20040123162111.66298.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40115BD6.8090801@yahoo.com> Why are you repeating what I said ? (my... would you say we happen to agree on something Rick ?) Rick a ?crit: > Wikipedia is not a list of citations. > > RickK > > Ira Stoll wrote: > > > *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and > replace it > with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a > reasonable > difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From saintonge at telus.net Fri Jan 23 17:28:38 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 09:28:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the community References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209D@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: <401159C6.2040308@telus.net> KNOTT, T wrote: >Mr natural health has refused mediation with the community. He appears to feel that he has done nothing wrong and wants his "harassers" punished. > >I'm just writing this email to keep the pressure on really. How far down the line are we on finalizing the arbitration process? When will the arbitration committee be able to something about the Mr NH situation? > Sometimes this process of "keeping the pressure on" is as irritating as MNH's alleged wrongdoing. What we see on the mailing list is a stream of accusations intended to highlight every little fault that he commits. We see little or nothing about the other side of the story. Mediation and arbitration are very good concepts, but I too would be hesitant about accepting a process in which the apparent mediators don't have their own system properly in place. The optics in those circumstances suggest that a person is offering himself as a mediator in order to further the POV of the majority opinion in that context. If by our actions we only succeed in convincing the accused that the process is unfair, then we have undermined the mediation system, and his refusal to co-operate with it begins to seem more logical. The mediation committee needs to figure out its own procedures before that option can be offered to anybody. Those procedures must include provisions to insure that the rights of the accused are protected so that he can have the confidence that he is participating in a fair system. Ec From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 23 19:23:54 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 19:23:54 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 Message-ID: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> Dear all. We have a rough agenda: PRINCIPLES 1) "Jurisdiction" - what disputes do we plan to get involved in? 2) "Rules" - How do we judge cases 3) "Outcomes" - what solutions can we impose? 4) "Transparency" - issues of privacy, openness, accountability, etc PROCESS 1) "Requests" - how does one request arbitration? 2) "Who takes part?" - how do we pick arbitrators on a case? 3) "Trial" - How does the trial proceed? 4) "Judgement" - How do we give our judgement? We might add points to that as they come up. Currently we're largely discussing Jurisdiction, though we've also has some discussion about Requests and Transparency prompted by your comments here and elsewhere. A couple of current Jurisdiction issues: * What sorts of disputes should the arbitration committee hear? Article disputes? Wikiquette disputes? Copyright/Legal/Election disputes? * Should we always require mediation, generally prefer mediation (with exceptions), or not require mediation? Your thoughts and opinions are very welcome. -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From anthere8 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 23 19:23:26 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:23:26 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the community References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C8215209D@backupserv.queens.harley> <401159C6.2040308@telus.net> Message-ID: <401174AE.805@yahoo.com> Ray Saintonge a ?crit: > KNOTT, T wrote: > >> Mr natural health has refused mediation with the community. He appears >> to feel that he has done nothing wrong and wants his "harassers" >> punished. >> I'm just writing this email to keep the pressure on really. How far >> down the line are we on finalizing the arbitration process? When will >> the arbitration committee be able to something about the Mr NH situation? >> > Sometimes this process of "keeping the pressure on" is as irritating as > MNH's alleged wrongdoing. What we see on the mailing list is a stream > of accusations intended to highlight every little fault that he commits. > We see little or nothing about the other side of the story. > > Mediation and arbitration are very good concepts, but I too would be > hesitant about accepting a process in which the apparent mediators don't > have their own system properly in place. The optics in those > circumstances suggest that a person is offering himself as a mediator in > order to further the POV of the majority opinion in that context. If by > our actions we only succeed in convincing the accused that the process > is unfair, then we have undermined the mediation system, and his refusal > to co-operate with it begins to seem more logical. > > The mediation committee needs to figure out its own procedures before > that option can be offered to anybody. Those procedures must include > provisions to insure that the rights of the accused are protected so > that he can have the confidence that he is participating in a fair system. > > Ec The first provision we can offer is about the confidentiality of everything that might be said during the mediation. It is very important to stress out that point. Nothing that will be said should left the small circles of mediators (unless the disputants agree to do so); and if one mediator talks in details to another about the case, it should be said clearly to the disputants. Mostly, what is said must not be used afterwards against the person; ie it must not be revealed to the arbitration commitee; nor used against the disputant in case of later conflicts. (note that, de facto, it is best for the mediator never to get into conflict with that editor afterwards, temptation could be high :-)). If one of the disputant fear he might be participating in a fair system, perhaps would it be for him to choose a silent overseer ? What else are you thinking of Ec ? From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 19:29:28 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:29:28 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation confidentiality In-Reply-To: <401174AE.805@yahoo.com> Message-ID: This seems sound. During mediation in attempts to compromise often parties will admit hastyness or wrong doing and that not ought to be thrown up them later. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:23:26 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the > community > > The first provision we can offer is about the confidentiality of > everything that might be said during the mediation. It is very important > to stress out that point. Nothing that will be said should left the > small circles of mediators (unless the disputants agree to do so); and > if one mediator talks in details to another about the case, it should be > said clearly to the disputants. > > Mostly, what is said must not be used afterwards against the person; ie > it must not be revealed to the arbitration commitee; nor used against > the disputant in case of later conflicts. (note that, de facto, it is > best for the mediator never to get into conflict with that editor > afterwards, temptation could be high :-)). > > If one of the disputant fear he might be participating in a fair system, > perhaps would it be for him to choose a silent overseer ? > > What else are you thinking of Ec ? From sean at epoptic.org Fri Jan 23 20:16:51 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:16:51 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> (martin@myreddice.freeserve.co.uk) References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> Message-ID: <200401232016.i0NKGp5E002978@orwen.epoptic.com> > A couple of current Jurisdiction issues: > > * What sorts of disputes should the arbitration committee hear? Article disputes? > Wikiquette disputes? Copyright/Legal/Election disputes? I prefer a narrow jurisdiction: I don't want to be asked to decide if Usama bin Laden is a terrorist, or even if DNA is a nucleic acid. Rudeness isn't a crime and I don't think our time should be wasted with "mommy, he called me a Nazi!" or even "mommy, he called himself a Nazi!" whin(g)ing. I can see us arbiting non-obvious copyright and legal questions, but if by "election disputes" you mean "mommy, he voted twice!" I feel that the person who set up the election needs to resolve any conflicts. > * Should we always require mediation, generally prefer mediation (with exceptions), > or not require mediation? I prefer flexibility; ie, prefer mediation but allow exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Unless that's a typo. I think that even if we don't now, we soon will require medication. -- Sean Barrett | My favorite kind of force is sheer force. sean at epoptic.com | From sascha at pantropy.net Fri Jan 23 20:48:00 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:48:00 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401232016.i0NKGp5E002978@orwen.epoptic.com> References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401232016.i0NKGp5E002978@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <200401231548.00662.sascha@pantropy.net> On Friday 23 January 2004 03:16 pm, Sean Barrett wrote: > > A couple of current Jurisdiction issues: > > > > * What sorts of disputes should the arbitration committee hear? Article > > disputes? Wikiquette disputes? Copyright/Legal/Election disputes? > > I prefer a narrow jurisdiction: I don't want to be asked to decide if > Usama bin Laden is a terrorist, or even if DNA is a nucleic acid. > Rudeness isn't a crime and I don't think our time should be wasted > with "mommy, he called me a Nazi!" or even "mommy, he called himself a > Nazi!" whin(g)ing. I can see us arbiting non-obvious copyright and > legal questions, but if by "election disputes" you mean "mommy, he > voted twice!" I feel that the person who set up the election needs to > resolve any conflicts. If you think that personal attacks on other wikipedians are OK, then please advocate for the "no personal attacks" rule to get repealed. I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are specified in [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]. Your characterisation of the desire of wikipedians that personal attacks should halt as 'Mommy, he called me xxx" and "whinging" is both condescending and illogical, given that "no personal attacks" happens to be a wikipedia policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall quote it again (from [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]): "No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period. [...] Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy, i.e. grounds for banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold." I agree that arbitration should not involve making decisions about wikipedia content, only the conduct of wikipedians. > > * Should we always require mediation, generally prefer mediation (with > > exceptions), or not require mediation? I think that in cases where there is nothing to mediate (eg. the MNH case), there should be no mediation. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Fri Jan 23 21:19:29 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:19:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: <20040123162111.66298.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Rick wrote: > Wikipedia is not a list of citations. > > RickK > > Ira Stoll wrote: > > *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it > with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable > difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented > I don't understand your POV, Rick. Are you saying that we should have _no_ citations or mention of references so readers can verify facts or quotations? If so, wouldn't that undermine the credibility of Wikipedia? Geoff From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Fri Jan 23 21:14:00 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:14:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> Message-ID: On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Martin Harper wrote: > Dear all. > > We have a rough agenda: > > PRINCIPLES > 1) "Jurisdiction" - what disputes do we plan to get involved in? > 2) "Rules" - How do we judge cases > 3) "Outcomes" - what solutions can we impose? > 4) "Transparency" - issues of privacy, openness, accountability, etc > > PROCESS > 1) "Requests" - how does one request arbitration? > 2) "Who takes part?" - how do we pick arbitrators on a case? > 3) "Trial" - How does the trial proceed? > 4) "Judgement" - How do we give our judgement? > > We might add points to that as they come up. Currently we're largely > discussing Jurisdiction, though we've also has some discussion about > Requests and Transparency prompted by your comments here and elsewhere. > > A couple of current Jurisdiction issues: > > * What sorts of disputes should the arbitration committee hear? Article > disputes? Wikiquette disputes? Copyright/Legal/Election disputes? > > * Should we always require mediation, generally prefer mediation (with > exceptions), or not require mediation? My thoughts are that mediation should be the preferred first step. Disputes should go to Arbitration if: 1. One or more of the parties involved are not following the terms they agreed to; 2. One or more of the parties involved refuse to agree to mediation; or 3. A matter of expediency, or specific kinds of issues (e.g., say 2 sysops are having a reversion war over the Front Page -- a dispute I hope never to see). > > Your thoughts and opinions are very welcome. > Geoff From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 23 21:16:47 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:16:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration In-Reply-To: References: <20040123162534.90383.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040123211647.GB5365@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Fred Bauder wrote: >RickK wrote: >>Fred Bauder wrote: >>>A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the >>>complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. >>He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. >If he does I will revert it and protect the page. So let him delete it! If a notice is placed and he deletes it, then we know that he's been informed. That is all that due process (or anything along those lines) requires. -- Toby From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 22:49:12 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:49:12 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration In-Reply-To: <20040123211647.GB5365@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: I think reverting it and protecting the page will work much better. It gives a strong message that business as usual is over unless they pay attention. Fred > From: Toby Bartels > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:16:47 -0800 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration > > Fred Bauder wrote: > >> RickK wrote: > >>> Fred Bauder wrote: > >>>> A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the >>>> complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. > >>> He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. > >> If he does I will revert it and protect the page. > > So let him delete it! > > If a notice is placed and he deletes it, then we know that he's been informed. > That is all that due process (or anything along those lines) requires. > > > -- Toby > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From sean at epoptic.org Fri Jan 23 22:51:47 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:51:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401231548.00662.sascha@pantropy.net> (message from Sascha Noyes on Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:48:00 -0500) References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401232016.i0NKGp5E002978@orwen.epoptic.com> <200401231548.00662.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <200401232251.i0NMplhh003372@orwen.epoptic.com> > If you think that personal attacks on other wikipedians are OK, then please > advocate for the "no personal attacks" rule to get repealed. > > I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are specified in > [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include [[Wikipedia:No personal > attacks]]. Your characterisation of the desire of wikipedians that personal > attacks should halt as 'Mommy, he called me xxx" and "whinging" is both > condescending and illogical, given that "no personal attacks" happens to be a > wikipedia policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall quote it again (from > [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]): Sorry, no. I am not going to try to change the policy. Rather, when a case comes before the arbitration committee that consist of nothing more substantial than name-calling, I will recuse myself. Vandalism, yes. Explicit threats, yes. Edit wars, yes. Insults? You're not paying me enough to tell people not to be hostile or rude. I'd rather relieve Sisyphus for a millennium or two. My characterization is "illogical"? Non-sequitur -- I'm not a Vulcan. "Condescending"? You're absolutely right. After all, my /six-year-old/ doesn't need my help to handle simple name-calling. -- Sean Barrett | Some days it just isn't worth preparing sean at epoptic.com | the environmental impact statement. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 23 23:05:37 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:05:37 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal Attacks In-Reply-To: <200401232251.i0NMplhh003372@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: I guess I'm at the other pole and just don't want to be associated with any offensive personality and vote with my feet before I put up with it. Fred > From: Sean Barrett > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:51:47 -0800 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 > >> If you think that personal attacks on other wikipedians are OK, then please >> advocate for the "no personal attacks" rule to get repealed. >> >> I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are specified in >> [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include [[Wikipedia:No personal >> attacks]]. Your characterisation of the desire of wikipedians that personal >> attacks should halt as 'Mommy, he called me xxx" and "whinging" is both >> condescending and illogical, given that "no personal attacks" happens to be a >> wikipedia policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall quote it again (from >> [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]): > > Sorry, no. I am not going to try to change the policy. Rather, when > a case comes before the arbitration committee that consist of nothing > more substantial than name-calling, I will recuse myself. > > Vandalism, yes. Explicit threats, yes. Edit wars, yes. Insults? > You're not paying me enough to tell people not to be hostile > or rude. I'd rather relieve Sisyphus for a millennium or two. > > My characterization is "illogical"? Non-sequitur -- I'm not a Vulcan. > "Condescending"? You're absolutely right. After all, my > /six-year-old/ doesn't need my help to handle simple name-calling. > > -- > Sean Barrett | Some days it just isn't worth preparing > sean at epoptic.com | the environmental impact statement. > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu Fri Jan 23 23:05:08 2004 From: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu (Toby Bartels) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:05:08 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration In-Reply-To: References: <20040123211647.GB5365@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Message-ID: <20040123230508.GA6037@math-rs-n03.ucr.edu> Fred Bauder wrote: >Toby Bartels wrote: >>Fred Bauder wrote: >>>If he does I will revert it and protect the page. >>So let him delete it! >>If a notice is placed and he deletes it, then we know that he's been informed. >>That is all that due process (or anything along those lines) requires. >I think reverting it and protecting the page will work much better. It gives >a strong message that business as usual is over unless they pay attention. So starting arbitration proceedings doesn't send that message? Instead, you'll protect the user talk page (which /ought/ to be viewed as a huge abuse of administrator power but which somehow isn't), thereby preventing any further attempts at mediation by non-admins. In MNH's case, that probably doesn't matter anymore. But it's an awful precedent to set. (And in MNH's case, protecting his user pages has happened before, so it wouldn't send any message to speak of either.) -- Toby From sascha at pantropy.net Fri Jan 23 23:50:36 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:50:36 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401232251.i0NMplhh003372@orwen.epoptic.com> References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401231548.00662.sascha@pantropy.net> <200401232251.i0NMplhh003372@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> On Friday 23 January 2004 05:51 pm, Sean Barrett wrote: > > If you think that personal attacks on other wikipedians are OK, then > > please advocate for the "no personal attacks" rule to get repealed. > > > > I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are specified in > > [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include [[Wikipedia:No personal > > attacks]]. Your characterisation of the desire of wikipedians that > > personal attacks should halt as 'Mommy, he called me xxx" and "whinging" > > is both condescending and illogical, given that "no personal attacks" > > happens to be a wikipedia policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall > > quote it again (from [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]): > > Sorry, no. I am not going to try to change the policy. Rather, when > a case comes before the arbitration committee that consist of nothing > more substantial than name-calling, I will recuse myself. So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated before, we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to them and scrap them. > My characterization is "illogical"? Non-sequitur -- I'm not a Vulcan. > "Condescending"? You're absolutely right. After all, my > /six-year-old/ doesn't need my help to handle simple name-calling. I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. We have made the choice that it is preferential to have policies concerning etiquette. The primary reason for this choice is the fact that valuable contributors will be driven away by people who grossly violate common decency. I care enough about wikipedia to keep haggeling with people on these mailing lists to enforce policies that are beneficial to wikipedia. Personally, I act on gross violations of etiquette by ignoring the people who engage in such behaviour. I believe that the persons who wrote policies such as "no personal attacks" believe, as do I, that not everyone reacts to gross violations of etiquette as your "/six-year-old/" and I do. Retaining valuable contributors with a thin skin is why enforcement of rules such as "no personal attacks" is indeed a good idea. The only argument you have given against enforcing such rules is that your time is too precious. So would it be correct to conclude that you either you think that nobody will be driven away by personal attacks, or it is not worth your time to retain these contributors? I will also put to you my opinion that in cases where there has been a gross violation of policies such as "no personal attacks", all the arbitration committee will have to do is the following: 1. Verify the veracity of the claim that a policy was grossly violated If (1) is found to be true, then either: 2.1 Inform the violator that if he/she should engage in such behaviour again, they will be banned. Or, if the previous violations were found to have been sufficiently extreme: 2.2 Ban the violator I doubt that this proceedure would take too much time. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 24 00:06:19 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:06:19 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401231548.00662.sascha@pantropy.net> <200401232251.i0NMplhh003372@orwen.epoptic.com> <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <4011B6FB.1030706@rufus.d2g.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No >personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated before, >we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to them and >scrap them. > > Well, I see a lot of our policies more as "you ought to do this" and "you ought not do this", rather than as "if you do (don't) do this you will be banned", which is a somewhat more strenuous pronouncement. Of course if we have no consequences the rules are meaningless, but I don't think we should be banning people simply for violating "the letter of the law", so to speak. Really we should only ban people who we've determined are highly detrimental to Wikipedia, combined with a determination that they're unlikely to change their behavior in the near future. In my opinion, anyway. -Mark From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 24 00:15:45 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:15:45 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Only Hard Cases? In-Reply-To: <4011B6FB.1030706@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: So just regularly not following policy is ok, so long as you're polite about it? Fred > From: Delirium > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:06:19 -0800 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 > > Sascha Noyes wrote: > >> So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No >> personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated before, >> we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to them and >> scrap them. >> >> > Well, I see a lot of our policies more as "you ought to do this" and > "you ought not do this", rather than as "if you do (don't) do this you > will be banned", which is a somewhat more strenuous pronouncement. Of > course if we have no consequences the rules are meaningless, but I don't > think we should be banning people simply for violating "the letter of > the law", so to speak. Really we should only ban people who we've > determined are highly detrimental to Wikipedia, combined with a > determination that they're unlikely to change their behavior in the near > future. In my opinion, anyway. > > -Mark > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 24 00:24:08 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:24:08 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Only Hard Cases? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4011BB28.9000200@rufus.d2g.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >So just regularly not following policy is ok, so long as you're polite about >it? > > Well, not _ok_, but I think it has to be pretty egregious to warrant a ban, which is a pretty severe sanction and should be the last resort. Note that I'm not commenting on the particular cases that have come up recently, which may very well be of the severe-enough-to-ban sort; just commenting generally. Perhaps it's a personal opinion, but I think we ought to strive to be as open and accomodating as possible, and avoid banning as much as possible, since that's basically a "we give up, this person cannot work within Wikipedia" decision. Several previous conflicts have been resolved somewhat more satisfactorily--for example, partisans on both sides of the Polish vs. German names dispute have engaged in some anti-policy activity (name-calling, revert wars, etc.), but have also contributed a great deal of useful information to the Wikipedia, and seem eventually to have been persuaded to act more in line with our policies. I think if we had simply banned a few of them that would've been a quicker but overall worse solution. -Mark From sascha at pantropy.net Sat Jan 24 00:28:22 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 19:28:22 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <4011B6FB.1030706@rufus.d2g.com> References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> <4011B6FB.1030706@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <200401231928.22975.sascha@pantropy.net> On Friday 23 January 2004 07:06 pm, Delirium wrote: > Sascha Noyes wrote: > >So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No > >personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated > > before, we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to > > them and scrap them. > > Well, I see a lot of our policies more as "you ought to do this" and > "you ought not do this", rather than as "if you do (don't) do this you > will be banned", which is a somewhat more strenuous pronouncement. "No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period. [...] Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy, i.e. grounds for banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold." The question is whether this is an extreme case. I agree with you that we shouldn't run around "throwing" everyone who has made a personal attack in front of the arbitration committee. But the above-quoted policy also states quite clearly that the policy "may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy, i.e. grounds for banning". > Of > course if we have no consequences the rules are meaningless, but I don't > think we should be banning people simply for violating "the letter of > the law", so to speak. Really we should only ban people who we've > determined are highly detrimental to Wikipedia, combined with a > determination that they're unlikely to change their behavior in the near > future. In my opinion, anyway. Basically the same question as above; when are people "highly detrimental to wikipedia"? The current policy, by my interpretation, states that someone is highly detrimental to wikipedia if their personal attacks are extreme. Which is obviously far from a clear-cut answer. Your suggestion of assessing whether or not someone is likely to change their behaviour is, IMO, answered by my suggestion in the parent email under (2.1): A "last warning". In my opinion inferring the probability of future compliance from past behaviour is in most cases an unsatisfactory approach. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From saintonge at telus.net Sat Jan 24 06:41:17 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:41:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> <200401240216.i0O2Gtwl003598@orwen.epoptic.com> <200401232144.08111.sascha@pantropy.net> <200401240339.i0O3dGop003725@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <4012138D.7000407@telus.net> Sean Barrett wrote: >So forget having me impeached -- call the Thought Police! > The thought of impeaching arbitrators even before the arbitration process is in place is not very encouraging. Ec From dd at dandrake.com Fri Jan 23 21:10:29 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:10:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the community Message-ID: <200401232110.i0NLAUtr008698@a.mail.sonic.net> PMFBI; have just been watching this list for a few days, but at least I have a few months of seeing Wikipedia operate. And I'm sorry to come out swinging, but the time being spent on setting up a perfect system before anyone can do anything about an alleged problem editor seems to me excessive. On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 19:23:26 UTC, Anthere wrote: > The first provision we can offer is about the confidentiality of > everything that might be said during the mediation. It is very important > to stress out that point. Nothing that will be said should left the > small circles of mediators (unless the disputants agree to do so); and > if one mediator talks in details to another about the case, it should be > said clearly to the disputants. > > Mostly, what is said must not be used afterwards against the person; ie > it must not be revealed to the arbitration commitee; nor used against > the disputant in case of later conflicts. We do understand, of course, that if mediation doesn't succeed, and someone takes the same case to arbitration, a person who is not of good will is certain to complain that he's being put on trial twice and having to defend himself against the very same things that came up in mediation. He may even make false claims about what went on in mediation; hence, the full legalistic set of rules will have to include some kind of waiver of this confidentiality. It amazes and distresses me that it is suddenly impossible to deal with a couple of destructive bozos (no, please don't offer me a position mediating or arbitrating these two cases) without weeks of major effort by some of the best people on Wikipedia to find a perfect system. Ray S has said, "If by our actions we only succeed in convincing the accused that the process is unfair, then we have undermined the mediation system, and his refusal to co-operate with it begins to seem more logical." It's undermined only to the extent that anyone else agrees that the process is unfair. What I don't get is the need for a long and difficult process to make sure that no one can find the mediation process unfair. Mediators have no power. If you don't expect the mediation to be fair, you can reject it. Then, if someone still cares, there will be a request for arbitration, which _does_ have power to act. That's where to concentrate on fairness and the assurance of fairness. MNH having declined mediation, he and the mediation process are now irrelevant to each other. Anyone who holds that something ought to be done about him needs to forget the mediation process and concentrate on getting arbitration working. > (note that, de facto, it is > best for the mediator never to get into conflict with that editor > afterwards, temptation could be high :-)). > > If one of the disputant fear he might be participating in a fair system, > perhaps would it be for him to choose a silent overseer ? I'm not sure what this means -- someone on his side who will watch the proceedings and form an opinion (for whose benefit?) on their propriety? Fine, if the parties want it. But again, since mediators have no power -- presumably not even power to send the case to arbitration -- what does it matter? -- Dan Drake dd at dandrake.com http://www.dandrake.com/index.html If I knew then what I know now, I would have said, 'I don't recall.' --Frank Doyle, FBI agent, testifying under oath about his previous deposition under oath. From dd at dandrake.com Fri Jan 23 21:21:47 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 21:21:47 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration References: <20040123162534.90383.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: PMFBI again, but after following this case for a week or more, I don't understand this. On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:23:17 UTC, Fred Bauder wrote: > > If he does I will revert it and protect the page. > > > From: Rick > > > He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. > > RickK > > Fred Bauder wrote: > A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the > complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. > So what if he deletes it? Bad behavior, but it's his talk page. The point of posting the notice would seem to be to inform him of the fact that arbitration is requested. When the notice goes up on his talk page, he's informed. If he decides to ignore the notice, then I suppose there's a procedure for handling that. If he claims he never got the notice -- well, gimme a break! What are archives for? OTOH, if a disputant deletes the official public arbitration notice on the RFA page, then just ban his/her ass. Naturally, the charge of vandalizing the RFA page is one he has to be allowed to defend himself against, but if that charge is established, you can forget all the other issues and all those complexities and doubts and ambiguities and procedural complications, and just ban his ass. What am I missing here? From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 08:19:56 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:19:56 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Notice to defendent in the case of arbitration References: <20040123162534.90383.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40122AAC.6040909@yahoo.com> Dan, I *deeply* thank you for the mail you sent to apologize for writing as a non member (usually, people do not) Do not forget to register soon :-) anthere Dan Drake a ?crit: > PMFBI again, but after following this case for a week or more, I don't > understand this. > > On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:23:17 UTC, Fred Bauder > wrote: > >>If he does I will revert it and protect the page. >> >> >>From: Rick >> >> >>He will just delete it as soon as it is posted to his Talk page. >> >>RickK >> >>Fred Bauder wrote: >>A notice should be placed on Mr. Natural Health's talk page quoting the >>complaint and linking to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. >> > > > > So what if he deletes it? Bad behavior, but it's his talk page. The point > of posting the notice would seem to be to inform him of the fact that > arbitration is requested. When the notice goes up on his talk page, he's > informed. If he decides to ignore the notice, then I suppose there's a > procedure for handling that. If he claims he never got the notice -- well, > gimme a break! What are archives for? > > OTOH, if a disputant deletes the official public arbitration notice on the > RFA page, then just ban his/her ass. Naturally, the charge of vandalizing > the RFA page is one he has to be allowed to defend himself against, but if > that charge is established, you can forget all the other issues and all > those complexities and doubts and ambiguities and procedural > complications, and just ban his ass. > > What am I missing here? From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 08:26:55 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:26:55 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> <4011B6FB.1030706@rufus.d2g.com> <200401231928.22975.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <40122C4F.20708@yahoo.com> > Basically the same question as above; when are people "highly detrimental to > wikipedia"? The current policy, by my interpretation, states that someone is > highly detrimental to wikipedia if their personal attacks are extreme. Which > is obviously far from a clear-cut answer. But the practice is that someone is highly detrimental to Wikipedia, when the sum of what he brings is lower that the sum of what he destroys. From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 08:51:58 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 00:51:58 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 Message-ID: <200401240051.58795.maveric149@yahoo.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are >specified in [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]. Your characterisation of the >desire of wikipedians that personal attacks should halt as 'Mommy, >he called me xxx" and "whinging" is both condescending and >illogical, given that "no personal attacks" happens to be a wikipedia >policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall quote it again (from >[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]): I'm in 100% agreement with this. The reason why we have policies like 'no personal attacks' is because allowing personal attacks drives away good contributors and creates a hostile working environment where reason is sacrificed in favor of bullying (thus the most persistant troll wins in article content disputes). This goes directly against our goal of creating NPOV and accurate content. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From irastoll at hotmail.com Sat Jan 24 09:16:31 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 03:16:31 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions Message-ID: That's exactly what I'm getting at. The wikipedia should be packed with clickable citations.The reason why I've always loved encyclopedias so much is the quality of the information, and the impartial manner in which it was presented. Citations (particularly linkable) bring with them evidence for belief, and an option for the reader to learn further, investigate for themselves (by clicking on it). A basic of polite discourse (and a policy in my debate club) was to accept another's argument so long as it is logical, and to accept their premise so long as you could not disprove it (like thru a citation). What I Don't like about the wikipedia is when the truth (or a way of interpreting it) is removed from an article, regardless of the quality of citation, due to overriding majority POV. My suggestions are meant to address that. JackLynch >On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Rick wrote: >Wikipedia is not a list of citations. > >RickK >Ira Stoll wrote: > >*only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it >with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable >difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented > >I don't understand your POV, Rick. Are you saying that we should have _no_ >citations or mention of references so readers can verify facts or >quotations? >If so, wouldn't that undermine the credibility of Wikipedia? >Geoff _________________________________________________________________ Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1 From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 24 09:18:25 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:18:25 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] CafePress Wikipedia items In-Reply-To: <200401240407.i0O47GpS003847@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <91Tx$syhpVB@erik_moeller> Sean- > I am pleased to report that I ordered two Wikipedia tile coasters from > CafePress on [[19 January]], and received them in perfect order on > [[23 January]]. A very smooth, satisfactory, and recommendable > transaction. How is the quality of the coasters? Is the text recognizable, are there any pixelization effects? There are now $20 in commission. I've configured Cafepress to send me a check when there are $100, which will be passed on to Wikimedia. It would probably be preferable to send the commission checks directly to Jimbo. To do so I need the full address and federal tax ID. Regards, Erik From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 09:17:18 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:17:18 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Only Hard Cases? Message-ID: <200401240117.18259.maveric149@yahoo.com> Delirium wrote: >... >Perhaps it's a personal opinion, but I think we >ought to strive to be as open and accomodating >as possible, and avoid banning as much as >possible, since that's basically a "we give up, >this person cannot work within Wikipedia" decision. >... I hope this will become the general ethos of the dispute resolution process. If not, then, IMO, we would have failed. However, arbitration is on the tail end of that process so I imagine that a fair number of arbitration cases will result in some type of editing sanction period (such as slowdowns, not able to edit certain articles or kinds of articles, not able to edit in a certain namespace(s), not being able to edit at all for a short term, and not being able to edit at all for a long term). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 09:37:25 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:37:25 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the community References: <200401232110.i0NLAUtr008698@a.mail.sonic.net> Message-ID: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> Dan Drake a ?crit: > We do understand, of course, that if mediation doesn't succeed, and > someone takes the same case to arbitration, a person who is not of good > will is certain to complain that he's being put on trial twice and having to > defend himself against the very same things that came up in mediation. A mediator is not a judge. He is not there to put someone in accusation. He > may even make false claims about what went on in mediation; hence, the > full legalistic set of rules will have to include some kind of waiver of this > confidentiality. full legalistic set of rules ? May we keep the whole process simple, without setting up 15 pages rules please :-( It does not matter really if the disputant makes false claims about what went on in mediation; as far as mediation is concerned, the case will be closed > It amazes and distresses me that it is suddenly impossible to deal with a > couple of destructive bozos (no, please don't offer me a position mediating > or arbitrating these two cases) without weeks of major effort by some of > the best people on Wikipedia to find a perfect system. > > Ray S has said, > "If by our actions we only succeed in convincing the accused that the > process is unfair, then we have undermined the mediation system, and his > refusal to co-operate with it begins to seem more logical." > It's undermined only to the extent that anyone else agrees that the process > is unfair. > > What I don't get is the need for a long and difficult process to make sure > that no one can find the mediation process unfair. Mediators have no power. > If you don't expect the mediation to be fair, you can reject it. Then, if > someone still cares, there will be a request for arbitration, which _does_ > have power to act. That's where to concentrate on fairness and the > assurance of fairness. > > MNH having declined mediation, he and the mediation process are now > irrelevant to each other. Anyone who holds that something ought to be > done about him needs to forget the mediation process and concentrate on > getting arbitration working. The last I knew, MNH agreed to mediation for the article issue, but requested arbitration for the human dispute issue. >>(note that, de facto, it is >>best for the mediator never to get into conflict with that editor >>afterwards, temptation could be high :-)). >> >>If one of the disputant fear he might be participating in a fair system, >>perhaps would it be for him to choose a silent overseer ? > > > I'm not sure what this means -- someone on his side who will watch the > proceedings and form an opinion (for whose benefit?) on their propriety? > Fine, if the parties want it. But again, since mediators have no power -- > presumably not even power to send the case to arbitration -- what does it > matter? This is not a question of putting someone on one side or another, this is a question of having a neutral observer watching to guarantee the process is fair. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 24 11:54:50 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 04:54:50 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unadmissible Evidence In-Reply-To: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> Message-ID: What went on in mediation should simply not be considered at the arbitration stage. So claims, true or false, are irrelevant. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:37:25 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the > community > >>He >> may even make false claims about what went on in mediation; hence, the >> full legalistic set of rules will have to include some kind of waiver of this >> confidentiality. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 24 12:02:29 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:02:29 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Type of Inadmissible Evidence In-Reply-To: <40122C4F.20708@yahoo.com> Message-ID: I think we need to consider what they destroy and how without consideration of what good things they have done. In other words, if some one is accused of destructive behavior, evidence that they wrote a good article or were polite in some other context is inadmissible evidence. After it is determined that we are dealing with someone who regularly transgresses, then as we consider remedies we might consider all the wonderful things they did. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:26:55 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 > > >> Basically the same question as above; when are people "highly detrimental to >> wikipedia"? The current policy, by my interpretation, states that someone is >> highly detrimental to wikipedia if their personal attacks are extreme. Which >> is obviously far from a clear-cut answer. > > But the practice is that someone is highly detrimental to Wikipedia, > when the sum of what he brings is lower that the sum of what he destroys. > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 12:15:53 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 13:15:53 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence References: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <401261F9.3000801@yahoo.com> Just thought of mentionning that thought the below mail make it so appear I wrote that comment, I did not. I agree with Fred entirely. Anthere Fred Bauder a ?crit: > What went on in mediation should simply not be considered at the arbitration > stage. So claims, true or false, are irrelevant. > > Fred > > >>From: Anthere >>Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia >>Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:37:25 +0100 >>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org >>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the >>community >> >> >>>He >>>may even make false claims about what went on in mediation; hence, the >>>full legalistic set of rules will have to include some kind of waiver of this >>>confidentiality. >> From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 24 12:15:55 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:15:55 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Swimming In-Reply-To: <200401232110.i0NLAUtr008698@a.mail.sonic.net> Message-ID: Me too, but as most members of the committees have never been wet before they have to carefully design the best way to swim before they jump in. I tried throwing them in, but they wiggled and wiggled and got away. Fred > From: "Dan Drake"
> Reply-To: Dan Drake
, English Wikipedia > > Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:10:29 -0800 (PST) > To: "WikiEN-L" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the > community > > It amazes and distresses me that it is suddenly impossible to deal with a > couple of destructive bozos (no, please don't offer me a position mediating > or arbitrating these two cases) without weeks of major effort by some of > the best people on Wikipedia to find a perfect system. From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 12:20:47 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 13:20:47 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Another Type of Inadmissible Evidence References: <40122C4F.20708@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4012631F.1080702@yahoo.com> Just as in justice, a jugdement declares someone guilty (or innocent) first Which set somehow a range of punishement, depending on the crime then the points in favor of the accused are examined. and help to decide on which side of the range of punishement he will be. Fred Bauder a ?crit: > I think we need to consider what they destroy and how without consideration > of what good things they have done. In other words, if some one is accused > of destructive behavior, evidence that they wrote a good article or were > polite in some other context is inadmissible evidence. After it is > determined that we are dealing with someone who regularly transgresses, then > as we consider remedies we might consider all the wonderful things they did. > > Fred > > >>From: Anthere >>Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia >>Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:26:55 +0100 >>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org >>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 >> >> >> >>>Basically the same question as above; when are people "highly detrimental to >>>wikipedia"? The current policy, by my interpretation, states that someone is >>>highly detrimental to wikipedia if their personal attacks are extreme. Which >>>is obviously far from a clear-cut answer. >> >>But the practice is that someone is highly detrimental to Wikipedia, >>when the sum of what he brings is lower that the sum of what he destroys. >> >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>WikiEN-l mailing list >>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > From vr at redbird.org Sat Jan 24 12:27:19 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 07:27:19 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040124072530.027c3cc0@smtp.panix.com> At 03:16 AM 1/24/04 -0600, Ira Stoll wrote: >That's exactly what I'm getting at. The wikipedia should be packed with >clickable citations. In some cases, the useful citations aren't to online material--making them clickable would entice people to, say, the chance to buy a book, rather than actually providing more information. >The reason why I've always loved encyclopedias so much is the quality of >the information, and the impartial manner in which it was presented. >Citations (particularly linkable) bring with them evidence for belief, and >an option for the reader to learn further, investigate for themselves (by >clicking on it). A basic of polite discourse (and a policy in my debate >club) was to accept another's argument so long as it is logical, and to >accept their premise so long as you could not disprove it (like thru a >citation). What I Don't like about the wikipedia is when the truth (or a >way of interpreting it) is removed from an article, regardless of the >quality of citation, due to overriding majority POV. My suggestions are >meant to address that. JackLynch People who ignore the NPOV policy aren't going to stop because there's a citation. Conversely, the presence of a citation doesn't stop a statement from *being* strongly POV. From nought_0000 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 12:54:52 2004 From: nought_0000 at yahoo.com (zero 0000) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 04:54:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.1.20040124072530.027c3cc0@smtp.panix.com> Message-ID: <20040124125452.12073.qmail@web21509.mail.yahoo.com> --- Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: > Conversely, the presence of a citation doesn't stop a > statement from *being* strongly POV. Well put. In fact many edit wars start precisely when someone thinks they have the right to insert some POV just because they can identify a web site with the same POV. Although we need to allow the opinions of important parties in some issue to be reported in attributed form, a web site does not count as an important party. In other words, a citation is something that adds value to part of an article that deserves to be there regardless of the citation. It isn't be used as an excuse for adding something that wouldn't be allowed without the citation. Zero. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From dpbsmith at world.std.com Sat Jan 24 15:31:53 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:31:53 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Packed with clickable citations In-Reply-To: <20040124121503.F1A701B01C9@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040124121503.F1A701B01C9@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <6F9CE192-4E82-11D8-9EEB-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> > Message: 4 > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 03:16:31 -0600 > From: "Ira Stoll" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed > > That's exactly what I'm getting at. The wikipedia should be packed with > clickable citations.The reason why I've always loved encyclopedias so > much > is the quality of the information, and the impartial manner in which > it was > presented. Citations (particularly linkable) bring with them evidence > for > belief, and an option for the reader to learn further, investigate for > themselves (by clicking on it). A basic of polite discourse (and a > policy in > my debate club) was to accept another's argument so long as it is > logical, > and to accept their premise so long as you could not disprove it (like > thru > a citation). What I Don't like about the wikipedia is when the truth > (or a > way of interpreting it) is removed from an article, regardless of the > quality of citation, due to overriding majority POV. My suggestions are > meant to address that. JackLynch I agree completely. Lack of citation and traceability is IMHO a big glaring deficiency in traditional encyclopedias, and it's one that should be remediable in a hypertext encyclopedia. (However, like so much about Wikipedia, there's no big barrier to "just doing it" and hoping that others will follow suit. Much as I'd like better Wiki-apparatus for the purpose). As for "Wikipedia is not a list of citations"—fine; neither is Lauren Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," but every darn statement she make in that readable, popular bestseller is documented and attributed. The omniscient viewpoint adopted by textbooks below the college level and encyclopedias is intellectually dishonest. When an educated person reads any factual matter, the question "Why should I believe this?" is (or should always be) in the back of their mind. "Because it's in a book and 'they' wouldn't print it if it weren't true?" "Because the style of writing gives me the impression the author knows what he's talking about?" Verifiability is important. (And it's just as important for noncontroversial facts as for controversial facts). One of the nice things about Wikipedia is that it gives us an opportunity to think about the nature of knowledge and authority. -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/ From daniwo59 at aol.com Sat Jan 24 16:20:06 2004 From: daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:20:06 EST Subject: [WikiEN-l] Citations. Message-ID: Hi, There's been some talk about the use of citations as sources and evidence. I think we are treading on very thin ice here. For example, I am not a big fan of George W. Bush. I even have two books, "The Bush Dyslexicon" by Mark Crispin Miller and "The Lies of George W. Bush" by David Corn, which lambast him based entirely on his quotations. While I happen to like the books, I would hardly base an article on them--if I did, I would be attacked for bias and POV, even though all of the quotations are well documented. We have to be very careful here. Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/95102294/attachment.htm From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Sat Jan 24 16:26:20 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:26:20 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kevin Baas Message-ID: <007401c3e296$cd003320$027c0450@Galasien> The clarifications on this list of 'WP norms' and 'WP due process' are very welcome. There is an ongoing problem, as far as I'm concerned, with [[User:Kevin baas]]. As anyone who reads his home page can see, he has a certain research program in mind. As far as I can see, it has no merit; but that's not really the point. Comments such as his (on [[Talk:Real computation]]) "don't you guys have a sense of shame?" cause a deterioration of the atrmosphere. The current [[Real computation]] page seems to me eminently sensible. I don't think this kind of bullying comment should be applied, just because the page content casts doubt on Kevin's research 'proposal'. A long series of related discussions, going back months, on [[Talk:Hypercomputation]]and [[Talk:Super-Turing computation]] have left the pages in reasonably good order - but the latter is vacuous (it is really 'some people say' about super-Turing computation). Kevin has consistently attacked the good faith of those who clearly know more. The [[Fractional paradigm]] and [[Fractional probability]] pages are his 'walled garden' pages here. I think they have zero useful content. Fractional electromagnetics, anyone? On [[Talk:Fractional probability]] Michael Hardy has patiently been trying to get some sense out of Kevin, for half a year. [[Fractional calculus]] and [[Talk:Fractional calculus]] are somewhat different cases, snce the topic is real rather than bogus. I'm not convinced that they consist of more than formulae copied out of books, though, without proper understanding. In case of the Weyl fractional derivative formula, I thought it was for periodic functions only. I could be wrong, but I've not got an answer over the course of some months. At [[Talk:Intermediate treatment of tensors]] there is a backlog of unresolved stuff about another, more prominent page that looks to me like Kevin copying half-understood stuff out of books. Summary: Kevin Baas is rather clearly trying to use WP space for his own, non-encyclopedic purposes. I don't find his contributions, apart from the formulary on the fractional calculus pages to be useful; and I find none of it authoritative. Some of it is wildly POV and unreliable, which is quite serious in a maths/computing area. My conclusions: Kevin Baas is in mathematical matters a bluffer. When engaged in discussion he resorts to: profanity; invocations of Socrates, Kant and the Pope; accusations of snobbery and so on. He is a timewaster, who makes himself difficult to deal with by retreat into interdisciplinary niches. Required actions: Some of the pages he has created ([[Fractional paradigm]] , [[Fractional probability]] and probably [[Super-Turing computation]]) are vanity pages beyond saving - the last of these should be merged into [[Hypercomputation]], against all his protests. His other stuff could be sorted out, absent his hostility. I think dealing with this kind of elusive pretentitiousness is something that ought to fall within the remit of WP recognised procedures. I realise that this is all on my say-so. I'd be grateful if others would comment on a way ahead. This sort of contribution saps the authoritative standing of WP. Charles http://www.speakingasaparent.com/ From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 17:01:45 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:01:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Citations. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040124170145.74331.qmail@web41803.mail.yahoo.com> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote: > Hi, > > There's been some talk about the use of citations as > sources and evidence. I > think we are treading on very thin ice here. For > example, I am not a big fan > of George W. Bush. I even have two books, "The Bush > Dyslexicon" by Mark Crispin > Miller and "The Lies of George W. Bush" by David > Corn, which lambast him > based entirely on his quotations. While I happen to > like the books, I would hardly > base an article on them--if I did, I would be > attacked for bias and POV, even > though all of the quotations are well documented. We > have to be very careful > here. > > Danny I'm not sure which articles these are, but if you have a list or something, could you contact the author(s) and ask them to find the original source of the information (ie. where those books got the information from)? That kind of book usually does almost no original research and is very well-cited. If that is impossible, you could just prefix the sentences with stuff like "Many believe..." to give it an NPOV. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From sean at epoptic.org Sat Jan 24 17:06:17 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:06:17 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] CafePress Wikipedia items In-Reply-To: <91Tx$syhpVB@erik_moeller> References: <91Tx$syhpVB@erik_moeller> Message-ID: <200401241706.i0OH6Hwp005117@orwen.epoptic.com> > Sean- > > I am pleased to report that I ordered two Wikipedia tile coasters from > > CafePress on [[19 January]], and received them in perfect order on > > [[23 January]]. A very smooth, satisfactory, and recommendable > > transaction. > > How is the quality of the coasters? Is the text recognizable, are there > any pixelization effects? For those who haven't seen the coaster at the CafePress site, it is a tile some 11.5cm (4.5 inches) square, showing a Wikipedia edit window in the Cologne Blue style, editing the [[Editing Wikipedia]] article. The edit summary is "Wikipedia rocks!" I didn't notice when I ordered, but the Wikipedia logo is the old quote-ball, not the new puzzle-ball. The edit text box is barely 6cm (2.35 inches) tall and holds 31 lines of text. I haven't seen text that small since I refinanced my house. It is readable at the moment, even with my several-decades-old eyeballs, but I seriously doubt that it will remain so after a few months of impacts from mug bottoms. Even now, the text is blurred (not pixellated) in places, an effect somewhat like the output of a laser printer that is running out of toner. On the other hand, the blue of the sidebar menu is vivid, the swollen lines of text in the quote-ball logo are recognizable as text (tho it cannot be read) and the tile itself is decent quality. For less than $10 each, I am satisfied. However, I must warn those of sensitive social consciousnesses that these coasters were made in China. -- Sean Barrett | I'm not bad, I'm just drawn sean at epoptic.com | that way. --Jessica Rabbit From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 24 17:12:28 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:12:28 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kevin Baas In-Reply-To: <007401c3e296$cd003320$027c0450@Galasien> Message-ID: Difficult, Seems bogus, but as I am ignorant in the area there is always a nagging doubt that maybe he's on to something. But on to something, however well-founded and creative, is not fulfilling our encyclopedic mission which is to render established knowledge in an authoritative, but condensed package. So the onus is on him to back up whatever he puts forth with cited authority. I would suggest you request mediation of him and the mediation committee. Fred > From: "Charles Matthews" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:26:20 -0000 > To: "Wikien list" > Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kevin Baas > > The clarifications on this list of 'WP norms' and 'WP due process' are very > welcome. > > There is an ongoing problem, as far as I'm concerned, with [[User:Kevin > baas]]. As anyone who reads his home page can see, he has a certain > research program in mind. As far as I can see, it has no merit; but that's > not really the point. > Comments such as his (on [[Talk:Real computation]]) "don't you guys have a > sense of shame?" cause a deterioration of the atrmosphere. The current > [[Real computation]] page seems to me eminently sensible. I don't think > this kind of bullying comment should be applied, just because the page > content casts doubt on Kevin's research 'proposal'. From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 17:48:02 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:48:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] CafePress Wikipedia items In-Reply-To: <200401241706.i0OH6Hwp005117@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <20040124174802.36882.qmail@web41812.mail.yahoo.com> > However, I must warn those of sensitive social > consciousnesses that > these coasters were made in China. > > -- > Sean Barrett That's mildly ironic, considering that Wikipedia was banned in China. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From meelar2 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 18:32:00 2004 From: meelar2 at yahoo.com (Dan Miller) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:32:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 105 In-Reply-To: <20040124174803.429BF1B0213@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040124183200.79763.qmail@web9606.mail.yahoo.com> Hi, I just had a somewhat weird problem with the wiki. I wanted to see if we had an article on "tin can", so I typed it in and hit go. On my screen showed up the article "Ford Model T", redirected from "Tin Lizzie". Why would this occur? Meelar __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 19:25:27 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:25:27 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] copyrights issues Message-ID: <4012C6A7.4040809@yahoo.com> Could someone give us a link to a draft page of emails to send to someone using wikipedia content without respecting the terms of the licence ? I saw several times great emails examples published on the list (the last one was really good). Does someone know the link ? Or is there somewhere a page from which we can inspire ourselves to make a standard copyright violation notice ? Thanks the non respect of the licence is there http://www.voyagenow.com/travel-references/fr/wikipedia/b/be/belize.html there is no reference to wikipedia as source in the page. the only link to wikipedia is the [[edit]] link that goes to fr: From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 24 19:36:39 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:36:39 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Packed with clickable citations In-Reply-To: <6F9CE192-4E82-11D8-9EEB-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> References: <20040124121503.F1A701B01C9@mail.wikipedia.org> <6F9CE192-4E82-11D8-9EEB-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> Message-ID: <4012C947.2090405@rufus.d2g.com> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote: > I agree completely. Lack of citation and traceability is IMHO a big > glaring > deficiency in traditional encyclopedias, and it's one that should be > remediable > in a hypertext encyclopedia. (However, like so much about Wikipedia, > there's no big barrier to "just doing it" and hoping that others will > follow suit. Much as I'd like better Wiki-apparatus for the purpose). But this seems to assume that the citations will all be to websites, which isn't likely to be the case--most respected, reliable information is still not available online. So citations of that sort will have to be to books or journal articles, which in many cases won't be accessible through hypertext. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 24 19:39:42 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:39:42 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] copyrights issues In-Reply-To: <4012C6A7.4040809@yahoo.com> References: <4012C6A7.4040809@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4012C9FE.6030100@rufus.d2g.com> Anthere wrote: > Could someone give us a link to a draft page of emails to send to > someone using wikipedia content without respecting the terms of the > licence ? > > I saw several times great emails examples published on the list (the > last one was really good). Does someone know the link ? Or is there > somewhere a page from which we can inspire ourselves to make a > standard copyright violation notice ? There's a page on the en: Wikipedia with a few sample letters at [[Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter]]. -Mark From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 20:06:23 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:06:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 105 In-Reply-To: <20040124183200.79763.qmail@web9606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040124200623.23740.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dan Miller wrote: > Hi, I just had a somewhat weird problem with the > wiki. > I wanted to see if we had an article on "tin can", > so > I typed it in and hit go. On my screen showed up > the > article "Ford Model T", redirected from "Tin > Lizzie". > Why would this occur? Meelar The Go button isn't very predictible. If you want to be more specific, then just type the name of the article into the title bar of the web browser (ie. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can ). Daniel Ehrenberg __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From erik_moeller at gmx.de Sat Jan 24 20:45:41 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:45:41 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 105 In-Reply-To: <20040124200623.23740.qmail@web41805.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <91Tx+BixpVB@erik_moeller> Daniel- > The Go button isn't very predictible. If you want to > be more specific, then just type the name of the > article into the title bar of the web browser (ie. > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can ). Ahem. It's not like the Go button picks pages randomly. "Tin can" does not exist. As a last ditch effort before falling through to the search, the Go button tries to find a near match for the entered phrase. This often means that only one of the terms in the query is matching. However, given that this rarely leads to good results, it would probably be better to 1) improve capitalization tests (e.g. "duke of edinburgh" should match "Duke of Edinburgh") 2) fall through to the search when there's no exact match, or at least require all search words to be contained somewhere in the title. Regards, Erik From saintonge at telus.net Sat Jan 24 20:06:38 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:06:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions References: Message-ID: <4012D04E.8030504@telus.net> Ira Stoll wrote: > That's exactly what I'm getting at. The wikipedia should be packed > with clickable citations.The reason why I've always loved > encyclopedias so much is the quality of the information, and the > impartial manner in which it was presented. Citations (particularly > linkable) bring with them evidence for belief, and an option for the > reader to learn further, investigate for themselves (by clicking on > it). A basic of polite discourse (and a policy in my debate club) was > to accept another's argument so long as it is logical, and to accept > their premise so long as you could not disprove it (like thru a > citation). What I Don't like about the wikipedia is when the truth (or > a way of interpreting it) is removed from an article, regardless of > the quality of citation, due to overriding majority POV. My > suggestions are meant to address that. JackLynch Citations are similar in importance to footnotes in a term paper. I don't see linkability as important, since many or probably most) credible works are not al all available on line. Ultimately the burden of proof for any assertion falls upon the one making the assertion. The debating club analogy doesn't work because in the heat of an oral debate the reference sources are just not there in front of the debater. The standard for written material should be much higher when the person has that longer time and opportunity to check his sources. There is a 'prima facie' presumtion that what someone says is valid; that persists until someone questions it. Beyond that, simply being "logical" is not enough, although people sometimes use that word when they really mean intuitive. One can challenge by pointing out a fallacy in the argument. At other times it is enough to simply ask, "Where did you get that?" The original contributor should have a reasonable chance to respond before further action is taken, but that's difficult when the user is an anonymous ip. Truth by majority vote is frequently not truth at all. It is a very dangerous practice. Those votes often are based on fallacious arguments totally lacking in intellectual rigour. The last time I looked at [[astrology]] there was a statement there to the effect that most astronomers believe that astrology is pseudoscience. The word "believe" there says something, but even when we use a less charged word like "consider" we are no further ahead. Whatever you may think about astrology it is clear that it different from astronomy, and what is more likely is that most astronomers have never studied astrology to a sufficient extent to be able to come up with any kind of informed opinion. People with informed opinions may still come to the same conclusion, but they owe it to us to let us know how well they are informed. I find it interesting to look at records of 19th century patents. Most of them got nowhere by failing to produce anything of practical importance, but they represented new ideas. Others were understated and their true importance would not become apparent until long after the patent expired, such as the 1842 patent on airfoils. Ec From dd at dandrake.com Sat Jan 24 22:30:37 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:30:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence References: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> <401261F9.3000801@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:15:53 UTC, Anthere wrote: > Just thought of mentionning that thought the below mail make it so > appear I wrote that comment, I did not. > > I agree with Fred entirely. > > Anthere Me too (pardon the expression). It hadn't been clear to me that this was part of the package. > > Fred Bauder a ?crit: > > What went on in mediation should simply not be considered at the arbitration > > stage. So claims, true or false, are irrelevant. > > > > Fred > From dd at dandrake.com Sat Jan 24 22:46:34 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:46:34 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost> <200401240216.i0O2Gtwl003598@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 02:16:55 UTC, Sean Barrett wrote: > > I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your > > condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. > > You told me to work to have the policy changed; I tell you to work to > have me removed. Jimbo appointed me; convince him to remove me. As > an alternative, if a simple majority of my fellow arbiters ask me to > step down, I will. > > > The only argument you have given > > against enforcing such rules is that your time is too precious. > > I haven't even given that argument, and I don't intend to give any > arguments. I simply refuse to be compelled to arbitrate the way you > think I should. > ... I assume that the arbitration process, like any other that I can think of, will allow some choice to the arbitrees in the selection of arbitrators. This raises an interesting question: the built-in advantage of people who have participated in Wikipedia for a while over the newcomer. The former are likely to know something of the arbitrators, and can protect their interests by making better-informed judgments. It would be only fair, though I suppose it would be impractical, to create profiles of the arbitrators. Then a newbie would know what positions the various people have taken on the subject of arbitration, and would not make the mistake of accepting someone who simply refuses to enforce some published policy of Wikipedia because he doesn't feel like it and nobody can make him. Just fpr example. From dd at dandrake.com Sat Jan 24 22:48:02 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:48:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 References: <401174CA.9216.3BE547@localhost><200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net><200401240216.i0O2Gtwl003598@orwen.epoptic.com><200401232144.08111.sascha@pantropy.net> <4012138D.7000407@telus.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 06:41:17 UTC, Ray Saintonge wrote: > Sean Barrett wrote: > > >So forget having me impeached -- call the Thought Police! > > > The thought of impeaching arbitrators even before the arbitration > process is in place is not very encouraging. > > Ec If the aribtrees don't have some such power for their particular cases, then why call it arbitration? From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sat Jan 24 23:01:28 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:01:28 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Selection of Arbitrators In-Reply-To: Message-ID: If we do allow litigants to select among arbitrators that would indeed give those who are knowledgeable and experienced an advantage (like in real life) where one party choses one arbitrator the other choses one, then the two chosen choose the third. In labor disputes the union choses someone friendly to them, likewise management, then the two chosen look for someone they can both work with. Fred > From: "Dan Drake"
> Reply-To: dd at dandrake.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:46:34 +0000 (UTC) > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 > > On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 02:16:55 UTC, Sean Barrett > wrote: > >>> I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your >>> condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. >> >> You told me to work to have the policy changed; I tell you to work to >> have me removed. Jimbo appointed me; convince him to remove me. As >> an alternative, if a simple majority of my fellow arbiters ask me to >> step down, I will. >> >>> The only argument you have given >>> against enforcing such rules is that your time is too precious. >> >> I haven't even given that argument, and I don't intend to give any >> arguments. I simply refuse to be compelled to arbitrate the way you >> think I should. >> ... > > I assume that the arbitration process, like any other that I can think of, > will allow some choice to the arbitrees in the selection of arbitrators. > This raises an interesting question: the built-in advantage of people who > have participated in Wikipedia for a while over the newcomer. The former > are likely to know something of the arbitrators, and can protect their > interests by making better-informed judgments. > > It would be only fair, though I suppose it would be impractical, to create > profiles of the arbitrators. Then a newbie would know what positions the > various people have taken on the subject of arbitration, and would not > make the mistake of accepting someone who simply refuses to enforce some > published policy of Wikipedia because he doesn't feel like it and nobody > can make him. Just fpr example. > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sat Jan 24 23:22:43 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:22:43 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Selection of Arbitrators In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4012FE43.2090504@rufus.d2g.com> Fred Bauder wrote: >If we do allow litigants to select among arbitrators that would indeed give >those who are knowledgeable and experienced an advantage (like in real life) >where one party choses one arbitrator the other choses one, then the two >chosen choose the third. In labor disputes the union choses someone friendly >to them, likewise management, then the two chosen look for someone they can >both work with. > > I don't really like this idea. It puts too much politics into it based on the selection of who's voting on your case, and those who know how to game the system are more likely to come out ahead. It also adds yet another beaurocratic step to the process. I'd prefer instead a simple vote of all members of the committee for all cases. I very much hope there will not be a lot of cases, so I don't see this as being a problem workload-wise. If there are a lot of cases, then we need to figure out how to rework the system so that there aren't--the vast majority of issues should, in my opinion, be decided by consensus on talk pages or, if necessary, through mediation. Having some sort of grandiose process I'm afraid will actually encourage the overuse of the committee, as it makes it seem like it's normal to refer matters to be decided through this process. I think instead the arbitration committee should be a "decision-making committee of last resort", to which only relatively extraordinary matters are referred. And so we could have a relatively minimalistic process: the committee just votes, and thereby makes a decision (including possibly making the decision "the committee declines to make a ruling on this matter"). -Mark From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 23:44:43 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:44:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040124234443.28565.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> I didn't say that. I said it is not a LIST of citations. Do we really want to have to have a citation beside every single sentence of every article? RickK Geoff Burling wrote: On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Rick wrote: > Wikipedia is not a list of citations. > > RickK > > Ira Stoll wrote: > > *only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it > with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable > difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented > I don't understand your POV, Rick. Are you saying that we should have _no_ citations or mention of references so readers can verify facts or quotations? If so, wouldn't that undermine the credibility of Wikipedia? Geoff --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/5819cc76/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 23:51:33 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:51:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401231850.36984.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040124235133.77418.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> I second Sascha's concerns. If you're an official representative of Wikipedia and are serving on a committee designed to make sure that people are following the policies, then it's not your place to pick and choose which policies you will enforce. RickK Sascha Noyes wrote: On Friday 23 January 2004 05:51 pm, Sean Barrett wrote: > > If you think that personal attacks on other wikipedians are OK, then > > please advocate for the "no personal attacks" rule to get repealed. > > > > I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are specified in > > [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include [[Wikipedia:No personal > > attacks]]. Your characterisation of the desire of wikipedians that > > personal attacks should halt as 'Mommy, he called me xxx" and "whinging" > > is both condescending and illogical, given that "no personal attacks" > > happens to be a wikipedia policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall > > quote it again (from [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]): > > Sorry, no. I am not going to try to change the policy. Rather, when > a case comes before the arbitration committee that consist of nothing > more substantial than name-calling, I will recuse myself. So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated before, we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to them and scrap them. > My characterization is "illogical"? Non-sequitur -- I'm not a Vulcan. > "Condescending"? You're absolutely right. After all, my > /six-year-old/ doesn't need my help to handle simple name-calling. I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. Best, Sascha Noyes --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/315104dc/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 23:53:11 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:53:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <4011B6FB.1030706@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040124235311.71610.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> If a person drives other, equally (or more so) valuable users because of continued abuse, isn't that detrimental to the project? RickK Delirium wrote: Sascha Noyes wrote: >So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No >personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated before, >we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to them and >scrap them. > > Well, I see a lot of our policies more as "you ought to do this" and "you ought not do this", rather than as "if you do (don't) do this you will be banned", which is a somewhat more strenuous pronouncement. Of course if we have no consequences the rules are meaningless, but I don't think we should be banning people simply for violating "the letter of the law", so to speak. Really we should only ban people who we've determined are highly detrimental to Wikipedia, combined with a determination that they're unlikely to change their behavior in the near future. In my opinion, anyway. -Mark --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/bbf6c0d4/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 24 23:58:42 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:58:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401240216.i0O2Gtwl003598@orwen.epoptic.com> Message-ID: <20040124235842.60248.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> I request Sean Barrett's removal from the arbitration committee. RickK Sean Barrett wrote: > I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your > condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. You told me to work to have the policy changed; I tell you to work to have me removed. Jimbo appointed me; convince him to remove me. As an alternative, if a simple majority of my fellow arbiters ask me to step down, I will. > The only argument you have given > against enforcing such rules is that your time is too precious. I haven't even given that argument, and I don't intend to give any arguments. I simply refuse to be compelled to arbitrate the way you think I should. > So would it be correct to conclude that you either you think that nobody will > be driven away by personal attacks, or it is not worth your time to retain > these contributors? Conclude what you like. I am a free man. You cannot compel me to rule on a case I don't choose to rule on. I encourage you, however, to work on impeaching me from the arbitration committee. > I will also put to you my opinion that in cases where > there has been a gross violation of policies such as "no personal attacks", > all the arbitration committee will have to do is the following: And I suspect that in cases where there has been a gross violation of the "no personal attacks" policy, there will be contemporaneous violations such as edit warring, which I agree rise to a level requiring arbitration. > Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. Don't forget to inform the arbitration committee of my dereliction of duty, and impress upon Jimbo the urgency of appointing arbiters who will always rule the way you tell them to. -- Sean Barrett | To bite off your shadow is neither easy sean at epoptic.com | nor painless. It demands a single-mindedness | that is almost unknown in this day. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/31c0204b/attachment.htm From dpbsmith at world.std.com Sun Jan 25 00:11:15 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 19:11:15 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Citations In-Reply-To: <20040124230000.B363F1B025A@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040124230000.B363F1B025A@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: > Daniel P.B.Smith wrote: > >> I agree completely. Lack of citation and traceability is IMHO a big >> glaring >> deficiency in traditional encyclopedias, and it's one that should be >> remediable >> in a hypertext encyclopedia. tter Wiki-apparatus for the purpose). > > But this seems to assume that the citations will all be to websites, > which isn't likely to be the case--most respected, reliable information > is still not available online. So citations of that sort will have to > be to books or journal articles, which in many cases won't be > accessible > through hypertext. What I meant was that I don't understand why citations--to books, websites, "personal communications," what have you--aren't used more often. I don't personally care so much what the format is, so long as they're _there_. By "hypertext," I just meant that it provides possibilities for presenting the text in a way that doesn't interrupt flow for the casual reader, while still allowing the references to be visible to the reader who wants to see the citations. The way it was done in "Seabiscuit," and which is becoming very popular for nonscholarly nonfiction, is a technique for which I don't know a name, which I will call "invisible endnotes." That is, there are no markers in the text at all, but at the end of the book the citations are referenced by chapter number, page number, and starting phrase of the sentence. This seems to me to be close to ideal--but it wouldn't work very well in Wikipedia, at least not without some technical apparatus that isn't in place yet, because Wikipedia articles don't have numbered pages and are subject to constant editing. -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/ From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:11:18 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:11:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040125001118.29090.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Then what's the point of having an encyclopedia? Why not just have an article title and list all of the citations? RickK Ira Stoll wrote: That's exactly what I'm getting at. The wikipedia should be packed with clickable citations.The reason why I've always loved encyclopedias so much is the quality of the information, and the impartial manner in which it was presented. Citations (particularly linkable) bring with them evidence for belief, and an option for the reader to learn further, investigate for themselves (by clicking on it). A basic of polite discourse (and a policy in my debate club) was to accept another's argument so long as it is logical, and to accept their premise so long as you could not disprove it (like thru a citation). What I Don't like about the wikipedia is when the truth (or a way of interpreting it) is removed from an article, regardless of the quality of citation, due to overriding majority POV. My suggestions are meant to address that. JackLynch >On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Rick wrote: >Wikipedia is not a list of citations. > >RickK >Ira Stoll wrote: > >*only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it >with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable >difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented > >I don't understand your POV, Rick. Are you saying that we should have _no_ >citations or mention of references so readers can verify facts or >quotations? >If so, wouldn't that undermine the credibility of Wikipedia? >Geoff _________________________________________________________________ Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/ebbf995d/attachment.htm From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:15:23 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:15:23 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kevin Baas Message-ID: <200401241615.23595.maveric149@yahoo.com> Fred wrote: >I would suggest you request mediation of him and the mediation >committee Let's not forget the other steps in the conflict resolution process that come before that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:19:12 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:19:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Packed with clickable citations In-Reply-To: <6F9CE192-4E82-11D8-9EEB-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> Message-ID: <20040125001912.30116.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Ugh. I'm glad I haven't tried to read that. How tedious. RickK "Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote: As for "Wikipedia is not a list of citations"?fine; neither is Lauren Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," but every darn statement she make in that readable, popular bestseller is documented and attributed. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/822539de/attachment.htm From shebs at apple.com Sun Jan 25 00:20:37 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:20:37 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: <20040124033435.27113.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040124033435.27113.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40130BD4.9010605@apple.com> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > >Currently, we have almost no references (I would >estimate 1 in 50 articles have references). To require >citations on all of them would be ridiculous. > Why? Notice how 1911EB has a little para of refs glued onto the end of each article, and they're not much noticed, but their length is easier to see if you turn into bulleted list. Modern "real" encyclopedias have refs on every article too, in very small print typically. Lack of refs is just another way for an article to be incomplete. Adding refs is more complicated than it needs to be however, and I've been designing a scheme to make it easier by using a new namespace a la images. Stan From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 00:26:21 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:26:21 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sean Barrett In-Reply-To: <20040124235842.60248.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I think I'd rather wait and see how arbitration actually goes with him on the committee and see what his expressed attitudes actually mean in practice. He has been quite open about hostility to certain policies. Others on the committee may also have trouble with certain policies, but haven't voiced their policy preferences so openly. I certainly haven't, although my attitudes are notorious enough. The question is, sitting on a Wikipedia committee, the purpose of which is to carry out Wikipedia policy, are you willing to do that; or do will you use your role as an arbitrator to continue policy debate, picking and chosing which policies deserve enforcement, which don't. But then, some policies are more important than others. That we can expect to see reflected in the nature of matters which users bring to the attention of the mediation and arbitration committees. Fred From: Rick Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:58:42 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 I request Sean Barrett's removal from the arbitration committee. RickK Sean Barrett wrote: > I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your > condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. You told me to work to have the policy changed; I tell you to work to have me removed. Jimbo appointed me; convince him to remove me. As an alternative, if a simple majority of my fellow arbiters ask me to step down, I will. > The only argument you have given > against enforcing such rules is that your time is too precious. I haven't even given that argument, and I don't intend to give any arguments. I simply refuse to be compelled to arbitrate the way you think I should. > So would it be correct to conclude that you either you think that nobody will > be driven away by personal attacks, or it is not worth your time to retain > these contributors? Co nclude what you like. I am a free man. You cannot compel me to rule on a case I don't choose to rule on. I encourage you, however, to work on impeaching me from the arbitration committee. > I will also put to you my opinion that in cases where > there has been a gross violation of policies such as "no personal attacks", > all the arbitration committee will have to do is the following: And I suspect that in cases where there has been a gross violation of the "no personal attacks" policy, there will be contemporaneous violations such as edit warring, which I agree rise to a level requiring arbitration. > Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. Don't forget to inform the arbitration committee of my dereliction of duty, and impress upon Jimbo the urgency of appointing arbiters who will always rule the way you tell them to. -- Sean Barrett | To bite off your shadow is neither easy sean at epoptic.com | no r painless. It demands a single-mindedness | that is almost unknown in this day. Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/0ae0a1b0/attachment.htm From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:24:36 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:24:36 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] CafePress Wikipedia items Message-ID: <200401241624.36423.maveric149@yahoo.com> LDan wrote: >That's mildly ironic, considering that Wikipedia >was banned in China. IIRC that was a rumor that was found to be false. -- mav From shebs at apple.com Sun Jan 25 00:28:50 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:28:50 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Packed with clickable citations In-Reply-To: <20040125001912.30116.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040125001912.30116.qmail@web60603.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40130DC2.60209@apple.com> That's why all that material is in the endnotes, not cluttering up the text. References are the foundation of the building, not the living room furniture. Stan Rick wrote: >Ugh. I'm glad I haven't tried to read that. How tedious. > >RickK > >"Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote: >As for "Wikipedia is not a list of citations"?fine; neither is >Lauren Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," but every >darn statement she make in that readable, popular bestseller is >documented and attributed. > > > >--------------------------------- >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:28:31 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:28:31 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] copyrights issues Message-ID: <200401241628.31807.maveric149@yahoo.com> Anthere wrote: >Could someone give us a link to a draft page of emails to send >to someone using wikipedia content without respecting the >terms of the licence ? The wiki is damn slow right now, but here are the links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content Tracks compliance progress http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter It is what it is. --mav From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:37:15 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:37:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions In-Reply-To: <20040125001114.295A71B026F@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040125003715.32493.qmail@web41813.mail.yahoo.com> >Then what's the point of having an encyclopedia? Why >not just have an article title and list all of the >citations? > >RickK That's not what they're saying. They're saying that it would be better if we had citations in addition to the articles so as to suppliment the article, since the sources will always have more information that Wikipedia's condenced article. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:38:00 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:38:00 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 Message-ID: <200401241638.00154.maveric149@yahoo.com> RickK wrote: >I request Sean Barrett's removal from the arbitration committee. Well if you can arbitrarily request the removal of Sean, I guess I can arbitrarily deny your request. Request denied. ;) -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 00:45:00 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:45:00 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unobtrusive Ways of Citing Authority In-Reply-To: <40130DC2.60209@apple.com> Message-ID: There are several ways of adding citations that do not clutter up the text. 1. A superscript which point to a footnote. 2. A hypertext link to the source like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_wet] which will display [1]. 3. Using comments while editing that do not show up in the displayed text: Fred > From: Stan Shebs > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:28:50 -0800 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Packed with clickable citations > > That's why all that material is in the endnotes, not cluttering up the text. > References are the foundation of the building, not the living room > furniture. > > Stan > > Rick wrote: > >> Ugh. I'm glad I haven't tried to read that. How tedious. >> >> RickK >> >> "Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote: >> As for "Wikipedia is not a list of citations"?fine; neither is >> Lauren Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," but every >> darn statement she make in that readable, popular bestseller is >> documented and attributed. >> >> >> >> --------------------------------- >> Do you Yahoo!? >> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From irastoll at hotmail.com Sun Jan 25 00:48:51 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:48:51 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions Message-ID: I am really impressed with the quality (and sunstance) of the debate on this. I agree with Rick that citations can get out of hand, and I also agree with others, who say that "non-clickable" citations are also quite good (references to books, or other sources of information). This is what I want: a hierarchy of citations. If it ever gets to the point (I think it VERY rarely will) where an article has too many citations, making it take up too much room, or it clutters too much (this would seem to be aleviated by putting them at the bottom of the page, but whatever) then you simply raise the standard. As I said in my original suggestion, the quality expected of citations should be based on the number of them presented. What is REALLY important to me is that differing citations be allowed, so long as they are from reliable sources (and such reliability should be based on the investigations of interested parties, perhaps even a "citation arbitration board" could be formed, if ever needed, to judge qualities of citations) and that differing interpretations be allowed, expressing that "some hold XYZ POV based on ABC interpretation of [1] information, but others...". This would be wonderful, and would definately improve the information quality, as well as the egalitarian acceptance of all legitamate (based on citation) POV's as being legitamately worth hearing (and IMO, drastically reduce disputes among non-troll editors). I am NOT saying everything needs to be cited, only things which are disputed should have to be. But the more citations the better, IMO. JackLynch _________________________________________________________________ Scope out the new MSN Plus Internet Software ? optimizes dial-up to the max! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=byoa/plus&ST=1 From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 00:50:43 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:50:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: <40130BD4.9010605@apple.com> Message-ID: <20040125005043.40562.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> I have no problem whatsoever in having a list of references at the end of the article. I must not have understood what was being proposed. The original proposal sounded as if the requester wanted a citation next to each assertion. That I would oppose. RickK Stan Shebs wrote: Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > >Currently, we have almost no references (I would >estimate 1 in 50 articles have references). To require >citations on all of them would be ridiculous. > Why? Notice how 1911EB has a little para of refs glued onto the end of each article, and they're not much noticed, but their length is easier to see if you turn into bulleted list. Modern "real" encyclopedias have refs on every article too, in very small print typically. Lack of refs is just another way for an article to be incomplete. Adding refs is more complicated than it needs to be however, and I've been designing a scheme to make it easier by using a new namespace a la images. Stan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/910c6e85/attachment.htm From shebs at apple.com Sun Jan 25 00:54:16 2004 From: shebs at apple.com (Stan Shebs) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:54:16 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick In-Reply-To: <200401212236.44712.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <642BCF00CF465B46B9EC036E26BDFE6004EEF5C5@n3cdoimmail40m.hood.army.mil> <200401220327.i0M3RAZb031730@orwen.epoptic.com> <200401212236.44712.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <401313B8.5010702@apple.com> Sascha Noyes wrote: >On Wednesday 21 January 2004 10:27 pm, Sean Barrett wrote: > > >>And I must add that I find it very scary that the Air Force is looking >>for that kind of information in a freely-editable encyclopedia.... >> >> > >I get the impression that Dawn Chavez was asking this out of personal >interest. But it would be prudent not to use a .mil email address for those >sorts of things. I did get a bit of a laugh out of that one, though. ;-) > > Don't laugh too much, military personnel often have a terrible time getting good information. Remember the tank guy calling the SCO help line from his M1A1 in Desert Storm? Military info systems are not all rotating whizzing 3d cross sections like you see in the movies. Stan From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 01:05:52 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:05:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <200401241638.00154.maveric149@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040125010552.84988.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> So what's the months-long procedure to get rid of a committee member? Where are the pages of rules on how to go about doing it and the fifty or so steps required? RickK Daniel Mayer wrote: RickK wrote: >I request Sean Barrett's removal from the arbitration committee. Well if you can arbitrarily request the removal of Sean, I guess I can arbitrarily deny your request. Request denied. ;) -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/cb6785c2/attachment.htm From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 25 01:12:47 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:12:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <20040124235133.77418.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040124235133.77418.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4013180F.70905@rufus.d2g.com> Rick wrote: > I second Sascha's concerns. If you're an official representative of > Wikipedia and are serving on a committee designed to make sure that > people are following the policies, then it's not your place to pick > and choose which policies you will enforce. My problem with this is that it's very unclear what is and is not Wikipedia policy. There are a lot of pages which purport to be policy, but some of them have been written by a single person and mostly ignored by everyone else, so at best can be called "one person's attempt at a proposed policy". There are some others that have some support, and multiple contributors, and still others than have a good deal of support. Then there are some procedural things, like VfD and the sysop-request process, that are de facto policy by virtue of the fact that they do what they say they'll do. But, apart from the fact that we strive for a "neutral point of view", I'm not aware of anything else that can be said to be "official policy", just a lot of things that have greater or lesser degrees of support as policy. For example, "no autobiographies" is a proposed policy with some support, but can't really be said to be official policy. "No personal attacks" likely has much more support, but I see it as quantitatively different rather than qualitatively--it should be given more weight since it has much more support, but none of our "policies" are really set in stone, since any of them can be modified at any time. In fact, the Wikiquette page was modified by User:168... just yesterday! So which version is official policy? The new one, or the old one? My answer would be neither--they're both proposed policies, with greater or lesser degrees of support. -Mark From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 25 01:14:57 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:14:57 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2 In-Reply-To: <20040125010552.84988.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040125010552.84988.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40131891.9090609@rufus.d2g.com> Rick wrote: > So what's the months-long procedure to get rid of a committee member? > Where are the pages of rules on how to go about doing it and the fifty > or so steps required? As far as I can tell, the current process is "elections once per year", presumably with intervention by Jimbo for egregious problems that arise in the interim. All subject to modification of course. -Mark From sascha at pantropy.net Sun Jan 25 01:36:45 2004 From: sascha at pantropy.net (Sascha Noyes) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:36:45 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unobtrusive Ways of Citing Authority In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401242036.47177.sascha@pantropy.net> On Saturday 24 January 2004 07:45 pm, Fred Bauder wrote: > There are several ways of adding citations that do not clutter up the text. > > 1. A superscript which point to a footnote. > > 2. A hypertext link to the source like > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_wet] which will display [1]. > > 3. Using comments while editing that do not show up in the displayed text: > > Or my personal favourite: [[Articlename#References|[1]]] Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc From maveric149 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 01:37:27 2004 From: maveric149 at yahoo.com (Daniel Mayer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:37:27 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Footnotes/Endnotes - a proposal for a new MediaWiki feature Message-ID: <200401241737.27764.maveric149@yahoo.com> There has been a lot of talk on WikiEN-l about the need for citations in articles. I tend to agree with that. But our current system of wiki refs only encourage the creation of footnote-like references to external websites (which is less than ideal). I have put together a proposal that, if enacted, would create a more wordprocessor-like footnote system that could be used for all types of footnotes (web, ISBN, journal articles, and written out dead tree citations). See and respond on: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footnotes -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) From dd at dandrake.com Sun Jan 25 02:37:58 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 02:37:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selection of Arbitrators References: <4012FE43.2090504@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 23:22:43 UTC, Delirium wrote: > Having some sort of grandiose process I'm afraid will actually encourage > the overuse of the committee, as it makes it seem like it's normal to > refer matters to be decided through this process. I think instead the > arbitration committee should be a "decision-making committee of last > resort", to which only relatively extraordinary matters are referred. > And so we could have a relatively minimalistic process: the committee > just votes, and thereby makes a decision (including possibly making the > decision "the committee declines to make a ruling on this matter"). This is probably a good idea; really, I'm not arguing for an elaborate procedure, but reacting to what seems to be becoming one. But why call it arbitration? "Committee of last resort" is a fine, descriptive name. Even the arbitration clauses in the agreements for brokerage and credit-card accounts (unconscionable because they are imposed by force and not in a genuine agreement, but that's another issue) give the aggrieved some power of selecting among the industry's pre-selected arbitrators to hear their case. As an organization that's charged with preserving Wilipedia's values (a good thing), "judges" would be a good term; but Committee of Last Resort, if a little verbose, would be best of all. From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 04:03:33 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:03:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unadmissible Evidence In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040125040333.61512.qmail@web41804.mail.yahoo.com> Fred Bauder wrote: > What went on in mediation should simply not be > considered at the arbitration > stage. So claims, true or false, are irrelevant. > > Fred Why are you being so formal? This isn't a court of law, it's just a discussion. When you put all of these formalities like inadmissible evidence in, what you have is a month-long court case, not just a short talk to stop an edit war. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Sun Jan 25 04:25:34 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex T.) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 23:25:34 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unadmissible Evidence References: <20040125040333.61512.qmail@web41804.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <011801c3e2fb$46a51b00$85fea8c0@HPDESKTOPONE> From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" > Fred Bauder wrote: > > What went on in mediation should simply not be > > considered at the arbitration > > stage. So claims, true or false, are irrelevant. > > > > Fred > > Why are you being so formal? This isn't a court of > law, it's just a discussion. When you put all of these > formalities like inadmissible evidence in, what you > have is a month-long court case, not just a short talk > to stop an edit war. L'Dan I agree with your idea of informality, but I think that Fred has a valid point too. Mediation is supposed to be confidential between the parties, if someone starts using what one person states in a mediation against them and the arbitrators allow that this will have a chilling effect upon the mediation process. Mediation is much prefered to arbitration as it is consensual. Arbitration is something that is imposed by the arbitrators upon the parties, they have no control over what the arbitrators do, wheresa mediation is what is agreeable to both parties, people must be encouraged to talk and discuss things in mediation, not think that what they say will be used against them. BTW I think the term is inadmissible evidence, I have never heard the term "unadmissible" used (maybe it is used some where else than where I have been, excuse my ignorance if that is true). Alex756 From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Sun Jan 25 08:30:30 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 03:30:30 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] maverick Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Stan Shebs Date: Saturday, January 24, 2004 7:54 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] maverick > Don't laugh too much, military personnel often have a terrible > time > getting good > information. Remember the tank guy calling the SCO help line from > his M1A1 > in Desert Storm? Say WHAT? You simply must tell this story, Stan. John From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 08:45:25 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 09:45:25 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: copyrights issues References: <4012C6A7.4040809@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40138225.7030902@yahoo.com> Anthere a ?crit: > Could someone give us a link to a draft page of emails to send to > someone using wikipedia content without respecting the terms of the > licence ? > > I saw several times great emails examples published on the list (the > last one was really good). Does someone know the link ? Or is there > somewhere a page from which we can inspire ourselves to make a standard > copyright violation notice ? > > Thanks Thanks Mav and Mark. I copied the english version, and lauched a campaign of collaborative translation/adaptation on fr: :-) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 08:52:27 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 09:52:27 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (dan) References: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> <401261F9.3000801@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <401383CB.4070201@yahoo.com> Dan Drake a ?crit: > On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:15:53 UTC, Anthere > wrote: > > >>Just thought of mentionning that thought the below mail make it so >>appear I wrote that comment, I did not. >> >>I agree with Fred entirely. >> >>Anthere > > > Me too (pardon the expression). It hadn't been clear to me that this was > part of the package. Dan...why do you write "pardon the expression". Is that not correct to write "me too" ? From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Sun Jan 25 08:49:48 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:49:48 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (dan) In-Reply-To: <401383CB.4070201@yahoo.com> References: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> <401261F9.3000801@yahoo.com> <401383CB.4070201@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4013832C.7070009@rufus.d2g.com> Anthere wrote: > Dan Drake a ?crit: > >> Me too (pardon the expression). It hadn't been clear to me that this >> was part of the package. > > Dan...why do you write "pardon the expression". Is that not correct to > write "me too" ? In internet culture, "me too" has come to be a somewhat notorious phrase associated with AOL users and other "internet newbies". It comes from AOL message boards (and possibly Prodigy or other message boards before that) where often when someone would post something about how they liked a movie or song or something, there'd be 10 replies that basically just said "me too". Sometimes in more words ("I also like that!" or something), but the effect was the same, so these became known as "me too" posts. -Mark From pentaj2 at UofS.edu Sun Jan 25 09:03:31 2004 From: pentaj2 at UofS.edu (John C. Penta) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:03:31 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (dan) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Delirium Date: Sunday, January 25, 2004 3:49 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (dan) > Anthere wrote: > > > Dan Drake a ?crit: > > > >> Me too (pardon the expression). It hadn't been clear to me that > this > >> was part of the package. > > > > Dan...why do you write "pardon the expression". Is that not > correct to > > write "me too" ? > > In internet culture, "me too" has come to be a somewhat notorious > phrase > associated with AOL users and other "internet newbies". It comes > from > AOL message boards (and possibly Prodigy or other message boards > before > that) where often when someone would post something about how they > liked > a movie or song or something, there'd be 10 replies that basically > just > said "me too". Sometimes in more words ("I also like that!" or > something), but the effect was the same, so these became known as > "me > too" posts. Prodigy, definitely. I first began living on the computer cuz of that during 1992. It was as bad as AOL is now. Then again, I was 8 then, so I was a bit of a brat myself.:-) John From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sun Jan 25 05:24:16 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:24:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: <20040124234443.28565.qmail@web60610.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Rick wrote: > I didn't say that. I said it is not a LIST of citations. Do we really > want to have to have a citation beside every single sentence of every article? > Rick, what you originally wrote was -- > On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Rick wrote: > > > Wikipedia is not a list of citations. > > > > RickK And that was all. I didn't know what you meant, so I asked for a clarification, & expressed a response to a possible answer thusly: > I don't understand your POV, Rick. Are you saying that we should have _no_ > citations or mention of references so readers can verify facts or quotations? > If so, wouldn't that undermine the credibility of Wikipedia? > I fail to see why had to be so antagonistic in your response. Geoff From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Sun Jan 25 05:32:15 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:32:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy suggestions In-Reply-To: <40130BD4.9010605@apple.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Stan Shebs wrote: > Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > > > >Currently, we have almost no references (I would > >estimate 1 in 50 articles have references). To require > >citations on all of them would be ridiculous. > > > Why? Notice how 1911EB has a little para of refs glued onto the > end of each article, and they're not much noticed, but their length > is easier to see if you turn into bulleted list. Modern "real" > encyclopedias have refs on every article too, in very small print > typically. > > Lack of refs is just another way for an article to be incomplete. > Adding refs is more complicated than it needs to be however, > and I've been designing a scheme to make it easier by using > a new namespace a la images. > This is exactly what I had in mind: each article in Wikipedia *should* have a number of entries of print materials under the "References" section, especially of authors referred to in the article body. (For example, if the article quotes one John Schmuck as saying, "This theory stinks", then there should be a proper citation to the print source whence Schmuck's quotation came.) However, I also acknowlege that it is possible that certain topics probably don't lend themselves to a Reference section. I think it would be desireable for articles to also have links to relevant webpages, but due to the ephemeral nature of most web pages -- & the widely uneven quality of most material on the web -- I acknowledge that this resource won't be as widespread. Geoff From dd at dandrake.com Sat Jan 24 22:27:43 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:27:43 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mr. Natural Health has refused mediation with the community References: <200401232110.i0NLAUtr008698@a.mail.sonic.net> <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:37:25 UTC, Anthere wrote: > Dan Drake a ?crit: > > > We do understand, of course, that if mediation doesn't succeed, and > > someone takes the same case to arbitration, a person who is not of good > > will is certain to complain that he's being put on trial twice and having to > > defend himself against the very same things that came up in mediation. > > A mediator is not a judge. He is not there to put someone in accusation. Yes, that's kind of my point (see below). So long as everyone remembers that, and remembers to pay no attention whatsoever to such a complaint, all is fine. Perhaps my faith that such nonsense will be properly and completely ignored has been undermined too much by watching this painful process of trying to assure utter unimpeachable fairness in what is not (as you say) a judgment process. > He > > may even make false claims about what went on in mediation; hence, the > > full legalistic set of rules will have to include some kind of waiver of this > > confidentiality. > > full legalistic set of rules ? > May we keep the whole process simple, without setting up 15 pages rules > please :-( Thank you for the reassurance; I was getting the opposite impression from what has been said on this list. Namely, the difficulty in setting up a flawless mediation procedure, when the arbitration must by its nature be even more difficult to set up. > It does not matter really if the disputant makes false claims about what > went on in mediation; as far as mediation is concerned, the case will be > closed And as far as arbitration is concerned? It will never allow itself to be distracted by any kind of claim or complaint about what the acused's evil enemies did during the mediation process. Excellent. I'm not being sarcastic, just maybe having some doubts about what will happen in practice. We all remember that people who are accused of being dedicated troublemakers are in some cases dedicated troublemakers, expert in tactics of distraction, confusion, and putting everyone else in the wrong. >... > > > > MNH having declined mediation, he and the mediation process are now > > irrelevant to each other. Anyone who holds that something ought to be > > done about him needs to forget the mediation process and concentrate on > > getting arbitration working. > > The last I knew, MNH agreed to mediation for the article issue, but > requested arbitration for the human dispute issue. Sorry; I misunderstood. I see that he's relevant to both processes. > ... > > I'm not sure what this means -- someone on his side who will watch the > > proceedings and form an opinion (for whose benefit?) on their propriety? > > Fine, if the parties want it. But again, since mediators have no power -- > > presumably not even power to send the case to arbitration -- what does it > > matter? > > This is not a question of putting someone on one side or another, this > is a question of having a neutral observer watching to guarantee the > process is fair. That's what I wonder about. Mediation is supposed to be fair and impartial in the first place. If a mediatee decides that the mediators are biased, he/she tells them to b---er off. What's the need for an observer here? What happened in mediation cannot be brought up in any later arbitration, as we just agreed; so, again, who would later need the opinion of a neutral observer of the mediation? Of course, if somebody *wants* an observer, and the other party doesn't have a problem, go ahead. But I still don't understand why it would be a significant part of the process. From zoltanknowledge at shaw.ca Sat Jan 24 23:30:28 2004 From: zoltanknowledge at shaw.ca (Zoltan) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:30:28 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] history Message-ID: <000001c3e2d2$175a28a0$d8c05018@va.shawcable.net> Hello Sir. What happens with the German population Gdansk afterwards in 1945 and Silesia ? Regards Zoltan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/a8f844f3/attachment.htm From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 09:54:18 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 10:54:18 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 References: <200401240216.i0O2Gtwl003598@orwen.epoptic.com> <20040124235842.60248.qmail@web60602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4013924A.7040007@yahoo.com> Do you suggest that any arbitrator have '''no''' right to participate to building policies from now on ? I suppose that similarly mediators have no right to participate in edit wars from now on as well ? Just as Jimbo has no right to edit articles ? If so, we might just forget the whole process entirely. Rick a ?crit: > I request Sean Barrett's removal from the arbitration committee. > > RickK > > Sean Barrett wrote: > > > I question your suitability for the role of arbitrator based on your > > condescention towards those who want the wikipedia policies enforced. > > You told me to work to have the policy changed; I tell you to work to > have me removed. Jimbo appointed me; convince him to remove me. As > an alternative, if a simple majority of my fellow arbiters ask me to > step down, I will. > > > The only argument you have given > > against enforcing such rules is that your time is too precious. > > I haven't even given that argument, and I don't intend to give any > arguments. I simply refuse to be compelled to arbitrate the way you > think I should. > > > So would it be correct to conclude that you either you think that > nobody will > > be driven away by person al attacks, or it is not worth your time > to retain > > these contributors? > > Co nclude what you like. I am a free man. You cannot compel me to > rule on a case I don't choose to rule on. I encourage you, however, > to work on impeaching me from the arbitration committee. > > > I will also put to you my opinion that in cases where > > there has been a gross violation of policies such as "no personal > attacks", > > all the arbitration committee will have to do is the following: > > And I suspect that in cases where there has been a gross violation of > the "no personal attacks" policy, there will be contemporaneous > violations such as edit warring, which I agree rise to a level > requiring arbitration. > > > Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. > > Don't forget to inform the arbitration committee of my dereliction of > duty, and impress upon Jimbo the urgency of appointing arbiters who > will always rule the way you tell them to. > > -- > Sean Barrett | To bite off your shadow is neither easy > sean at epoptic.com | no r painless. It > demands a single-mindedness > | that is almost unknown in this day. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 10:22:21 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 11:22:21 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: copyrights issues References: <4012C6A7.4040809@yahoo.com> <40138225.7030902@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <401398DD.1080200@yahoo.com> This said...this is not the first time that happens. Usually, the mention the text is gfdl is there. But usually as well, there is no mention of Wikipedia, no mention of any author, no link to wikipedia itself, no link to the article or to the article history. In short, the text is considered public domain, since there is no respect for who wrote it. So...that is nice, since the text is being used by others. But our project is not gaining anything. No reputation as it is not considered the origin of the text, and no new contributors, since there are no links. Each time I raise the topic on fr, a contributor answers that no where in the license is it written that wikipedia name itself should be mentionned. And that the projet itself could disappear, hence making disappear the names of the contributions. So that it is not worth it to ask for a link to be put back to wikipedia itself Conclusions are that the names of the contributors themselves only should be mentionned (on the site using the content - which is totally impracticable), or that we should ask a link to the history of the article (which is imho, bound to let many readers of the site in question quite abashed and wondering what is that stuff about). Consequently, no one is doing anything, and sites are beginning to use our content without any recognition of our rights. This is ***seriously*** beginning to bug me. Anthere a ?crit: > > > Anthere a ?crit: > >> Could someone give us a link to a draft page of emails to send to >> someone using wikipedia content without respecting the terms of the >> licence ? >> >> I saw several times great emails examples published on the list (the >> last one was really good). Does someone know the link ? Or is there >> somewhere a page from which we can inspire ourselves to make a >> standard copyright violation notice ? >> >> Thanks > > > Thanks Mav and Mark. I copied the english version, and lauched a > campaign of collaborative translation/adaptation on fr: :-) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sun Jan 25 10:25:32 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 11:25:32 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (internet language) References: <40123CD5.4080503@yahoo.com> <401261F9.3000801@yahoo.com> <401383CB.4070201@yahoo.com> <4013832C.7070009@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <4013999C.3060201@yahoo.com> k. lol. Delirium a ?crit: > Anthere wrote: > >> Dan Drake a ?crit: >> >>> Me too (pardon the expression). It hadn't been clear to me that this >>> was part of the package. >> >> >> Dan...why do you write "pardon the expression". Is that not correct to >> write "me too" ? > > > In internet culture, "me too" has come to be a somewhat notorious phrase > associated with AOL users and other "internet newbies". It comes from > AOL message boards (and possibly Prodigy or other message boards before > that) where often when someone would post something about how they liked > a movie or song or something, there'd be 10 replies that basically just > said "me too". Sometimes in more words ("I also like that!" or > something), but the effect was the same, so these became known as "me > too" posts. > > -Mark From irastoll at hotmail.com Sun Jan 25 10:32:24 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:32:24 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy Suggestions Message-ID: >I think it would be desireable for articles to also have links to relevant >webpages, but due to the ephemeral nature of most web pages -- & the >widely uneven quality of most material on the web -- I acknowledge that >this resource won't be as widespread. I would guess it will become increasingly more common, as information will hopefully become more free and accessible online over time. At the present, it amazes me how much is available. The goal here, IMO is to make the wikipedia just such an easily clickable information resource, which others might like to cite ;) JackLynch _________________________________________________________________ Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://shopping.msn.com/softcontent/softcontent.aspx?scmId=1418 From brion at pobox.com Sun Jan 25 02:30:47 2004 From: brion at pobox.com (Brion Vibber) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:30:47 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Web servers shuffled Message-ID: <7BD5EA72-4EDE-11D8-A361-000A95DAA284@pobox.com> en.wikipedia.org is now running on a much faster machine. Between that and the database tweaks we've done in the last couple days, I hope this should keep things more or less smooth for the next few weeks until the new server farm is set up in Florida (thanks to all those who donated!). -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PGP.sig Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 186 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040124/8ac804ff/attachment.pgp -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 11:36:00 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:36:00 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Using language which represents events In-Reply-To: <20040125040333.61512.qmail@web41804.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Instead of using the words "inadmissible evidence" I could have said, "during arbitration the users shouldn't be able to drag in everything that happened during mediation", but the short phrase (from law, after all I was a lawyer) serves. It doesn't imply all the bullshit that goes with formal court proceedings, after all we are talking about mediation followed by arbitration for participants in a voluntary cooperative effort. Nevertheless it is useful to use short hand exppressions which represent events or things which otherwise have to be spelled out at length. Having to reinvent a new language for our particular proceeding would be quite burdensome although we probably will develop some language unique to our situation. Fred > From: Daniel Ehrenberg > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:03:33 -0800 (PST) > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Unadmissible Evidence > > Fred Bauder wrote: >> What went on in mediation should simply not be >> considered at the arbitration >> stage. So claims, true or false, are irrelevant. >> >> Fred > > Why are you being so formal? This isn't a court of > law, it's just a discussion. When you put all of these > formalities like inadmissible evidence in, what you > have is a month-long court case, not just a short talk > to stop an edit war. > > LDan > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 11:46:11 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:46:11 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration and Policy In-Reply-To: <4013924A.7040007@yahoo.com> Message-ID: One of the things that will go on as we consider cases is that both the arbitrators and the mediators will be looking at Wikipedia policies, examining where they originated, (like who wrote the page, was it after a considered discussion on the talk pages and mailing lists, how much support particular policies have among the users, i.e. is the policy generally followed or ignored, etc.). And of course the artitrators can sound off about policy, mediators can be in edit wars, Jimbo can edit all he wants, and like elephants we will never forget or give up on anything. Fred > From: Anthere > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia > Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 10:54:18 +0100 > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #2 > > Do you suggest that any arbitrator have '''no''' right to participate to > building policies from now on ? > > I suppose that similarly mediators have no right to participate in edit > wars from now on as well ? > > Just as Jimbo has no right to edit articles ? > > If so, we might just forget the whole process entirely. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 11:48:36 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:48:36 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Me Too In-Reply-To: Message-ID: We want "Me Too" messages during this process of discussion as we want decisions to reflect what everyone wants and that is how you communicate agreement. Fred > From: "John C. Penta" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:03:31 -0500 > To: English Wikipedia > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (dan) > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Delirium > Date: Sunday, January 25, 2004 3:49 am > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unadmissible Evidence (dan) > >> Anthere wrote: >> >>> Dan Drake a ?crit: >>> >>>> Me too (pardon the expression). It hadn't been clear to me that >> this >>>> was part of the package. >>> >>> Dan...why do you write "pardon the expression". Is that not >> correct to >>> write "me too" ? >> >> In internet culture, "me too" has come to be a somewhat notorious >> phrase >> associated with AOL users and other "internet newbies". It comes >> from >> AOL message boards (and possibly Prodigy or other message boards >> before >> that) where often when someone would post something about how they >> liked >> a movie or song or something, there'd be 10 replies that basically >> just >> said "me too". Sometimes in more words ("I also like that!" or >> something), but the effect was the same, so these became known as >> "me >> too" posts. > > Prodigy, definitely. I first began living on the computer cuz of that during > 1992. > > It was as bad as AOL is now. Then again, I was 8 then, so I was a bit of a > brat myself.:-) > > John > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 12:01:06 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 05:01:06 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] history In-Reply-To: <000001c3e2d2$175a28a0$d8c05018@va.shawcable.net> Message-ID: Very very bad things indeed. All were deported, many of them tortured and killed, the women raped, etc. This is covered in Wikipedia articles, or if not, should be. But what is your point? That because of these terrible things we should never forget, never forgive, and call Gdansk Danzig? Fred From: Zoltan Reply-To: English Wikipedia Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:30:28 -0800 To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org Cc: "Zoltan Karolyi." Subject: [WikiEN-l] history Hello Sir. What happens with the German population Gdansk afterwards in 1945 and Silesia ? Regards Zoltan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040125/08fe8623/attachment.htm From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 13:00:07 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 06:00:07 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Should the content of articles be subject to arbitration? In-Reply-To: <002601c3e340$51cff0a0$07b80243@stevehome> Message-ID: Whether we deal with article-based disputes is a close issue. While I see the need and advocate it, I recall great reluctance on the part of the mailing list to allow arbitration of article content. I'm also posting this to wikien-l for further comment by the mailing list. Fred > From: "Steve Dunlop" > Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 06:39:45 -0600 > To: > Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: Jurisdiction - keep it simple? > > Item [4]. I believe that it is important that we remain available for > article-based disputes. Some of these will not be able to be resolved > through mediation. Since "interpersonal" disputes at Wikipedia have their > roots in article disputes, I think the community would be best served to > have a means of resolving article disagreements where mediation has failed. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Sun Jan 25 13:02:25 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 06:02:25 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] FW: Decisions, Opinions, Precedents and Learning from Experience In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ---------- From: Fred Bauder Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 05:55:43 -0700 To: Steve Dunlop , Subject: Decisions, Opinions, Precedents and Learning from Experience I suggest that on any matter each arbitrator first state a conclusion such as accept or don't accept then a brief (or lengthy as it suits them) explanation of why. These votes and "opinions" should be available to all users. As to precedents, lets not consider ourselves bound by what we have done in the past but guided as it were by experience. In the case of matters we refuse to hear we can watch what happens when we do refuse to hear a matter. Likewise we can watch our difficulties and the consequences of acceptance and that experience can guide as a similar matters arise in the future. Fred > From: "Steve Dunlop" > Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 06:39:45 -0600 > To: > Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: Jurisdiction - keep it simple? > > I also think it is important that we, as policy, do not give a reason for > refusing to hear a dispute. To do so adds considerable work for us since we > would have to reach consensus on the reason and the wording for each case we > refuse. Such refusals may make precedents inadvertently so they would > require careful work to construct. From irastoll at hotmail.com Sun Jan 25 14:28:07 2004 From: irastoll at hotmail.com (Ira Stoll) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 08:28:07 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Should the content of articles be subject to arbitration? Message-ID: >Whether we deal with article-based disputes is a close issue. While I see >the need and advocate it, I recall great reluctance on the part of the >mailing list to allow arbitration of article content. I'm also posting this >to wikien-l for further comment by the mailing list. > >Fred I feel very strongly that article disputes be settled by arbitration, or some other time consuming process where the issue is well thought over and researched, rather than decided by poll. To be honest, I have a rather contentious issue that I would like to have arbitrated, assuming it is still a concern by the time the arbitrators are ready to start taking cases (and also assuming it is decided that they will handle article disputes :) JackLynch _________________________________________________________________ Find high-speed ?net deals ? comparison-shop your local providers here. https://broadband.msn.com From dpbsmith at world.std.com Sun Jan 25 14:38:45 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 09:38:45 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unobstrusive ways of citing authority In-Reply-To: <20040125004845.4DD051B0265@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040125004845.4DD051B0265@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <2E2167EC-4F44-11D8-864B-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unobtrusive Ways of Citing Authority > > There are several ways of adding citations that do not clutter up the > text. > > 1. A superscript which point to a footnote. > > 2. A hypertext link to the source like > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_wet] which will display [1]. > > 3. Using comments while editing that do not show up in the displayed > text: > > > > Or my personal favourite: > > [[Articlename#References|[1] nowiki>]] Which will hopefully become a feature before too long. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From rjaros at shaysnet.com Tue Jan 27 03:27:52 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 22:27:52 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Packed with clickable citations In-Reply-To: <4012C947.2090405@rufus.d2g.com> References: <20040124121503.F1A701B01C9@mail.wikipedia.org> <6F9CE192-4E82-11D8-9EEB-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> <4012C947.2090405@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: On Jan 24, 2004, at 2:36 PM, Delirium wrote: > Daniel P.B.Smith wrote: > >> I agree completely. Lack of citation and traceability is IMHO a big >> glaring >> deficiency in traditional encyclopedias, and it's one that should be >> remediable >> in a hypertext encyclopedia. (However, like so much about Wikipedia, >> there's no big barrier to "just doing it" and hoping that others will >> follow suit. Much as I'd like better Wiki-apparatus for the purpose). > > But this seems to assume that the citations will all be to websites, > which isn't likely to be the case--most respected, reliable > information is still not available online. So citations of that sort > will have to be to books or journal articles, which in many cases > won't be accessible through hypertext. Not necessarily. ISBN linking is a tremendous help here, and hopefully other methods, if there are any, will become features one day. Though I can't think of one right now. Peter --- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show From OLIVIABUTTON12 at hotmail.com Sun Jan 25 19:40:21 2004 From: OLIVIABUTTON12 at hotmail.com (Olivia) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:40:21 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] question about the atlantic ocean Message-ID: hi, i need help on my geography homework, i was wondering if you could help? ''what is the name of the ocean current in the atlantic to the west of the uk? and how does it affect our climate? thank-you! olivia p.s please email me back on: oliviabutton12 at hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040125/4942f26a/attachment.htm From pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tue Jan 27 08:30:03 2004 From: pfortuny at sdf-eu.org (Pedro Fortuny) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:30:03 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholic Encyclopedia In-Reply-To: <200401261541.08520.sascha@pantropy.net> References: <200401261541.08520.sascha@pantropy.net> Message-ID: <20040127083002.GA4442@SDF-EU.ORG> * Sascha Noyes [2004-01-26]: > ... What were we talking about > again? Oh yeah, Catholic Encyclopedia articles are a bad starting point for > "real" encyclopedia articles. ;-) > After reading all this thread (and agreeing more or less on its spirit), I have to say that all these "CE is pathetic" is the same as as saying "I found a bug in Apache and several security issues, instead of fixing it I simply shall tell other web managers not to use Apache as a starting point to serve web pages". Is it reasonable? How many non-dogmatic non-doctrinal articles are there in the CE which contain real facts? By the way, I have only read the CE twice -repeat twice- in my life, I am just trying to explain that your "concern" about its seriousness is quite quite unfair. Cheers, Pedro. -- Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org pfortuny at sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277 From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Tue Jan 27 09:40:34 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:40:34 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] question about the atlantic ocean Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A1@backupserv.queens.harley> Hi, Olivier I am happy to help you although a better place to ask the question is either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk on Wikipedia or http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Study_help_desk on Wikibooks. But just this once - The ocean current is called the North Atlantic Drift. It is a continuation of the Gulf stream which is a huge current of warm water that flows from the gulf of Mexico up to Europe. It warms the whole of Europe by several degrees, which is why here in the UK we have a temperate climate rather than an arctic one. (get hold of an atlas and follow the lines of latitude round, note which other countries are on the same latitude as us and check out their climate). The current sinks in several places north of Iceland because it is very salty (and therefore dense). It then returns back to Mexico in a deep water current called the North Atlantic deep water. The whole system forms a huge convection current, which pumps heat from the equator to northern Europe. There is evidence that in the past this system has shut down. There is some speculation that global warming melting the ice caps may dilute the saltyness of the current and so prevent it from sinking. If this happens there will be a massive cooling of the UK and the whole of Northern Europe. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Olivia [mailto:OLIVIABUTTON12 at hotmail.com] Sent: 25 January 2004 19:40 To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] question about the atlantic ocean hi, i need help on my geography homework, i was wondering if you could help? ? ''what is the name of the ocean current in the atlantic to the west of the uk? and how does it affect our climate? ? thank-you! ? olivia ? p.s please email me back on: oliviabutton12 at hotmail.com From jwales at bomis.com Tue Jan 27 10:37:45 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 02:37:45 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] website error Message-ID: <20040127103728.GE14225@joey.bomis.com> From: Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 18:56:22 -0800 To: Subject: website error >From this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1876 I clicked on the link for David Davis. I was sent to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Davis and it says that Davis was born in 1948. This is not the same David Davis who was involved with the 1876 Presidential election. Thank you, xxxx xxxxxxxxxx From jwales at bomis.com Tue Jan 27 11:08:42 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 03:08:42 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Selection of Arbitrators In-Reply-To: <4012FE43.2090504@rufus.d2g.com> References: <4012FE43.2090504@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <20040127110842.GJ14225@joey.bomis.com> Delirium wrote: > I'd prefer instead a simple vote of all members of the committee for > all cases. I very much hope there will not be a lot of cases, so I > don't see this as being a problem workload-wise. This is what I had envisioned as well. > If there are a lot of cases, then we need to figure out > how to rework the system so that there aren't--the vast majority of > issues should, in my opinion, be decided by consensus on talk pages or, > if necessary, through mediation. Yes, absolutely. Just as a side note -- I'm deliberately staying out of this discussion, so when I say "this is what I had envisioned as well" I'm just giving background information, not dictating to the committee as to how it should function. If no consensus by committee members develops soon enough as to what it will do, I can step in and say "O.k., let's have a vote of the committee on the options that have been proposed" and then we'll go with that. But hopefully a vote won't be necessary, if proposals are craft that try to take into account various points of view. I think that the simple approach is best right now. --Jimbo From fredbaud at ctelco.net Tue Jan 27 11:50:53 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 04:50:53 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Article Dispute is Effectively Settled In-Reply-To: <401588DD.10661.B6A139@localhost> Message-ID: Now that Jimbo has weighed in on the negative side of this matter it is senseless to continue the discussion even later. Rather than consider content we will need to consider the behavior of users as it relates to content. Fred > From: "Martin Harper" > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk > Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:38:37 -0000 > To: arbitration at nerstrand.net > Subject: Next on the agenda - "Rules" > > I think we can leave the "article dispute" issue raging and come back to it. > For > example, some people have expressed a fear that we will end up dictating parts > of > an article - if we reject that option during our discussion of "Solutions", > then they > may feel differently. So, boldly onwards. From fredbaud at ctelco.net Tue Jan 27 11:59:45 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 04:59:45 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Learning from Experience Rather than Being Bound by Precedent In-Reply-To: <401588DD.10661.B6A139@localhost> Message-ID: As disputes arise, and are decided, we, as participants, can learn the consequences. Likewise we can observe the consequences of Jimbo's decisons as well as what happens when various actions are taken by the community at large. We can consider those consequences and refine our response and make an appropriate response to the situation before us. It is not like a court making decisions which affect property rights or business investments where citizens need to have a reliable guide to action. If we try to follow precedent we will make bad decisions in order to avoid seting a precedent and then make bad decisions because we have to follow precedent. Fred > From: "Martin Harper" > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk > Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:38:37 -0000 > To: arbitration at nerstrand.net > Subject: Next on the agenda - "Rules" > > Next on the agenda is "Rules": what rules are we going to enforce - on what > basis > will people be found guilty. Some possibilities (brainstorming, really): > > * Precedent based on our own decisions > * Precedent based on Jimbo's decisions > * Precedent based on community group actions (VfD, et al) From fredbaud at ctelco.net Tue Jan 27 12:06:32 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:06:32 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Following Wikipedia Custom Message-ID: Very good idea because custom expresses in a concrete way the practical needs and desires of our users. Fred > From: "Martin Harper" > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk > Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:38:37 -0000 > To: arbitration at nerstrand.net > Subject: Next on the agenda - "Rules" > > Next on the agenda is "Rules": what rules are we going to enforce > - on what basis > will people be found guilty. Some possibilities (brainstorming, really): > * Common practice on Wikipedia From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 27 12:09:09 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:09:09 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Learning from Experience Rather than Being Bound byPrecedent References: Message-ID: <004601c3e4ce$5e752fc0$027c0450@Galasien> Fred Bauder wrote > If we try to follow precedent we will make bad decisions in order to avoid > setting a precedent and then make bad decisions because we have to follow > precedent. Good - makes me glad I added the final section to [[Precedent]]. Charles From fredbaud at ctelco.net Tue Jan 27 12:18:25 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:18:25 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rule of Law Message-ID: We need to especially follow our own "laws", Wikipedia terms of use, our own bylaw. Definitely copyright law which all members need to learn and respect for the welfare of the project. Since we are not copyright experts we need to make conservative interpretations. With respect to real world law in general, we need to use common sense. For example, in Colorado, it is slander to speak ill of the dead. Unconstitutional but on the books last I heard. Likewise we cannot so completely avoid covering the activities of Nazis and Communist mass murderers that we can satisfy France, Germany, or Red China. Fred > From: "Martin Harper" > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk > Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:38:37 -0000 > To: arbitration at nerstrand.net > Subject: Next on the agenda - "Rules" > > Next on the agenda is "Rules": what rules are we going to enforce - on what > basis > will people be found guilty. Some possibilities (brainstorming, really): > * The real world law > * The [[Wikipedia:terms of use]] > * The copyright license > * Wikimedia bylaws > > There are no doubt many more. There's also the option of going with a similar > approach to the way we handled Jurisdiction and starting off with a minimal > set that > we can interpret flexibly and nail down (if necessary) later. > > So, opinions? > > -Martin From fredbaud at ctelco.net Tue Jan 27 12:24:49 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:24:49 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Common Sense, Concensus and Ethics Message-ID: Common sense is always good as is paying attention to peoples expectations as they try to figure out (pretty complicated these days) what is expected by the the community. We should always consider how situations feel to our users and never simply mechanically apply rules. Fred > Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk > Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:38:37 -0000 > To: arbitration at nerstrand.net > Subject: Next on the agenda - "Rules" > > Next on the agenda is "Rules": what rules are we going to enforce - on what > basis > will people be found guilty. Some possibilities (brainstorming, really): > * Our common sense and judgement. > * Some or all of the [[Wikipedia:policies and guidelines]] > * The [[Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] > * Community consensus > * Jimbo's opinion > * Morality/ethics > * ... > > There are no doubt many more. There's also the option of going with a similar > approach to the way we handled Jurisdiction and starting off with a minimal > set that > we can interpret flexibly and nail down (if necessary) later. > > So, opinions? > > -Martin From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 27 14:52:33 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:52:33 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Minor changes by anonymous user Message-ID: Carl Witty proposes a feature enhancement: > On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 15:26, Elly Waterman wrote: > > Indeed, and in addition, I like to switch off the Minor Changes to > > watch only for the Bigger Changes, by regular users and ALL CHANGES by > > anonymous users, among which unluckily are some vandals. If vandals > > can in some way click this nonexisting box, they can do their hobby > > unnoticed, at least by me, and other sysops who work in this way. > > If people don't like removing the "minor edit" box for anonymous users, > how about this? > > 1) Put the "minor edit" box back > 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show all edits, hide minor > changes, hide minor changes from logged-in users > > This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) a fairly small cost in > software effort. > > (I actually like not having the "minor edit" box as an anonymous user; > it helps me remember to log in!) Let's hear some "me too" and/or "no way" posts on this one! Ed Poor Developer From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 27 15:03:56 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:03:56 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a minor change? Message-ID: There is no official definition of what a "minor change" is. My working definition is "anything that my fellow contributors would agree is minor". And the operative question is "Would they want to see this on Recent Changes (with 'hide minor changes' in effect?" I mark these as minor: * Nearly all my grammar and spelling fixes * Copy-edits that DO NOT CHANGE the meaning I usually don't mark these as minor: * Copy-edits that subtly correct a nuance of POV * Re-writes and re-phrasing which PROBABLY DON'T CHANGE the meaning, but which some other user might think is a sly attempt to inject my own POV (in a controversial article). Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Tue Jan 27 15:07:09 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:07:09 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a minor change? Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A3@backupserv.queens.harley> I've noticed a number of editors (especially newbies) mark small additions of content as minor. I've also seen people make two or three edits in a row as minor when, had they added all that info in one go they would probably not mark it minor. I agree with your definition of minor changes. I work on the principle of better to not mark it minor when it is than mark it minor when it isn't. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Poor, Edmund W [mailto:Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com] Sent: 27 January 2004 15:04 To: Wikimedia developers Cc: English Wikipedia Subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a minor change? There is no official definition of what a "minor change" is. My working definition is "anything that my fellow contributors would agree is minor". And the operative question is "Would they want to see this on Recent Changes (with 'hide minor changes' in effect?" I mark these as minor: * Nearly all my grammar and spelling fixes * Copy-edits that DO NOT CHANGE the meaning I usually don't mark these as minor: * Copy-edits that subtly correct a nuance of POV * Re-writes and re-phrasing which PROBABLY DON'T CHANGE the meaning, but which some other user might think is a sly attempt to inject my own POV (in a controversial article). Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Tue Jan 27 16:18:10 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:18:10 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a minor change? References: Message-ID: <007401c3e4f1$2888a180$027c0450@Galasien> Ed Poor wrote >And the operative question is "Would they want to see this on Recent Changes (with 'hide minor changes' in effect?" I have not edited many really contentious pages; but I'd have to say that this doesn't match my take on the issue. I don't assume that Recent Changes is the main way to see changes to pages in which I have a particular interest. I would myself use my watch list to monitor those. Minor edits do show up there, but there is the phenomenon, for anyone really wanting to pull a fast one, of minor edits masking earlier, larger changes. Anyway, it probably is good practice to make all changes to a page 'major', if there is substantial interest. Charles From sheldon.rampton at verizon.net Tue Jan 27 17:01:22 2004 From: sheldon.rampton at verizon.net (Sheldon Rampton) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:01:22 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learning from Experience In-Reply-To: <20040127115806.566DB1B02AB@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040127115806.566DB1B02AB@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Fred Bauder wrote: >As disputes arise, and are decided, we, as participants, can learn the >consequences. Likewise we can observe the consequences of Jimbo's decisons >as well as what happens when various actions are taken by the community at >large. We can consider those consequences and refine our response and make >an appropriate response to the situation before us. It is not like a court >making decisions which affect property rights or business investments where >citizens need to have a reliable guide to action. Perhaps it would be a good idea to try setting up a separate wiki specifically for the purpose of discussing and recording policy decisions, actions and precedents. We could call it a "Wikislature." --Sheldon Rampton From littledanehren at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 17:04:54 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:04:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 119 In-Reply-To: <20040127115806.1494C1B02A8@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040127170454.60749.qmail@web41808.mail.yahoo.com> > From: "Martin Harper" > > Subject: [WikiEN-l] "admin abuse" > Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 00:41:21 -0000 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > > If the name alone was the problem, we do have an > established > procedure for involuntary name changes: it's a > developer judgement > call based on community consensus. Anyone remember > Drolsi > Susej or TMC or SH? > > Naturally, the arbitration committee will be > usurping the power to > judge the appropriateness of Wikipedia usernames and > using it to > take over ze world! Or not. > > -Martin IIRC, those were all voluntary, albeit after a good deal of peer pressure. Daniel Ehrenberg __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From sannse at delphiforums.com Tue Jan 27 18:28:56 2004 From: sannse at delphiforums.com (sannse) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:28:56 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 119 References: <20040127170454.60749.qmail@web41808.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004301c3e503$6ee57560$5100a8c0@LisaCushway> Dan wrote > > If the name alone was the problem, we do have an > > established > > procedure for involuntary name changes: it's a > > developer judgement > > call based on community consensus. Anyone remember > > Drolsi > > Susej or TMC or SH? > > > > Naturally, the arbitration committee will be > > usurping the power to > > judge the appropriateness of Wikipedia usernames and > > using it to > > take over ze world! Or not. > > > > -Martin > > IIRC, those were all voluntary, albeit after a good > deal of peer pressure. > > Daniel Ehrenberg The change to TMC's name certainly wasn't voluntary. In fact as I understand it he left Wikipedia in consequence of the enforced name change. I don't remember whether Drolsi Susej was voluntary (although the change /to/ that name was) but I think SH was also decided by developer action (I didn't follow that one). Regards, sannse From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 18:31:27 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 19:31:27 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the mailing list... Message-ID: <4016AE7F.9070408@yahoo.com> We are on the 27th of january. The end of the month is in 4 days. Today, the mailing list received over 25 messages to clean up. Tonight, my mail box is full of virus and other crap. In 4 days, the list will be without anyone to let go through cute messages from students wondering "what the name of the ocean current in the atlantic to the west of the uk is". It is high time that someone steps in...:-) From elian at djini.de Tue Jan 27 18:58:27 2004 From: elian at djini.de (Elisabeth Bauer) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 19:58:27 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rule of Law In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4016B4D3.7000902@djini.de> Fred Bauder wrote: > With respect to real world law in general, we need to use common sense. For > example, in Colorado, it is slander to speak ill of the dead. > Unconstitutional but on the books last I heard. Likewise we cannot so > completely avoid covering the activities of Nazis and Communist mass > murderers that we can satisfy France, Germany, or Red China. German law doesn't forbid covering the activities of Nazis (on the contrary). The only thing which is forbidden is stating as a fact that the holocaust never happened and making Nazi propaganda. Two things which I hope Wikipedia will never do anyway. greetings, elian From littledanehren at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 19:07:41 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:07:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 120 In-Reply-To: <20040127182837.36C961B02C6@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040127190741.71105.qmail@web41807.mail.yahoo.com> > From: "Poor, Edmund W" > > On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 15:26, Elly Waterman wrote: > > > Indeed, and in addition, I like to switch off > the Minor Changes to > > > watch only for the Bigger Changes, by regular > users and ALL CHANGES > by > > > anonymous users, among which unluckily are some > vandals. If vandals > > > can in some way click this nonexisting box, they > can do their hobby > > > unnoticed, at least by me, and other sysops who > work in this way. > > > > If people don't like removing the "minor edit" box > for anonymous > users, > > how about this? > > > > 1) Put the "minor edit" box back > > 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show all > edits, hide minor > > changes, hide minor changes from logged-in > users > > > > This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) a > fairly small cost in > > software effort. > > > > (I actually like not having the "minor edit" box > as an anonymous user; > > > it helps me remember to log in!) I just use a different skin > > Let's hear some "me too" and/or "no way" posts on > this one! > > Ed Poor > Developer Me too LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 27 18:48:02 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:48:02 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rule of Law References: Message-ID: <4016B262.6050608@telus.net> Fred Bauder wrote: >We need to especially follow our own "laws", Wikipedia terms of use, our own >bylaw. Definitely copyright law which all members need to learn and respect >for the welfare of the project. Since we are not copyright experts we need >to make conservative interpretations. > >With respect to real world law in general, we need to use common sense. For >example, in Colorado, it is slander to speak ill of the dead. >Unconstitutional but on the books last I heard. > The common sense approach should apply in all cases. Following a law just because it is on the books is silly, as the Colorado example plainly shows. The spirit of the laws is far more important than the letter of the law. Respect for copyright law does not mean taking it to the point of putting ourselves at extreme disadvantage. If in a given situation two interpretations are reasonably available there is nothing wrong with opting for the more favorable one. An ISP does have the duty to remove clear copyright violations when he finds them without being notified. If there are reasonable doubts about the violation it should stay until there is a direct complaint by an authorized person; at that point there will be plenty of time for review. I also follow the principle that there is no copyright unless someone exists to own it. Ec From littledanehren at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 20:11:11 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:11:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholic Encyclopedia In-Reply-To: <20040127115806.1494C1B02A8@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040127201111.7195.qmail@web41808.mail.yahoo.com> > Uh, if this is the same CE that can be found online, > it may be helpful to note that that edition is from > 1911. > > Why use something from 1911? > > John The 1911 Britannica is used extensively throughout Wikipedia. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Tue Jan 27 18:47:18 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 13:47:18 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] the mailing list... Message-ID: I cleaned up the rest of the Pending Admin Requests, Anthere, and if no one else volunteers for next month I'll keep doing it. Ed Poor Unsung Hero of Administration P.S. The pity party will be held in the Hall Closet, accompanied by the World's Smallest Violin ;-) From anthere8 at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 20:46:50 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:46:50 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the mailing list... References: Message-ID: <4016CE3A.1010107@yahoo.com> Mes remerciements les plus sinc?res Ed. I think there should be a system, recognising a minimum of this spam, and rejecting it automatically (with receipt in case the mail was a honest one). I do not think it is fair to ask anyone to put on with (yeah, I got more today finally) 30 or so shitty mails per day, with unfortunately, from time to time, a relevant one hidden in the middle. My deep honest thoughts : we are not machines, and we should not do machine work if a machine can do it. Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > I cleaned up the rest of the Pending Admin Requests, Anthere, and if no > one else volunteers for next month I'll > keep doing it. > > Ed Poor > Unsung Hero of Administration > > P.S. The pity party will be held in the Hall Closet, > accompanied by the World's Smallest Violin ;-) From dd at dandrake.com Tue Jan 27 21:18:15 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:18:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Minor changes by anonymous user References: Message-ID: All right: Me too. (AND there's too much quoted text in this posting. But at least it's clear what I'm agreeing with.) It's one more little set of compilcations and bells and whistles and config options, but I vote to overlook that. On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:52:33 UTC, "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > Carl Witty proposes a feature enhancement: >... > > > > If people don't like removing the "minor edit" box for anonymous > users, > > how about this? > > > > 1) Put the "minor edit" box back > > 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show all edits, hide minor > > changes, hide minor changes from logged-in users > > > > This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) a fairly small cost in > > software effort. > > > > (I actually like not having the "minor edit" box as an anonymous user; > > > it helps me remember to log in!) > > Let's hear some "me too" and/or "no way" posts on this one! > > Ed Poor > Developer From dd at dandrake.com Tue Jan 27 21:26:12 2004 From: dd at dandrake.com (Dan Drake) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:26:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Unobtrusive Ways of Citing Authority References: <8BEB043C-5078-11D8-B35E-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 03:26:08 UTC, Peter Jaros wrote: >... > > > > Or my personal favourite: > > > > [[Articlename#References|[1] > nowiki>]] > > Which will hopefully become a feature before too long. > It looks nice, but how is it really going to work? Does it really just take you to the References section? I often want to cite a specific work for a specific piece of text I've written, and I don't see how this does it. In fact, one may want to cite a work twice, with different page numbers each time, and I don't see how that will work. I think this discussion will require a lot of worked-out examples before it's done. From rich_holton at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 21:47:29 2004 From: rich_holton at yahoo.com (Rich Holton) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 13:47:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Minor changes by anonymous user In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040127214729.32203.qmail@web60310.mail.yahoo.com> Frankly, I can't see the point of having a minor changes setting. Far too often significant changes are listed as minor, and minor changes as significant. Often this occurs by accident. Other times, it's someone hiding their actions. There also seems to be no universal agreement on what kind of change is "minor". So, I ignore the "minor change" indication on recent changes and elsewhere (though I do try to mark my edits appropriately). The feature could disappear entirely, and I'd only be pleased. Rich Holton (a.k.a. Anthropos) --- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote: > Carl Witty proposes a feature enhancement: > > > On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 15:26, Elly Waterman wrote: > > > Indeed, and in addition, I like to switch off > the Minor Changes to > > > watch only for the Bigger Changes, by regular > users and ALL CHANGES > by > > > anonymous users, among which unluckily are some > vandals. If vandals > > > can in some way click this nonexisting box, they > can do their hobby > > > unnoticed, at least by me, and other sysops who > work in this way. > > > > If people don't like removing the "minor edit" box > for anonymous > users, > > how about this? > > > > 1) Put the "minor edit" box back > > 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show all > edits, hide minor > > changes, hide minor changes from logged-in > users > > > > This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) a > fairly small cost in > > software effort. > > > > (I actually like not having the "minor edit" box > as an anonymous user; > > > it helps me remember to log in!) > > Let's hear some "me too" and/or "no way" posts on > this one! > > Ed Poor > Developer > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From nrussell at acsu.buffalo.edu Tue Jan 27 21:48:27 2004 From: nrussell at acsu.buffalo.edu (Nathan Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:48:27 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mariusz Message-ID: <996173218.1075222107@PSCpn1N-12.pubsites.buffalo.edu> This user is turning into a royal pain, and multiple sysops have been watching recent changes and blocking his IPs almost continiously for about twenty minutes. I'd like to request that, if things don't let up, a "PHP ban" be imposed on 80.54.196/18 for at least a day or two. Thanks, Pakaran From martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk Tue Jan 27 23:38:09 2004 From: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk (Martin Harper) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:38:09 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Selection of Arbitrators Message-ID: <4016F661.6039.12818A2@localhost> Jimbo wrote: > If no consensus by committee members develops soon enough as > to what it will do, I can step in and say "O.k., let's have a vote of > the committee on the options that have been proposed" and then > we'll go with that. If, as chair, I judge that we are unable to reach a consensus on one or more issues, then I will take appropriate action, which will probably entail us requesting that Jimbo step in. However, I would view an *uninvited* intervention by Jimbo as unwelcome interference, and I do not believe it would prove productive. I have no idea what "soon enough" might mean. We will be ready when we are ready. We have eight agenda items to get through, and as we work through you'll all be able to see how fast we are progressing, and can form your own estimates as to when we'll be finished. By the way, we're all human. A little support and encouragement from time to time goes a long way. -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper From rjaros at shaysnet.com Wed Jan 28 01:54:38 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:54:38 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a minor change? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Jan 27, 2004, at 10:03 AM, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > I mark these as minor: > * Nearly all my grammar and spelling fixes > * Copy-edits that DO NOT CHANGE the meaning > > I usually don't mark these as minor: > * Copy-edits that subtly correct a nuance of POV > * Re-writes and re-phrasing which PROBABLY DON'T CHANGE the > meaning, but which some other user might think is a sly attempt > to inject my own POV (in a controversial article). I tend to make a distinction between substantive (major) and non-substantive (minor) edits. Anything that changes the meaning in *any way*, anything that someone could disagree with after but not before, is major, anything else is minor. That way no one is surprised by my changes, and watchers can safely ignore anything marked minor by me. But since that's just *my* rule, and no one's keeping track of what who considers minor, it's only so useful... Peter -- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- -- From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 28 05:19:30 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 06:19:30 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selection of Arbitrators References: <4016F661.6039.12818A2@localhost> Message-ID: <40174662.80009@yahoo.com> Martin Harper a ?crit: > Jimbo wrote: > By the way, we're all human. A little support and > encouragement from time to time goes a long way. > > -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper The loneliness of those having to make decisions or make things move ...yeah. Well, imho, take your time, hasty decisions are rarely good, and I am sure there are enough good people in your group to avoid that trap. :-) From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Jan 28 05:46:40 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:46:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] news In-Reply-To: <20040127103728.GE14225@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: <20040128054640.97246.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> NAVY removes submarine commander Norwich Bulletin ... According to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, the Jimmy Carter is 100 feet longer than its sister ships and has been modified for "highly classified missions ... from http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/stories/20040127/localnews/298767.html found from Google News Alerts. I receive some news stories from time to time which talk about wikipedia or use wikipedia as a reliable source. It seems that our work is good and what we do is useful to humanity! --Optim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Jan 28 05:59:32 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:59:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Minor changes by anonymous user In-Reply-To: <20040127214729.32203.qmail@web60310.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040128055932.70158.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> As Anthropos said, I would also have no problem to disable this feature (minor changes) completely. I also never pay attention to that thing. But, To some users the minor changes seem useful. I would say to keep this feature and improve it. So, I agree with Carl Witty. For the future, we can also do this: A lot of checkboxes (NOT option boxes) under the edit summary textbox which will include: X Spelling/Grammar Fix X Copyedit, same meaning X New content X Factual correction X NPOV editing X Removal of unnecessary info X Link correction X Addition of new wikilinks or external links X Major rewrite how do you think? Of course this requires more development effort. So that's why I said "for the future". --Optim --- Rich Holton wrote: > Frankly, I can't see the point of having a > minor > changes setting. Far too often significant > changes are > listed as minor, and minor changes as > significant. > Often this occurs by accident. Other times, > it's > someone hiding their actions. There also seems > to be > no universal agreement on what kind of change > is > "minor". > > So, I ignore the "minor change" indication on > recent > changes and elsewhere (though I do try to mark > my > edits appropriately). The feature could > disappear > entirely, and I'd only be pleased. > > Rich Holton (a.k.a. Anthropos) > > --- "Poor, Edmund W" > wrote: > > Carl Witty proposes a feature enhancement: > > > > > On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 15:26, Elly Waterman > wrote: > > > > Indeed, and in addition, I like to switch > off > > the Minor Changes to > > > > watch only for the Bigger Changes, by > regular > > users and ALL CHANGES > > by > > > > anonymous users, among which unluckily > are some > > vandals. If vandals > > > > can in some way click this nonexisting > box, they > > can do their hobby > > > > unnoticed, at least by me, and other > sysops who > > work in this way. > > > > > > If people don't like removing the "minor > edit" box > > for anonymous > > users, > > > how about this? > > > > > > 1) Put the "minor edit" box back > > > 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show > all > > edits, hide minor > > > changes, hide minor changes from > logged-in > > users > > > > > > This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) > a > > fairly small cost in > > > software effort. > > > > > > (I actually like not having the "minor > edit" box > > as an anonymous user; > > > > > it helps me remember to log in!) > > > > Let's hear some "me too" and/or "no way" > posts on > > this one! > > > > Ed Poor > > Developer > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building > tool. Try it! > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com Wed Jan 28 11:38:26 2004 From: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com (Bjorn Lindqvist) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:38:26 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "admin abuse" In-Reply-To: <20040127115806.6C5981B02A1@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040127115806.6C5981B02A1@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040128113826.GA1115@localhost> I looked at UB1's user contributions and I couldn't find anything damaging that that user had done. Except for contributing to an edit war over whether there should be six stars on hir user page or not and blanking hir talk page. I don't understand why "UnbannableOne" is an unaccepted username, it's not like hir called itself "Administrator", "Root" or "JimmyWales" - any name that would actually make you THINK the user was unbannable! I also think the ability to ban logged in users should be removed. It is way to powerful and all uses of that ability so far, has resulted in controversies. BL From vr at redbird.org Wed Jan 28 13:39:50 2004 From: vr at redbird.org (Vicki Rosenzweig) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:39:50 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Minor changes by anonymous user In-Reply-To: <20040128055932.70158.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040127214729.32203.qmail@web60310.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20040128083723.00ab6130@smtp.panix.com> At 09:59 PM 1/27/04 -0800, Optim wrote: >As Anthropos said, I would also have no problem >to disable this feature (minor changes) >completely. I also never pay attention to that >thing. > >But, To some users the minor changes seem useful. >I would say to keep this feature and improve it. > >So, I agree with Carl Witty. > >For the future, we can also do this: >A lot of checkboxes (NOT option boxes) under the >edit summary textbox which will include: >X Spelling/Grammar Fix >X Copyedit, same meaning Copyediting is more than spelling/grammar fixing. It generally means editing for clarity, and for correct choice of words, not just for whether those words are spelled correctly. If we're going to have a checkbox for that, let's not label it incorrectly. >X New content >X Factual correction >X NPOV editing >X Removal of unnecessary info >X Link correction >X Addition of new wikilinks or external links >X Major rewrite > >how do you think? I suspect that the sum of this is overly complicated, however, and that people won't use them consistently, and most people won't use them at all. I'd rather just keep typing "Copyed" or "attempting to NPOV" when those are appropriate to what I've done. From saintonge at telus.net Tue Jan 27 18:48:02 2004 From: saintonge at telus.net (Ray Saintonge) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:48:02 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rule of Law References: Message-ID: <4016B262.6050608@telus.net> Fred Bauder wrote: >We need to especially follow our own "laws", Wikipedia terms of use, our own >bylaw. Definitely copyright law which all members need to learn and respect >for the welfare of the project. Since we are not copyright experts we need >to make conservative interpretations. > >With respect to real world law in general, we need to use common sense. For >example, in Colorado, it is slander to speak ill of the dead. >Unconstitutional but on the books last I heard. > The common sense approach should apply in all cases. Following a law just because it is on the books is silly, as the Colorado example plainly shows. The spirit of the laws is far more important than the letter of the law. Respect for copyright law does not mean taking it to the point of putting ourselves at extreme disadvantage. If in a given situation two interpretations are reasonably available there is nothing wrong with opting for the more favorable one. An ISP does have the duty to remove clear copyright violations when he finds them without being notified. If there are reasonable doubts about the violation it should stay until there is a direct complaint by an authorized person; at that point there will be plenty of time for review. I also follow the principle that there is no copyright unless someone exists to own it. Ec From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Wed Jan 28 18:27:04 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 10:27:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Minor changes by anonymous user In-Reply-To: <20040128055932.70158.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Optim wrote: > As Anthropos said, I would also have no problem > to disable this feature (minor changes) > completely. I also never pay attention to that > thing. > > But, To some users the minor changes seem useful. > I would say to keep this feature and improve it. Due to abuse of this feature in the past by other contributors, I tend to use this feature only when I could justify the change as a minor change (e.g., typos, spelling). Even a format change might be considered by some as a significant change. > > So, I agree with Carl Witty. > > For the future, we can also do this: > A lot of checkboxes (NOT option boxes) under the > edit summary textbox which will include: > X Spelling/Grammar Fix > X Copyedit, same meaning > X New content > X Factual correction > X NPOV editing > X Removal of unnecessary info > X Link correction > X Addition of new wikilinks or external links > X Major rewrite > > how do you think? > > Of course this requires more development effort. > So that's why I said "for the future". > About the only options you omitted from your list (exmpting specific reasons for an edit, such as the humorous example, "Genghis Khan never conquered St. Louis") that I've used were "typo", "fixing my mistake", & "formatting". I've seen a number of variations on "disambiguating link" from other contributors, some abbreviated to the point I didn't know what they were talking about. Geoff From cwitty at newtonlabs.com Wed Jan 28 20:41:13 2004 From: cwitty at newtonlabs.com (Carl Witty) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 20:41:13 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Minor changes by anonymous user In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.1.20040128083723.00ab6130@smtp.panix.com> References: <20040127214729.32203.qmail@web60310.mail.yahoo.com> <5.2.0.9.1.20040128083723.00ab6130@smtp.panix.com> Message-ID: <1075319746.22564.30.camel@flare> On Wed, 2004-01-28 at 05:39, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: > At 09:59 PM 1/27/04 -0800, Optim wrote: > >As Anthropos said, I would also have no problem > >to disable this feature (minor changes) > >completely. I also never pay attention to that > >thing. > > > >But, To some users the minor changes seem useful. > >I would say to keep this feature and improve it. > > > >So, I agree with Carl Witty. > > > >For the future, we can also do this: > >A lot of checkboxes (NOT option boxes) under the > >edit summary textbox which will include: > >X Spelling/Grammar Fix > >X Copyedit, same meaning > > Copyediting is more than spelling/grammar fixing. It generally > means editing for clarity, and for correct choice of words, not > just for whether those words are spelled correctly. If we're going > to have a checkbox for that, let's not label it incorrectly. I interpreted "Copyedit, same meaning" as "I reworded the article without changing the meaning" (agreeing with your description of copyediting). Carl Witty From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 28 21:25:33 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:25:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Using religious encyclopedias. In-Reply-To: <20040126200916.AE8181B0290@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040128212533.79041.qmail@web20310.mail.yahoo.com> Sascha brought up the fact that we can't always rely on the Catholic Encyclopedia as an unbiased, or even semi-biased source. It has an uncritical view of supernatural beliefs. Good point. The same, of course, would be true of information from any religious encyclopedia, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatnot. Yet Ed Poor cautions us that "Both Catholics and Unificationists believe in the devil and other evil spirits as Real Beings...Of course, this is in the context of a whole bunch of other non-atheistic beliefs; it's not as nutty as it sounds." This too is a good point. I think we can use such encyclopedias; they contain large amounts of objective historical statements. They also contain religious claims which represent a point of view; we just need to make sure that we distinguish between objective and verifiable facts ("Saint Robert was a German man canonized by the Austrian Church in 2003, under Pope John Paul Ringo George") and religious claims, which by their nature are unverifiable ("Saint Robert was known to have healed several blind men through divine miracles; by praying to Cthulhu their sight was miraculously restored. Praise Shub-Niggurath and her thousand dark young.") We can use both kinds of facts. The first we can simply state as factual; but the second we have to carefully preface as a belief. (e.g. "According to Cthuhulian Catholics, Saint Robert is believed to have healed several blind men..."). Also, it usually is a good idea to leave out all honorific phrases (e.g. Praise be unto Muhammed; Baruch Hashem (Praise God); Praise Shub-Niggurath and her thousand dark young, etc.) Some religious encyclopedias are more skeptical and NPOV than others; the "Jewish Encyclopedia" (1906, public domain) has some traditionally religious points of view, yet has some other articles that are skeptical and written in a style that today weight call NPOV (those articles, of course, are out of date in regards to modern scholarship.) The same is true of its successor, the 1970 (and more recent updates) "Encycloepdia Judaica", which is written by a number of authors, many of whom do not uncritically present all traditional beliefs as historical facts. I imagine that their are similar semi-critical/NPOV or totally critical NPOV Christian and Muslim religious encyclopedias out there as well. (I use the word "critical" in the technical sense; as a form of analysis, not as a synonym for disagreement.) Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From viajero at quilombo.nl Wed Jan 28 21:25:10 2004 From: viajero at quilombo.nl (Viajero) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:25:10 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Martin Harper is again censoring Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <20040125150532.78759.qmail@web20313.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 01/25/04 at 07:05 AM, Robert said: > Martin Harper (MyRedDice) is again censoring the article, > "Palestinian views of the peace process". Instead of > deleting the entire article, Martin Harper has deleted most of the > (verfied) facts and quotes, leaving a skeleton article with vietually no > content! Robert is once again trying to shift the parameters of debate from the validity and representation of Palestinian viewpoints within the discourse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to that of "censorship", which is, plainly and simply, a canard. > This specific problem was already discussed in detail a few weeks ago. > It was decided that [...] Nothing was "decided" a few weeks ago. Jimbo expressed his opinion on the subject, as is his right. Given his position within this community, his point of view naturally carries substantial weight but by no means represents a definitive and binding judgement. > One may not delete verified historical > facts and quotes simply because it makes them > uncomfortable. You cannot push your political agenda by > deletin facts that are inconvenient. The issue is not whether these quotes are verifable or not but simply the fact -- as I have pointed out here before -- that taken out of context -- as they were here -- they are misleading. Given Israel's overwhelming military and economic power, such nationalistic saber-rattling on the part of Arafat and others can only be considered pathetic bluster, and most charitably can be seen as a shameless effort to distract his Palestinian listeners from the fact that he sold out their future for short-term personal gain. Since you don't seem to be interested in adding the missing context to this article (no surprise there), Martin is entirely correct and should be applauded for removing this material which otherwise serves as nothing more than crass anti-Palestine propaganda and is a blemish on the image of neutrality we trying to achieve in this project. V. From rkscience100 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 28 21:41:13 2004 From: rkscience100 at yahoo.com (Robert) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:41:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <20040127115806.6C5981B02A1@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040128214113.45771.qmail@web20303.mail.yahoo.com> Someone writes: > hi, i need help on my geography homework, i was > wondering if you could help? > ''what is the name of the ocean current in the atlantic > to the west of the uk? and how does it affect our climate? We all want to be nice and helpful when someone asks us a question; it is only natural. But there is a great danger to directly answering questions like these: In a short amount of time Wikipedia might become known as a place where people can mail in requests for info, and then we will be flooded with thousands of requests each month for help on homework and research. We'd get questions from people in junior high, high school, and college. I think if we get such requests, we should tell them to read the relevant articles on Wikipedia (as well as suggest to them that they need to use multiple sources). The only times we need to answer such questions is when the questions reveal a gap in Wikipedia articles. (i.e. if someone asks a good question that interests us, and Wikipedia has nothing on that topic, then maybe its a good idea to begin doing a little work on that topic.) I don't like saying "No" to specific requests for information, but if the OED and the Encyclopedia Brittanica usually answered such requests, then they might never have completed the first edition of their works. Your mileage may vary, Robert (RK) ===== "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous". The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From anthere8 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 28 22:07:52 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:07:52 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requests References: <20040127115806.6C5981B02A1@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040128214113.45771.qmail@web20303.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <401832B8.8020105@yahoo.com> Robert a ?crit: > Someone writes: > >>hi, i need help on my geography homework, i was >>wondering if you could help? >>''what is the name of the ocean current in the atlantic >>to the west of the uk? and how does it affect our > > climate? > > > We all want to be nice and helpful when someone asks us a > question; it is only natural. But there is a great danger > to directly answering questions like these: In a short > amount of time Wikipedia might become known as a place > where people can mail in requests for info, and then we > will be flooded with thousands of requests each month for > help on homework and research. We'd get questions from > people in junior high, high school, and college. > > I think if we get such requests, we should tell them to > read the relevant articles on Wikipedia (as well as suggest > to them that they need to use multiple sources). The only > times we need to answer such questions is when the > questions reveal a gap in Wikipedia articles. (i.e. if > someone asks a good question that interests us, and > Wikipedia has nothing on that topic, then maybe its a good > idea to begin doing a little work on that topic.) me too errr...sorry, I agree it would be nice as well, that people do not reach so easily the mailing lists, so they could ask information on wikipedia itself. Perhaps the way is not clear enough ? From rjaros at shaysnet.com Wed Jan 28 22:59:46 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:59:46 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] news In-Reply-To: <20040128054640.97246.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20040128054640.97246.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Jan 28, 2004, at 12:46 AM, Optim wrote: > NAVY removes submarine commander > Norwich Bulletin > ... According to Wikipedia, an online > encyclopedia, the Jimmy Carter is > 100 feet longer than its sister ships and has > been modified for "highly > classified missions ... > > from > http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/stories/20040127/localnews/ > 298767.html > > found from Google News Alerts. > > I receive some news stories from time to time > which talk about wikipedia or use wikipedia as a > reliable source. It seems that our work is good > and what we do is useful to humanity! I was just about to post that myself! I guess I'm *not* the only one using Google News Alerts... :) Peter -- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- -- From rjaros at shaysnet.com Wed Jan 28 23:49:26 2004 From: rjaros at shaysnet.com (Peter Jaros) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:49:26 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <401832B8.8020105@yahoo.com> References: <20040127115806.6C5981B02A1@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040128214113.45771.qmail@web20303.mail.yahoo.com> <401832B8.8020105@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9B698888-51EC-11D8-B35E-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> On Jan 28, 2004, at 5:07 PM, Anthere wrote: > it would be nice as well, that people do not reach so easily the > mailing lists, so they could ask information on wikipedia itself. > Perhaps the way is not clear enough ? That's what I've never understood. One would think it would be easier to click "Edit this page" on a talk page, type in a question, and wait for a response, than to track down this mailing list, subscribe, confirm, write an email, and scan the entire list's traffic for replies. But maybe that's just me. Peter -- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- -- From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 29 05:03:27 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 06:03:27 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requests References: <20040127115806.6C5981B02A1@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040128214113.45771.qmail@web20303.mail.yahoo.com> <401832B8.8020105@yahoo.com> <9B698888-51EC-11D8-B35E-000A27B3913C@shaysnet.com> Message-ID: <4018941F.9000801@yahoo.com> Ed ! Come around here ! I think we found the mailing list next administrator !! ;-) Peter Jaros a ?crit: > On Jan 28, 2004, at 5:07 PM, Anthere wrote: > >> it would be nice as well, that people do not reach so easily the >> mailing lists, so they could ask information on wikipedia itself. >> Perhaps the way is not clear enough ? > > > That's what I've never understood. One would think it would be easier > to click "Edit this page" on a talk page, type in a question, and wait > for a response, than to track down this mailing list, subscribe, > confirm, write an email, and scan the entire list's traffic for > replies. But maybe that's just me. > > Peter > > -- ---<>--- -- > A house without walls cannot fall. > Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org > -- ---<>--- -- From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 29 07:33:05 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:33:05 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation committee Message-ID: <4018B731.3070106@yahoo.com> Let's give it another try The mediation committee has decided to have a chair. (The proper terminology should be a chairperson, not a chairman please :-)). here is the outcome of our considerations : Mediators are independant in their choice of which case to mediate, and how to mediate. We want to keep among ourselves, a collegial type atmosphere, not a hierarchical group with a leader who has veto power. As a consequence, the role of the chair will be one of coordination and facilitation, not of supervision. There shall be no hierarchy or specific superauthority in the group. We wish that all mediators participate to the best of their ability and desire, to any task necessary within the committee.
However, we also consider the commitee might benefit both of an organiser and of a minimum of formality, in particular as regards decisions or recommendations given by the committee itself. For example : * The chair should help to make sure that the mediators are trained and standards upheld * The chair could help to check each request for mediation is being answered * The chair should help to check everyone has been consulted for a decision within the community * The chair could report for the group, when the group wants to speak with one voice, for official announcements (for example, to announce the failure of a major mediation and the transfer of the case to arbitration) Jimbo' s opinion of a chair role My thinking is that 'hierarchy' isn't what's important, but rather a sufficient degree of formality so that we have a way of saying "Here's the outcome of the mediation" or "Here's where we officially say that mediation hasn't worked, and that the arbitration committee should look at it now." The process needs to be knowable and comprehensible to everyone, so that it's transparent and positive. --Jimbo Any of the mediation member may ask to be the chair, and will have to be approved by the other members. Appointement to the chair position will be rotating every couple of months. The current Chairperson is Tuf Kat. ------ well, at least, I hope that this is a correct perception of our agreement :-)))) From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Thu Jan 29 08:44:27 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:44:27 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A4@backupserv.queens.harley> As the Guilty party who answered the question. I have to say that I checked out the wikipedia article on the Gulf stream and found it to be rather lacking. There were no details such as flow rate, average temp, etc. No false colour maps. No history of who discovered it etc. As a result of answering the child's HW question I've added gulf stream and all the other ocean currents to my to do list and will be improving them shortly. The thing is, has the question not been asked I probably would never have looked at the page. SO although I agree that there is a danger of setting a precedent and I do see your point I have to disagree that allowing HW questions on this list is necessarily a bad thing. Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Robert [mailto:rkscience100 at yahoo.com] Sent: 28 January 2004 21:41 To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests >But there is a great danger to directly answering questions like these: In a short amount of time Wikipedia might become known as a place where people can mail in requests for info, and then we will be flooded with thousands of requests each month for help on homework and research. We'd get questions from people in junior high, high school, and college. From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Thu Jan 29 09:14:21 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 01:14:21 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A4@backupserv.queens.harley> References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A4@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: <4018CEED.20304@rufus.d2g.com> KNOTT, T wrote: >As the Guilty party who answered the question. I have to say that I checked out the wikipedia article on the Gulf stream and found it to be rather lacking. There were no details such as flow rate, average temp, etc. No false colour maps. No history of who discovered it etc. > >As a result of answering the child's HW question I've added gulf stream and all the other ocean currents to my to do list and will be improving them shortly. The thing is, has the question not been asked I probably would never have looked at the page. SO although I agree that there is a danger of setting a precedent and I do see your point I have to disagree that allowing HW questions on this list is necessarily a bad thing. > > Perhaps we ought to have some sort of a requests list we could specifically direct these requests to? That'd probably encourage many more such requests, but they'd be unobtrusive, in a place where we could go to find out what sorts of things people are looking for and not finding. -Mark From jnelson at soncom.com Thu Jan 29 12:10:49 2004 From: jnelson at soncom.com (Jake Nelson) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 06:10:49 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] news References: <20040128054640.97246.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00ac01c3e660$f2fe5930$0100a8c0@Darkblade> Peter wrote: > On Jan 28, 2004, at 12:46 AM, Optim wrote: > > > NAVY removes submarine commander > > Norwich Bulletin > > ... According to Wikipedia, an online > > encyclopedia, the Jimmy Carter is > > 100 feet longer than its sister ships and has > > been modified for "highly > > classified missions ... > > > > from > > http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/stories/20040127/localnews/ > > 298767.html > > > > found from Google News Alerts. > > > > I receive some news stories from time to time > > which talk about wikipedia or use wikipedia as a > > reliable source. It seems that our work is good > > and what we do is useful to humanity! > > I was just about to post that myself! I guess I'm *not* the only one > using Google News Alerts... :) Nope, I've had the same one set for a month or two. It's great to see the use we get... the last, I find especially amusing, remembering some people's complaints about ship and sub articles. -- Jake From jnelson at soncom.com Thu Jan 29 12:20:34 2004 From: jnelson at soncom.com (Jake Nelson) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 06:20:34 -0600 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A4@backupserv.queens.harley> <4018CEED.20304@rufus.d2g.com> Message-ID: <012401c3e662$5e1b5960$0100a8c0@Darkblade> Delirium wrote: > Perhaps we ought to have some sort of a requests list we could > specifically direct these requests to? That'd probably encourage many > more such requests, but they'd be unobtrusive, in a place where we could > go to find out what sorts of things people are looking for and not finding. This sounds like a good plan to me. I've never been the sort of person to turn away someone with a straightforward question, and I'd like somewhere we can answer them off the normal list. Plus, it'd be easier to find archived responses to questions if they're not mixed in with the general list archive. -- Jake From fredbaud at ctelco.net Thu Jan 29 12:28:21 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 05:28:21 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <012401c3e662$5e1b5960$0100a8c0@Darkblade> Message-ID: How about a link on the Main Page: Ask Wikipedia Fred > From: "Jake Nelson" > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 06:20:34 -0600 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests > > Delirium wrote: >> Perhaps we ought to have some sort of a requests list we could >> specifically direct these requests to? That'd probably encourage many >> more such requests, but they'd be unobtrusive, in a place where we could >> go to find out what sorts of things people are looking for and not > finding. > > This sounds like a good plan to me. I've never been the sort of person to > turn away someone with a straightforward question, and I'd like somewhere we > can answer them off the normal list. Plus, it'd be easier to find archived > responses to questions if they're not mixed in with the general list > archive. > > -- Jake > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From daniwo59 at aol.com Thu Jan 29 12:27:52 2004 From: daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 07:27:52 EST Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests Message-ID: <108.2b3b105b.2d4a5648@aol.com> Wikipedia is becoming a resource. What more can we ask for? I also answered, like this: "Here's a hint for your homework: Look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream" It hardly delayed the expansion of Wikipedia. On the other hand, I do think a place or list for people to ask questions of this kind is a good idea. In fact, it would be helpful to us in finding out where we should focus some of our energies to fill in incomplete articles. We could link to it from the Main Page. Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040129/7eb452c1/attachment.htm From anthere8 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 29 13:01:34 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:01:34 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requests References: <108.2b3b105b.2d4a5648@aol.com> Message-ID: <4019042E.1090904@yahoo.com> daniwo59 at aol.com a ?crit: > Wikipedia is becoming a resource. What more can we ask for? I also > answered, like this: > > "Here's a hint for your homework: > Look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream" > > It hardly delayed the expansion of Wikipedia. On the other hand, I do > think a place or list for people to ask questions of this kind is a good > idea. In fact, it would be helpful to us in finding out where we should > focus some of our energies to fill in incomplete articles. We could link > to it from the Main Page. True, but if you set such a list, it has to be open (not member restricted)...and then, I really suggest that we set an anti-spam list. Seriously, during my 2 weeks taking care of the english list, member restricted, I had up to 30 mails per day to check. with several ones per days infested by virus or worms. We just can't have an open list any more, if a solution to found for 1) limit spam 2) improve security for the recipiendaries From billy.mills at thomson.com Thu Jan 29 13:04:25 2004 From: billy.mills at thomson.com (Mills, Billy) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 13:04:25 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requ ests Message-ID: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE059037B4@eagle.netg.ie> > -----Original Message----- > From: Anthere [mailto:anthere8 at yahoo.com] > Sent: 29 January 2004 13:02 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > > Seriously, during my 2 weeks taking care of the english list, member > restricted, I had up to 30 mails per day to check. > with several ones per days infested by virus or worms. > We just can't have an open list any more, if a solution to found for > 1) limit spam > 2) improve security for the recipiendaries > Why not a [[Wikipedia: Ask Wikipedia]] page linked form the Main Page? Currently a lot of stuff ends up on Village Pump that would naturally go to an Ask page if it existed. Of course, others may well have already suggested this. Billy Mills DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040129/f92b279b/attachment.htm From sean at epoptic.org Thu Jan 29 14:07:34 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 06:07:34 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] news In-Reply-To: <00ac01c3e660$f2fe5930$0100a8c0@Darkblade> (jnelson@soncom.com) References: <20040128054640.97246.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <00ac01c3e660$f2fe5930$0100a8c0@Darkblade> Message-ID: <200401291407.i0TE7YY2027522@orwen.epoptic.com> > > > NAVY removes submarine commander > > > Norwich Bulletin > > > ... According to Wikipedia, an online > > > encyclopedia, the Jimmy Carter is > > > 100 feet longer than its sister ships and has > > > been modified for "highly > > > classified missions ... ... > Nope, I've had the same one set for a month or two. It's great to see the > use we get... the last, I find especially amusing, remembering some people's > complaints about ship and sub articles. I won't rest until the day we're cited in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute.... ;-> -- Sean Barrett | sean at epoptic.com | From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jan 29 17:18:33 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:18:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821520A4@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: <20040129171833.37789.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I am also interested in ocean currents although I know nothing about them. Recently I wrote [[Cromwell current]]. May you check it for correctness and improve it? thnx. --Optim .'. --- "KNOTT, T" wrote: > As the Guilty party who answered the question. > I have to say that I checked out the wikipedia > article on the Gulf stream and found it to be > rather lacking. There were no details such as > flow rate, average temp, etc. No false colour > maps. No history of who discovered it etc. > > As a result of answering the child's HW > question I've added gulf stream and all the > other ocean currents to my to do list and will > be improving them shortly. The thing is, has > the question not been asked I probably would > never have looked at the page. SO although I > agree that there is a danger of setting a > precedent and I do see your point I have to > disagree that allowing HW questions on this > list is necessarily a bad thing. > > Theresa > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert [mailto:rkscience100 at yahoo.com] > Sent: 28 January 2004 21:41 > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive > homework and research requests > > >But there is a great danger > to directly answering questions like these: In > a short > amount of time Wikipedia might become known as > a place > where people can mail in requests for info, and > then we > will be flooded with thousands of requests each > month for > help on homework and research. We'd get > questions from > people in junior high, high school, and > college. > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jan 29 17:20:41 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:20:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requ ests In-Reply-To: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE059037B4@eagle.netg.ie> Message-ID: <20040129172041.37770.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> How about [[Wikipedia:Reference desk]] ? --Optim .'. --- "Mills, Billy" wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Anthere [mailto:anthere8 at yahoo.com] > > Sent: 29 January 2004 13:02 > > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > > > > Seriously, during my 2 weeks taking care of > the english list, member > > restricted, I had up to 30 mails per day to > check. > > with several ones per days infested by virus > or worms. > > We just can't have an open list any more, if > a solution to found for > > 1) limit spam > > 2) improve security for the recipiendaries > > > Why not a [[Wikipedia: Ask Wikipedia]] page > linked form the Main Page? > Currently a lot of stuff ends up on Village > Pump that would naturally go to > an Ask page if it existed. Of course, others > may well have already suggested > this. > > Billy Mills > > > DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by > Norton Antivirus (using the > latest definitions) for all known Viruses. > The information in this message is confidential > and is intended solely for > the use of the named addressee. If you are not > the intended recipient, you > must not copy, distribute or use this email or > the information contained in > it for any purpose other than to notify us. If > you have received this > message in error, please notify the sender > immediately, and delete this > email from your system. Thank you. > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From timwi at gmx.net Thu Jan 29 18:06:43 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:06:43 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Poor, Edmund W wrote: > There is no official definition of what a "minor change" is. My > working definition is "anything that my fellow contributors would > agree is minor". The semi-intuition that has established itself within the community of Wikipedia regulars as to what a "minor edit" should be, goes somewhat counter to what a newbie would think is intuitively "minor". The opposite of minor is major. I believe most newbies would think a major edit would be a rewrite of a section of the article or the entire article. Addition of a sentence, although it adds actual information to the article, is not generally called a "major" edit of the article. What regulars have come to think of as "minor" is what I would call "trivial". Timwi From timwi at gmx.net Thu Jan 29 18:07:25 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:07:25 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learning from Experience In-Reply-To: References: <20040127115806.566DB1B02AB@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: Sheldon Rampton wrote: > Perhaps it would be a good idea to try setting up a separate wiki > specifically for the purpose of discussing and recording policy > decisions, actions and precedents. We could call it a "Wikislature." [[meta:]] can be used for that... From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jan 29 18:15:23 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 10:15:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040129181523.66372.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> that's right. --Optim .'. --- Timwi wrote: > The semi-intuition that has established itself > within the community of > Wikipedia regulars as to what a "minor edit" > should be, goes somewhat > counter to what a newbie would think is > intuitively "minor". > > The opposite of minor is major. I believe most > newbies would think a > major edit would be a rewrite of a section of > the article or the entire > article. Addition of a sentence, although it > adds actual information to > the article, is not generally called a "major" > edit of the article. > > What regulars have come to think of as "minor" > is what I would call > "trivial". > > Timwi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From littledanehren at yahoo.com Thu Jan 29 19:28:47 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:28:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <20040129181641.A558B1B02F3@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040129192847.70462.qmail@web41806.mail.yahoo.com> > From: daniwo59 at aol.com > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework > and research requests > Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 07:27:52 EST > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org > > Wikipedia is becoming a resource. What more can we > ask for? I also answered, > like this: > > "Here's a hint for your homework: > Look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream" > > It hardly delayed the expansion of Wikipedia. On the > other hand, I do think a > place or list for people to ask questions of this > kind is a good idea. In > fact, it would be helpful to us in finding out where > we should focus some of our > energies to fill in incomplete articles. We could > link to it from the Main > Page. > > Danny Isn't that what Wikibooks's completely neglected [[Study help desk]] was supposed to be for? LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From fun at thingy.apana.org.au Thu Jan 29 20:31:33 2004 From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:31:33 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests In-Reply-To: <20040129192847.70462.qmail@web41806.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040129192847.70462.qmail@web41806.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40196DA5.5000306@thingy.apana.org.au> On 01/29/04 19:28, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > From: daniwo59 at aol.com >>It hardly delayed the expansion of Wikipedia. On the >>other hand, I do think a >>place or list for people to ask questions of this >>kind is a good idea. In >>fact, it would be helpful to us in finding out where >>we should focus some of our >>energies to fill in incomplete articles. We could >>link to it from the Main >>Page. > Isn't that what Wikibooks's completely neglected > [[Study help desk]] was supposed to be for? As the Usenet 2 FAQ points out, naming is everything. A link from the main page might be good. "Got a question and the answer isn't [http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.org here]? Ask at the Wikipedia [[Wikipedia:reference desk]]!" The problem would be the bottom 1% of respondents: the people with an overwhelming sense of entitlement. "You didn't answer my question. You suck." - d. From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Thu Jan 29 20:46:13 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:46:13 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests Message-ID: I don't think we should do students' homework for them. Queries in the form of, "My professor assigned me to answer this question; please give me the answer" are an invitation to help a student cheat. I choose to decline such invitations. If the information required isn't in the Wikipedia, then by all means let's respond to the query by adding that information. I'd love to know more about ocean currents, myself. There's been discussion (last year, was it?) about how Wikipedia is like a library, or perhaps not like one. The reference librarian is happy to help you FIND YOUR OWN ANSWERS, thus facilitating your homework -- not doing it for you. The point is to help you learn, to let you know. Ed Poor From groups at gabrielwicke.de Thu Jan 29 20:25:21 2004 From: groups at gabrielwicke.de (Gabriel Wicke) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:25:21 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A danger of massive homework and research requests References: <108.2b3b105b.2d4a5648@aol.com> <4019042E.1090904@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:01:34 +0100, Anthere wrote: > We just can't have an open list any more, > if a solution to found for 1) limit spam > 2) improve security for the recipiendaries I have spamassassin running on my server for all mail accounts- it works just great- even without training. Filtered 1600 spams in the last three months, missed four, no false positives. -- Gabriel Wicke From dpbsmith at world.std.com Fri Jan 30 01:19:03 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:19:03 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Homework and research direct requests In-Reply-To: <20040129122135.66F511B02EE@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040129122135.66F511B02EE@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <4AD44380-52C2-11D8-B3EF-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> It used to be true, and may still be, that when you bought a print copy of the Britannica and do all the things they want you to do (like subscribing to their yearbook), the price also entitled you to submit a limited number of research requests to the Britannica. You were allowed five a year, or something like that. Soooooo... by analogy... should the price that people pay for Wikipedia similarly entitle them to a limited number of research requests? :-) -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/ From A Fri Jan 30 03:11:31 2004 From: A (A) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:11:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] 168... should be desysoped Message-ID: <20040130031131.66008.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> 168... has protected [[DNA]] despite his being involved in the edit war there. He has repeatedly refused to discuss the article on the talk page. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From delirium at rufus.d2g.com Fri Jan 30 03:11:35 2004 From: delirium at rufus.d2g.com (Delirium) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:11:35 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] 168... should be desysoped In-Reply-To: <20040130031131.66008.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040130031131.66008.qmail@web21505.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4019CB67.4000600@rufus.d2g.com> A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote: >168... has protected [[DNA]] despite his being >involved in the edit war there. He has repeatedly >refused to discuss the article on the talk page. > > We already have a space for discussing these sorts of things, near the bottom of [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]]. -Mark From TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk Fri Jan 30 09:34:09 2004 From: TKNOTT at qcl.org.uk (KNOTT, T) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:34:09 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? Message-ID: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522C4@backupserv.queens.harley> -----Original Message----- From: Timwi [mailto:timwi at gmx.net] Sent: 29 January 2004 18:07 To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org Cc: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? >What regulars have come to think of as "minor" is what I would call "trivial". >Timwi That's very sensible. Can we have "minor edit" renamed "trivial edit" to make things clear ? Theresa From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com Fri Jan 30 09:43:48 2004 From: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com (Charles Matthews) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:43:48 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? References: <2CF0780B23A1AE4DB4669FED03942C821522C4@backupserv.queens.harley> Message-ID: <002f01c3e715$96dea910$027c0450@Galasien> Theresa wrote >That's very sensible. Can we have "minor edit" renamed "trivial edit" to make things clear ? Hmmm - how about 'maintenance edit'. I don't think maintenance is at all trivial - keep the flower beds weeded, and a good impression is made on visitors. I do consider a high proportion of my minor edits to fall in that category. Charles From rich_holton at yahoo.com Fri Jan 30 14:13:43 2004 From: rich_holton at yahoo.com (Rich Holton) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 06:13:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? In-Reply-To: <002f01c3e715$96dea910$027c0450@Galasien> Message-ID: <20040130141343.49928.qmail@web60306.mail.yahoo.com> My rule of thumb is that a "minor edit" (by whatever name you choose to call it) is one to which no one could possibly object. Fixing a clear-cut spelling error would fall into this category (although I like to try to make sure it's not a spelling variant). Fixing a link may NOT fit into this category, unless I know for certain that the link I'm making is the one that was intended. I still believe in being bold in editing. I'm just VERY careful about using "minor edit". Again, as far as I'm concerned, the feature is virtually useless. -Rich Holton (a.k.a. Anthropos) --- Charles Matthews wrote: > Theresa wrote > > >That's very sensible. Can we have "minor edit" > renamed "trivial edit" to > make things clear ? > > Hmmm - how about 'maintenance edit'. I don't think > maintenance is at all > trivial - keep the flower beds weeded, and a good > impression is made on > visitors. I do consider a high proportion of my > minor edits to fall in that > category. > > Charles > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From billy.mills at thomson.com Fri Jan 30 14:16:27 2004 From: billy.mills at thomson.com (Mills, Billy) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:16:27 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What is a minor change? Message-ID: <97F9610EEF4D154AA3B611E29FBB2BAE059037B9@eagle.netg.ie> Generally speaking, I reserve Minor edit for clear-cut typos and for changes to my user page. Every time I see a vote on VfD marked minor, I think the option should be turned off. Billy Mills (Bmills) DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the latest definitions) for all known Viruses. The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this email from your system. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040130/b6037f80/attachment.htm From alex756 at nyc.rr.com Fri Jan 30 14:20:51 2004 From: alex756 at nyc.rr.com (Alex R.) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:20:51 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Homework and research direct requests References: <20040129122135.66F511B02EE@mail.wikipedia.org> <4AD44380-52C2-11D8-B3EF-003065AFDB8A@world.std.com> Message-ID: <002801c3e73c$43d6a3e0$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> What price? The Charter of Wikimedia states the the purpose of that organization is to "Create and freely distribute a free encyclopedia in all the languages of the world" (Article III). There have been something like $40,000 in donations to date just in the first seven months of the Foundation's existence. http://www.sunbiz.org/COR/2003/0620/90039369.tif Wikipedia will remain free, even if Wikimedia is dissolved or becomes insolvent. Why? Because all the work distributed on all the Wikipedias and related projects are released under the GFDL a license that allows liberal copying. Anyone can create a "fork" of Wikipedia, or a mirror site (under their own name as Wikipedia is a trademark). If you want to start a homework service using Wikipedia info, go right ahead, but "the price that people pay for Wikipedia" will always be free, there is nothing however stopping someone from starting a homework service that using the Wikipedia database (note the warranty disclaimer notice on each page, however). Alex756 From: "Daniel P.B.Smith" > It used to be true, and may still be, that when you bought a print copy > of the Britannica and do all the things they want you to do (like > subscribing to their yearbook), the price also entitled you to submit a > limited number of research requests to the Britannica. You were allowed > five a year, or something like that. > > Soooooo... by analogy... should the price that people pay for Wikipedia > similarly entitle them to a limited number of research requests? > > :-) > From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 30 14:41:54 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:41:54 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam Assassin Message-ID: Gabriel wrote: > On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:01:34 +0100, Anthere wrote: > > > We just can't have an open list any more, > > if a solution to found for 1) limit spam > > 2) improve security for the recipiendaries > > I have spamassassin running on my server for all mail > accounts- it works just great- even without training. > Filtered 1600 spams in the last three months, missed > four, no false positives. Brion, Can we install Spam Assassin software on the wikien-l mailing list? How about other mailing lists? Anthere and I have gotten tired of reading and deleting up to 30 daily spam, spam, spam, ham, eggs and spam (hasn't got MUCH spam in it) every day -- the joke gets old after a while. Ed Poor Wikien-l Admin Emeritus From fredbaud at ctelco.net Fri Jan 30 15:13:30 2004 From: fredbaud at ctelco.net (Fred Bauder) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:13:30 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk or Ask Wikipedia In-Reply-To: <002801c3e73c$43d6a3e0$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02> Message-ID: I don't think it's necessary to create a fork in order to implement this idea when most responses have been positive. But "Last Call". Fred > From: "Alex R." > Reply-To: English Wikipedia > Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:20:51 -0500 > To: "English Wikipedia" > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Homework and research direct requests > > What price? The Charter of Wikimedia states the the > purpose of that organization is to "Create and freely distribute > a free encyclopedia in all the languages of the world" (Article III). > There have been something like $40,000 in donations to date > just in the first seven months of the Foundation's existence. > http://www.sunbiz.org/COR/2003/0620/90039369.tif > > Wikipedia will remain free, even if Wikimedia is dissolved or > becomes insolvent. Why? Because all the work distributed on > all the Wikipedias and related projects are released under the > GFDL a license that allows liberal copying. > > Anyone can create a "fork" of Wikipedia, or a mirror site > (under their own name as Wikipedia is a trademark). If you > want to start a homework service using Wikipedia info, go > right ahead, but "the price that people pay for Wikipedia" > will always be free, there is nothing however stopping someone > from starting a homework service that using the Wikipedia > database (note the warranty disclaimer notice on each page, > however). > > Alex756 > > From: "Daniel P.B.Smith" >> It used to be true, and may still be, that when you bought a print copy >> of the Britannica and do all the things they want you to do (like >> subscribing to their yearbook), the price also entitled you to submit a >> limited number of research requests to the Britannica. You were allowed >> five a year, or something like that. >> >> Soooooo... by analogy... should the price that people pay for Wikipedia >> similarly entitle them to a limited number of research requests? >> >> :-) >> > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l From groups at gabrielwicke.de Fri Jan 30 16:36:08 2004 From: groups at gabrielwicke.de (Gabriel Wicke) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:36:08 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Spam Assassin References: Message-ID: On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:41:54 -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote: > > Can we install Spam Assassin software on the wikien-l mailing list? How > about other mailing lists? > > Anthere and I have gotten tired of reading and deleting up to 30 daily > spam, spam, spam, ham, eggs and spam (hasn't got MUCH spam in it) every > day -- the joke gets old after a while. > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l Admin Emeritus I have to add that spamassassin uses a bit of cpu for its processing, but at the rather low volume of mails processed by the mailing lists this shouldn't be a problem. -- Gabriel Wicke From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 30 16:34:38 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:34:38 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links Message-ID: <20040130163423.GA1837@joey.bomis.com> Which subdomains are linked to most often as 'external links' in Wikipedia? Looking for bias in this list is a dangerous activity. I personally think that the BBC is horribly biased, and so I was alarmed to see how often we link to them, as compared to other sources that may give a more "fair and balanced" perspective (yes, you know what I mean, and yes I'm having fun). HOWEVER, a huge proportion of hte BBC links are from the page *about* the BBC, which links to lots of divisions of the BBC. Most of the other cases are similar. Still, I found the list interesting enough to pass along... us.imdb.com - 519 www.geocities.com - 487 www.imdb.com - 327 www.wikipedia.org - 297 www.bbc.co.uk - 271 onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu - 267 www.nytimes.com - 258 www.house.gov - 202 www.guardian.co.uk - 190 dmoz.org - 166 www.ietf.org - 156 www.cnn.com - 149 34sp.eurosong.net - 149 www.google.com - 137 www.nobel-winners.com - 136 www.nobel.se - 132 www.pbs.org - 132 www.meritbadge.com - 121 members.aol.com - 120 quote.wikipedia.org - 119 www.washingtonpost.com - 118 www.ibiblio.org - 117 www.webelements.com - 111 www.yale.edu - 106 www.indianchild.com - 106 www.world-gazetteer.com - 100 www.nps.gov - 99 www.duke.edu - 98 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov - 97 environmentalchemistry.com - 97 www.newadvent.org - 96 www.angelfire.com - 91 www.itis.usda.gov - 90 www.amazon.com - 85 www.baseball-reference.com - 83 www.cbc.ca - 83 www.wired.com - 80 www.ethnologue.com - 80 www.heise.de - 80 www.w3.org - 79 members.tripod.com - 78 www.research.att.com - 78 www.history.navy.mil - 78 directory.google.com - 77 slashdot.org - 77 groups.google.com - 76 www.faqs.org - 75 www.fas.org - 75 www.tat.or.th - 75 mathworld.wolfram.com - 73 kanchanapisek.or.th - 73 www.archives.gov - 72 www.whitehouse.gov - 71 www.un.org - 71 www.insecula.com - 70 www.metrodemontreal.com - 70 www.us-israel.org - 66 groups.yahoo.com - 66 www.fishbase.org - 65 wikiquote.org - 62 www.bartleby.com - 62 www.fordham.edu - 61 bioguide.congress.gov - 61 www.gnu.org - 58 www.copsrus.com - 58 www.nsdl.arm.gov - 55 www.epinions.com - 54 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk - 53 ull.chemistry.uakron.edu - 51 www.seds.org - 51 www.plattegronden.nl - 51 www.state.gov - 49 www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com - 49 www.conigliofamily.com - 48 www.salon.com - 48 www.xs4all.nl - 48 www.schoolhouserock.tv - 48 www.time.com - 47 memory.loc.gov - 45 www.zmag.org - 45 www.nlm.nih.gov - 45 www.tsha.utexas.edu - 45 www.cdc.gov - 45 www.defenselink.mil - 45 www.globalsecurity.org - 45 zdnet.com.com - 45 www.adl.org - 43 www.microsoft.com - 43 www.ie.lspace.org - 43 www.snopes.com - 42 www.info.gov.hk - 42 www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk - 41 europa.eu.int - 41 www.rfc-editor.org - 41 www.loc.gov - 40 www.apple.com - 40 www.washtimes.com - 40 plato.stanford.edu - 40 scriptures.lds.org - 40 citeseer.nj.nec.com - 40 digital.library.upenn.edu - 39 www.HavenWorks.com - 39 www.nature.com - 39 www.machall.com - 38 www.ccel.org - 37 arxiv.org - 37 www.vatican.va - 37 web.mit.edu - 37 wiktionary.org - 36 news.com.com - 36 etext.lib.virginia.edu - 35 sources.wikipedia.org - 35 www.sdu.nl - 35 foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk - 34 www.allmusic.com - 34 home.earthlink.net - 34 www.nba.com - 34 tisue.net - 34 www.theregister.co.uk - 33 abcnews.go.com - 33 java.sun.com - 33 sunsite.berkeley.edu - 31 www.counterpunch.org - 31 www.religioustolerance.org - 31 biodiversity.uno.edu - 31 www.straightdope.com - 31 www.livius.org - 31 www.abc.net.au - 31 www.crimelibrary.com - 31 www.marxists.org - 30 www.aozora.gr.jp - 30 www.synaptic.bc.ca - 29 www.unicode.org - 29 caselaw.lp.findlaw.com - 29 www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk - 29 www.tvtome.com - 29 www.battle.net - 29 www.foxnews.com - 29 www.npr.org - 29 www.ex.ac.uk - 28 www.msnbc.com - 28 www.statistik.admin.ch - 28 www.newscientist.com - 28 story.news.yahoo.com - 28 www.eia.doe.gov - 28 web.archive.org - 28 www.cbsnews.com - 28 earthobservatory.nasa.gov - 28 www.olympic.org - 28 www.sfgate.com - 28 imdb.com - 28 www.astronautix.com - 27 usinfo.state.gov - 27 etext.library.adelaide.edu.au - 27 ourworld.compuserve.com - 27 www.peakware.com - 27 www.pokemondungeon.com - 27 pdreader.org - 26 skepdic.com - 26 education.jlab.org - 26 msdn.microsoft.com - 26 www.mozilla.org - 26 www.shakespeare-literature.com - 26 www.tate.org.uk - 26 www.acmuller.net - 25 www.epa.gov - 25 www.cia.gov - 25 www.egs.edu - 25 edition.cnn.com - 25 sourceforge.net - 25 www.sacred-texts.com - 25 mozillaquest.com - 25 www.grida.no - 24 www.lysator.liu.se - 24 www.rcsb.org - 24 www.usatoday.com - 24 www.sff.net - 24 www.census.gov - 24 www.mapquest.com - 24 www.klov.com - 23 www.hrw.org - 23 www-aus.cricket.org - 23 www.kuro5hin.org - 23 www.mfa.gov.il - 23 www.travelchinaguide.com - 23 www.kirjasto.sci.fi - 23 www.thrale.com - 23 www.artcyclopedia.com - 23 www.stanford.edu - 23 www.rootsweb.com - 23 www.math.miami.edu - 23 biz.yahoo.com - 23 www.hku.hk - 23 www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk - 22 lcweb2.loc.gov - 22 en.wikipedia.org - 22 www.telegraph.co.uk - 22 www.cl.cam.ac.uk - 22 www.disinfopedia.org - 22 www.idf.il - 22 www.btinternet.com - 22 www.ebible.org - 22 lwn.net - 22 www.theatlantic.com - 21 www.usdoj.gov - 21 www.omniglot.com - 21 home.att.net - 21 www.jsc.nasa.gov - 21 www.globeandmail.com - 21 classics.mit.edu - 20 www.columbia.edu - 20 www.adherents.com - 20 www.eff.org - 20 media.guardian.co.uk - 20 www.senate.gov - 20 www.biblegateway.com - 20 www.maintour.com - 20 primes.utm.edu - 20 www.pitt.edu - 20 www.amorc.org - 20 www.newsfactor.com - 20 From wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Fri Jan 30 16:39:59 2004 From: wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk (Gareth Owen) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:39:59 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links In-Reply-To: <20040130163423.GA1837@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040130163423.GA1837@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Jimmy Wales writes: > I personally think that the BBC is horribly biased, Right-o, Jimbo. I'll see to it that the two most senior managers resign forthwith. -- Gareth Owen From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 30 17:28:20 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:28:20 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links Message-ID: I'm surprised that there are only 40 links to the Washington Times. Is someone going around behind me and removing these? Or are they just expiring because they embargo their news after a couple of weeks? Ed Poor From jwales at bomis.com Fri Jan 30 19:27:19 2004 From: jwales at bomis.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 11:27:19 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] New servers delivered! Message-ID: <20040130192629.GA6392@joey.bomis.com> Sorry for the massive crossposting, but this is big good news. The new colocation facility (Neutelligent/Hostway, Tampa) just called me and they are at this moment taking delivery of 9 new servers belonging to the Wikimedia Foundation. :-) I'm heading over there now with Michael and we will be spending as long as it takes to install them. It's more up to Brion and the other developers as to when we'll be able to go live on these. I'm just going to get them up and running and make sure that the latest (most secure) ssh is on them. Since I'm on my way out the door and need a quick list of names suidas beauvais glanwilla moreri hoffman bayle coronelli zwinger browne are taken from "Notable encyclopedists before 1700", in the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia --Jimbo From pcb21 at btconnect.com Fri Jan 30 19:57:28 2004 From: pcb21 at btconnect.com (Peter Bartlett) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:57:28 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links In-Reply-To: Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales >I personally think that the BBC is horribly biased, and so I was alarmed to see how often we link to them, as compared to other sources that may give a >more "fair and balanced" perspective (yes, you know what I mean, and yes I'm having fun). I am not sure what you mean, but I am glad you are having fun. You say that a good portion of the BBC links are about the BBC, leaving (I guesstimate) 100 that use the BBC as a source. Well I guess I am personally responsible for a huge chunk of those. I reference my articles more than most, and I write on British current event issues and the BBC is a very natural source area for these areas. If there is a problem with the BBC as a source (but not geocities!!) then it is important for me to know what it is. Pete/pcb21 From cprompt at tmbg.org Fri Jan 30 20:18:48 2004 From: cprompt at tmbg.org (cprompt) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 15:18:48 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1075493926.5744.38.camel@chai.snacksoft.com> On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 14:57, Peter Bartlett wrote: > -----Original Message----- > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales > > >I personally think that the BBC is horribly biased, and so I was > alarmed to see how often we link to them, as compared to other sources > that may give a > >more "fair and balanced" perspective (yes, you know what I mean, and > yes I'm having fun). > > I am not sure what you mean, but I am glad you are having fun. You say If I'm not mistaken, he's referring to Fox News, which touts itself as "fair and balanced". It's not. From erik_moeller at gmx.de Fri Jan 30 20:26:34 2004 From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 20:26:34 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Spam Assassin In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <91q+aPBhpVB@erik_moeller> Gabriel- > On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:41:54 -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote: >> >> Can we install Spam Assassin software on the wikien-l mailing list? How >> about other mailing lists? >> >> Anthere and I have gotten tired of reading and deleting up to 30 daily >> spam, spam, spam, ham, eggs and spam (hasn't got MUCH spam in it) every >> day -- the joke gets old after a while. >> >> Ed Poor >> Wikien-l Admin Emeritus > I have to add that spamassassin uses a bit of cpu for its processing, but > at the rather low volume of mails processed by the mailing lists this > shouldn't be a problem. Because of mydoom I strongly recommend using a procmail filter for killing attachments *before* they reach SpamAssassin. Before I did so SA literally killed my system because it hit internal file limits. The following rule works well: :0 B * ^ *Content-Disposition: attachment; * filename=".*\.(pif|exe|scr|zip|bat|cmd)" virus It kills zip files, too, but this shouldn't be a problem for the mailing list. In fact we might want to filter all mails that contain attachments - use URLs instead. SpamAssassin is very good at killing spam, but it is not very well suited for attachment filtering because of its slowness for large mails. Regards, Erik From llywrch at agora.rdrop.com Fri Jan 30 20:09:42 2004 From: llywrch at agora.rdrop.com (Geoff Burling) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:09:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links In-Reply-To: <20040130163423.GA1837@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote: > Which subdomains are linked to most often as 'external links' in > Wikipedia? > > Looking for bias in this list is a dangerous activity. I feel a useful, if not particularly exciting, Wikipedia task is to periodically check these links, to verify that they still work, that they offer useful material, etc. > > I personally think that the BBC is horribly biased, and so I was > alarmed to see how often we link to them, as compared to other sources > that may give a more "fair and balanced" perspective (yes, you know > what I mean, and yes I'm having fun). I didn't know Al Franken had a web page. More seriously, I guess this preference of links to news sites with a center to left POV reflects the interests & nature of the WP community. All of my links to news sites have been to my local newspaper, which historically presents a Republican POV (although it has been gradually drifting to the left relative to the rest of the media). > HOWEVER, a huge proportion of > hte BBC links are from the page *about* the BBC, which links to lots > of divisions of the BBC. > > Most of the other cases are similar. One catagory that surprised me was the number of external links back to Wikipedia. Surely most of them can be modified to a simple hyperlink. I wasn't surprised at the number of links to the Internet Movie Database, though; variations on its URL make it the first & third most linked site. However, having used it frequently over the years (since it was nothing more than a collection of perl scripts on a server in Wales), I know that as a resource it is thin in facts as compared to WP currently, & even admitting many of our articles need work. Geoff From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 30 19:37:50 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:37:50 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A request for prayers (for the new servers!) Message-ID: I would like to humbly request that we pray for God's blessing upon the new servers -- that they will work well and that they will serve all of humanity with accurate and useful knowledge. For those of you who do not believe in God, try this formula: "Oh, God, if there is a God..." Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed From sean at epoptic.org Fri Jan 30 21:44:22 2004 From: sean at epoptic.org (Sean Barrett) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 13:44:22 -0800 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A request for prayers (for the new servers!) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <401AD036.4080101@epoptic.org> Poor, Edmund W wrote: > I would like to humbly request that we pray for God's blessing upon the > new servers -- that they will work well and that they will serve all of > humanity with accurate and useful knowledge. > > For those of you who do not believe in God, try this formula: > > "Oh, God, if there is a God..." O capricious Eris, turn thy face from our servers! Do not consider our humble enterprise, so unworthy of thine attention! Stay thy hand from ... no, wait! Don't look at m*#${{{ NO CARRIER -- Sean Barrett sean at epoptic.com From Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com Fri Jan 30 21:38:14 2004 From: Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com (Poor, Edmund W) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:38:14 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links Message-ID: Surely every news source has its biases. I don't see how we Wikipedians would (or could) ever be able to agree that any particular newspaper was "really telling the truth", given that we Wikipedians also have our biases. One thinks the Guardian or the New York Times is "objective, truth-based, etc." while another condemns both as hopelessly entrenched bastions of liberal bias. How do we each decide which news source to trust? If you're like me, you probably measure the reliability of a source in terms of how much of its "news" agrees with what you already "know". If you're a fan of socialism, and "his" source criticizes socialism, then obviously that source is biased. If you're a US Republican, and "her" source criticizes Bush, then obviously, etc. Larry and Jimbo wisely crafted the Neutral Point of View formula as the only workable way to deal with this mess, and it seems to be holding up rather well. Uncle Ed From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sat Jan 31 01:02:03 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:02:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Spam Assassin In-Reply-To: <20040130202659.083461B02B6@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040131010203.31307.qmail@web41813.mail.yahoo.com> > It kills zip files, too, but this shouldn't be a > problem for the mailing > list. In fact we might want to filter all mails that > contain attachments - > use URLs instead. > > Regards, > > Erik I don't think that's such a good idea, since some people attach PGP public keys to all of their outgoing mail. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From timwi at gmx.net Sat Jan 31 02:17:12 2004 From: timwi at gmx.net (Timwi) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 02:17:12 +0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links In-Reply-To: <20040130163423.GA1837@joey.bomis.com> References: <20040130163423.GA1837@joey.bomis.com> Message-ID: Jimmy Wales wrote: > Which subdomains are linked to most often as 'external links' in > Wikipedia? > > us.imdb.com - 519 > www.geocities.com - 487 > www.imdb.com - 327 [etc.] How is this list generated? Is it the actual number of external links, or is it the number of articles that contain at least one external link to that site? The reason I'm asking is that your list goes all the way back down to only 20 links, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal contains roundabout 40 links to www.livejournal.com. So either there's something wrong with the list, or I'm missing something here ... Timwi From littledanehren at yahoo.com Sat Jan 31 03:33:53 2004 From: littledanehren at yahoo.com (Daniel Ehrenberg) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:33:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links In-Reply-To: <20040130202659.083461B02B6@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: <20040131033353.90831.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> > I personally think that the BBC is horribly > biased, and so I was > alarmed to see how often we link to them, as > compared to other sources > that may give a > more "fair and balanced" perspective (yes, you > know what I mean, and > yes I'm having fun). That's strange. I always thought of you as free-thinking and rational. LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 31 04:59:55 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 20:59:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Searching In-Reply-To: <20040131033353.90831.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040131045955.77347.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> The Search function (both "Go" and "Search") is completely inoperative. Attempts to use it send the user to the Main Page. Unless you can find a link to an article, you cannot navigate the Wikipedia. RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040130/b53c6b8c/attachment.htm From giantsrick13 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 31 05:18:20 2004 From: giantsrick13 at yahoo.com (Rick) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 21:18:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Edit problems In-Reply-To: <20040131045955.77347.qmail@web60609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040131051820.6542.qmail@web60608.mail.yahoo.com> I'm also having problems now with editing. If I edit a page, then someone else edits it, if I try to re-edit it, I get the edit page containing the content it had before *I* last edited it. I can't find ANY way to get to the current version. I've tried Ctrl-F5, I've tried Refresh, nothing seems to work. RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040130/b6b554d8/attachment.htm From jheiskan at welho.com Sat Jan 31 07:40:44 2004 From: jheiskan at welho.com (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 07:40:44 -0000 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A request for prayers (for the new servers!) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1075535380.15978.9.camel@myhome.home> On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 21:37, Poor, Edmund W wrote: I would like to humbly request that we pray for God's blessing upon the new servers -- that they will work well and that they will serve all of humanity with accurate and useful knowledge. For those of you who do not believe in God, try this formula: "Oh, God, if there is a God..." Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed Well, I stroked my amulet (and no; it does not mean what you think it means), did steady breathing etc. for Geoffrin. :-/ I think this time we need stronger medicine; perhaps we should ask the fool-killer to spare these nine children of wisdom yet to be recollected? Jussi-Ville Heiskanen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040131/d8d438c8/attachment.htm From anthere8 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 31 08:24:41 2004 From: anthere8 at yahoo.com (Anthere) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:24:41 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Spam Assassin References: Message-ID: <401B6649.3040502@yahoo.com> Poor, Edmund W a ?crit: > Gabriel wrote: > > >>On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:01:34 +0100, Anthere wrote: >> >> >>>We just can't have an open list any more, >>>if a solution to found for 1) limit spam >>>2) improve security for the recipiendaries >> >>I have spamassassin running on my server for all mail >>accounts- it works just great- even without training. >>Filtered 1600 spams in the last three months, missed >>four, no false positives. > > > Brion, > > Can we install Spam Assassin software on the wikien-l mailing list? How > about other mailing lists? > > Anthere and I have gotten tired of reading and deleting up to 30 daily > spam, spam, spam, ham, eggs and spam (hasn't got MUCH spam in it) every > day -- the joke gets old after a while. > > Ed Poor > Wikien-l Admin Emeritus very emeritus... Does anyone know why I am still receiving messages from the english mailing list, as if I was still the mailing list admin, which I am not anymore ? Subject: WikiEN-l post from monster at sol.dk requires approval From:wikien-l-owner at Wikipedia.org Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book To:wikien-l-owner at Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:06:40 +0100 As list administrator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting: List: WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org From: monster at sol.dk Subject: Hi Reason: Post by non-member to a members-only list At your convenience, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/admindb/wikien-l to approve or deny the request. ------- Do I need to unregister from the mailing list as a user for the mails to stop entirely ? I am not receiving all of them, only part of them. That did not happen when I resigned from administrating the fr list; What is happening ? ant From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jan 31 08:41:14 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:41:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Spam Assassin In-Reply-To: <20040131010203.31307.qmail@web41813.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040131084114.3639.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> yes, and I may also attach PGP keys in the future. --Optim --- Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > > It kills zip files, too, but this shouldn't > be a > > problem for the mailing > > list. In fact we might want to filter all > mails that > > contain attachments - > > use URLs instead. > > > > Regards, > > > > Erik > > I don't think that's such a good idea, since > some > people attach PGP public keys to all of their > outgoing > mail. > > LDan > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building > tool. Try it! > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From groups at gabrielwicke.de Sat Jan 31 11:38:11 2004 From: groups at gabrielwicke.de (Gabriel Wicke) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 12:38:11 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Spam Assassin References: <20040130202659.083461B02B6@mail.wikipedia.org> <20040131010203.31307.qmail@web41813.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:02:03 -0800, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: > I don't think that's such a good idea, since some > people attach PGP public keys to all of their outgoing > mail. Erik's rule doesn't interfere with PGP signatures, shouldn't be a problem. -- Gabriel Wicke From dpbsmith at world.std.com Sat Jan 31 19:01:21 2004 From: dpbsmith at world.std.com (Daniel P.B.Smith) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:01:21 -0500 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A request for prayers (for the new servers!) In-Reply-To: <20040131082045.408741B0283@mail.wikipedia.org> References: <20040131082045.408741B0283@mail.wikipedia.org> Message-ID: > I would like to humbly request that we pray for God's blessing upon the > new servers -- that they will work well and that they will serve all of > humanity with accurate and useful knowledge. Just be sure to save one file containing a prayer onto each hard drive on each server... that's the equivalent 7200 PPM (prayers per minute). (Some extremely pious system administrators try to save one prayer per disk platter or even one prayer per disk surface). -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/ From magnus.manske at web.de Sat Jan 31 19:51:26 2004 From: magnus.manske at web.de (Magnus Manske) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 20:51:26 +0100 Subject: [WikiEN-l] A request for prayers (for the new servers!) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <401C073E.6030603@web.de> Poor, Edmund W wrote: > I would like to humbly request that we pray for God's blessing upon the > new servers -- that they will work well and that they will serve all of > humanity with accurate and useful knowledge. But what about the servers we already tried? I don't think prayers will do any good; they are already possessed by the minions of SCO^H^H^H Satan! If there are any wikipedians in Rome, maybe they could look for one of these fine Exorcist fellows. A native american schaman might also work for the time being. Magnus From optim81 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jan 31 20:13:11 2004 From: optim81 at yahoo.co.uk (Optim) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 12:13:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A request for prayers (for the new servers!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040131201311.26537.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I have several text files with the Buddhist "Om Mani Padme Hum" written in them and saved in all hard disks of most of my computers. I also use Christian prayers, such as "kyrie eleison" (Greek). See: http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/digital-wheels.htm But for the Wikipedia servers I would suggest to put the prayers in 10000RPM hard disks. They spin at a faster rate than the 7200RPM ones, so in theory they generate much more positive karma! :-) --Optim --- "Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote: > Just be sure to save one file containing a > prayer onto each hard drive > on each server... that's the equivalent 7200 > PPM (prayers per minute). __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/